Author Archives: First.One.Through

Omar and Tlaib’s Antisemitic B.D.S.

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Two members of congress, Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) were denied entry into Israel in August 2019 because of their work advocating for an economic war against Israel, called B.D.S. for boycott, divest and sanction. The two contend that their motives are noble in that they just seek to exercise their freedom of expression and speech to pressure Israel to improve the rights of Palestinian Arabs. In response to being rejected by Israel, they are now seeking to cut U.S. economic aid to Israel. It seems that haters of Israel can always find an excuse for B.D.S., including hurt pride.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar hold press conference on the ban preventing them from traveling to Israel, Aug. 18, 2019, in St Paul, Minn.

These two congresspeople have been openly hostile to Israel for many years. The question being discussed is whether these two women and the B.D.S. movement are really about real or perceived actions of Israel OR pure antisemitism.

The Sole Jewish State.
There is only one Jewish state, a situation very dissimilar to the dozens of Christian and Muslim countries. Boycotting Israel is therefore an attack on every Jewish state. One could perhaps not be so cynical about the two Muslim women’s motives if they were targeting only one out of ten Jewish states, similar to President Trump’s temporary travel ban on 10% of the Muslim-majority countries because of their poor security controls. But these same women gave no allowance to Trump and said he was singling denying entry to Muslims in a “hateful” assault. So, one can draw a conclusion that these women are driven by their own “hateful” ideology, persecuting 100% of the Jewish countries, not just 10 percent of them.

Relying on Prior Comments
Omar had no compunction calling out Trump’s travel ban because of the prior comments he had made about Muslims and Islam. Yet she cannot understand people viewing her attacks on Israel through the prism of her repeated negative comments about Jews. She says that “Islamophobia and antisemitism are two sides of the same bigoted coin,” but the reality is people see her and Trump as two similar bigoted talking heads.

Outrageous Claims
The B.D.S. movement which Tlaib proudly supports, makes wildly false and inflammatory claims about Israel. It openly uses terms like “apartheid,” “settler colonialism” and “ethnic cleansing” in vile libels which not only have no basis in fact, but are incendiary comments designed to rile up people to actively attack the Jewish state.

  • Israel Welcomes non-Jews While the Muslim Countries Practice Antisemitism
    The “ethnic cleansing” attack on Israel is an inversion of facts. At Israel’s founding it welcomed 160,000 non-Jews as citizens, while at the same time, Jordan expelled every Jew from the land it seized from Israel and specifically denied any Jew citizenship. Fellow Arab and Muslim countries followed suit and evicted one million Jews between the 1930’s and 1960’s. Today, there are 100 times the number of Arabs living inside Israel as there are Jews living in Arab and Muslim countries. Arabs in Israel are thriving. where their numbers are growing faster than the organic population of any neighboring Arab country.
  • Israeli Arabs like the Jewish State
    When Israel passed its Nation-State Law, many supporters of the B.D.S. movement claimed that it showed Israel to be a racist country. However, they ignored the polls which showed that Israeli Arabs overwhelmingly support the law, even more than Israeli Jews!
  • Israel is more tolerant of Muslims than Europe
    Israel permits people to wear hijabs and burqas, to build churches, mosques and minarets, to have halal food, perform circumcisions and use Sharia courts. Those are freedoms you cannot find in France, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Latvia or Turkey, to name a few countries.
  • Israel is the most liberal country in MENA
    The simple fact is that Israel is an open liberal democracy, with rights and protections for all people. There are Arabs in the Israeli parliament, the Supreme Court and the army. Muslims are allowed to pray at Judaism’s holiest site and can become the prime minister in the country. Those liberties are in sharp contrast to its Arab Muslim neighbors.
  • Israel is the Reestablishment of Jewish Sovereignty
    The B.D.S. claim of “colonialism” is not just a lie but antisemitic. It deliberately erases the 3,300 years of Jewish history in the land and ignores Judaism’s focus of prayer and pilgrimage to Jerusalem for millenia. It is a part of a new type of repulsive “replacement theology” in which Arabs have transformed themselves into the indigenous people in the holy land and Jews are recent invaders.

B.D.S.’s Goal is the Destruction of Israel
The founder of the B.D.S. movement, Omar Barghouti, states very clearly that his movement seeks to end the Jewish State in any configuration or size, “most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.” Even long-time critic of Israel Norman Finkelstein said that the supporters of B.D.S. “don’t want Israel [to exist].”

B.D.S. Tactics are Attacks, not Protests
The tactics deployed by the B.D.S. movement are through economic and cultural warfare. Omar and Tlaib saying that they are just expressing their opinions is a far cry from reality. The movement wants universities, companies and countries to stop investing in Israel, from conducting any commerce, collaboration or trade, and to sanction it often and repeatedly. A small country like Israel would be crippled without its export/import industry.

Democratic Socialists Embrace B.D.S.
Tlaib and Omar have common cause with the far-left wing of the Democratic Party, Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders’ Democratic Socialists which have also embraced B.D.S. In doing so, they are mainstreaming the falsehoods and vilification of Israel and advancing an economic war against the Jewish State.

Pressuring Only the Jewish State in the Dispute
The two members of Congress and the B.D.S. movement claim they are seeking a peaceful settlement to the Israeli-Arab conflict, but are only attacking one party, not attempting to bring them together.

  • Nominally about a Dispute or a Civil War
    The Arabs have been fighting with the Jews over the control of the land for 100 years in a long-simmering civil war. It has still not ended as neither side has claimed victory nor defeat, leaving millions of Arabs stateless. Progressive empathy is naturally drawn to the weaker party, without consideration of who is actually right or whether the fault of the terrible situation lies at the leadership of the weaker party. The alt-left and Muslim extremists either ignore or celebrate the acting-president of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Mahmoud Abbas calling for millions of fighters to descend on Jerusalem (1:03) and the Hamas Charter which calls for the killing of Jews and refusing to ever negotiate a peace with Israel.
  • Palestinians Have No Ability to Negotiate
    The leader of the PA’s four-year term in office ran out over a decade ago. He has no mandate to negotiate, and polls show that the Palestinians want him to resign. He also does not control Gaza, and has not been able to govern a Palestinian parliament which has 58% of the members belonging to Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist organization. Abbas has never shown a compromise in his negotiations with Israel and has never been able to control Hamas. Therefore, there is no logic for Israel to negotiate with a straw man who cannot deliver, and it is unfair to punish Israel for failing to reach an agreement with such counter-party.

Omar and Tlaib Refuse Visit to Israel and Schedule Visit to “Palestine”
Over forty Democratic members of Congress went to Israel in the beginning of August and met with Israelis and Palestinian Arabs in a well organized trip. But Omar and Tlaib boycotted the trip and instead decided to go on a trip to the State of “Palestine,” even though the United States does not recognize such a country. Their agenda was organized by Miftah, a group which has excused the killing of Israeli civilians.

The B.D.S. movement is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish State and the nullification of Jewish history and Jewish rights, which is why the Israeli government banned entry for people affiliated with the movement. It is manifestation of Palestineism which believes the dignity of Palestinians is predicated on erasing the dignity of Jews. Omar and Tlaib are its current ugly face, but it’s in the hearts and minds of other Democratic Socialists.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Three Camps of Ethnic Cleansing in the BDS Movement

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Ilhan Omar Isn’t Debating Israeli Policy, She is Attacking Americans

Muslim Women Debate Anti-Semitism

The Insidious Jihad in America

The Antisemitic Youth

The Mourabitat Women of Congress

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel

Anti-Israel Lobbyists Dwarf Pro-Israel Lobbyists

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Palestineism is Toxic Racism

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Racism is a form of hatred which believes that all members of a particular group are inferior and/or evil. In itself, it is ugly but not dangerous, a localized noxious belief system based on bigotry. Racism becomes toxic when it spreads and obtains power.

Such is the state of Palestineism, the effort to weaken, shrink and destroy Israel because it is a Jewish State, as well as to vilify Jews and deny their rights, history and dignity in the Jewish holy land.

The Arab World

Palestineism has been present in the Arab and Muslim world for a hundred years.

Denying Jews and the Jewish State has been at the forefront of the Palestineism. Even before Jews reestablished Jewish sovereignty in their holy land in 1948, Arabs rioted and killed Jews throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, and petitioned the British who oversaw the Palestine Mandate to bar and limit the entry of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe. When Israel declared itself a Jewish state, the armies of five neighboring Arab Muslim countries invaded with the stated desire to destroy it completely. The Arabs evicted Jews from all lands they seized and specifically forbade Jews from obtaining citizenship (Article 3). Fellow Arab and Muslim nations followed suit, with ten Arab and Muslim countries expelling one million Jews after Israel was founded, irrespective of whether their fellow Jewish countrymen were Zionists.

To this very day, there are 30 Arab and Muslim countries which refuse to acknowledge the basic existence of the only Jewish country despite 20% of Israel’s population being Muslim, even while they recognize other countries including Myanmar which actively persecutes Muslims. The acting-President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas continues to refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, an acknowledgement which would have no impact on creating a new state of Palestine.

The Arab world’s objection to Israel is specifically that it is that is it Jewish.

The Palestinians elected Hamas to 58 percent of the Palestinian parliament in 2006 with this antisemitic jihadist charter full of sinister conspiracy theories about Jews (Articles 17, 22 and 30, among others).

The institutionalized Arab hatred of the Jews has developed into a full-blown vile ideology, as it attempts to validate its desire to wipe out Jews from the region.

  • The foundational document of the Palestinian Arabs claims that Jews have no history in Palestine, erasing the history and essence of the Jewish people (Article 18).
  • Throughout the Muslim world, Jews are actively dehumanized and stripped of their dignity, referred to as the “sons of apes and pigs.” It is a doctrine of racial superiority which is morally condemnable.
  • Mahmoud Abbas said that Jews have been hated for centuries because “of their function,” which is why they are always massacred. He continued his screed that in recent history, the “imperialist powers” tossed those unwanted Jews out of their countries into the Middle East, poisoning Palestinian land with the wretched people. It is blame-the-victim approach worthy of a sickening governing body which excuses honor killings of women.

The fabric of Palestineism is that Jews are disgusting foreign invaders who have no rights nor claims to Arab land.

This immoral Palestineism ideology manifests itself in many ways:

  • The Palestinian Authority has a law which calls for the death penalty for any Arab who sells land to a Jew.
  • The PA gives lifetime stipends to Arabs who murder Jews.
  • The Palestinians refuse to allow Jews to step foot on Arab college campuses in the West Bank, even journalists who loudly condemn Israel.
  • When Muslims ruled Hebron, they refused to allow Jews from entering their second holiest place, the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs.
  • Muslim Arabs continue to refuse to let the Jews pray at their holiest location, the Jewish Temple Mount.

The list goes on.

Palestineism, in its very essence, is about the repression of the dignity and integrity of Jews as human beings, with full rights to live and worship freely in their holy land. The toxicity has spread from the leadership and the state-controlled media to infuse the people who are the most anti-Semitic in the world.

Palestineism in The Rest of the World

Palestineism was built on Jew-hatred and conspiracy theories. The calls that Jews are “colonialists” and invaders of “Arab land” has been picked up by others, including leaders in the western world.

In Great Britain, Jeremy Corbyn is a member of the Labour Party who adopted Palestineism early in his career, often comparing Israelis to Nazis. He was once an outlier, but the toxicity infected the rest of the party when he was elected the party leader in September 2015 and began replacing senior party people with like-minded racists. Jews began to leave the Labour party in droves – including members of parliament – finding the antisemitism intolerable.

In the United States, Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) were elected to congress in November 2018, and accused Jews of having dual loyalty and buying off members of the government to support Israel, racist tropes which the two Muslim women have not made about Irish-Americans, Mexican Americans or any other group. They contend that the most liberal nation in the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is an apartheid state, inverting the root cause of racism in the region, deflecting Muslim antisemitism. Meanwhile, these same members of Congress believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran which hangs gays by cranes in the streets and is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, should not only not be boycotted, but given a legal pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran has called for the destruction of Israel – coincidence?

Palestineism is employing the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel, the sole Jewish state as a tool in its jihad. Corbyn, Omar and Tlaib are pushing for economic warfare against Israel, supposedly in the name of giving Palestinian Arabs a state.

The European Union is considering unique labels for products manufactured by Jews in the Israeli territory of Area C in the West Bank, but not those manufactured by non-Jews. It is the very definition of racism in suppressing the dignity of one human being over another. Will it label products made by Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir differently? By Christians and Muslims in Cyprus?

The toxicity of racism embedded in the Palestineism is not just spreading, it is being mainstreamed and defended by political leaders outside of the Muslim and Arab world. Denying Jewish history and repressing Jewish dignity are no longer viewed as morally condemnable and socially unjust, but essential ingredients to the creation of a Palestinian state, because those sentiments are demanded by the Arab world and Palestinian leadership. As it is considered improper to malign the “marginalized” in liberal circles, the alt-left is parroting the Palestineism propaganda, rather than condemning the racism.

So, schools in the Palestinian territories named for terrorists get European funding. Textbooks which deny the humanity and history of Jews are disseminated by the United Nations. Monies which flow to the murderers of Jews are reimbursed by Arab and non-Arab countries alike.

It is the very embodiment of toxic racism.

Palestinian Arabs could achieve sovereignty and statehood in Gaza and Areas A and B tomorrow, but Palestineism has more malicious demands: that Israel not be a Jewish State; that Jews be forbidden from living anywhere in Palestine; and that Jews be denied access and rights to their holy sites. It is Palestineism that is the roadblock to creating a state of Palestine and an enduring peace in the region, nothing else.

Palestineism is a sinister jihad, a direct antisemitic assault on the humanity, dignity and integrity of Jews, Judaism and the Jewish State and the polar opposite of coexistence and decency. It must be condemned loudly, clearly and often by everyone.


Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), advocate for boycotting Israel,
upon being sworn in as a new member of the US Congress

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Palestinian State I Oppose

Rep. Ilhan Omar and The 2001 Durban Racism Conference

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Squeezing Zionism

The Three Camps of Ethnic Cleansing in the BDS Movement

Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

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I Understand Why the Caged Jew Sighs

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The free Crescent Birds migrate back-and-forth
Crossing from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans
Over 1.8 billion in total, touching mountains and deserts
With feet on the ground and heads in the sky.

The free Cross Birds zip casually in Europe and Americas
Counting over 2.2 billion, they dominate the West
And have causes in the East
Every land an open door.

But the Jew Birds were given no nests
Seen as failing the two faith tests
Still needing some safe quarters
By point, forced into cramped ghettos.

The caged BIRDS were hunted
A paltry sum stunted
Clipped wings on the precipice
The tattered flock Exodus.

The Crescent Birds haj to Mecca
Drew millions of the same feather
A city with a single plume
Marked Jerusalem as its own.

The Cross Birds sang at the Vatican
And set stations in Jerusalem
They came and went and fought and prayed
The pilgrims of reenactment.

The caged BIRDS were allotted few miles
For which they fought several trials
Barred from rebuilding their holy nest
Being told they were just passing guests.

The caged birds are left in the
Shadow of a wall
Lifting heads to sing over the
Muezzin call
While the Crescent Birds mock overhead
The caged birds sing of hope and what’s next.


The Temple Mount seen from the roof of the Hurva Synagogue
(photo: First.One.Through)

Related First.One.Through article:

Losing the Temples, Knowledge and Caring

The Dark Side of Jerusalem Day: Magnifying the Kotel and Minimizing the Temple Mount

Dignity for Israel: Jewish Prayer on the Temple Mount

Visitor Rights on the Temple Mount

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The Growth of UNRWA’s “Other” Wards

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The last post “UNRWA Anoints New Palestinian Wards” generated many questions. Does the agency tasked with helping descendants of internally-displaced people from 1948 actually assist non-refugees as well?

The answer is unambiguously yes.

Here is UNRWA’s report from January 1, 2011. It shows a whopping growth in the number of “refugees,” including a growth of 8.9% in the West Bank alone. If that sounds too hard to believe that Arabs suddenly went from an annual population growth of 2-3% to 9%, it’s because it is untrue. UNRWA decided to add lots of other people onto its service rolls.

Here is a chart the following year in January 2012, the first time UNRWA broke out figures for this “other” category.

Table 1. 2012 UNRWA Recipients Totals

2012 Jordan Lebanon Syria West Bank Gaza Total
Refugees        1,979,580        436,154        486,946        727,471        1,167,572        4,797,723
“Others”              67,787           29,644           23,498        147,156              49,947            318,032
Total        2,047,367        465,798        510,444        874,627        1,217,519        5,115,755
other % 3.3% 6.4% 4.6% 16.8% 4.1% 6.2%

The non-refugees who received aid from UNRWA were 6.2% of the total population, and an incredible 16.8% in the West Bank.

The world didn’t seem to care and kept sending money to the agency. So the numbers of “others” kept on skyrocketing.

Here is a chart from January 2019, which shows that the “other” percentage jumped to over 10% of the total population serviced by UNRWA.

Table 2. 2019 UNRWA Recipients Totals

2019 Jordan Lebanon Syria West Bank Gaza Total
Refugees        2,242,579        475,075        560,139        846,465        1,421,282        5,545,540
“Others”            133,902           58,810           83,003        201,525            149,013            626,253
Total        2,376,481        533,885        643,142     1,047,990        1,570,295        6,171,793
other % 5.6% 11.0% 12.9% 19.2% 9.5% 10.1%

As shown in Table 2, one-in-five West Bank recipients of UNRWA aid were not even descendants of people who fled the 1948 war zone.

This is a result of the active recruitment of “other” Arabs who UNRWA decided should get services from the bloated agency.

Table 3. Change from 2012 to 2019
UNRWA Recipients Totals

Change Jordan Lebanon Syria West Bank Gaza Total
Refugees 13.3% 8.9% 15.0% 16.4% 21.7% 15.6%
“Others” 97.5% 98.4% 253.2% 36.9% 198.3% 96.9%

As show in Table 3, while the Gaza “refugee” population grew by 21.7% over seven years, the “others” serviced by UNRWA TRIPLED. Overall, the refugee population grew by 15.6% while the “other” category almost doubled.

Who are these “Other” Non-Refugees?

UNRWA doesn’t hide the fact that in services other people. It considers itself a humanitarian organization, so it will give other people in need free education and healthcare. Why Syrians fleeing the terrible civil war come under the umbrella of UNRWA (growing by 253%!!) and not the UNHCR which cares for every other refugee in the world is a mystery that only the brains at UNRWA could answer.

In general, UNRWA breaks down the “other” category into six categories:

  • Jerusalem poor and Gaza poor. Just being poor – and their descendants! – entitles people to special relief from UNRWA.
  • Frontier Villagers. That’s a category, and all their descendants also get services from UNRWA.
  • Compromise Cases. Alas, these descendant to not get services
  • Family Members. If someone marries a refugee, then they get services and all adopted children get services. Quite the set up for the scam of the century.
  • Non-refugee wives. If you marry a refugee, you get special services.
  • Khafala children. Children who get Islamic care from a refugee or “other” get UNRWA services too, even if they or their ancestors were never refugees.

So many rich categories to choose from, it’s a wonder that the rolls only doubled in seven years and din’t quintuple.


UNRWA office in Jerusalem
(photo: First.One.Through)

UNRWA was created in 1950 as a TEMPORARY agency, but has managed to make itself a permanent fixture in the Arab-Israel conflict as it inflates the number of refugees and continuously adds to its beneficiaries and staffing. It is well past time to whittle it down to size.

Related First.One.Through articles:

What’s Wrong with UNRWA

The Gross OVER-Staffing of UNRWA Schools

UNRWA’s Munchausen Disease

Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR

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UNRWA Anoints New Palestinian Wards

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UNRWA, the UN agency tasked with providing healthcare, education and loans to the descendants of Arabs who used to live in Israel, has come under fire recently because the head of the agency was caught extending favors to his girlfriend. The accusations caused the Netherlands, Switzerland and Belgium to suspend donations to the agency.

Past accusations of supporting terrorism and producing school textbooks which promoted antisemitism never generated such an outcry, perhaps because the Europeans viewed those reports as biased, coming from pro-Israel corners of the world.

But raw statistics as provided by UNRWA itself show the agency to be deeply flawed. Consider the following:

UNRWA staff grows faster than the population it serves.  From 2017 to 2018, the local staff at UNRWA grew by 3.0%, from 30,799 to 31,726, while the number of registered persons served by UNRWA grew by only 2.6%, from 5,869,733 to 6,021,510. There is no reason for a 70-year old agency to grow (hire local Palestinian Arabs) at such an aggressive level.

UNRWA keeps adding (manufacturing?) new Palestinians wards. The number of “registered persons” who are serviced by UNRWA include “registered refugees” which is defined as people who lived (or are descended from males who lived) in Israel between June 1, 1946 and May 15, 1948, together with “other registered persons” who might include wives of people who are registered refugees. (For clarity, the UN decided that a woman who marries a grandson of an Arab who used to live in Jaffa for a few months in the 1940’s, becomes entitled to free healthcare and education for life, as do all of her kids- even those from a previous marriage).

From 2017 to 2018, while the number of registered refugees in Gaza grew by 2.8%, the number of “other registered persons” grew by a whopping 48.4%! The refugee count in Gaza grew by 37,919 people from 1.35 million to 1.39 million, while the number of “others” grew by an insane 42,114 people, from 87,080 to 129,194. It is as though UNRWA in Gaza was officiating at 100 wedding ceremonies every single day to enroll more wards onto its ledgers.

These are figures supplied by UNRWA itself, not an external report which may have some qualitative bias.

UNRWA is a highly corrupt agency focused on self-preservation which wastes billions of dollars of global aid, as it actively undermines any chance for peace in the Arab-Israel conflict. That the Europeans would suddenly become “woke” because of the toxic environment at the top is more tragic than laughable.


UNRWA building in Jerusalem
(photo: First.One.Through)

Related First.One.Through articles:

Shut UNRWA in Gaza Immediately

UNRWA Is Not Just Making “Refugees,” It’s Creating Palestinians

UNRWA’s Ongoing War against Israel and Jews

Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR

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First the Attackers Were Radical Islamic Extremists

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First the attackers were radical Islamic extremists, and people protected them – because they were also Muslims.

Then the attackers were radical black preachers, and people protected them – because they were also black.

Then the attackers were alt-right white supremacists, and people protected them – because they were also white.

Then the attackers were progressive Antifa extremists, and people protected them – because they were also progressives.

And each of them came for the Jew – because each of the attackers was breast-fed antisemitism from birth and nurtured by the United Nations which singles out the Jewish State for demonization every day.


The United Nations in New York City

Martin Niemoller wrote his poem focused on victims and on remaining silent because the victims were the “other.” He didn’t realize his complicity in the crime until he suffered the same fate.

The updated version of the poem above is focused on the haters who come from a variety of groups, with each silently shielding its own radicals.

Except for the Jews. While all of the haters come for the Jews and the Jewish State, radical progressive Jews are at the front line calling for the world to attack the most moderate nation in the entire Middle East. In reaction, the right-wing Jews yell at the alt-left Jews to stop the vilification. And the remaining Jews in the middle stay silent, hoping that not engaging in the bilestorm will provide its own haven.

The Jews have always been everyone’s “other.” Today, they are also “others” to themselves. It is a story that played out 2,000 years ago to a tragic end.

Related First.One.Through articles:

I See Dead People

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

Muslim Women Debate Anti-Semitism

Stopping the Purveyors of Hateful Propaganda

The Selfishness, Morality and Effectiveness of Defending Others

The United Nations’ Incitement to Violence

The Only Religious Extremists for the United Nations are “Jewish Extremists”

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

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From “You Didn’t Build That” to “You Don’t Own That”

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The Democratic Party is continuing to move in an authoritarian manner to strip people of their liberties and properties.

In July 2012, President Obama addressed a crowd in Virginia while he sought a second term in office and said “if you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” The comment irritated his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, who responded that

“to say that Steve Jobs didn’t build Apple, that Henry Ford didn’t build Ford Motors, that Papa John didn’t build Papa John Pizza … To say something like that, it’s not just foolishness. It’s insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America … And by the way, the president’s logic doesn’t just extend to the entrepreneurs that start a barber shop or a taxi operation or an oil field service business like this and a gas service business like this, it also extends to everybody in America that wants to lift themself [sic] up a little further … The president would say, well you didn’t do that. You couldn’t have gotten to school without the roads that government built for you. You couldn’t have gone to school without teachers. So you didn’t, you are not responsible for that success. … what the President said was both startling and revealing. I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States. It goes to something that I have spoken about from the beginning of the campaign. That this election is, to a great degree, about the soul of America. Do we believe in an America that is great because of government or do we believe in an America that is great because of free people allowed to pursue their dreams and build our future?”

Americans didn’t seem to notice or agree with Romney’s remarks and voted Obama to a second term in office by a margin of 332 to 206.

So, the progressive presidential candidates are at it again.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is extending Obama’s line of reasoning in the hopes that it will be even more popular with Americans. While Obama gave the government and teachers credit for playing a large part in entrepreneurs’ success, Sanders’ socialist philosophy concluded that such a government system which enables entrepreneurs to achieve so much wealth must inherently be corrupt and sinister. Therefore, Sanders wants a complete revolution to destroy America’s capitalistic economy. 

Comrade-in-arms Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) who is also running for president doesn’t want to destroy the successful companies as much as she wants to seize them away from management and investors. Warren’s goal is to give 40 percent of a company’s board seats to employees if the company has annual revenue over $1 billion. Additionally, she wants to take 2 percent of people’s wealth over $50 million.

And why not? Obama laid the philosophical groundwork that the rich profit off of the efforts of others as well as the governmental system and economy, so why shouldn’t the employees get a giant say and take in the outcome of a company and the government come to lay claim to its just rewards?


Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren

It is easy to see a future Democratic Socialist presidential candidate following Warren and arguing that labor should get 70% of boards on all companies with revenue over $100 million, and that the government will take 5 percent of all personal wealth over $5 million, then 10% on wealth over $1 million, as that is the nature of a voracious government that eyes success suspiciously.

While Warren will claim that she is more of a capitalist than Sanders to appeal to moderates, it is a nuance without difference. While Sanders wants to destroy capitalism immediately, Warren is simply seeking to establish the mechanisms to kill investment and motivation. Her long-term goal is to let capitalism choke under the weight of government, until such time that the income and wealth gap is flattened to such a level to satisfy the alt-left.

In 2012, Romney repeated the vision of the role of government protecting liberty as conceived by America’s founding fathers in a warning about Obama’s grand government. But today, nobody is sounding the alarms on alt-left politicians laying claim to corporate and wealth takeovers in gestures prevalent in failed socialist societies like Venezuela. Such is a society which stokes populism rather than freedom.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Democratic Socialists Tell Lies and Half Truths About Lobbyists

Progressives are Stripping the Equity of Our Lives

#NeverGillibrand #NeverSanders #NeverHarris #NeverDeBlasio

Please Don’t Vote for a Democratic Socialist

Libertarian Validation and Absolution

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The Democratic Socialists Tell Lies and Half Truths About Lobbyists

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The July 30, 2019 debate with Democratic candidates for president covered little ground. Much of the discussion centered around healthcare in which the two leading contenders – Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) – were calling out the terrible role that pharmaceutical and insurance companies play in the ecosystem of healthcare. Each took a turn to slam the amount of money the industries spend on lobbyists.


Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Sanders said that the pharma and insurance industries spent $4.5 billion on lobbyists last year. He was wrong. They spent a total of $441 million according to OpenSecrets.org, off by a factor of ten times.

Put that aside.

Sanders asked all of the Democrats running for office to pledge that they would not take any money from these two industry groups, as it put them in direct conflict in being able to negotiate healthcare honestly and effectively after these groups paid their way into office.

However, what was not discussed is the much more toxic money that public sector UNIONS pay into elections. These are groups that are sitting directly across the table from elected officials in negotiating their salaries and benefits. The union lobbying dollars are blessed bribes. Graft. It is a direct conflict of interest worthy of banana republics.

But the Sanders/Warren camp won’t discuss the poison, because they contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to Democrats. The socialist psychos would rather paint the entire lobbying fight of mega multi-national corporations squashing the poor little guy.

Here are some union lobbying figures for 2018:

Carpenters and Joiners Union $41.5 million
Service Employers International Union $41.5 million
Laborers Union $31.5 million
American Federation of Teachers $31.1 million
American Federation of State/County/Muni Employees $14.1 million

That’s $160 million just from these five unions, of which 99% went to Democrats.

By way of comparison, here are top multi-national corporations payouts for lobbyists:

Bloomberg $95.9 million (100% for Democrats)
Las Vegas Sands $62.4 million (100% for Republicans)
Microsoft $14.1 million (87% Democrats)
Amazon $13.6 million (69% Democrats)
Koch Industries $12.1 million (99% Republican)

Sanders called out the Koch brothers, and in the past he has slammed Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas Sands owner. Those two are the epitome of the bad billionaires for the socialists, presumably because they are top givers to the Republicans.

Somehow, they neglect to mention the lobbying money of “Fahr LLC” which gave a whopping $73.1 million in 2018 – all to Democrats. Fahr is the middle name of Tom Steyer, a billionaire Democrat who is spending tens of millions of dollars lobbying people in congress to fight climate change and to impeach Donald Trump.

The leading liberals talk about the evils of lobbying money – but very, very selectively. They pretend to be more ethical in talking about the corruption of lobbying dollars, but only for those contributing to Republicans.

There is nothing more pernicious that allowing government unions to contribute money into elections, and it happens at the federal, state, county and local levels every day.

In New York, “government unions collectively spent more on lobbying last year [2017] than the state’s biggest trial lawyers, landlord, tobacco and hospital interests combined. And topping the list, as usual, was New York’s powerful conglomerate of public education unions.” Would it surprise you that New York is a deep blue (Democratic) state?

While I admire the socialist twin’s calls to stay away from pharma lobbyist money, I consider their voices vacuous unless there are louder calls to stop the most sinister lobbying in the country: from public sector unions.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Please Don’t Vote for a Democratic Socialist

#NeverGillibrand #NeverSanders #NeverHarris #NeverDeBlasio

New York Times Reprints Union Manifesto

Bernie Sanders is Less Sophisticated Than Forrest Gump

Progressives are Stripping the Equity of Our Lives

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Beyond Judaism’s IPO

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Beyond Meat

The hottest food and initial public stock offering these days is a proud fake.

“Beyond Meat” advertises “imagine your favorite meaty dishes like burgers and tacos delivering the juicy, delicious taste you know and love, while being better for you and the planet. That’s the future we’re working to build. Click below to learn more about each of our products and discover The Future of Protein today.”

Imagine… get what you love – all that yummy flavor – but it’s better for both you AND the planet. Sounds too good to be true. Why would you ever want the real thing again?

The BM site continues “The world’s first plant-based burger that looks, cooks, and satisfies like beef without GMOs, soy, or gluten.”

It looks and satisfies like the real thing, but doesn’t have any “issues” that might be found in the real thing or the current wave of fakes with which you might be familiar (soy). BM finally found the perfect blend of more good with none of the bad. It doesn’t just simulate without sin, it perfects.

Beyond Judaism

Just as the animal proteins came in a variety of cuts and flavors (sirloin, chops, bar-b-que, smoked) Judaism has had a variety of orientations over thousands of years. The most famous tug-of-war in the Jewish community was 2,000+ years ago. The Sadducees and Karites sought to limit their Judaism to just the written word of the bible, as they did not believe in the accompanying “oral law” which others believed was passed down through tradition from Moses. Meanwhile, the Pharisees championed the combined use of oral law together with the written bible. That was the form of Judaism that prevailed after the destruction of the Second Temple and the creation of Christianity.

While each were different, they all believed in the authenticity of the bible as the work of God.

That began to change 200 years ago, with the introduction of the Reform and Conservative movements. Their push towards modernity and greater integration into society included the shedding of various mitzvot, Jewish laws, such as keeping kosher. They were able to comfortably make the transition by reducing the bible to a work written by people who were divinely-inspired. Free of the constraints of being a work of God and therefore timeless, it became a document written around 2,700 years ago which needed refreshing for modern consumption and life. The groups maintained its connection with Judaism by still referencing the bible, and because Jews are a people in addition to being a religion.

American Judaism continued to morph with newer movements like Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal (JR). These movements – and JR in particular – moved beyond mitzvot to the notion of “values” and “spiritual experience.” The Hebrew bible became a framework from which to create an experience; a concept but not a source. Not surprisingly, the values and spiritual experience are very similar to what someone might find in a church of any religion with a similar political and worldly outlook.

And that was their point.

Stripped of being tied to a divine document which contained some non-progressive language such as the condemnation of homosexual acts as an abomination, the movements took only the parts of the bible they liked. Judaism became a universal value system and not a distinct religion.

Like Beyond Meat, these new “Jewish” approaches market themselves as giving people the sense that they are enjoying and participating the real thing, but improving upon it immensely by being better for both the individual and society.

On one side, one can see Orthodox Jews devouring smoked brisket in a kosher restaurant and risking heart disease with fellow Jews, and on the other, see Jews and non-Jews at a Jewish Renewal event grilling plant-based foods.

Can both groups of Jews coexist? Sure, they can be friendly. But one group truly believes that the “originalists” are unhealthy, contribute to animal cruelty and brainwash their children, while the other believes that the “progressives” are deluding themselves that they are practicing anything remotely Jewish and having a prayer at a future in the Jewish world.

Related First.One.Through articles:

On Heretics and Slanderers

An Orthodox Rabbi at the Capitol

The Non-Orthodox Jewish Denominations Fight Israel

Fake Definitions: Pluralism and Progressive / Liberalism

Not Remembering, Forgetting and Never Knowing

A Sofer at the Kotel

Losing the Temples, Knowledge and Caring

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When You Understand Israel’s May 1948 Borders, You Understand There is No “Occupation”

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There are really only two ways to consider the borders of Israel when it declared independence in May 1948: the entirety of the Palestine Mandate OR the proposed border put forward by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947. As discussed below, only one of these is legally valid, while both options demonstrate that Israel does not occupy any “Palestinian Land.”

May 1948 Borders: the Palestine Mandate

When the Ottoman Empire broke up, the French and British assumed control of various mandates until the local populations were able to establish their own functioning governments. The French took the Lebanon and Syrian mandates, and each of them became countries in 1943 and 1946, respectively, after the last of the French troops withdrew. The British took the Palestine and Iraq mandates. Iraq declared its independence in 1932. As for Palestine, the situation was more labored and complicated.

The 1922 international mandate made clear that the British were to help the Jews reestablish their homeland in the territory. However, the land east of the Jordan River was viewed as a land that the British could option to separate (Article 25), which they did. That land ultimately became the Kingdom of Jordan.

Regarding the rest of the Palestine Mandate, the British had a difficult time dealing with a local Arab population which did not want to see a flood of Jews enter the area. The multi-year Arab riots between 1936 and 1939 led the British to consider dividing the land between the Jews and Arabs (the 1937 Peel Commission which was not adopted) and placing a cap on the number of Jews allowed to enter the territory (the 1939 White Paper which was enacted).

By the end of the devastation of World War II, the British had enough rebuilding to do at home and the Jews clearly needed to have the cap on immigration terminated, so the Brits asked the United Nations to tackle the issue in 1946. The UN General Assembly voted to partition the land between the Jews and Arabs in a non-binding vote in November 1947. All of the Arab countries voted ‘no’ and the partition never took place.

When the British withdrew their last troops in May 1948, the Jews declared the new Jewish State of Israel. Like the Mandates of Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, the British troop withdrawal was accompanied by the declaration of a new state on the ENTIRETY OF THE MANDATE, including areas which have now become known as Gaza and the West Bank.

May 1948: the 1947 Partition Plan

When Israel declared its independence, the Arab community was still seeking to control the entirety of the Palestine Mandate itself. It rejected the State of Israel in 1948 the same way it rejected the 1947 proposed UN Partition Plan. It considered both illegal, null and void, invasions of their own Arab land.

When five Arab armies attacked Israel when it declared independence, the invasion did not start at Jerusalem. For the Arabs, all of the land was a single contiguous unit. The lines of the Partition Plan were as invisible and irrelevant as the proposed borders of the Peel Commission.

And so it was for the Jews.

The 1949 Armistice Lines / the Green Line

When the international community talks about “occupation” today of “Palestinian Land,” they are referring to the borders as they existed before the outbreak of the Six Day War in June 1967. These were the frontier areas that came into being at the end of the 1948-9 Israel War of Independence. These Armistice Lines established between Israel and a number of the invading countries were drawn in the maps in green, so also became known as the “Green Lines.”

The Egyptian army took over the Gaza Strip area. The Israeli-Egyptian truce specifically stated that those Armistice Lines were not to be construed as final borders. Similarly, the Jordanian army took over much of eastern Palestine, which over time became known as the “West Bank.” The Israeli-Jordanian agreement also stated that the lines were not meant as borders.

However, Jordan took a number of particularly hostile moves. Not only did it evict all Jews from the “West Bank,” it annexed the territory in 1950 in a move not recognized by almost the entire world. It took a further step of granting all of the Arabs who lived in the West Bank Jordanian citizenship in 1954 (Jews were specifically excluded from becoming Jordanians).

From 1949 until 1967, the land was divided between Israel, Egypt and Jordan. There was no Palestine.

It was in this window of time that many countries began to recognize the State of Israel. While the frontiers of the land were subject to possible modifications as outlined in the two armistice agreements, the countries recognized the Israeli sovereignty up to those lines. And so it is until this day.

The 1967 “Borders”

The fighting continued to rage between the Israelis and Egyptians and Jordanians between 1949 and 1967.

Arab fighters would cross the Green Line into Israel from Egypt and Jordan and kill Israelis in night raids and Israel would retaliate. The United Nations would debate the “Question on Palestine,” particularly as over 700,000 Arabs who fled the fighting zone were not allowed to return to towns in Israel. And the Palestinian independence movement would develop, with the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1964, whose stated mission was to destroy Israel and reclaim the entirety of the Palestine Mandate for Arabs.

As fate would have it, the Jordanians attacked Israel in June 1967, after Israel launched a preemptive defensive war against Syria and Egypt which were about to attack. The Jordanians lost all of the West Bank which they had illegally annexed, the Egyptians lost Gaza and the Syrians lost the Golan Heights.

The 1949 Armistice Lines which were established and understood to be temporary, somehow morphed into the minds of many as the 1967 “borders,” implying a new sense of permanence, even though the war did the exact opposite – it reestablished Israeli control of the entire Palestine Mandate and reclaimed its boundaries of May 1948.

Israel did itself no favors. Rather than clearly state that its borders had been reestablished, it “annexed” the eastern portion of Jerusalem which had been under Jordanian control and only established military rule over the West Bank. It did this – much like it handed control of the Jewish Temple Mount to the Jordanian Waqf – in the hopes of winning over global support for peace. So much for that theory.

Even if one were to believe that Israel’s May 1948 borders were based on the UN’s 1947 Partition Plan, various countries recognized Israel’s expanded borders up to the 1949 Armistice Lines, effectively endorsing the concept of expanding one’s borders in a defensive war. That same principle would apply to Israel taking the West Bank in another defensive war in 1967.

Either way one looks at it – Israel’s May 1948 borders constituted the entirety of the Palestine Mandate or were limited to the 1947 Partition Plan – the entirety of the West Bank is Israeli territory.

No Palestinian Land / No “Occupation”

As the history above details, the Palestinians quest for self-rule has been aspirational. The global community has attempted to create a new sovereign Arab Palestinian country, or to somehow give the Arabs who reside in Gaza and the West Bank self-determination. The Arabs in Gaza got self-determination in 2005 when the Israeli troops left the area, and the majority of Arabs in the West Bank also have some self-determination in “Area A” and to a lesser extent in “Area B” when Israel handed control of select lands to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as part of the Oslo II Accords of 1995.

But there is no “Palestinian Land” beyond these lands which the PA controls. The balance is Israeli territory as it was from the time Israel declared its independence. The 1967 War did not begin “occupation” of “Palestinian Land”; it brought Israeli territory back under Israeli control from the Egyptians and Jordanians who invaded Israel back in 1948.

As the only “Palestinian Land” that exists today are those which Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority, it is impossible for there to be any “occupation.” The Palestinians will get only get more “Palestinian Land” if and when Israel gives incremental land to the PA.

The international community had defined being gay as a mental illness until 1973, and homosexuality is still considered a crime in roughly half of the member states of the United Nations. Almost all of those same UN countries also refuse to recognize the existence of the Jewish State and believe there is a “colonial occupation” of “Palestinian Land.” They may never come to accept gays or the Jewish State.

It took the western world a long time to accept the mental well-being of homosexuals, and perhaps one day soon, they will realize the rights of Jews to live throughout their homeland and that there is no illegal occupation of Palestinian land.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Legal Israeli Settlements

Recognition of Acquiring Disputed Land in a Defensive War

“Settlements” Crossing the Line

Names and Narrative: Palestinian Territories/ Israeli Territories

Names and Narrative: Zionist Entity and Colonial Occupier

Republicans Do Not Believe There is Any “Occupation”

A Response to Rashid Khalidi’s Distortions on the Balfour Declaration

Related First.One.Through video:

The Green Line (music by The Kinks)

Judea and Samaria (music by Foo Fighters)

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