Author Archives: First.One.Through

Antisemitism For Dummies

Posted on by
2

A satire.

At last: the definitive handbook for turning age-old Jew-hatred into cutting-edge activism. Whether you’re a beginner looking to chant in the quad or a seasoned professional eager to upgrade from vague conspiracy posts to full-blown manifestos, this guide has you covered.

⭐️ Foreword by Zohran Mamdani

Mamdani reminds readers: the key to effective antisemitism is tone management. “Smile when you chant,” he writes. “Genocide with a grin reassures the brunch crowd that you’re not angry, you’re just passionate about human rights. Remember, a cheery face pairs well with calls for erasure.” He encourages everyone to follow his fellow Democratic Socialists around the United States in their vilification of Jews.

📚 Chapter Highlights

Chapter 1: Chair-Slamming for Justice (by disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman)

Bowman demonstrates the physical theater of antisemitism. Pro tips:

  • Always slam a chair. Tables are optional.
  • If confronted, look wounded and insist you’re the one being silenced.
  • Practice lines like: “Why won’t anyone love me?” while pointing angrily at Jews.

⚠️ Warning Box: Weak antisemitism looks guilty. Turn up the volume.
It’s an interesting first chapter after the Mamdani “smiling antisemitism” approach in the introduction. The message is either speak softly with a smile or go full jihadi.

Bowman and Mamdani as besties, ready to educate the world on both the anti-Israel and anti-Jew lexicon

Chapter 2: Victimhood Chic (by Rep. Rashida Tlaib)

Learn how to wrap 19th-century blood libels in the soft blanket of “solidarity.” From “poor Gazans” to “oppressed Detroitians,” Tlaib shows how to recycle conspiracy theories as community-building.

💡 Pro Tip: Sprinkle “settler-colonial” and “they” into every sentence. Academia eats it up.

Chapter 3: Identifying Enemies (by Zahra Billoo, CAIR)

Billoo’s motto: Know thy Jewish neighbors, then denounce them.

Draw lists of Jewish organizations and label them “agents of oppression.”

Remember: Jewish schools, camps, and synagogues are all part of “the machine.”

Smile as you explain that Jews who acknowledge their heritage and history are “enemies,” even if they appear “polite.” Even if they are elderly or just children.

💡 Field Exercise: Practice in front of a mirror: “We’re not antisemitic, we’re just anti-Zionist.” Repeat until even you almost believe it.

Chapter 4: The Geography of Intimidation

Featuring Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and WESPAC
Why wait for a march in Washington? Bring the fight to Jewish neighborhoods directly.

Step 1: Find out where Jews live.

Step 2: Show up outside their homes and community centers.

Step 3: Chant until even the mezuzahs look nervous.

📌 Dummies Note: Always claim you’re just exercising free speech. (Lawyers love that one.)

Chapter 5: Bring a Jew (by Peter Beinart)

The best deflection against anti-Jew slander is to be accompanied by an AsAJew. You can usually pick one up in a local woke synagogue or library.

💡 Pro Tip: they are likely to be even louder than you are, so no need for an extra megaphone. Also, use them to help map Jewish locations per Chapter 4.

Chapter 6: Reuse Well-known Tropes- Repackaged for Today’s Audience (by Rep. Ilhan Omar)

Blend anti-capitalist buzzwords with old-school Jew-hatred. Example:
“From auto factories to olive groves, Jews profit off Black and Brown bodies.”
Add enough Marxist vocabulary and suddenly it sounds like grad school theory instead of medieval scapegoating. Be hip with “it’s all about the Benjamins,” to keep the younger audience engaged.

Chapter 7: Accuse Jews of Lying (Bowman)

Bowman comes back with the penultimate chapter. Part of antisemitism is to not only deny Jews a defense, but that they cannot be trusted. Even go so far as accuse raped Jewish women of being liars. Don’t be worried if it makes you appear callous and insane in an age of Believe Women: it helps shake out the true antisemites who will still rally to you.

Chapter 8: Theatrics, Not Apologies

Never apologize. If cornered, double down. If really cornered, accuse the accuser of “Islamophobia.” Remember: tears are a weapon—use them.

🎤 Bonus Features

🔲 Tips & Tricks Box:

Always bring a bullhorn or something else to make noise like whistles or pots. It’s impossible to sound genocidal when you whisper. Don’t let anyone have a passing part in the drama: let them be aware and own the fact that they are actively being complacent as Jews are marked for annihilation in their neighborhoods. They have tacitly joined the jihad.

If accused of antisemitism, pivot: “This is about Gaza!” Works every time.

📖 Sample Review Blurbs:

“Finally, a book that says what I scream outside synagogues every weekend!” — Anonymous Activist

“The Magna Carta of modern bigotry.” — UNESCO Heritage Committee

“Reads like Mein Kampf, but with a flair for fashion.” — Vogue Middle East

🏆 Epilogue: Owning It

The authors agree: antisemitism done timidly looks embarrassing. But antisemitism done boldly and passionately can get you re-elected, tenured, or at least viral on TikTok. Own it, project it, and never forget: you are the victim, even while chanting for someone else’s destruction.

Jesus, the Latest Jew Taken Hostage

Posted on by
3

Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, posted on X that Jesus was a Palestinian. The implication was not only that Jesus was Arab, but also Muslim. Both are historically false. Jesus was a Jew in Judea. He lived, preached, and died as a Jew in his homeland.

If alive today, Jesus would not be celebrated by the Palestinian Authority. He would be condemned. The United Nations would call him an “illegal settler” for living in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Palestinian leaders would brand him a “colonist” because his Jewish family had the audacity to live in their ancestral land.

This is not a new stunt. A few years ago, activist Linda Sarsour declared that Jesus was a Palestinian from Nazareth. She conveniently ignored the fact that Nazareth is in Israel, and that Jesus was Jewish—observing Jewish holidays, quoting Jewish scripture, and praying in Jewish synagogues. He was as much a “Palestinian” as King David or Moses.

Radical preacher Omar Suleiman – invited to speak before Congress by Nancy Pelosi – said the same. His goal was to peel Christian support away from the Jewish State. Evangelical Zionists needed to hear the gospel from an Islamic extremist.

Why this persistent rewriting of history? Of cultural appropriation? Because anti-Israel agitators have a larger project: erasing Jewish ties to the land of Israel. They cannot admit that Jews have been in their holy land continuously for millennia, so they try to recast Jewish history in Arab clothing. They claim Jews are foreigners and interlopers while appropriating Jewish figures for their own narratives.

The irony is striking. For all their rhetoric about “coexistence” and “justice,” the pro-Palestinian movement reveals its antisemitic moral rot in these fabrications. They would rather deny Jewish history than seek peace with the Jewish people. They would rather invent a fictional Palestinian Jesus than accept the historical Jewish Jesus.

Jesus has now become the latest Jew taken hostage—not in body, but in identity. Uygur, Sarsour, and their fellow travelers parade his name as a prop in their campaign against Jewish sovereignty. But no amount of Twitterstorms, hashtags, or revisionist slogans can undo the reality: Jesus was a Jew, in Judea, in the land of Israel.

Jesus, like every Jew before and after him, is bound up with the land that antisemitic anti-Israel activists desperately want to sever from its true indigenous people.

Parshat Re’eh and E1: Gathering the Nation Around Jerusalem Then and Now

Posted on by
Reply

Parshat Re’eh commands the Jewish people:

“Three times a year all your males shall appear before Hashem your God in the place He will choose—on the Festival of Matzot [Pesach], on the Festival of Weeks [Shavuot], and on the Festival of Booths. [Sukkot]” (Deuteronomy 16:16).

At a time when the tribes of Israel were destined to live across a wide and varied land—from the Galilee to the Negev, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley and beyond—this commandment ensured that all Jews, regardless of tribe or geography, would remain bound to a single center: the place “He will choose:” Jerusalem.

Then: One City for One People

The pilgrimage festivals were not simply religious obligations; they were national glue.

  • Unity in Diversity: Each tribe had its own territory, customs, and leadership. But Jerusalem reminded them that they were not twelve separate entities—they were one nation.
  • Physical Connection: The journey itself—families traveling for days from north, south, east, and west, THREE TIMES A YEAR—kept every Jew intimately connected to the city at the nation’s core.
  • Spiritual Focus: No matter how far they lived, Jews oriented their lives toward Jerusalem.

Without this ritual of convergence, the tribes might have drifted apart, their shared purpose diluted by distance and difference.

Now: Re-Centering Around Jerusalem

Fast forward over three millennia. Jerusalem is once again the capital of a sovereign Jewish state. But the modern challenge is becoming increasingly less about tribal dispersion, with Jews in the holy land making up a plurality of Jews – it is geopolitical pressure and strategic vulnerability.

Recent government plans to develop the area known as E1, just east of Jerusalem, have sparked international controversy. Critics claim the project is “obstructive to peace.” It’s an absurd claim. Supporters see it differently: as an essential step to connect Jewish communities around the capital, ensuring that Jerusalem remains safe and accessible and central to Jews from north, south, east, and west.

The parallels to Re’eh are striking:

  • Geographic Cohesion: Just as ancient pilgrimage routes tied the tribes together, modern infrastructure links surrounding communities to Jerusalem.
  • National Identity: Building around Jerusalem reinforces its role not just as a city, but as the beating heart of Jewish life.
  • Defying Fragmentation: Where outside forces seek to carve up and isolate Jerusalem, development ensures continuity and connection.

Jerusalem: The Eternal Center

Parshat Re’eh’s vision was never merely about geography—it was about survival through unity. When Jews journeyed to Jerusalem three times a year, they reaffirmed their covenant and their peoplehood. One God, one people.

Today, as Israel strengthens the areas around Jerusalem, it is engaged in the same mission: to keep the Jewish people close to their capital, secure in their homeland, and united across generations.

Then as now, Jerusalem is not just a place—it is the center of a people.

The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount on the holiday of Sukkot

Emotional Support Waffle Iron

Posted on by
Reply

A satire.

Nothing so empowers me like a waffle iron. Forget therapy dogs, noise-canceling headphones, or weighted blankets—the true travel companion is a solid, chrome-plated Belgian beauty, TSA-approved for carry-on. The airport agent looks at me quizzically as it passes through the X-ray machine. “Sir, is this… an appliance?” Yes, officer, an appliance of the soul.

Some people bring neck pillows; I bring the mighty iron. At cruising altitude, I place it lovingly beneath my one inch thick airline-issued pillow. The faint perfume of yesterday’s batter wafts upward—vanilla, cinnamon, a whisper of baking soda—and I sink into dreams of golden grids. I drool freely, but what is drool if not syrup in prelude?

The other passengers gawk, of course. One woman clutches her pearls when I tuck it in like a child. A businessman suggests I check it in the overhead bin. Ha! Would he stow his emotional support ferret in row 22B? I think not.

My ardor is no different at my destination. Hotel rooms become chapels of carbohydrate reverence. I wake, press the iron to my chest like a knight’s shield, and murmur, “Today, we make batter.” Sometimes I don’t even plug it in—I just listen to the hinge creak as my choir during morning prayers.

Do I need professional help? Perhaps. But waffles are the architecture of joy. A perfect grid to hold the chaos of toppings—syrup rivers, butter mountains, berry avalanches. And in the geometry of those squares, I find order in the universe.

So yes, I sleep with a waffle iron under my pillow. Some dream of sugarplums. I dream of brunch.

A favorite from Key and Peele:

UNESCO Protects the Hamas Charter as Endangered Cultural Artifact

Posted on by
Reply

A satire.

In a bold step to preserve humanity’s “most fragile treasures,” UNESCO voted to add the Hamas Charter to its list of endangered cultural artifacts. The decision came during the organization’s annual heritage summit, which initially convened to safeguard vanishing African oral traditions, disappearing tribal instruments, and lost languages. But the spotlight quickly shifted after the State of Palestine—recognized as a full UNESCO member—submitted the 1988 Hamas Charter as a candidate for protection.

Delegates debated the proposal with solemn reverence, as though they were discussing ancient scrolls or fragile clay tablets. “This is not merely a document,” intoned one UNESCO official, “it is a vibrant example of humanity’s enduring talent for mixing medieval theology, paranoid conspiracy, and genocidal intent into a single cultural artifact.”

Hamas founder, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, standing before children

Hamas, which currently holds 58% of the Palestinian parliament and continues to govern Gaza with an iron fist wrapped in a prayer shawl, celebrated the recognition. “We thank UNESCO for finally appreciating the poetic quality of our prose,” said one Hamas spokesperson, pointing to passages citing Jews as orchestrators of every global evil, from wars to stock market crashes. “It is art. Dark, sinister art, but art nonetheless.”

The Islamic Republic of Iran, a member of UNESCO with a keen eye for heritage preservation, reportedly helped prepare the submission. Delegates noted the Persian calligraphy used in the cover page of the proposal as “an exquisite touch of cultural diplomacy.”

Critics, however, were less charitable. Human rights groups asked why UNESCO would protect a text calling for the eradication of an entire people while ignoring actual endangered communities being eradicated in real time. UNESCO officials brushed off such concerns. “Our mission is not to judge,” said one diplomat. “If we can safeguard Stonehenge, we can safeguard Stone Age thinking.”

The vote passed overwhelmingly, though with several European countries abstaining in embarrassment. The document will now be digitally preserved and inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, alongside such treasures as the Magna Carta, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

As the session closed, one delegate mused: “Perhaps one day humanity will look back on this charter the way it looks at medieval torture devices—an artifact of cruelty, once revered, now displayed in a museum of shame.”

For now, however, UNESCO has declared the Hamas Charter an endangered cultural jewel which must be preserved. Its continued existence may be a threat to peace, but, as the organization reminded the world, “heritage must be protected, even when it is heritage of hate.”

The Disturbing Difference Between Weaponizing Racism and Weaponizing Antisemitism

Posted on by
Reply

When liberals talk about “weaponizing racism,” the meaning is clear. Think of the infamous cases where white people call the police on Black people for doing something perfectly innocuous — selling water, birdwatching, sitting in a Starbucks. The very act of dialing 911 becomes a way to make Black people feel more vulnerable, more over-policed, more endangered. Racism is real in this framing, and its “weaponization” is a way of worsening the problem, inflicting still more harm on those already marginalized.

But when it comes to antisemitism, the logic gets flipped on its head. When Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) or campus activists talk about “weaponizing antisemitism,” they don’t mean that Jews are made more vulnerable. They mean the accusation of antisemitism is being used to silence critics of Israel or chill free speech. In this version, the harm is not what antisemitism does to Jews — but what claims of antisemitism do to non-Jews.

December 4, 2023 debate about “weaponizing antisemitism” on the House floor

That’s a disturbing asymmetry. With racism, the victim is always centered: racism exists, and its weaponization compounds the pain. With antisemitism, the victim disappears entirely: antisemitism itself is treated as unreal, and Jews are recast as the aggressors who manipulate charges of antisemitism for their own gain.

That’s not just dismissive. It’s antisemitism squared: denying the reality of antisemitism, while simultaneously vilifying Jews as powerful, conniving actors who exploit victimhood to harm others. It erases Jewish vulnerability, erases Jewish history, and turns the victims into villains.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal slams Israel as racist state June 2023, accuses Republicans of weaponizing antisemitism in May 2024

The result is a discourse where every minority group is believed about its pain — except Jews. For everyone else, weaponization highlights their marginalization. For Jews, weaponization supposedly proves their power. That isn’t a progressive double standard. It’s an old antisemitic one, dressed up in new language.

Names and Narrative: “Settlers” and “Colonists”

Posted on by
1

For decades, the pro-Palestinian narrative labeled any Jew living east of the 1949 Jordanian Armistice Lines a “settler.” The term was never about accuracy but about framing. “Settler” implied that Jews were foreign interlopers, distinct from Arab residents who were cast as the indigenous population. So when Jewish and Arab families from Jaffa moved to Jerusalem’s Old City, only the Jews were called settlers. The transplanted Arab was considered at home, while the transplanted Jew was branded an intruder.

Even more strangely, the label of “settler” wasn’t tied to the founding of a new community. A Jew moving into an existing neighborhood—or even just a single apartment—could suddenly transform the entire edifice into a “settlement.” Words bent reality; the label carried the weight of illegitimacy.

But the terminology seems to be shifting. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official media arm, now increasingly calls Jews in these areas not “settlers,” but “colonists.” The updated lingo seems to fit better with the intellectual currents flowing through Western universities, where post-colonial studies cast Jews as Europeans imposing themselves on native lands. Never mind that Jews are the indigenous people of Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, and that there are more Mizrachi Israeli Jews than Ashkenazi—the narrative works if repeated often enough.

Wafa website on August 19, 2025

If the key to eroding U.S. support for Israel lies in framing Jews as oppressors and colonizers, then the Palestinian Authority is adapting accordingly. By embracing this academic jargon, it aligns itself with progressive activists abroad.

Expect the United Nations, NGOs, and sympathetic media outlets to follow suit. Language is a weapon, and the word “colonist” sharpens the blade. The campaign is not just to vilify Jews east of an arbitrary line—it is to recast Jewish presence anywhere in the land as alien, invasive, and illegitimate.

Further, “settlers” is deeply embedded with an anti-Jewish narrative. A pivot to a generic smear appears less antisemitic as well as more universal in condemning the entire Western world’s imperialism and colonialism. Take on Jews everywhere in “Palestine.” Take on Americans throughout “Turtle Island.”

“Colonists” are the new cudgel in the effort to purge Jews from their homeland. It’s a deliberate term and effort, crafted so as to be easily next replicated against Americans by radicals as the new school year begins.

The Israel Gaze

Posted on by
Reply

In 1975, film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term “male gaze” to describe how women are portrayed on screen. The camera does not simply show reality — it frames women for a heterosexual male viewer. Women become visual objects, defined by how they serve the viewer’s pleasure, not by their own full humanity.

The concept applies far beyond film. A “gaze” is any dominant perspective that controls how another group is seen. The one doing the looking holds power; the one being looked at is flattened, reduced, and judged. The colonial gaze. The white gaze. The antisemitic gaze. In each, the subject is stripped of complexity and placed in a role that makes sense to the audience, not to themselves.

Israel is caught in such a gaze. Call it the “Israel Gaze.”

In the Israel Gaze, the Jewish state is the object, never the subject. It is to be observed, graded, managed — but rarely allowed to speak or act on its own terms. Its security concerns are minimized; its legitimacy treated as conditional.

Like the male gaze that zooms in on a woman’s body while ignoring the rest of her life, the Israel Gaze focuses on narrow, selective snapshots. Cameras linger on a checkpoint — but not the suicide bombings that created the need for it. They magnify airstrikes — but crop out the rockets that triggered them.

The framing serves the outside viewer, often a Western political elite, who want a morality play: powerful oppressor vs. powerless victim. Israel is assigned the role of aggressor. No matter the reality on the ground, the narrative is cast before the curtain rises.

And just as the male gaze reduces women to archetypes — seductress, mother, damsel — the Israel Gaze flattens Israel into “occupier,” “aggressor,” “settler state.” The country’s remarkable complexity — the ultimate decolonization project, a refuge for a persecuted people, a diverse democracy, a hub of innovation, a nation under constant threat — disappears from view.

This gaze is not neutral. It is a tool of power. In film, it props up patriarchy. In global politics, it reinforces the idea that Israel’s right to exist, defend itself, or define its own future depends on approval from outsiders who claim the right to judge.

Typical UN vote condemning Israel – lopsided

Mulvey noted in her analysis that “her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.” So it is in global politics, with the viewer solely transfixed on Israel’s supposed evils that the actual storyline – and path to peace – is lost out of sight.

Both the male gaze and the Israel Gaze deny the subject the dignity of being whole. Both reduce identity to an image crafted for someone else’s satisfaction. And both sustain an imbalance in which the viewer’s comfort matters more than the subject’s survival.

Israel faces two battles at once: the immediate fight for security and the deeper fight to be seen truthfully. Until the gaze changes, the story will never be told honestly — and the verdict will be written before the trial even begins.

On Trust

Posted on by
Reply

Trust is a curious thing. It can be so natural when it comes in small, unassuming packages. A neighbor offering a hand with the groceries. A stranger holding open a door. The innocent gaze of a child. These gestures, light as feathers, weigh more than they seem because they carry no hidden agenda.

Reading Sarah Tuttle-Singer on trust is like reading poetry. She writes with the hope that trust can bridge divides, that shared humanity can soothe ancient wounds. It’s tempting. It’s comforting. It makes us want to exhale and believe that the world really can turn softer, kinder, lighter.

But trust, in the realm of politics and war, is a word misused. Bus drivers and merchants may indeed know the art of coexistence, but their goodwill cannot stand against the fury of those consumed by hatred. History has shown this cruelly and clearly.

On October 7, Israel’s dreamers were shown what happens when trust meets rage. Peace-loving families along the Gaza envelope, who had spent years helping Gazans reach Israeli hospitals, were burned alive. Young people who came only for music and joy at the Nova festival were hunted, raped, and gunned down. Trust did not save them.

Leaders at war do not have the luxury of extending trust to enemies sworn to their destruction. Their duty is to protect their people, not to tell their adversaries where the defenses are weak or where to buy stronger weapons. In war, misplaced trust is not a virtue—it is a death sentence.

I like dreams. I enjoy Tuttle-Singer’s writings. But her kind of pre–October 7 dreaming feels like a dangerous nostalgia while Hamas still rules Gaza, while Israelis are still captives in tunnels, while so many Palestinian Arabs still celebrate the massacre and fantasize about taking over Israel itself.

Even more, I understand that I might have the luxury of fantasy, but the people in charge of keeping people safe do not.

Dreams belong in the safety of bed, not while driving a highway. Trust has a time and a place. For now, in the waking hours of the Middle East, those in charge with ensuring survival must act with clarity with dollops of charity.

It is better to trust in wartime leaders who are wide awake to reality than to believe in poets dreaming on the frontlines.

And to thank them for their service.

Eikev, On Consequences

Posted on by
Reply

Parshat Eikev is about consequences. Love God and cherish the land, and there will be abundance. Turn away from them, and the blessings will vanish. It’s not just poetic scripture—it’s a binding principle embedded in Jewish destiny.

In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, handing the Strip to the Palestinian Authority. The move was framed as a step toward peace, but Palestinians internalized a different lesson from the Second Intifada: violence works. Within two years, Hamas was elected to a majority of the Palestinian parliament, seized power in Gaza, and rockets became Gaza’s chief export.

The same pattern played out decades earlier. In 1967, Israel reclaimed eastern Jerusalem from Jordan in a defensive war and reunified the city. Yet, instead of asserting Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism—Israel handed day-to-day control to the Islamic Waqf which banned Jewish prayer there. The Muslim world absorbed the message: Jews do not value their holy places as deeply as Muslims do.

These choices raise the uncomfortable question: do Jews truly love the land and God in the way Eikev commands? The Bible is not just a Jewish text. Billions of non-Jews around the globe read it. They know its covenantal clauses and its warnings. They understand—at least in their own terms—the consequences that befall Jews when we turn from God’s love and from the eternal heritage of the land. Some may even see themselves as agents in delivering divine justice.

God knows. The world knows.

It is time for Jews to internalize this truth. The Shema’s first line is often recited aloud with pride. But the second section (starting at Deuteronomy 11:13), with its stark outline of blessings for faithfulness and curses for betrayal, is whispered—if said at all. Perhaps it’s time to say it aloud, not just with our lips, but with our lives: affirming an unbreakable commitment to God and to the holiness of the land.

In Israel, that would be building homes in the area known as “E1,” cementing all of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount as integral to Israel. In the diaspora, it means putting mezuzahs on doorposts and wearing tefillin (11:18-20).

The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound

Consequences are not an abstraction in the Torah—they are the lived reality of Jewish history. Eikev’s message is as urgent now as it was on the plains of Moab.