Democrats have been trying to make a case that Republicans are attempting to make Israel a wedge issue in American politics. Pro-Israel Democrats say that it is harmful to the Jewish State to destroy the broad bipartisan support of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East enjoys. Republicans agree and lament that Democrats are addressing the wrong audience.
The charge by centrist Democrats’ about Republicans is designed to be a red herring to cover the infiltration of the anti-Zionist alt-left into the Democratic Party.
Justice Democrats has been growing its influence in Democratic circles, supporting anti-Zionist non-White people in Congress like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) does the same.
In an attempt to distinguish between their rabid anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the far-left argues that there are good Jews and bad Jews. They embrace the anti-Israel “good Jews” like those from Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, as if doing so proves they don’t hate Jews. Only those “bad Jews” who support Jews living in the Jewish holy land are targeted for vitriol and harassment.
CAIR, the Council for American-Islamic Relations makes a similar argument. Zahra Billoo made a speech which specifically called out “polite Zionists… which are not your friends” because she argued that any Jew who supports Israel is inherently anti-Muslim. To be an ally in the Islamic world requires that Jews denounce Zionism.
These and similar organizations and countries have been attempting to brand Zionism a form of racism, as so declared in 1975 at the United Nations. They have pushed a narrative in schools and society that everyone actively needs to be anti-racist and consequently anti-Zionist.
Branding Israel as an “apartheid” and “genocidal” country started well before the October 7 massacre by Palestinians. The effort was to not only make Israel a pariah nation devoid of allies, but to convince Jews to abandon their brethren and heritage.
The jihadi-socialist alliance is not only looking to destroy the Jewish State, but to pit Jew against Jew regarding Israel. It is yet another vile form of antisemitism.
Since 1993, the United States has provided more than $7.6 billion in assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza—primarily through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration suspended the program in January 2019 due to the Palestinians continued support of terrorism but it was restarted under the Biden administration in April 2021. According to the U.S. Governmental Accounting Office report in December 2023, American taxpayer dollars are currently not going to terrorism via that program.
The same cannot be said of the money the U.S. sends to Palestinians via the United Nations.
Since 1950, the U.S. has donated $7.3 billion to UNRWA, the temporary agency to deal uniquely with Palestinians who left Israel in 1948, together with their millions of descendants. The Biden administration suspended payments to UNRWA in January 2024 when it was revealed that several staffers participated in the brutal mass slaughter of people in Israel on October 7.
All that money hasn’t bought America any love.
The supposedly “moderate” Holocaust-denier President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority addressed the Turkish government on August 15, 2024. He promised “sharia law: victory or martyrdom” in the war against the Jewish State, and cursed the United States, “America is the plague and the plague is America.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States hate America too.
The negative sentiments about the U.S.A. is more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans. According to a June 2023 Pew poll, Republicans were more likely to view America as tolerant (54% to 35%) and democratic (51% to 36%) compared to Democrats. Meanwhile Democrats were more likely to find the U.S. to be dangerous (43% to 21%) and religious (35% to 26%) than Republicans. Note that these statistics were taken before the Palestinians launched the October 7, 2023 war against Israel.
Meanwhile, Israelis have a very positive view of the United States, with 77% having a positive view according to a June 2024 Pew poll. By way of comparison, Canada, the United Kingdom and France have 54%, 54% and 46% positive scores for the United States, respectively.
According to Palestinian sources, there are over 40,000 Gazans killed in the current war against Israel. Israel claims that 17,000 of the dead were terrorists. That means that the Palestinian Authority expects millions of additional dollars to support their “Martyrs Fund” / pay-to-slay program, on top of appeals to rebuild Gaza in the war they deliberately initiated.
When the leader of the Palestinian Authority declares “America is the plague” and his supporters threaten to burn America to the ground, it begs the question why America gives a single penny to people who despise the country, and whose leaders promise to give their last penny to people who slaughter Jews.
May 2021 saw a relatively short war between Hamas in Gaza and Israel. As the battle was coming to a close, Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas’s military, met with Tor Wennesland, the UN Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
It did not go well.
Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, gestures during a rally in Beit Lahiya on May 30, 2021. (Atia Mohammed/ Flash90)
“It was a bad meeting. It was not positive at all, and we clarified to the [United Nations] delegation that we would hold a meeting of Islamic and national factions in Gaza to decide our next steps,” Sinwar told reporters following the meeting. “It seems that the occupation [Israel] did not get our people’s message,” essentially threatening the Jewish State again.
Hamas demanded that Israel lift tightened restrictions on the Gaza Strip in exchange for continued calm, as well as permit Gaza to rebuild after the 11-day battle between Israel and the terror group. But Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Israel would not permit a full reconstruction of Gaza — with the resulting influx of materials — without the return of two Israeli civilian captives and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by Hamas.
Sinwar rejected the proposal and said Israel is “trying to extort us, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian resistance, when it comes to lifting [the restrictions] on our people.”
A spokesperson for the UN Secretary General was interviewed in June 2021 after Wennesland’s meeting with Sinwar, especially on the topic of Hamas’s use of children in armed conflict. The UN offered generic messaging and would not specifically condemn Hamas.
Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar sits and smiles in his bombed Gaza office when it was above ground, May 27, 2021 (Courtesy)
Two years later, Sinwar launched a massive war against Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. It seemed that Hamas wanted both the UN and Israel to get the “message” that they will be unbowed by any rules of war, and magnify his violence by a hundred times.
Israel learned Sinwar’s 2021 and 2023 messages and is replying to sender: the Jewish State will defend itself aggressively when attacked in such barbaric fashion, and it will always insist on reclaiming its citizens. Any reconstruction of Gaza will depend on Sinwar’s death or capture this time, in addition to the release of the Israeli hostages whether dead or alive.
For its part, the UN continues to pretend that it does not understand anyone’s messages, offering worthless bobbleheads with microphones attached. If it weren’t so horribly tragic, it would be comical.
Many political experts have offered that there is no way to defeat Hamas’ ideology though military means. Israel’s war effort will only be successful in defeating the military capabilities of the political-terrorist group, much like allied forces defeated Nazi Germany in World War II, and US and other allies defeated al-Qaeda and ISIS in the 21st century. The ultimate driver of Hamas, to destroy the Jewish State, will continue to fuel another generation of Palestinian radicals.
What goes unmentioned is that this “ideology” is rooted in religious fanaticism, much like al Qaeda and ISIS, among others. This potentially makes the ideology eternal, so any notion of defeating the ideology would be nonsensical.
Consider that there are only 900 Christian Arabs in Gaza out of a population of roughly 2.2 million, a paltry 0.04% of the region, with the rest being Muslim. The strip is deeply religious under a strictly Islamic religious regime enforcing sharia law. Hamas is attempting to use its Gaza foothold as the launching pad for a caliphate with the help of other Islamic regimes including Iran and Qatar, to consume Israel next door.
Last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas came clean about his fanatical Islamic and antisemitic and anti-US beliefs in front of the Turkish parliament as he declared “we implement sharia law: victory or martyrdom!” and “America is the plague and the plague is America.”
The Israel-Arab war is a religious war for Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic Republic of Iran, not a territorial war. It is therefore not surprising that Jews in the diaspora are being attacked by antisemites who berate Jews as murderers, racists and robbers who are “colonizers,” not indigenous to the land of Israel. It is an unhinged rant of fanatics who celebrate the slaughter of unbelievers unmoored in reality, not a reasoned opinion capable of being addressed.
The United Nations’ role in the Middle East is a dangerous farce. It pretends to be an impartial party attempting to bring peace to the volatile region, when in fact it takes only sides with Palestinian Arabs.
The UN has a person appointed to be the “Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process,” Tor Wennesland. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Wennesland to that role in December 2020 and simultaneously to act as Guterres’ “Personal Representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.” How could Israel possibly take the position of such a biased representative seriously? Guterres shot the messenger by cementing him with Palestinian cement shoes from the outset.
Not surprisingly, the “peace process” floundered under Guterres and Wennesland, with the Palestinian Arabs together with backers in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen all coming for the Jewish State in a regional assault.
The biased and tarnished Wennesland continues to address the UN Security Council and the world via social media. Various biases can be found throughout his comments.
On August 16, 2024, Wennesland tweeted that he condemned settler violence and wanted “to ensure full accountability for all involved,” and further called “on the Israeli government to stop settler violence.”
August 16, 2024 tweet calling out Israelis for violence and demanding full accountability
But Wennesland did the opposite regarding Hamas and other terrorist groups attacking Israel, where he did not call out “Hezbollah” and demanded that Israel use “maximum restraint” in responding to terror.
July 27, 2024 tweet not naming Hezbollah terrorists and urging Israel respond with “maximum restraint”
The hypocrisy is a designed feature of the UN. When Wennesland addressed the UN Security Council on May 29, 2024, he acknowledged the “breakdown of law and order” in Gaza as well as the “well-organized looting of the UNRWA Rafah log base,” but deliberately omitted saying that the looting was done by Hamas. In fact, he implied the opposite, that because Hamas was no longer in charge, there was a breakdown of order.
Comments to UNSC on May 29, 2024
Wennesland treats Hamas as a trusted partner and uses the political-terrorist group’s talking points. On August 10, 2024, Wennesland condemned on the “devastating strike on a school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian, with dozens of fatalities.” The UN itself admitted that those “dozens of fatalities” were terrorists, yet the UN’s “Coordinator for Peace” parroted jihadi terrorist propaganda.
Official statement condemning the killing of terrorists on August 10, 2024
Wennesland views his role as protecting and promoting Palestinian Arabs, not securing peace. It means advancing their narrative, excusing their terrorism, and preventing Israel from eliminating jihadi terrorists.
Wennesland knows that there are numerous allies of Palestinians all attacking Israel; he names Hizbullah, Iran and the Houthis, even while treading gingerly around Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It’s because he sees his goal as supporting the creation of a Palestinian state first and foremost, and that means calling for international support for a Palestinian government, even knowing it to be deeply corrupt and antisemitic.
May 29 comments to UNSC
The UN’s idea of a “peace process” is deeply and fundamentally flawed. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Coordinator for Middle East Peace Tor Wennesland should both be fired for abetting terrorism, and all UN agencies in the region should be shuttered.
For decades, Palestinians put on a dance that they had two personas: one peaceful and secular, the other militant and Islamist. In August 2024, they shed the former and fully embraced the latter.
Palestinian Arabs had two principal parties in their government: the more secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas. The Palestinian Authority has been ruled by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who the west presents as a moderate voice of reason, despite being a Holocaust denier and being deeply unpopular amongst local Palestinians. Abbas has ruled E49, the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, commonly called the “West Bank” by Palestinians and “Judea and Samaria” by Israelis.
Hamas is the more popular political party amongst local Palestinian Arabs and has ruled Gaza since 2007. It is a designated terrorist organization according to the United States, European Union, Israel and many other countries. It nominally divided the organization between its political wing and its military wing, much like Nazi Germany had different divisions of the SS, Gestapo, Waffen, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and Wehrmacht.
On July 31, 2024, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, while he was in Iran. In response to the vacated position, on August 6, Hamas announced that Yahya Sinwar who is the group’s military leader, will also assume the role of diplomatic leader. The move consolidated the diplomatic and terrorist faces of the organization.
Just over a week later on August 15, President Abbas spoke to the government of Turkey in a large address. In his remarks, he made clear that the Palestinian Authority is not a secular party but a religious one, intent on “implement[ing] Islamic sharia law: victory or martyrdom.”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas addressing government of Turkey on August 15, 2024
He called for Islamic prayers to mourn for the slain leader of Hamas with reciting prayers from the Quran to wide applause.
And then called the United States a “plague,” something nefarious and detrimental to humankind which must be destroyed.
Palestinian leadership has shed the polite diplomatic facade and embraced the genocidal jihadi mantra of the foundational Hamas Charter, in line with the desires of the Palestinian Arab public and radical jihadists around the world. It remains to be seen if this will expand the war against the Jewish State or initiates a global recognition that an antisemitic genocidal regime next to the only Jewish State is untenable in the extreme.
The United Nations Secretary General released the biannual report on the threat posed by ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) on August 8, 2024. Vladimir Voronkov, Under-Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism noted that the threat of terrorism has spread throughout the world, and in Africa in particular, noting “a vast territory stretching from Mali to northern Nigeria could fall under their effective control.”
Various countries commented on the report and the threat of terrorism by Islamic radical groups including Boko Haram, Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, and ISIL-Khorasan. The representative of Sierra Leone, Council President for August, spoke in his national capacity, noting that “this new epicentre of terrorism [in Central Sahel and West Africa] accounts for almost 50 per cent of all deaths from terror acts globally.” Roughly 2,000 people in Burkina Faso were killed in 258 incidents in 2023, accounting for nearly a quarter of all terrorist deaths globally.
Many discussed the issue of border control as an essential tool in combating terrorism. Sierra Leone’s representative said that “terrorist groups often exploit porous borders, weak border controls and security vulnerabilities for cross-border illegal trafficking of weapons, drugs and people.” The Republic of Korea’s delegate warned that “terrorists can exploit a lack of governance in border areas, which exacerbates various security problems beyond those areas.” Natalia Gherman, Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate opined that there needs to be “an integrated approach to border security.”
Some members referenced the Accra Initiative which is designed to combat the spread of terrorism in Africa. One of the primary focuses was border security, where efforts led to the arrest of 700 people in 2018 and 2019. Albert Kan-Dapaah, Ghana’s national security chief said that unemployment was a factor in terrorism [a statement not proven by research] and his country would focus on job creation. “We don’t want to have a situation beyond our control, so we will also make it difficult for the jihadists to radicalise youth in border communities.”
Not one country mentioned Hamas, the jihadi Palestinian Arab terrorist group that killed over 1,200 people, until the United States was disgusted by an accusation by the Russian representative and rose to criticize Russia and “its growing influence with terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis, as well as with Iran — the leading State sponsor of terrorism — to end their terrorist attacks.”
While the U.S. was able to remember the threat of genocidal jihadi extremists when vilified by Russia, the Biden-Harris Administration has seemingly not been worried about terrorists streaming across U.S. borders.
The number of illegal border crossings from December 2020 (under the Trump Administration) to December 2023 went up an astounding 744% according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Center for Border Protection (CBP).
According to the March 2024 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), the United States accounted for 70% of the terrorist attacks among western countries in 2023, with only the U.S. and Belgium having fatalities from terrorism.
GTI noted that Hamas, a “designated as a terrorist organisation by several countries, including the United States, Israel, and the European Union” had been “relatively inactive as a terrorist organisation in the five years before the October 7th attacks, with only 14 attacks and one fatality recorded between 2015 and 2022.” But the political-terrorist group used that time to carefully prepare for an enormous attack which killed 1,200 and brought the region to an all-out war.
Israel is intent on maintaining a presence in the Philadelphi Corrider between Gaza and Egypt, which has long been used to bring in weapons, trained terrorists and tunnel building materials into the terrorism enclave. Doing so is blocking the restocking of Hamas in the current war and will impede its rearming in the future.
Global communities are focusing intently on their border security and immigration policy as well.
The United States is on edge with rampant antisemitism on streets and campuses with a jihadi-socialist alliance growing ever more bold. How much of it is from foreign students legally permitted into the country? How much from people entering illegally? What are they planning for the new semester? How soon until the vitriol and harassment becomes terror?
Jewish students were physically blocked from sections of UCLA’s campus by anti-Israel protestors, many covering their faces with kaffiyehs in the Spring 2024 semester. Three students consequently sued to have the university ensure that they have equal rights to use and enjoy the campus facilities.
U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed with the plaintiffs that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs. His ruling ordered UCLA to stop “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.”
UCLA strongly disagreed.
Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said “the district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”
Thomas Harvey, the lawyer representing Faculty for Justice in Palestine, came up with the absurd notion that the ruling “paves the way for total removal of pro-Palestinian activity on campus. If the sincerely held religious belief being protected here is the belief in the Jewish state of Israel, any class, campus event or speaker that criticizes that nation’s legal or political decisions might be prohibited.”
Jewish student at UCLA denied entry to campus while police looked on
UCLA and the lawyer’s arguments aren’t just ridiculous but make one wonder if they are deeply antisemitic. The ruling doesn’t say anything about criticizing “political decisions” of any country; it is about free and fair access for all students to use every corner of the university campus.
In a strange bit of coincidence, on October 6, 2023, one day before the barbaric Palestinian massacre of Israelis, UCLA announced the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism, funded by a $600,000 gift by the Pritzker family. The hub is a joint effort between the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the Center for Jewish Studies. In announcing the new effort, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said “It is critical that we do more than condemn the recent surge in antisemitism — we must actively work against it.”
Chancellor Block was pushed to resign in May 2024 by anti-Israel protestors who also called for canceling the school’s Israel Studies Department and for boycotting all Israeli universities.
UCLA is tacking to the jihadi fringe to remove any tolerance of contrary points of view and freedom of access in an undemocratic purge of Zionists and Jews. It is displaying a frightful lack of basic civility and critical thinking.
UCLA is so infected with anti-Zionism, that it is fighting to ban pro-Zionist students from campus and an education. It says a great deal about California and the terrible state of education today.
The United Nations General Assembly was wrapping up its 78th session on August 13, 2024, and was going to pass a resolution about racism with seemingly little objection. At the last minute, South Africa asked for the resolution to include a reference to the Durban Declaration and Programme of Action from 2001. The resolution quickly lost overwhelming support, with only 61 votes in favor, 78 abstentions, and a single opposing vote by Israel.
UN press release on August 13, 2024
The action was deliberate and calculating by South Africa, which recently pursued a case at the International Court of Justice charging Israel with committing genocide in Gaza. The African nation wanted to make Israel appear as a racist entity by opposing a resolution condemning racism.
It was specifically the inclusion of that Durban document that made Israel oppose the resolution. The Programme of Action was a lengthy document discussing racism and xenophobia which veered into the Palestinian-Israel conflict at several points, as jihadi regimes attempted to bundle condemnation of Israel into a document which was designed to confront racism.
Durban conference of 2002 preamble mentioning that “Palestinian people [are] under foreign occupation” and that they have a “right to an independent state.”
The document included a call for Palestinian refugees “to return voluntarily to their homes and properties,” making it an individual right outside of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. In a 100+ page global document about racism.
The 2001 event, just days before the terrorist attacks on the United States on 9/11, was deliberately inflammatory and made many countries send lower level officials or not vote for the programme.
The United Nations Press team published its usual anti-Israel smear on August 13, 2024, as it described the latest Gaza war. In a headline that read “Humanitarian official describes pitiful regard for International Law, as delegates deplore continued attacks on civilians, suffering of Palestinians,” one would imagine another one-sided piece only critical of Israel. The sub-header about a “financial liquidity crisis” at the UN requiring a shortened article, may explain why the text of the article wasn’t scrubbed of any Israeli narrative.
While the article began that there was a “desperate need to reach a ceasefire” after an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza on August 10, the article – remarkably – included quotes from Israeli sources about who was killed in the attack, rather than only parrot Hamas’ figures which refers to every Palestinian as a civilian and every Israeli as a colonizing terrorist.
The UN article quoted Israeli officials that “its forces targeted a Hamas command centre in a mosque inside the compound and killed at least 31 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters.” Just a couple of paragraphs later the text would cover an August 3 Israeli strike in Tulkarem where nine Palestinians were killed who were planning “an attack inside Israel.”
While the article did quote Palestinian officials as well, that is routine. What was exceptional in this case was that the Israeli version of events was included in the press release, which is normally absent.
It would appear that the best way to get the United Nations to treat Israel with a modicum of respect and fairness is to starve it of funds.
First One Through 