The first night of Passover is celebrated with a seder, with props designed to entertain and engage young and old. The youngest child at the table typically recites the Ma Nishtana, questioning why that night is different from all other nights of the year.
Below are some additional questions about the entire week of Passover for older people.
Every other week during the year I would never consider going away with in-laws; on Passover, I relish in the sponsored trip
During the rest of the year, I never go near raspberry jelly; for the week of Passover, I can’t get enough
For the entire year, I never pause to think about the nature of mixed or single sex swimming in the pools; on Passover, I might decide to change the country of my destination based on the response
For 51 weeks, I could go to Florida with a eight days of clothing in my carryon; on Passover I bring two oversized checked bags and a hatbox
Normally, I can go to the beach or pool without worrying about lunchtime; on Passover, I suddenly need a watch with an alarm lest I miss a piece of chremzel
When I typically go on vacation, I don’t think about who I might bump into; on Passover, I join and check the program’s What’sApp group so I can ping people twice a day whom I haven’t seen in years
When I pick a location for a holiday during the year, I focus on the location’s surroundings; on Passover, I factor in twelve other considerations like food, entertainment and who else will be there
Email Rep. Jamaal Bowman Mount Vernon Office (914) 371-9220, White Plains office (914) 323-5550, D.C. office (202) 225-2464
Rep. Bowman,
I understand that you are co-authoring a letter to President Biden “to investigate whether Israel is using U.S. weapons to commit human rights abuses against Palestinians.” In the current draft of the letter made available by Jewish Currents, you made reference to recent attacks in the West Bank as well as a claim that the “Israeli government’s anti-democratic mission to dismantle the rule of law… is attempting to destroy the independent Israeli judiciary.” You also claimed that there is an Israeli “military siege of Gaza.”
Allow me to give you information that you may have missed or decided to ignore.
The Palestinians poll themselves every quarter, something they have been doing since 2000. The latest poll came out on March 14, 20231 and details frightening sentiments of Palestinian Arabs about their Jewish neighbors:
68% support the formation of armed groups, such as the Lions’ Den, and 87% believe the Palestinian Authority (PA) does not have the right to arrest members of these groups
71% support the Palestinian point blank shooting of two Israeli brothers who drove into the town of of Huwara
61% of Palestinians support armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside of Israel
57% support the return to an “armed intifada”
Support for a two state solution stands at just 27%
If presidential elections were held, 52% would vote for the leader of the political-terrorist group Hamas
Those are the latest figures of the Palestinians polling themselves. It is because of that rejection of coexistence and preference for violent attacks that Israel launched a daytime raid into Nablus on February 22, to stop an upcoming terrorist attack. The Israeli defensive action killed nine terrorists and saved an untold number of lives – which your letter disgracefully omitted. Are you in favor of allowing terrorists to target and kill innocent Jewish civilians in Israel?
Even according to the biased United Nations reports, West Bank Arabs committed more attacks2 than Israeli Jews living in Israeli territory of Area C in every month of 2022.
As for terrorist enclave of Gaza,3 the situation is more horrific. The territory is controlled by a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, Hamas.4 The March 2023 poll figures show that 36% and 31% “strongly support” and “support” armed attacks against Jews in Israel, respectively. A frightening 71% of Gazans support armed groups like the Lions’ Den and Jenin Battalion which do not take orders from the PA (question 40). Your inversion of this terrorist enclave to being the victims of an “Israeli military siege” is outrageous.
As to the assertion that Israel is “pushing repressive, anti-democratic policies,” let me remind you that Israel held five in elections in the past four years. This in a region that doesn’t hold any, including the PA, where the president’s four-year term ran out in 2009, fourteen years ago. Further, after each Israeli election, there was a peaceful transition of power, more than can be said for these United States.
Currently hundreds of thousands of citizens are peacefully protesting in the streets of Israel for months, in sharp contrast to the bloodshed and civil wars in neighboring countries.5 And both side of the Israeli protests are in favor of putting checks-and-balances for the government and judiciary.
Your refusing to acknowledge the radical jihadi violence currently prevalent in Palestinian society – as well as the Islamic Republic of Iran march towards nuclear weapons – while simultaneously calling for the U.S. to consider pulling back military support for the only Jewish State, is alarming.
Rep. Bowman, anti-Semitism is brewing in your district, in your state and your country. At the same time, more Israeli Jews have already been killed by Palestinian terrorism since President Biden took office than in the full four years of the prior American administration.
Amidst such backdrop, you’ve decided that America should open an investigation of the Jewish State and show its enemies that the sole liberal democracy8 in the Middle East is losing its main supporter.
Not satisfied with penning such letter with Senator Bernie Sanders, you are seemingly agitating to get other members of congress to join your assault.
Congressman, you defeated Rep. Eliot Engel, one of the authors of the Taylor Force Act which restricted funds to the Palestinian Authority as long as it continued its “martyr payments.” Are you now using your power to strip Israel of funding for its defensive operations? Did congress not only lose a defender of human rights in the Middle East, but did it gain a member which tramples on them?
There are indeed “gross violations of human rights” happening now. And you are aiding and abetting the perpetrators.
There was a time when the largest newspaper in the world did its own reporting, analysis and sourcing of news. It chose its stories and reported facts with the aim of educating the world-at-large about important matters.
Those days are long gone. The New York Times has become an activist agitator, reporting on stories from the vantage point of its far left-wing base. The news is not simply delivered as though written in the Opinion Section by progressive activists, but is actually SOURCED from left-wing groups.
Consider the paper’s reporting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Times has long chosen to vilify him as a monster, even posting TWO close-up pictures of him in an article about a Palestinian Arab youth injured during riots, seemingly suggesting the Netanyahu himself punched the boy in the face. (For comparison, try to find a picture of President Barack Obama in a Times article about American drones blowing up people in the far East).
As the paper is online, it has become easier to track the deep bias against Israel and Netanyahu: J Street.
J Street markets itself as pro-peace and pro-Israel, when it is actually a far left-wing group headed by pro-Palestinian Jews, a counter to the Republican Jewish Coalition that is conservative and pro-Israel. J Street frequently publishes opinion pieces as it lobbies politicians to take pro-Arab actions, and the Times quotes the group’s leadership as though it spoke for the majority of American Jews.
In a recent Times’ article, “Biden’s Confrontation With Netanyahu Had Been Brewing For Years“, it described a letter written by Democratic politicians urging the president to take action against Israel. Rather than source the actual letter, the Times provided a link to J STREET’S WEBSITE praising the letter.
Not only does the “Gray Lady” not go to source documents to draw its own conclusions in writing articles, it acts as a REFERRAL TO LEFT-WING ANTI-ZIONIST SITES.
The radical jihadist group Students For Justice in Palestine said that J Street is a gateway for Jews to become anti-Zionist. The New York Times is providing them a global megaphone.
There was another terrible shooting at a school in the United States, the latest in Nashville, TN. Teachers and young children were gunned down and the victims’ stories are being told.
According to the Associated Press, the killer’s name was Audrey Hale, a.k.a. Aiden Hale. In describing the shooter the media said “Police gave unclear information on the shooter’s gender. For hours, police identified the shooter as a 28-year-old woman and eventually as Audrey Hale. Then at a late afternoon press conference, the police chief said that Hale was transgender. After the news conference, police spokesperson Don Aaron declined to elaborate on how Hale identified.”
The confusion was at least made clear to readers. The dead assailant was initially identified as a woman who had attended the school, and it was later learned from online profiles that Hale’s preferred gender pronouns were he/him and used the name Aiden.
The New York Times opted to avoid sharing facts and took to wordsmithing about the killer.
Front page New York Times article on March 29, 2023
The Times neither wanted to call out the murderer as being transgender, nor did it want to use a pronoun that Hale hadn’t chosen. Instead, it omitted using any pronouns for Hale, and used “the assailant” or “the perpetrator” throughout the piece.
The Times also avoided using any guesswork about the motivation for the killing rampage, and opted to only share that Hale had “an emotional disorder,” even as the paper normally attributes motivations of misogyny or racism for other mass murderers, even before facts are unearthed.
It is without debate that there was another horrible tragedy in which innocents were gunned down. As a society trying to deal with seemingly ubiquitous mental illness and anger, we should all be able to speak clearly about the facts to help usher a safer and saner world.
On March 23, 2023, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres published a message for the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, to be observed on March 25th. Gutteres focused on the “evil enterprise of enslavement [that] lasted for over 400 years… of suffering and barbarity that shows humanity at its worst.” He focused on the European slavery of Africans, stating that one can “draw a straight line from the centuries of colonial exploitation to the social and economic inequalities of today. And we can recognize the racist tropes popularized to rationalize the inhumanity of the slave trade in the white supremacist hate that is resurgent today.”
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during the High Level Segment of the 37th Session of the Human Rights Council. 26 February 2018.
While modern slavery exists to this day – much of it the enslavement of Black youths in Africa as soldiers and laborers for Black adults in Angola, Togo, Benin and Nigeria – the U.N. leader focused narrowly on “white supremacist hate” for Africans that was rooted in 400 years of the slave trade. The particularism of Remembrance is for Black victims of White racism, nothing else.
It is interesting to contrast this approach with Gutteres’ statement honoring the victims of the Holocaust, in which Nazi Germany and its allies nearly completed the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Europe.
The title of the United Nations story about Holocaust Remembrance Day was “Honouring Holocaust victims, U.N. chief Guterres pledges to battle anti-Semitism, all forms of hatred.” The lead-in sentence continued that theme, that “the world has a duty to remember that the Holocaust was a systematic attempt to eliminate the Jewish people and so many others.“
A recap of Gutteres’ video remarks noted that “the Holocaust was the culmination of millennia of hatred, scapegoating and discrimination targeting the Jews, what we now call anti-Semitism, he emphasized, adding that tragically and contrary to the international community’s resolve, anti-Semitism continues to thrive. Moreover, the world is also witnessing a deeply troubling rise in extremism, xenophobia, racism and anti-Muslim hatred. Irrationality and intolerance are back, said the U.N. chief.” He further said “that as Secretary-General of the United Nations, I will be in the frontline of the battle against anti-Semitism and all other forms of hatred.“
The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein also offered thoughts about the Holocaust that the “sadistic brutality of the atrocities inflicted by the Nazi regime on Jews, Roma, Slavs, persons with disabilities, political dissidents, homosexuals and others was nourished by layer upon layer of propaganda, falsifications and incitement to hatred.” He added that “is crucial to maintain respect for human rights, especially in respect of the right to life and wellbeing of all people regardless of their origin or ethnicity,… [and that] education must be at the core of all efforts to combat anti-Semitism, racism, and all forms of discrimination.”
The speakers were very holistic and all-encompassing as it related to the genocide of Jews.
While the United Nations solely focused on White slavery of Blacks and drew a line across centuries straight to racism against Blacks by Whites today, it opted for a completely different storyline for the slaughter of Jews. For the Holocaust of just some decades ago – as Survivors still scream in their sleep – the UN chose to include many non-Jewish people in the Remembrance, and attributed the barbarism to broad-based xenophobia which manifests itself in broad-based extremism like anti-Muslim hatred today.
It’s repulsive and shocking. And not shocking.
For the U.N., White racism against Blacks is systemic and persistent, while anti-Semitism is neither special nor unique; a subset of other forms of hatred which much also be addressed. The mantra is that over 1 billion Black people suffer persecution as a targeted minority, while the same cannot be said of 15 million Jews.
Ilhan Omar and Nancy Pelosi (photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
There is no more persecuted group in the world than the Jews. The hatred is so embedded in society, that world leaders do not call it out clearly, uniquely and unapologetically, because they have internalized the venom. The audience doesn’t want to hear it, and leaders don’t really want to talk much about it, as the straight line from the Holocaust to today runs through the radical jihadist Palestinian Arabs and anti-Zionists seeking to destroy the Jewish State.
In woke narrative, perpetrators can only by White Christian Males and victims are anyone else. So when society opts to define Jews as White (they are actually multi-racial), the Holocaust gets subtly reconfigured as a story of broad-based xenophobia which caught Jews alongside confirmed capital-V Victims by White Nazis. When Jews today are clearly targeted by non-Whites, the story is either ignored (like New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio and The New York Times) or the hatred is whitewashed because Jews deserved it as “interlopers” (as defined by Blacks in Jersey City) or “colonialists” (as concocted by anti-Zionists).
We are being reeducated by progressive powers that believe Jews are over-represented in power structures cloaked in their Whiteness. The woke become incensed when Jews claim victimhood, and spin the Holocaust into a crime against righteous Victims – homosexuals, the disabled and Muslims – which also caught Jews in the broad net.
The particular stand against racism is as correct as the universalistic stance against Jew-hatred-plus is wrong. Pathetic Holocaust Remembrances and watered down denouncements of anti-Semitism are facilitating the noxious evil, as the neo Nazis and jihadists know an opening when they see it.
I have read with alarm that you are considering making aid to Israel “conditional,” something no American president has ever done, including President Biden. The reasons for doing so are abundant, and have never been more obvious.
Sen. Chris Murphy (photo: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts.)
Security
Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran has threatened to wipe Israel off the map. This leading state sponsor of terrorism is on the very cusp of nuclear weapons capability, a fact very well known to you and the United States government which has been alternatively attempting to stop the terrorist regime from gaining weapons of mass destruction, and paving the way to a legal complete manufacturing infrastructure.
Lebanon. One of Iran’s terrorist arms is Hezbollah, just north of Israel in Lebanon. The terrorist group is overseeing a country in the middle of a complete freefall, with its currency collapsing by over 90% since the beginning of they year. The Lebanese are becoming extremely anxious, with a populace now ranked as the second most unhappy country in the world, just ahead of Afghanistan. The terrorists of Hezbollah have an estimated 150,000 missiles and mortars targeting Israel, and there is no better way to distract the angry Lebanese than to start a war against the Jewish State.
Syria. Another leading state sponsor of terrorism is still led by a mass murderer who has killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens. The country remains in an official state of war with Israel, as it has been since the reestablishment of the Jewish State. While Israel was effective at stopping Syria from building a nuclear weapons compound which the Islamic state was doing with the help of North Korea (yet another state sponsor of terrorism), Syria continues to get supplied with arms and intelligence from Iran and Russia.
West Bank Palestinian Arabs. The Arabs in the West Bank have never been more blood-thirsty than they are at present. According to a December 2022 Palestinian poll, 46% support killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel (Gazans’ support was yet higher at 57%). Several new terrorist groups have recently emerged in the West Bank including the Lion’s Den and Jenin Battalion which have a 70% approval rating according to a March 2023 Palestinian poll, with the groups shooting and planning attacks against Israelis. A similarly frightening high percentage of Palestinians support the point blank shooting of two Jewish brothers who drove into an Arab town a few weeks ago.
Gazans. The political-terrorist group Hamas, continues to rule Gaza. The group is committed to never making peace with Israel and was elected to a significant majority of the Palestinian parliament with the most anti-Semitic charter ever written. If new presidential elections were held, Hamas would win according to the March 2023 poll (52% for Hamas’ Ismail Haniyeh to 36% for Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas), and assume control of the Palestinian Authority to rule both the West Bank and Gaza.
The idea of making aid to Israel conditional in such backdrop is not only dangerous in hurting Israel’s military readiness, but serves as an invitation to the Jewish State’s hostile neighbors that it is standing alone and vulnerable.
Palestinian Thoughts on the “Peace Process”
And for what? Why subject Israel to the evil forces that seek its destruction? Are the radical jihadist values listed above closer aligned to the United States?
You mentioned that Israel is not actively engaged in pursuing a two state solution. Have you looked at the facts and polls related to Palestinians?
According to the March 2023 PCPRS poll, “support for the concept of the two-state solution stands at 27% and opposition stands at 71%.” Three times as many Palestinian oppose a two-state solution as support it.
Their preference is violence. The same poll found that “58% supported return to armed confrontations and intifada,” and 77% want Abbas to resign. The Palestinians are not interested in peace or negotiations led by a corrupt and inept leader, but want to go to war with Israel.
Exactly how is Israel supposed to push forward two states with such Palestinian counterparty? Israel has shown its readiness to make peace with many Arab countries willing to engage, and has put forward numerous solutions through the decades to the Palestinian Arabs. The current situation offers no opportunity for fruitful negotiations.
Jewish Homes East of The 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL)
Senator, you seem to believe that the presence of Jews obliterates the chance for a two state solution. On February 15, 2023 you said “The Israeli government’s move to advance nearly 10,000 new settlement homes and legalize nine outposts in the West Bank is deeply concerning. Unilateral decisions like these make a negotiated two-state future more and more difficult to achieve and undercut prospects for a just and lasting peace with the Palestinians.” A couple of weeks later you doubled down and said “I worry that we are at a moment in which we are watching a future Palestinian state be obliterated by the pace of settlements, by the legalization of outposts.”
If Israel is thriving with over 20% of its population coming from non-Jews including Arabs and Druze, and the United Nations continues to demand that Israel accept millions of additional Arabs into the country, why are 10,000 new homes for Jews an obstacle for a “lasting peace with the Palestinians”? Is it because the Palestinians want an ethnically-cleansed, pure Arab country devoid of Jews? If that is their goal, how can anyone believe that there will ever be peace with people who hold such noxious anti-Semitic views?
Senator, your comments would simply be viewed as irresponsible if they were uttered from the mouths of radical members of the House of Representatives. Coming from a senator who sits on the foreign affairs committee is a dangerous invitation for brutal violent dictators and terrorist groups to wage war on the Jewish State.
Conditioning aid to Israel to pressure the Jewish State to bend to the will of anti-Semitic Arabs is not the mark of a “pragmatic progressive.” It is a product of a delusional mindset chasing a fantasy that Palestinians do not want (in regards to two states) and Israelis cannot risk.
The streets of Israel are teeming with hundreds of thousands of people protesting the proposed changes to the country’s judicial system. It is a global lesson in democracy.
An Education About The Supreme Court
The current protests are not about the price of cottage cheese (there actually was such a protest in Israel!), raising the age of retirement (as in France), or about changes to police enforcement (as in the USA), but about how the country’s Supreme Court is elected and functions. Something seemingly so nuanced and esoteric as to be beyond the interest of the masses, yet they’ve come out to protest for weeks and months to argue for compromise.
The proposed five changes are seemingly small but the impact is potentially large. As people delve into the details, they are getting a civics lesson about the checks-and-balances that maintain a healthy democracy.
Elections
The bedrock of democracy is the rights of citizens to elect their leaders. Israel is so focused on the will of its citizens, it remarkably held five elections in four years! It sounds preposterous, especially in the middle of the illiberal Middle East which has leaders for life with either no or sham elections.
Israel obviously did not do this intentionally, as governments are intended to sit for several years. However, the country’s parliamentary system enables coalition members to withdraw and thereby dissolve its majority position. In slim majority coalitions, a single upset member of parliament can bring about a collapse of the majority and calls for a new election. The Prime Minister can do little about it, other than negotiate, beg and plead to keep his coalition together.
Israeli citizens watch this theater in real time, and get to choose the next chess pieces to place on the board. It is a thoroughly engaged, active – and yes, oftentimes dysfunctional – democracy. As Winston Churchill said “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
Despite the flux and hysteria, the people of Israel voted in peace and the transition of power happened without violence.
Checks and Balances
The Kohelet Policy Forum which drafted the proposed changes to the country’s judicial process, is just as sensitive to the checks-and-balances of power as those protesting the changes. Those for and against the rules do not want any branch of the government to have unlimited control of society. An election won is not a certificate to overhaul every aspect of society and civil protection, and unelected judges chosen by unelected officials should not be able to trump laws and the government willy-nilly.
Both the protestors and those backing the judicial overhaul are debating a crucial principle of creating and maintaining a healthy society.
Majority Rule And Protection Of Minorities
The democratic process of choosing a government via elections is meant to empower the will of the majority of voters. However, it is a liberal democracy that enshrines protections of the minority through laws.
Israel has many groups who could be considered minority groups. Israeli Arab citizens number about 1.6 million and about 2 million including those with permanent residency status. There are about 160,000 Ethiopian Jews and 1.3 million ultra Orthodox Jews. They got to vote and make their concerns heard, and also count on the legal system to protect their basic rights.
Which is part of the interesting dynamic in Israel. The country does not have a constitution and relies on Basic Laws for fundamental rights and protections. People are appreciating the role of the parliament and judiciary in such a situation, and considering whether enacting a constitution would be beneficial.
Peaceful Protests
Israelis of all walks of life have made their feelings known. Professional lawyers, doctors and bankers rallied in squares. Laborers and workers blocked highways. Military personnel refused to serve. CEOs took their monies out of the country.
All peacefully.
Tens of thousands of Israelis protest against the government’s judicial overhaul moves, in Tel Aviv on March 4, 2023. (Gili Yaari/Flash90)
This is in sharp contrast to the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ protests in neighboring Arab countries.
In Egypt, 846 people were killed in protests, which saw the head of the country get thrown out and put in jail, followed by an election in which the people chose a radical Islamist, who was in short order thrown out of office by the military.
Reporters run for cover during clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters of Egypt’s ousted president Mohamed Morsi, and police.(photo: MOSAAB EL-SHAMY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)
In Syria, the protests led to a brutal crackdown by its leader with over 2,500 people killed in the first months. It soon turned into a full civil war with over 500,000 killed and many millions displaced internally in Syria and as refugees abroad.
Syria men carrying babies in Aleppo, Syria in 2017 (photo: AFP)
In Yemen, 2,000 civilians were killed in the first few months of their protests, which became a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia once the ruler fled the country. The estimate of the dead now stands at 150,000. It has become the world’s worst failed state.
The violence continued throughout the Arab world, including in Tunisia (estimated 338 dead), Sudan (over 200), Bahrain (120) and Saudi Arabia (24). In Libya, the United States helped the rebels kill its leader, and the resulting tumult has led to as many as 20,000 killed. The country is now a haven for terrorist groups including ISIS and al Qaeda.
In the middle of this Middle Eastern firestorm of anger and bloodshed, the Jewish State has sit ins, fighting for the rule of law while protecting and believing in it.
What can be more democratic than: open, fair and repeated elections; the smooth transition of power from one government to the next; ensuring checks-and-balances in the government; and the ability to protest peacefully to those in power?
Israel is giving a basic civics lesson to the entire world about the importance and mechanics of proper courts of justice, the seventh of the Noahide Laws. It should be proud.
‘Wokeness’, the idea that problems are rooted in ‘toxic masculinity’, ‘male chauvinism’ and ‘White privilege’ is becoming mainstreamed, even at the United Nations. The secretary-general, himself a White and Christian male, has comically tried to discuss it using statistics.
On March 13, 2023, UNSG Antonio Gutteres gave remarks to the Women’s Civil Society Town Hall in New York, in which he rejected ‘Male Chauvinist’ domination of the technology sector, and called for an overhaul of ‘Patriarchal Structures’. His examples were problematic at their core.
Consider Gutters’ comment about the war in Ukraine: “and while men still largely make those decisions, women and girls often pay the price. Ninety percent of refugees from the war in Ukraine are women and their children.” He said that men make the decisions to go to war but that women and their children pay the price.
Yet the United Nations flips the suffering to the women who are afforded the ability to flee to safety.
Gutteres made similarly ridiculous comments about the COVID-19 pandemic when he said “The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over for women who lost their jobs, and girls who lost their chance of education. The cost-of-living crisis is hitting women and girls first and worst.” The basic fact is that men LOST THEIR LIVES while women lost their jobs. The death rate for men in the pandemic was 1.6 times that of women.
Yet the United Nations flipped the pain to the women who survived in much greater numbers than men.
This was akin to Gutteres rebuking rich and White European countries for prioritizing administering vaccines during the pandemic to their own citizens, saying “I am particularly concerned about the African continent.… we must tackle the devastating social and economic dimensions of this crisis, with a focus on those most affected: women, older persons, youth.” But barely anyone from the African continent died from COVID. It was mostly older White men, not Black women. (As of this writing, there were 15 deaths per million in Nigeria, compared to 5,076 per million in Hungary). Who was really most affected?
It’s amazing what can be done with selectively choosing statistics to burnish a particular narrative.
And the leader of the United Nations has a very specific and woke narrative: “Many of the challenges we face today — from conflicts to climate chaos to the cost-of-living crisis — are the result of a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture, taking the key decisions that guide our world. And while men still largely make those decisions, women and girls often pay the price.” Men only do harm. They don’t contribute to the good of society – developing vaccines, building infrastructure, providing security, etc. – they are simply the cause of problems.
And the women suffer from this “male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture.”
The wokester-in-chief is offering simplistic and deceptive lines of toxic misandry which are making people angry at the growing extreme left-wing infecting politics and culture. The reaction to these smears is sometimes to elect the very right-wing misogynists that Gutteres is calling out, to stem the tidal wave of male criticism.
Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Gutteres
There are good and bad men and women, as well as good and bad White and Black people. Those are simple facts. The vilification of one group over-and-again has names – racism, sexism, ageism, etc. – and politicians must stop fanning the flames of hatred and division.
I know that you have been following matters in the Middle East and likely have access to materials and insiders that many do not. You may have concluded that while the Arab-Israeli Conflict is complicated, the thorniest issue is Jerusalem, and in that tinderbox the most sensitive is the al Aqsa Mosque / Jewish Temple Mount.
I reach that assessment based on your support of a position that the ban of Jews praying on the holy site should continue, a position known as the “status quo.”
It is likely based on comments from the leader of the Palestinian Authority who said that Israel is “playing with fire” if it allows Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, something he called allowing “settlers to desecrate holy sites.”
The leader of Hamas made similar comments, that there would be a “bloodbath” if Israel makes changes to the rights of Jews. He warned that “the action of the occupation targeting the Islamic and the Christian Holy sites in Jerusalem and Palestine, and specifically the Al Aqsa Mosque, brings about the angry Palestinian reaction.”
To avoid such bloodshed, you possibly decided to overlook the basic human rights of Jews to pray at their holiest site.
You may have convinced yourself that the only Jewish visitors who want to pray at the site are right-wing extremist “illegal settlers”, to further rationalize your position.
So let me ask you, do only Christian fanatics visit and pray at the Vatican?
Do you understand that Judaism is a particular religion, with no desire to convert or dominate anyone? That while Christians and Muslims fought crusades for over one hundred years over the holy land, and expelled the others, and converted their mosques to churches and churches to mosques, Israel did no such thing when it took control of the Temple Mount in 1967? Instead, it handed administrative control of the site to the Jordanian Waqf.
Jerusalem’s Arabs who have been living under Israeli administration for decades have slowly internalized that Israel has no plans on the al Aqsa Mosque. In a December 2022 poll of Jerusalem’s Arabs, they showed that they have a greater fear of accessing the holy site if eastern Jerusalem was under Palestinian sovereignty (63%) than Israeli (41%).
This year is the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 states “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” Article 2 underscores the point that this relates to religious rights in disputed land: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”
This clearly includes the rights for Jews from around the world to pray at their holiest site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
So it is with the status quo ban on Jews. It is morally wrong and a disgrace, and the world has blindly let it continue.
I ask that you stop facilitating the trampling of the fundamental human rights of Jews and vote to reverse the anti-Semitic “status quo” edict, and condemn the incendiary remarks and false accusations which block Jews from praying peacefully at their holiest site in their holiest city in the holy land.
The Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem are in a unique category compared to other Arabs in the region for two principle reasons: from the international perspective, they are not Palestinians, and from the Israeli perspective, they are Israeli. That is not true for any other Arab in the region.
The United Nations in 1947 had sought for all of greater Jerusalem and greater Bethlehem to be an international “holy basin”, but the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli war divided the region into Israeli-controlled and Jordanian-controlled territory. It’s why most countries do not recognize even the western part of Jerusalem as Israeli and move their embassies there, as they want the Holy Basin to be divided through negotiations. The same holds for the eastern part of the city.
From the Israeli perspective, they took the western part of Jerusalem in a defensive war in 1949, and then Bethlehem and eastern Jerusalem in another defensive war in 1967, making the acquisitions completely legal (reacquisitions actually, as all the land was part of the Palestine Mandate). Israel annexed eastern Jerusalem and extended the borders into a new municipality. All Arabs who have not been convicted of terrorism are allowed to apply for Israeli citizenship and thousands have done so.
The trend towards favoring Israel continues to grow.
There were 22 areas in which the Arabs thought that their daily lives improved, compared to only five in which they deteriorated (and two of them were about taxes). Access to the al Aqsa Mosque (+11%), retirement benefits (+11%), access to travel throughout Israel (+12%), access throughout the West Bank (+21%), overall standard of living (+21%), and obtaining a passport and flying out of Ben Gurion Airport (+22%) are just some examples.
The improvements are directly related to Israel’s governance. When asked to whom they turn when they have an issue, almost no Arab turned towards the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian NGOs or international NGOs which pepper the landscape. Almost everyone turns to either a family member or the Israeli government exclusively.
That is not to say that everything is good and people are satisfied with the Israeli government’s administration. The vast majority of Jerusalem’s Arabs are still angered by the Security Barrier and checkpoints which cause delays (89% and 87%, respectively). The perception of level of crime dropped significantly (from 84% in 2010 to 63% in 2022) as did the perception of corruption of Israeli officials (from 78% to 66%). However the levels of perceived intimidation increased, from border guards (54% to 65%), Jewish civilians (51% to 61%) and Palestinian groups (20% to 29%).
As the Palestinians consider holding presidential elections this year as announced in October 2022 as part of the Algiers Declaration endorsed by the United Nations, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is likely to raise a commotion about having Arabs in Jerusalem participate. According to the PCPSR poll, only 6% of the eastern Jerusalem Arabs said they would vote. Abbas uses Israel’s refusal to allow Jerusalemites to participate in Palestinian elections as an excuse to not hold them, when in truth, he knows that Hamas would trounce him, as shown in numerous PCPSR polls.
Significantly, when asked what they would like to see in a final settlement, the preference among Jerusalem’s Arabs is for being part of Israel TRIPLED, while only one-third would want to see Jerusalem become part of a Palestinian state, down from half.
Not surprisingly, the number of Jerusalem Arabs who would welcome being Israeli citizens over becoming a citizen of Palestine jumped as well.
The immediate reaction to the findings is perhaps surprise, as Jerusalem is considered the thorniest issue to resolve in the conflict. But Jerusalem’s Arabs are finding that becoming Israeli and part of a stable economic powerhouse is preferable to being under corrupt Arab rule.
As it relates to the most difficult of the thorniest issues, the Jewish Temple Mount / al Aqsa Mosque, the polls findings were shocking. Arabs believe that their access to al Aqsa will be BETTER under Israeli sovereignty than Palestinian sovereignty!
Perhaps that is the reason Abbas, Hamas and even the Jordanian king are actively trying to stoke anger about the Old City of Jerusalem and the al Aqsa Mosque: they see that the local Arabs are embracing Israel.
Jerusalem’s Arabs appreciate the benefits of being under Israeli administration and are increasingly showing their preference that all of Jerusalem should be under Israeli sovereignty.
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