Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) is in for a tough fight to keep his seat as a congressman as a fellow progressive with significant experience is running against him in the Democratic primary. For some reason, Bowman’s strategy is to paint Westchester County Executive George Latimer as a White MAGA racist which is completely absurd. At the same time, Bowman is showing his true colors by whitewashing the terrible spike in antisemitism in New York, particularly stemming from attacks by non-White people.
Screenshot from Jamaal Bowman’s reelection website
Bowman’s website discusses a variety of hate crimes “since Trump was elected,” including against the Jewish, Muslim, Asian and Black communities. However, he only highlights one group of perpetrator of the attacks: White people.
At four different times, Bowman’s site highlighted “a white nationalist” killing Jews in Pittsburgh, “a white man” killing Muslims in North Carolina, and issues surrounding “white nationalism” and “white supremacist extremism.” At no time did he flag hate crimes and murders committed by Muslims or Blacks.
Bowman declined to mention several Black people killing Jews in Jersey City in 2019 or a Black man hacking a rabbi to death in Monsey, NY that same month. Or the dozens of attacks against Jews in New York City by minorities. He failed to highlight the near lynching of Joseph Borgen by a gang of five Muslim men in the middle of the day on the streets of Manhattan in 2021. He deliberately avoided mentioning the calls to kill Jews and harassment of Jews by Muslims over the past three months, with 34 antisemitic incidents per day according to the ADL.
Mahmoud Musa and four other Muslim men nearly killed an unarmed Joseph Borgen in Manhattan
In trying to appear balanced between Jews and Muslims, Bowman’s website says he pushed “a resolution that declared the value of both Palestinian and Israeli lives, urged an immediate ceasefire and encouraged diplomatic efforts.” That resolution was put forward in the week immediately after Palestinian Arabs sadistically butchered 1,200 people in Israel on October 7, essentially granting Hamas and other Arab terrorists immunity from justice. The resolution did not only fail to condemn Hamas, it did not call for a release of the 240 hostages. Instead, it called out humanitarian aid for Gaza.
Jamaal Bowman has long peppered his career in Washington with race-baiting. Now he taunts Jews that he is only concerned for their well-being when perpetrators are White racists, prioritizing Blacks and Muslims over Jews, as antisemitism spikes to alarming levels.
The anti-Zionists who claim not to be antisemites like members of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) say that they simply want the land of Israel to go back to the indigenous Arabs. They are lying.
Arabs are from Arabia. They invaded the land of Israel, as well as North Africa, as part of the Muslim invasions of the seventh and eighth centuries. They killed and converted Jews who had been living in the land for over one thousand years before Mohammed was born. Saying that Arabs are indigenous and Jews are not are lies and an attempt to rob Jews of their history and heritage.
Further, the calls that Jews should go back where they came from – whether Warsaw or Brooklyn – is repulsive on many levels. First, it denies the Israeli government the basic authority to make its own immigration decisions. Secondly, it is xenophobic in the extreme. Third, some of those countries tortured and exterminated Jews a few decades ago.
Every country decides on its own laws. Many countries such as Japan and Greece facilitate citizenship for people with Japanese or Greek ancestry, respectively. So does the Jewish State, which expedites Israeli citizenship for Jews. Non-Jews can and do become Israelis, and roughly 26% of Israeli citizens today are not Jewish, in sharp contrast to Japan where there are almost zero non-Japanese citizens. Yet no one attacks Japan or other countries for their ethnic citizenship laws.
It is also true that immigrants move all over the world. People who tell Nicaraguans to go back where they came from are called racists in the United States. Yet somehow, people who don’t even live in Israel, tell Jews that they should “get the hell out of Palestine,” like White House reporter Helen Thomas said. That’s an extreme level of toxic racism to demand the expulsion of people from a country thousands of miles away.
Thomas elaborated that Jews should go back to “Poland and Germany,” countries that wiped out their Jewish population in a genocide. She could have simply suggested that Jews drown themselves and save the carbon emissions from the airplane flight.
Her sentiment that Jews should leave the land of Israel is repeated around the world by antisemitic anti-Zionists, via either a forced expulsion or “voluntary immigration.” The latter was the statement suggested by Israeli politician Bezalel Smotrich, who was universally condemned by the media and same people who call for expelling Jews.
It’s complete hypocrisy.
But worse.
The anti-Zionists who call for expelling Jews are more dangerous than Smotrich. There are 1.8 billion Muslims and over 50 Muslim-majority countries. Smotrich is not attacking them and knows that Gazans could find a safe home around the world. That is in sharp contrast to Jews who have a single Jewish state and number only 15 million people as they’ve been murdered and ethnically cleansed around the world. Smotrich is fine living in a country in which 26% of the citizens are non-Jews who coexist peacefully but anti-Zionists want to rid the entirety of the land of Jews.
Many actually want ALL Jews dead.
Consider Fatima Mohammed, commencement speaker for CUNY in May 2023. On January 16, 2024 she yelled to a cheering crowd on the street “death, death, death to Zionism wherever it exists! Whether it is in our neighborhoods or across seas! Death to Zionism every single place it lays its feet!”
Radical jihadists around the world are looking at Israeli and diaspora Jews as targets. That is the attitude of CAIR, the Council of Arab-Islamic Relations who called out Jewish groups around the United States as “enemies” and the Massachusetts “Mapping Project” which gave the addresses of Jewish institutions around the state for targeting.
The radical jihadists are openly calling to root out Jews wherever they live, not just in Israel. They want the Jews in the land of Israel to “voluntarily immigrate” into the ovens in Poland and Germany, while the jihadists take matters into their own hands in the Jewish diaspora.
While there are some pro-Palestinian protestors who just want Jews and Arabs to live in peace – as Jews and Arabs do in Israel – there is a loud, growing and very dangerous jihadi movement around the world actively calling for the complete genocide of Jews.
Today’s genocidal Nazis are jihadi radicals marching in the streets and posting to millions of global followers on social media to kill the Jews, as democratic societies stutter in shameful silence.
There is a disturbing trend to normalize the hatred of Jews and the Jewish State as well as to normalize the calls for and actual massacres of Jews among extremists.
No To Zionism AndCoexistence
The BDS Movement (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) provides a “anti-normalization guideline” outlining the philosophy for haters of Israel: “Normalization with/of Israel is, then, the idea of making occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism seem normal and establishing normal relations with the Israeli regime instead of supporting the struggle led by the Indigenous Palestinian people to end the abnormal conditions and structures of oppression.” It adds that its mission is not targeting non-Jewish Israelis but “refers to Jewish-Israelis and Jewish-Israeli institutions.”
The anti-normalization camp has a range of views from only opposing the blockade of Gaza, to objecting to the presence of Jews in the West Bank, to rejecting the basic existence of a Jewish State and any Jews in the region.
The far-left’s Democratic Socialist of America is a growing anti-Zionist party in the United States in both numbers and influence. NYC-DSA asked candidates to pledge to never visit Israel, putting the group on the fringe of the extremists. The socialist site Jacobin applauded DSA’s stance which “offers a model for socialist and progressive politicians who want to take on the powerful pro-Israel lobby,” using antisemitic tropes of Jews as powerful puppet-masters.
The DSA’s own “Anti-Zionist Resolution” was greeted with tremendous support by radical jihadi groups like the Palestinian Youth Movement which penned a letter “Do not allow Zionism to be normalized within your organization. We urge the DSA to truly demonstrate its commitments to revolutionary internationalism by upholding anti-Zionism.”
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), a member of the extremist “squad” believes in variants of this twisted approach. He voted against supporting the Israel Relations Normalization Act backing the Abraham Accords in which Israel established peaceful agreements with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. He shockingly argued that Israel’s normalizing relations with Arab countries would actually undermine peace in the region.
Activist Linda Sarsour took the normalization language a step further, and argued that people shouldn’t “humanize the oppressor,” portraying Jews as non-human.
Yes To Massacres and Intifadas
In June 2023, the DSA Tweeted that no Israeli Jews should be viewed as civilians, that all are fair game to be targeted for violence, and simultaneously granted full absolution to Palestinians violently attacking Israeli Jews.
DSA Tweet in June 2023 arguing that all Israelis are fair game to target
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY15) immediately responded “Denying Israelis the status of civilians means declaring them fair game for violence and terror. If a naked justification of terror against Israel is not a sign of a demonic double standard against the Jewish State, I am not sure what would be.”
In the following days, the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism wrote a letter to university presidents that it was “horrified by the ubiquity of messaging from our university administrations that has expressed empathy for Israeli life,” essentially blessing the raping and mutilation of Jewish women and burning Jewish families alive.
Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian activist who speaks frequently on college campuses including Princeton, addressed a large march in London in January 2024 and declared “Zionism is apartheid. It’s genocide. It’s murder. It’s a racist ideology rooted in settler expansion and racial domination and we must root it out of the world. We must de-Zionize because Zionism is a death cult. Zionism is indefensible…. Our day will come but we must not be complacent. Our day will come but we must normalize massacres as the status quo.”
The calls for and support for violence have metastasized. Shellyne Rodriguez was fired from Hunter College after chasing a reporter with a machete. She was subsequently hired by Cooper Union which effectively normalized her threatening behavior. It was not a surprise that Jewish students at the school had to barricade themselves a library to avoid a mob after October 7.
The New York group Decolonize This Place, has actively called to “globalize the intifada.” It seeks to hunt diaspora Jews to confront them in their homes, offices and on the streets. Backers of the group like Cooper Union’s Rodriguez have advocated for stopping rent payments to Jews in a new form of BDS of Zionists.
Some people switch back-and-forth between advocating for violence and backing away from it. El-Kurd followed his fiery rhetoric calling for massacres to be normalized tweeting that he misspoke. Another extremist, Manolo De Los Santos from the People’s Forum told NPR that he wouldn’t condemn Hamas’s October 7 attack, but said at an event that he would celebrate the destruction of Israel.
X feed of Jason Curtis Anderson showing Manolo De Los Santos telling a cheering crowd that the destruction of Israel will be the beginning of the destruction of capitalism everywhere.
We are watching extremists loudly and proudly declare that their antisemitic and violent attitudes are normal, in a perverted attempt to win supporters. The radical jihadists and alt-left believe that if they can unashamedly strip Jews of their history, heritage, humanity, dignity, rights and property, the closeted antisemites will easily follow suit.
So far, it seems that they are dangerously being proved correct.
The global population was roughly 2.5 billion people in 1947. Less developed countries had a population of roughly 1.75 billion, and there were about 800 million in the developed world. Back then, the populations of China, India, the USA and Russia were about 570 million, 360 million, 150 million and 100 million, respectively.
Quite a different world then today.
The world was once much more regionalized. In 1947, there were fewer than 25 million international tourists; that figure was nearly 1.5 billion in 2019 before the pandemic, and has slightly rebounded to just under 1 billion in 2022. There were only about 10 million foreign-born people in the US in 1947, a number closer to 45 million in 2018. The figures are similar in Europe.
Computers were just starting to be used 75 years ago, with today’s pocket smartphones having more capabilities than those gigantic governmental ones. International calls cost a fortune as opposed to today’s free over-the-top calls made to people everywhere in an instant.
Technology and transportation have made the world smaller and people migrate much more than they did 75 years ago. Just since 1990, Europe went from having a foreign-born population accounting for roughly 5.5% of the population to nearly 10.5% in 2015. In the United States, it went from 7.9% to 13.9% over those same years.
Laws and regulations changed over the past 75 years which contributed to global migration patterns beyond technology and transportation. Many more immigrants from Latin American countries come to the United States now, whereas they used to come from Europe (75% in 1950s). Countries pass laws based on current realities and desires for the future. They tinker with immigration policy based on global demand as well as their own demographic needs for labor.
No country enacts policies to RECREATE A REALITY that existed in the past. They do not pretend that it’s 1947 and that laws passed back then have relevance to today’s reality.
Except for the United Nations as it relates in Palestinian Arabs.
The UN continues to bless the Palestinian desire for a “Right of Return” to homes that grandparents once lived in inside Israel based in a resolution passed in December 1948 when the Arab war to destroy the new State of Israel was still being waged. While the UN and Palestinians ignore most of Resolution 194 as it obviously has no bearing on today’s reality, they continue to prop up a single provision, article 11 which states:
“Resolves that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.“
Supporters of Hamas express their solidarity with the Jenin refugee camp, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 10, 2022. Days before, gunmen from Jenin went on a shooting rampage in Tel Aviv killing three Israelis and wounding more than a dozen others. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
People correctly point out that almost all Palestinians today are not refugees and are unwilling to live at peace with Israel as demonstrated time and time again. More basically, today is not 1947, and the same way that UNGA Resolution 194 calling for the internationalization of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem is no longer contemplated, so has the concept of a “right of return” long passed its expiration date.
The UN may advocate for Palestinian self-determination but cannot demand a right-of-return to Israel. All nations must make clear that they support terminating a concept which was captured in a single line in a resolution passed in 1948 in the middle of a war.
ACTION ITEM
Email White House “Make clear that our country opposes the idea that descendants of Palestinian refugees have a “right of return” to towns inside Israel which was contemplated as part of a broad end to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It continues to foment frustration, hatred and encourages war in the region.
South Africa put forward the charge of ‘genocidal conduct‘ against Israel for its actions in Gaza since October 8, 2023. The reported figure of over 23,000 deaths, over one percent of the population of Gaza, is claimed to show a deliberate intent to wipe out all Arabs in the region. The use of heavy 2,000-pound bombs in civilians neighborhoods is alleged to show a complete disregard for non-combatants as well as a disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force.
Lawyers prosecuting Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) quoted members of the Israeli parliament after the October 7 attack in which they said they wanted to flatten Gaza, encourage a ‘voluntary emigration’ of Arabs from the region, and treat them like the biblical ‘Amalek’, a people for which Jews are commanded to wipe out completely. Counsel argued that comments from leaders shows the government’s official policy for the annihilation of the region’s Arabs.
The United Nations’ International Criminal Court has disallowed Israel from bringing any evidence of the Gazans’ October 7 massacre and brutalization of Israelis, mostly civilians. It contends that even if Hamas committed crimes against humanity, Israel must still adhere to basic rules of war.
The Case Against ‘Genocide’
Genocide involves the deliberate mass killing of an ethnic group or particular nation with the goal of annihilation or ethnically cleansing them.
It is bizarre to bring the charge against Israel based on the situation before even considering the prosecution of the war.
Israel’s attack on Gaza was both reactive and defensive. It had a ceasefire agreement with Hamas which rules Gaza, which Hamas broke with its invasion and sadistic slaughter.
Hamas leaders have pledged to commit the October 7 massacre “again and again.” Israel is compelled to not only bring the estimated 3,000 Gazan perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to justice, as well as the leaders who commanded and supported the operation, but to prevent the atrocities from happening again.
Hamas continues to fire at Israel. Hamas and various factions of this Gaza army continue to fire rockets and wage war against Israel. This is not a situation of a military aggressively hunting civilians but an active battlefield.
Hamas fires from civilian neighborhoods. The battlefield is the neighborhoods of Gaza from which Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other factions of the Gazan army shoot rockets and attack Israel.
Civilian infrastructure is part of the Gazan war effort. The Gazan army and infrastructure is embedded in civilian homes, hospitals, mosques and schools. Arms are stored and tunnel-openings begin in these locations, and are therefore part-and-parcel of the Gazan war effort.
The core Gazan army infrastructure is beneath civilian neighborhoods. The Gazan army runs the majority of its operations below ground, underneath civilian neighborhoods.
The Gazan army doesn’t wear uniforms. Many Palestinian fighters do not wear uniforms to clearly distinguish themselves from civilians, blurring the battlefield between military and civilians.
Israel unilaterally left Gaza completely in 2005. Israel does not covet the land and wanted the region to be a peaceful neighbor where Arabs would have complete self-determination. Instead, Gaza became a terrorist-ruled strip which has waged repeated wars against Israel targeting civilians.
Israel is attempting to save hundreds of hostages. Hamas and other Gazans took 240 hostages, mostly civilians into Gaza, many of whom are children, elderly and infirm. Saving them requires quick action.
Those are just the basic facts which set the scene for which Israel has to prosecute a difficult war. Even with such impossible backdrop, Israel has attempted to avoid the loss of civilian lives.
Millions of text messages sent to Palestinian Arab civilians to get out of harm’s way
Leaflets dropped over neighborhoods to make sure civilians got the message to leave active battlefields.
‘Safe zones’ and escape corridors created for civilians to flee hot spots.
Israel telegraphed its intentions of where it was prosecuting the battle – starting in northern Gaza – to allow civilians to leave, putting its own Israeli soldiers at risk.
The world begged Israel to not launch a ground invasion of Gaza and so relied on air power to start the retaliation against known military targets. It is those aerial assaults that the world now criticizes.
While the world may appreciate the need to dismantle Hamas and the impossible task facing Israel of fighting an enemy which is deeply embedded with civilians, it doesn’t really care. It has no proposals or gameplans to prosecute the war any better, other than demand Israel do so.
A view of the rubble of buildings hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, October 10, 2023. (Fatima Shbair/AP)
In regard to Israeli leaders’ commentary that Gazans are like Amalek, a metaphor is not a call to action. Amalek was called out because they attacked the weakest Jews as they left Egypt, just as Hamas and its horde brutally butchered women, children and elderly in 2023. Other Israeli comments that all Gazans are culpable have been made by Palestinian advocates, such as James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute who told the United Nations on June 27, 2023 that there is “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture,” as the majority of the people prefer violence.
Most importantly, Israel has said it will end the campaign immediately if Hamas surrenders and returns all of the hostages.
Israel is now going house-to-house to rescue its captives and destroy Hamas’s army and infrastructure amid a population which supports Hamas and terrorism. Hamas has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament from democratic elections held in 2006. The majority of Gazans support killing Jewish civilians in Israel and supported the October 7 massacre. They are family and friends of Hamas fighters, their teachers and students, donors and recipients of Hamas aid. When Israelis go through the Gazan neighborhoods in this tight battlefield, the civilians which surround them are the soft layer of the Hamas military which Hamas exploits, not uninvolved spectators.
It is likely that any other army would have killed five times as many Gazans as Israel at this point of the war. It is impossible to know because this war is like no other.
As to the charge of genocide, Palestinian Arabs are not confined to Gaza. Over half the population lives in the West Bank and Israel has not launched a massive campaign there, as Hamas doesn’t have a strong presence and there are no Israeli hostages in that region. On a macro level, 23,000 Gazans out of 1.8 billion Muslims is a 0.001% figure. By way of comparison, 63% of Europe’s Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and about 39% of global Jewry, an actual premeditated deliberate genocide of unarmed civilians.
There are therefore only two considerations to possibly judge Israel: the terrible loss of children’s lives, and the massive destruction of Gazan infrastructure.
Children are innocent by definition. They have no say in the war and not responsible for the terrible actions of adults. Close to 50% of Gazans are under the age of 18, so one would imagine indiscriminate bombing would cause close to 50% of the 23,000 dead to be children, or around 11,500 people. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the number of children killed is about 8,000, or 30% less than expected. While a tragic figure, it defends Israel’s prosecution of the war as being targeted against military targets.
There is no question there is widespread destruction of Gazan infrastructure. Neighborhoods have been leveled all around the Strip. That is a function that those neighborhoods are, and are above, the battlefield. It is actually surprising that a relatively low number of deaths have occurred with so many bombs dropped on the small territory, suggesting a targeted military campaign.
Hamas is sworn to the destruction of Israel and has ruled Gaza unilaterally since 2007 enabling it to embed itself throughout the region. Despite the hostile neighbor next door, Israel has limited its activities against the strip to a blockade to limit the flow of weapons, and to respond when attacked. It has never targeted the region or its residents for annihilation.
It is a tragedy for Palestinian Arabs, for Israel, and the world that so many children in Gaza have died. But the fault remains with the Arab rulers who teach their children death and martyrdom, while they attack Israel from those children’s homes. Israel is trying to minimize those casualties in an impossible battle, and the figures show that it is doing so.
The smoldering rubble of the Gazan battlefield is shocking but there is no genocide of buildings. However, the overall architecture of Gaza’s war mentality and machinery has been enabled by the United Nations, the entity which now sits as judge of Israel’s actions. It is a morbid farce, and must be confronted and rooted out for there to be a prayer of coexistence.
The December 5, 2023 Congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses was about a very serious and obvious dynamic: Jew-hatred. It was right there in the title, and was called for in response to widespread attacks against Jews on college campuses.
Three university presidents attended: from Harvard, University of Pennsylvania and MIT. Elizabeth Magill of UofP resigned shortly after the hearing after smugly responding to the question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews was against university policy that “it’s a context-dependent decision.” Claudine Gay of Harvard also resigned for a different reason even though she offered a similar response; she stepped down because of allegations of plagiarism.
Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of UofP, Pamela Nadell of American University and Sally Kornbluth of MIT
The “context” comment was defended by university-backers as whether such calls for genocide were directed at individuals or were severely harassing to step beyond the bounds of free speech. However, the opening comments of each university president reveals a very different context orientation.
Gay shared in her opening comments that she appreciated the need for the hearing “on the critical topic of antisemitism,” as the world had seen a dramatic spike in antisemitism after the brutal Hamas massacre, including at Harvard. She then added “At the same time, I know members of the Arab and Muslim communities are also hurting. During these past months, the world, our nation and our campuses have seen a rise of incidents of Islamophobia.”
Why were these statements about Muslims inserted into a hearing about Jew-hatred?
She was not alone.
Magill spoke and about Hamas’s October 7 massacre and the targeting of Jewish businesses near the school. She added “we are seeing a rise in our society in harassment, intimidation and threats toward individuals based on their identity as Muslim, Palestinian or Arab.” Again, why did a university president’s prepared opening remarks discuss hatred for some non-Jews – particular non-Jews – when the hearing was on Jew-hatred?
Pamela Nadell, a professor of Jewish history at American University then addressed the panel. She concluded her remarks “I urge congress to do everything in its power to support the national strategy [against antisemitism] and also the forthcoming national strategy to counter Islamophobia.”
The trend was clear. One needn’t have listened to MIT’s president’s opening remarks.
Sally Kornbluth of MIT talked about new initiatives launched to fight hate on campus. “In addition to fighting antisemitism, it will address Islamophobia, also on the rise and also underreported. MIT will take on both. Not lumped together but with equal energy and in parallel.”
Every one of the speakers could not focus on the dedicated topic of Jew-hatred in scripted remarks to a congressional hearing about antisemitism at their institutions, and each mentioned “Islamophobia.” Racism persists at the schools but went unmentioned. Slurs against the LGBT community on campuses continue but were not called out.
Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs were specifically highlighted because the October 7 massacre was committed by Islamic extremists in the Palestinian Arab community. The “context” for university presidents was how to handle Jew-hatred on their campuses from a campus community which approved of and celebrated the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
It was as though the heads of American universities would have called out Germanophobia during World War II when discussing Jew-hatred emanating from German students and Nazi-supporters on campus.
It was a sad spectacle in American history but at least members of congress still cared enough about Jews to call for such hearing.
That is not the case on the world stage, where the United Nations’ adoption of Palestinians as permanent wards ensures that the global body always takes their side and only finds fault with Israel. The U.N.’s International Court of Justice (ICJ) will now narrowly focus on Israel’s actions in Gaza and provide no “context” that Israel is responding to Hamas’s massacre of civilians and threats to repeat the attacks “again and again,” whose soldiers hide like cowards beneath their families.
University presidents and the United Nations are telling all of us clearly that there are reasons people hate Jews before, after and while they are slaughtered. And most importantly, those antisemitic grievances should confine Jewish activities and constrict sympathy for Jewish suffering.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made the rounds around the Muslim Middle East and Israel to declare that everyone in the region wants to avoid seeing the Israel-Palestinian War from Gaza spiraling into a regional conflict.
He is completely wrong. It is very much a regional conflict with Iran, and the region wants the Iranian threat addressed.
Secretary Antony Blinken’s X post that countries want the conflict contained
Iran has been actively stoking the conflict for years. The Islamist regime has backed the Houthis in Yemen stoking a civil war there, a war against Saudi Arabia next door, and assaulting shipping in the Red Sea. Iran backs Hezbollah in Lebanon which is shelling Israel. It is also one of the main backers of Hamas in Gaza which launched the sadistic atrocities of October 7.
The United States was on the cusp of brokering a deal with Saudi Arabia before October 7, which would have included the United States bringing the oil-rich nation nuclear capabilities, as the U.S. utterly failed to contain Iran’s nuclear program. Saudi Arabia had long made clear that if Iran got nuclear weapons, it would pursue them as well. The U.S. decided to make the best of a horrific situation, and rather than watch the Saudis secure nuclear blueprints and material from North Korea, it offered to supply the Islamist kingdom with the know-how, provided that the kingdom also normalize relations with Israel.
Iran’s nuclear break-out led directly to Saudi’s launching a nuclear program with America’s assistance.
When Israel called up a fighting force of roughly 350,000 people after October 7, it sent 200,000 of them to the Lebanese border, not Gaza. Roughly 100,000 were stationed around the West Bank to contain the various Hamas-allied terrorist groups like Lion’s Den and Jenin Brigades. The smallest segment went to Gaza.
Similarly, Israel did not only evacuate Israeli civilians from the entire area near Gaza on October 8. It also pulled all civilians away from the Lebanese border.
Israel readied for war on many fronts, not just Gaza, to confront Iranian proxies on every side.
Many Israeli military leaders are pushing to launch the battle against Hezbollah in Lebanon now, while 200,000 troops are stationed at the border and the civilians in the region have been evacuated south. They argue that the Iranian proxy with 150,000 missiles pointed at Israel is a threat which must be dealt with proactively and not according to Iran’s timetable.
This war started from Gaza but the conflict centers around Iran. Blinken may believe that the conflict is local and to be contained as he broadcast, or perhaps – hopefully – he toured the region to prepare for destroying Iran’s nuclear weapons in the very near future.
On January 3, two bombs went off in Iran during ceremonies marking the death of Qassem Soleimani. Soleimani was head of Iran’s Quds Force, and assassinated by the United States four years earlier because it claimed he was “directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of millions of people.”
Despite the backdrop of Soleimani being a murderer, the fact remained that the bombing was an act of terrorism, so the United Nations felt compelled to issue a statement, despite the victims being supporters of that mass murderer. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres official statement read “The Secretary-General strongly condemns the attack today on a memorial ceremony in Kerman city in Iran, which reportedly killed more than 100 people and injured many more. The Secretary-General calls for those responsible to be held accountable. The Secretary-General expresses his deep condolences to the bereaved families and the people and the Government of Iran. He wishes the injured a speedy recovery.”
Guterres reached out to the government of Iran despite its fomenting wars throughout the Middle East as it pursues nuclear weapons, and also demanded that the terrorists who killed 100 people celebrating a mass murderer be brought to justice. One would therefore imagine a much stronger statement from Guterres for Israel after October 7 when thousands of Palestinians killed 1,200 people and brutally raped and sadistically tortured civilians in their homes in Israel.
The October 7 statement from Guterres was appalling:
“The Secretary-General condemns in the strongest terms this morning’s attack by Hamas against Israeli towns near the Gaza Strip and central Israel, including the firing of thousands of rockets towards Israeli population centres. The attacks have so far claimed numerous Israeli civilian lives and injured many hundreds. The Secretary-General is appalled by reports that civilians have been attacked and abducted from their own homes. The Secretary-General is deeply concerned for the civilian population and urges maximum restraint. Civilians must be respected and protected in accordance with international humanitarian law at all times. The Secretary-General extends his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and calls for the immediate release of all abducted persons. The Secretary-General urges all diplomatic efforts to avoid a wider conflagration. He stresses that violence cannot provide a solution to the conflict, and that only through negotiation leading to a two-State solution can peace be achieved.”
Rather than demand that the terrorists “be held accountable,” as with Iranians, Guterres urged “maximum restraint” by Israel. Instead of offering condolences to victim families AND the state as he did for Iran, Guterres omitted any mention of feelings towards Israel.
In the aftermath of Jews suffering the worst single day killing since the Holocaust and most savage day of sexual assault ever, the head of the United Nations demanded no accountability for the terrorists and no sympathy for Israel. Guterres and the United Nations have demonstrated a failure of basic civility and humanity, and are enemies of justice, peace and the Jewish people.
Gaza is a crowded mess and there are two proposals for “voluntary emigration” which are getting vastly different reactions.
Situation In Gaza
The population of Gaza is roughly 2.1 million people, all Arabs, almost 99% of whom are Muslim. Roughly 39.8% of the population is under 14 years old, making it one of the youngest geographies in the world, with less than 3% of the Strip over 65 years old. The median age of 19.2 years old ranks it at #209 out of 227 areas scored by the World Fact Book. By way of comparison, the median age in Israel is 30.1, in USA 38.5, and 40.6 in the United Kingdom.
The US-designated foreign terrorist group Hamas exclusively governs Gaza since 2007. That means that roughly half of the Gaza Strip has only known the rule of a fanatical Islamist group committed to killing Jews and the destruction of the Jewish State next door. Fighters, typically aged 18-24, have known almost nothing other than Hamas and its mission.
As of 2022, UNRWA provided services to nearly 1.8 million people in Gaza, or about 83% of the population. It manages most of the schools in the Strip, many of which openly call for killing Jews and destroying Israel according to reports from IMPACT-SE. The report also covers that “13 UNRWA staff members have publicly praised, celebrated or expressed their support for the unprecedented deadly assaults on civilians [in Israel] on 7 October.”
Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Proposal Condemned
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where four minutes away from our communities there is a hotbed of hatred and terrorism, where two million people wake up every morning with aspiration for the destruction of the State of Israel and with a desire to slaughter and rape and murder Jews wherever they are.” As such, he expressed his support for encouraging “voluntary emigration” of the Strip’s population to other countries as part of his postwar vision.
The reaction to Smotrich’s proposal was quick. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller labeled the suggestion as “inflammatory and irresponsible.” The New York Times reported that France and Germany had similar reactions.
United Nations’ Proposal Embraced
The United Nations also has a plan for Gaza. It involves the voluntary emigration of roughly 1.8 million Gazans for whom UNRWA provides services to relocate to Israel. It makes this proposal – still to this very day – as part of UN Resolution 194 which was passed in December 1948, over 75 years ago while the Israeli War of Independence was still being waged.
The proposal has long since passed its expiry date but dozens of Islamic and Arab countries, as well as the United Nations itself, keep on trying to breathe life into an idea to massively move over 80% of the population of Gaza – the majority of whom want to kill Jews – into Israel to extinguish the Jewish State.
Several Western countries and members of the progressive media were appalled that two members of the Israeli parliament suggested a “voluntary emigration” of Gazans to various countries but simultaneously embrace such emigration to Israel. It’s a peculiar mix of anti-Zionism and hypocrisy which seems very prevalent in these dark days.
Most countries were founded by professionals including lawyers and businessmen. Sometimes they included pharmacists, doctors and inventors. Often they included generals and military leaders.
Consider that Hamas has ruled Gaza outright since 2007, so every child under 16 years old has only known a land governed by the U.S.-designated terrorist group. On October 7, it assembled well over one thousand people of its army and related groups and invaded Israel, slaughtering children and the elderly. Hamas led the horde to rape, mutilate and butcher Jewish women. They grabbed 240 people and took them into Gaza as hostages.
Members of Hamas clearly meet the definition of evil psychopaths.
The leaders of Gaza were not done with their cruelty.
Knowing that Israel would respond to get their people back, pursue justice for the fallen and make sure that Gazans did not repeat the attack, the leaders of Gaza hid in tunnels developed for their exclusive use and of their army. Readied with power and food, the leaders of Hamas sat tight in the underground bunkers and let women and children suffer from Israel’s bombing campaign above. The leaders of Hamas dined as they let their people starve.
Cowards, everyone of them.
It’s bizarre for people to use the expression “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” when discussing Hamas. This action isn’t similar to Israeli leader Menahem Begin blowing up the King David Hotel in 1946 when it served as the British administrative headquarters, phoning in warnings in advance for people to leave the building. The Hamas henchmen entered people’s homes, bound families together and burned them alive.
Palestinian leadership is horribly twisted and evil.
Despite the deep depravity, a majority of “54% [of Palestinian Arabs] believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today,” according to a December PCPSR poll.
Palestinians have not disowned their leaders as yellow-bellied maniacs, even as they are being pummeled.
So what will future generations of Palestinian Arabs think about their founding fathers if October 7 turns out to a “war of liberation” the way celebrated by American university professors? Will Palestinian history books discuss how the founders of Palestine raped and sadistically tortured Jewish women? How they shot elderly people waiting at bus stops? How they hid underground comfortably while civilians took the brunt of Israeli reprisals?
Or will they lie to themselves and cleanse history that none of those things happened, even though the Palestinian Arab attackers filmed themselves in the act?
While psychopaths are mostly thought of as people who cannot discern between good and evil, a main feature is pathological lying and portrayal of victimhood. Psychology Today shares that “when caught in the act with their unscrupulous behavior, most sociopaths and psychopaths will not show signs of contrition or remorse (unless it is strategically advantageous for them to do so). On the contrary, they are more likely to double or triple down on their aggressive tendencies, increase hostility, deny responsibility, accuse and blame others, and maintain a facade of arrogance and conceit.”
Yahya Sinwar and the rest of Hamas are already being cleansed of any wrong-doing, with 75% of Palestinians supporting the October 7 massacre. Hamas leadership said that the October 7 massacre “is just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight…. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force. We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again.”
Palestinian supporters argue that Israel’s attacks on Gaza are creating the next generation of terrorists. Jordan’s Queen Rania said Israel’s response in Gaza will “create a new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent.”
But it is not so. The repeated “aggressive tendencies, increased hostility” and blaming others are hallmark features of being psychopaths. People led by psychopaths for decades are becoming psychopaths themselves.
James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute was invited to speak to the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023, months before the October 7 Massacre. While vigorously defending Palestinians he shared that there is a “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture” with people preferring violence over peace. After sixteen years of Hamas rule, the “deformity” has metastasized into a deep rot.
A country founded by psychopaths will in all likelihood be a failed state, prominently featuring cruelty, and a populace blind to empathy and reason.
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