During the night of May 10, 1933, tens of thousands of Germans in twenty-two cities gathered books written by Jews and tossed them into huge bonfires. It was part of an emerging effort to remove the supposed “depraved” culture of Germany instigated by Jews and replace it with something more pure.
In Munich, the Ludwig Maximilian University and the Technical University granted state recognition to students’ unions as legal entities in the university constitution, with a stipulation that Jewish students be excluded from these bodies. An estimated 8,000 Germans celebrated the action at a rally and then proceeded to burn books by Jews. An estimated 70,000 onlookers watched the spectacle.
Roughly one hundred book burnings took place from early March and ran through October of 1933. Universities were the main originators of the effort to identify and ban books, which led to libraries and other institutions following suit.
Five and one-half years later, the Nazi machinery had gained momentum. On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazis throughout Germany and Austria burned Jewish stores and synagogues in what became knows as Kristallnacht. Citizens – mostly neighbors – ransacked and looted about 7,500 Jewish businesses, killed at least 91 Jews, and vandalized Jewish hospitals, homes, schools, and cemeteries. Some 30,000 Jewish males aged 16 to 60 were arrested.
Jews were forced to pay for and clean up the carnage from which they suffered. They scrubbed streets on their knees before Nazis and their neighbors, as they had been forced to do for months in public humiliation.
Jews in Vienna, Austria forced to scrub streets with their hands in March 1938
Eighty-five years later, a new generation of antisemites labeled a different Jewish idea as a depravity to terminate and Jews to annihilate: Zionism.
On March 30, 2018, thirty thousand Gazans marched on the fence with Israel in what they billed the “Great March of Return.” They continued to rail against the fence demanding the “right to return” into the land of Israel, where grandparents lived until 1948. Backed by Hamas, the Gazans burned fires and sent burning kites into Israel to torch their fields, as they tried to take down the border fence.
Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.
Hamas Charter
Five and one half years later, on October 7, 2023, over 1,000 members of Hamas and many Gazans effectively stormed and destroyed the border separation and stormed into Israeli towns where they butchered and slaughtered 1,200 people. They made clear that they did not just want to return to Israel but to end the existence of Jews and the Jewish State.
Kibbutz Be’eri after Hamas October 7 Massacre
Both Nazis and Hamas targeted Jews at their inceptions well before 1933 and 2018, respectively. The Nazis gained legitimacy over time through democratic elections and penetrated the mindset of universities. Hamas similarly won Palestinian elections and dominate Palestinian views in a manner that James Zogby of the Arab American Institute called a “deformity in Palestinian political culture.”
Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.
Hamas Charter
The scary dynamic is that the Palestinian narrative about the evil idea of Zionism is no longer constrained to Arab and Muslim schools but global academia.
Ivy League schools push the idea to “Decolonize Palestine” and paint Jews as foreign invaders with no history in their homeland. They support a global putsch to take down the Jewish State and professors agreed “to recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years. One could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation,” even though Israel left Gaza in 2005.
In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.
Hamas Charter
What is Zionism that so angers Palestinians and university “scholars”? A simple set of beliefs that millions of Jews and non-Jews believe:
Jews are a people, not simply members of a religion
Jews have history and deep ties to their particular homeland in the land of Israel
Jews have a right to self-determination, manifest in establishing sovereignty with the State of Israel
The State of Israel is a safe haven for Jews around the world, all welcome to return
That Jewish State will fight global antisemitism
Nazi Germany moved from burning Jewish ideas to burning Jews in just a few years. Palestinian Arabs and their supporters have similarly targeted Zionism, Jews and the Jewish State. The question is whether the civilized world will turn back the evil.
An estimated 290,000 Jews and Zionists came to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on November 14, 2023 to march for Israel, the release of hostages and against antisemitism. News reports share that it was the single largest turnout of Jews in D.C. ever.
Hundreds of thousands of people at the National Mall rally on November 14, 2023 (photo: FirstOneThrough)
While marked as a “march” to run from 1:00PM to 3:00PM, the rally started at 11:00AM and ended well past 3:00PM. Speakers and singers addressed the large crowd who came from around the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. There were masses of Israeli flags everywhere, as well as American flags, as everyone attending appreciated the simple ability to come out without fear in America’s capital.
There were sections set aside for members of Congress, and both Republicans and Democrats were proud to show their support for Israel and Zionists. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) was an early speaker, and the most forceful American politician from those invited to speak. He roundly condemned Hamas and spoke with moral clarity about the fight against evil.
Other Democrats who were not given the podium, like Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), were happy to speak to various people about the war, including Nir Barkat, former Mayor of Jerusalem and current Minister of Finance in Israel. Republican speakers included new House Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) who was only second to Rep. Torres in clearly articulating standing firmly with Israel and against Hamas, and that America’s support was a bipartisan effort. Many other Republicans attended, including from California, Arizona, Georgia and Texas.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz at rally for Israel in Washington, DC on November 14, 2023 (photo: FirstOneThrough)
Beyond the familiar names were the new names.
Families of the over 200 hostages held in Gaza came to Washington. They stood and held each other and demanded the return of their loved ones. Many took the stage and spoke passionately about their sons, daughters and family members abducted amidst the slaughter of October 7.
Family of Hersh Goldberg-Polin
Rachel Goldberg-Polin spoke to the audience as she has done many times at any forum where she can try to help advance the release of her son Hersh, whose arm was blown off during the October 7 massacre. She shared that she did not know if he was alive and buried in the tunnels of Gaza, or had died from bleeding out from his wounds. But she knew she needed to speak out as best she could.
Other parents also spoke on behalf of their children. Some held placards with the names and faces of the captives. These were not “Kidnapped” signs that could be ripped from lampposts as thousands have been by anti-Zionists in America’s cities. These signs held up the tortured families, standing somewhere between shiva and hope.
In many ways, that was the essence of rally. While people leaned on each other for support and blessed the United States for both standing with Israel and being an open welcoming society, everyone knew that this was no celebration.
Over 1,200 people in Israel were slaughtered and butchered. Antisemitism was skyrocketing. University professors and students shouted their joy at the death of Jews. Politicians and world governments were calling the Jewish State a racist genocidal country not worthy of existing. Global crowds cheered the jihadists’ auto-da-fe.
So thousands came to America’s capital in a counter-demonstration of love and peace.
Jews and Christian Zionists came to be together. At times they accepted comfort from the array of speakers and other times they shouted back “Bring Them Home!” and “No Ceasefire!” in reply. The crowd stood for hours, talking to people around them to understand their personal stories of how they’ve been impacted, as well as to simply embrace friends traumatized by unfolding events.
Families of hostages demand the return of their loves ones in Washington, DC on November 14, 2023 (photo: FirstOneThrough)
The crowd came to the capital to collectively mourn the unholy death in the holy land. They came to get and demand reassurance from powerful politicians that they will be safe in America and make sure Israel can have peace.
And they openly showed their fear.
Like the 240 hostages in Gaza, roughly 300,000 people are not sure whether this was a time for hope or a time to mourn. Perhaps this is a post-Ecclesiastes world when time and state are no longer paired; a time for shiva and hope concurrently.
A month after the heinous massacre of October 7, the world feels very different, when in fact only a few things changed.
Hamas was a terrorist group at its founding in 1987, when it wrote its infamous 1988 charter, when Palestinian Arabs voted the group to 58% of parliament in 2006, and today. Their capabilities have gotten better while their intent to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish State remains constant.
The Israeli Defense Forces is seemingly capable of responding to the threat when given time but were horribly unprepared during that first day. The Palestinian jihadists were not able to launch an even more deadly invasion from the West Bank showing the important life-saving work of active intelligence and occasional raids into terrorists’ enclaves. The IDF had done no such raids into Gaza for two years.
In reality, much of the underlying matters have not changed much. However, the scale and barbarity of the attack has put Israeli society in shock. It cannot permit Hamas to maintain such genocidal capabilities to launch similar attacks.
The United States, Germany and several other western democracies are standing with Israel in its fight against jihadi terror. The American president and Secretary of State have both said that “Hamas is ISIS”, a lethal, radical Islamist group with a poisonous ideology which a global coalition helped defeat in Syria and Iraq.
It’s much of the rest of the world that changed.
While the Muslim world did not actively condemn the destruction of ISIS, they have rallied to the Palestinians as many have been killed in the effort to root out Hamas. Many governments have also excused Hamas’s atrocities and some even support it.
Worse, socialists around the world have been cheering Hamas’s slaughter. On college campuses, students and professors shout about their joy about the attacks, hailing it is the start of “decolonizing Palestine.”
Faced with clear footage of barbarism, the radical left is supporting genocidal maniacs. With the clarity that the conflict is not just about land but vicious racism and antisemitism, the alt-left is cleaving to the jihadists.
Socialists have demonstrated their depravity. They are not just indifferent but joyous to see Jews suffer.
I have long known about Hamas but I didn’t really know you.
Jews make up a very small population in the world yet suffer disproportionately from persecution.
Globally, Jews account for less than 0.2% of the population, or about 1 person for every 525 people. Most people have never met a Jewish person.
As most of the world is Christian and Muslim, it is not surprising that Christian-majority countries make up the majority of the United Nations, followed by Muslim-majority countries. There is only a single Jewish-majority country, Israel, which is disproportionately vilified at the United Nations.
Outside of the Israel, the only country with a sizable Jewish population is the United States, which has 40% of the global Jewish population. Outside of Israel and the USA, there is roughly 15% of the rest of world Jewry, principally located in France, Canada, United Kingdom, Argentina and Russia.
In the United States, Jews are a small part of the minority groups. While DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) efforts focus on Hispanics, Blacks, Asians and the LGBT+ community, it ignores Jews who are labeled “White” and “privileged”.
Without protection afforded to other minorities, Jews stand out as the most targeted group in the United States for hate crimes, based on population.
College campuses have become particularly noxious breeding grounds of antisemitism. In addition to excluding Jews from DEI and federal Title VI protections, universities miseducate Zionism to be a form of “European colonialism” and Zionists to be racists. Compounding the matter, because Jews are labeled “White and privileged”, they are not allowed to defend themselves, and must simply sit and be berated.
The tragic farse doesn’t even end there. In addition to persecuted American Jews being vilified by laws and people meant to defend minorities, those groups label Israel as an example of White Supremacy, even though Mizrahi Jews make up a majority of the Jewish State. Jews of color make up 41.2% of the Israeli population.
Despite Jews being indigenous to the land of Israel and Israel being the most liberal country in the entire Middle East, liberal universities have turned the Jewish State into a polluter of pure Arab land.
Jews are a minority-minority in the United States and around the world, persecuted and unprotected by laws and people who are both proud of their antisemitism and those who think they are fighting for minority rights. At least majority-minority rights, like 1.8 billion Muslims.
Politicians and presidents of universities are being graded by their reaction to Hamas’s October 7 massacre in Israel and Israel’s response. The pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian communities are keeping score.
Pro- Israel Statements
There are a number of statements that people expect to see, some of which are considered easy and others which show true pro-Israel bona fides.
Condemn October 7. The Hamas attack which killed over 1,200 people was brutal. Most people expect condemning the attack an easy thing to do because of its scale and brutality.
Harsh adjectives of attack. Calling the attack “barbaric”, a “pogrom”, “pure evil” and similar language is similarly expected as a logical extension of the condemnation.
Calling Hamas is a terrorist group. The United States, Canada, United Kingdom and many other countries officially label Hamas a terrorist group, so calling it as such is also not viewed as a major pronouncement but Zionists expect to hear it specifically mentioned now.
Israel has a right to defend itself. This is a natural right and obligation of countries which are attacked. Stating that Israel has such right would normally be considered redundant but nothing seems to be in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Call to release hostages. Prioritizing the release of an estimated 240 people who were seized in the October 7 attack is a basic humanitarian call. It is surprisingly absent from many public statements, upsetting many Jews and Zionists.
Bring the perpetrators to justice. A natural biproduct of all of these statements is to hold the murderers and abductors to account.
Pro-Palestinian Actions
Pro-Israeli statements blend into pro-Palestinian statements when addressing Israel’s response to the attack. People who condemn violence might want all attacks to end and can hold both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian statements concurrently. However, when people demonize Israel and support Hamas, the break in the preference becomes clear.
Call for Humanitarian Pause. Israel’s response to the October 7 attack has killed thousands of people. Calling for humanitarian pauses to allow civilians to leave the area and bring in food and fuel is viewed as natural by many peace activists who want to minimize civilian casualties.
Call for Ceasefire. A ceasefire is viewed as much more extreme than a pause, especially early in the Israeli counter-attack. Pro-Israel people want to see the military capabilities of Hamas destroyed and a premature end to the campaign would give Hamas a huge victory. Pro-Palestinians believe that it is the only way to save thousands of Palestinian lives and are not concerned that Hamas may launch more attacks as they promised to do.
Say the October 7 attack had “context.” Backers of Palestinians do not want the narrative of the story to be that Hamas initiated the fight. While people may or may not acknowledge the brutality of the October 7 massacre, they discuss the blockade of Gaza and other Palestinian grievances to frame the discussion.
Rip down Kidnapped posters. The fate of 240 people ripped from their homes undermines the Palestinian narrative which paints Arabs as the victims.
Calling Hamas a “resistance movement”. Hamas calls itself a “resistance” movement, making it sound like a reactionary force rather than a terrorist group. Palestinian sympathizers use the nomenclature, even after the October 7 attack which killed more Jews in a day than any day since the Holocaust.
Not condemning October 7 attack. Many people released statements which skip the Hamas attack and only address Israel’s ongoing attack on Gaza. This is appreciated by the Palestinian community as it frames the oppressor and oppressed narrative to their liking. In contrast, it is considered appalling and a red flag to much of humanity as failing to condemn horrific acts like placing a baby in an oven alive, an action of psychopaths.
Call to “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea.” This demand to end Israel as a Jewish State goes beyond the specific war. It marks the war as the beginning of a liberation of land from Jewish control.
Call to “Globalize the Intifada”. This chant has many iterations like “Intifada revolution”. It spells out the desire to ‘Free Palestine’ with violence as well as either attack Zionists everywhere and/or any entity considered a western imperialist power.
Shouts of “Gas the Jews” and other forms of attack. The call for violence against Jews everywhere, not just in Israel, is the extreme end of pro-Hamas statements, shouted at rallies and in social media.
The scorecard shows people’s preferences in the conflict, like U.S. President Joe Biden and Congressman Ritchie Torres on the pro-Israel side, university leaders like Columbia University president Minouche Shafik who say nothing, and United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, Queen Rania of Jordan and Rep. Rashida Tlaib on the pro-Palestinian side.
Politicians, university presidents and corporate CEOs who all waded into politics in the Russia-Ukraine War and Black Lives Matter incidents, are being pushed to make statements about the 2023 Gaza War, with many angering supporters of each side. Everyone is checking the scorecard to gauge where people’s loyalties lie.
Hamas’s grotesque butchery of people in Israel on October 7, 2023 was seemingly from another time and place. Burning babies in ovens. Chopping off fingers of young boys and amputating feet of young girls. Cutting off breasts of women and raping them. The sickening depravity of the Palestinian jihadists seemed born in hell.
These Islamic extremists were not simply invading Israel to take land; they came to embarrass, to dehumanize, to torment the infidels.
Like the Spanish Inquisition of hundreds of years ago, religious fanatics tortured and burned Jews whom they deemed to be “heretics”.
Heretics to Christians. Infidels to Jihadists.
Jews.
Burning Jews alive during the Inquisition before large local crowds in Lisbon, Portugal
So they brought back some corpses to parade through the streets of Gaza. Some 240 live people too.
Modern technology enabled their barbarity to be captured and shared with the world very quickly. From Australia to the United States, antisemites shouted their joy at watching the massacre of Jews.
In Sydney, Australia the crowds yelled “Gas the Jews,” “F–k the Jews.” Cornell professor Russell Rickford said the spectacle was “exhilarating” and “energizing.” A junior at the University of Pennsylvania asked the crowd whether they remembered “the several other joyful and powerful images which came from the glorious October seventh?… I remember feeling so empowered and happy, so confident that victory was near and so tangible. I want all of you to hold that feeling in your hearts. Never let go of it. Channel it through every action you take. Bring it to the streets!”
The butchering of Jews eventually brought out the crowds, albeit asynchronous to the slaughter. They cheered the guilty verdict and incineration of Jews.
The antisemites gathered in the streets with fellow Jew-haters to reminisce and pray for more days like October 7. They tore down “kidnapped” posters, staged walk-outs, blockaded streets and lobbied members of congress to protect their heroes in Gaza. They wanted to see the second, third and fourth wave of torturing Jews, as Hamas promised.
Maybe live next time.
The Catholic Church once tortured and paraded Jews before burning them at the stake for the local crowds amusement. Today’s religious devils are radical jihadists appealing to a global audience to hunt and torment diaspora Jews for sport and to gather support for their war effort against the Jewish State.
The biblical Samson did not die alone but was staged in a large theater to mock and kill for the crowd’s pleasure.
Recognize that today’s pro-Hamas “protests” are not silent, holding vigil for Palestinian civilians. They are a mob looking for the next Jewish Samson to eliminate.
And of course, there were over 1,400 people butchered in Israel on October 7.
The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres addressed each, condemning the attacks.
Regarding Cameroon, Guterres called “on the Government of Cameroon to conduct an investigation and to ensure that those responsible are held accountable.”
For the attack in Myanmar, Guterres said of the terrorists, “Those responsible must be held to account.”
Yet despite to much greater scale and barbarity of the attack on Israel, Guterres pared back his comments. He specifically did not want the Government of Israel to hold the Hamas terrorists accountable.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
In the immediate aftermath of the worst crime against Jews since the Holocaust, Guterres offered “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.”
Does Guterres think that Hamas terrorists are “civilians” to be protected? Does he not believe that the 1,000-plus terrorists that invaded Israel and burned families alive should “be held to account?” What is the purpose of the statement that is a world apart from what Guterres offers to other countries?
Seemingly, the United Nations is sending a message that countries like Cameroon and Myanmar can and should hold terrorists to account. But not Israel. Israel must use “maximum restraint” despite the horror.
To give context to the 1,400 people killed in Israel on a single day, the total deaths from terrorism in 2022 in the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region was 791 people. The one day toll in Israel was more than any country for the entire year of 2022.
Yet the United Nations urged “maximum restraint.”
This treatment of Israel in the face of terrorism has a long history, as the UN adopted Palestinian Arabs long ago and protects them at all times, even – or especially – when they engage in grotesque jihadi terrorism.
But even now? Even in the aftermath of the October 7 massacre?
According to the United Nations, Israel may never act as judge; it is only to be judged, scrutinized and criticized. It is an object to be acted upon, and must otherwise remain silent, even when slaughtered.
Many people wonder what will happen after the end of the 2023 Gaza War. Will the Palestinian Authority take administrative control of the area with Israel serving a military function, much like Area B in the West Bank? Will Hamas 2.0 rise from the ashes, the way Queen Rania of Jordan (herself of Palestinian descent) predicts, which will be a “new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent.”
There is a better way. To end Palestinian atrocities and the horrible death on both sides, one needs to speak a plain truth at the core of the conflict to understand how to end it.
The United Nations and Saudi Arabia must state clearly that there is no ‘right of return’ for Palestinian Arabs to go to Israel. The Arabs’ future lies in Gaza or parts of the West Bank that will be under the Palestinian Authority, or another country that welcomes them, should they decide to leave the region.
Palestinians have been lied to by the United Nations for 75 years that they will get to return to homes where grandparents once lived. The United Nations continues to call many Palestinians “refugees” and places keys atop UNRWA “refugee” camps to tell them that the UN is much more than a services agency: they are the gateway to returning to Israel.
Portal to UNRWA Aida “refugee” camp near Bethlehem
The UN maintains refugee camps inside Gaza and the West Bank to tell Palestinian Arabs that the land they stand on – which was part of Palestine in 1947 – is just a waiting zone. They will get to move to Israel someday.
So the Arabs have grown very frustrated. Rather than make a life in Gaza and the West Bank, they covet the first world country next door that it really belongs to them. Palestinians vote for invasion rather than investment.
Approximately 81.2% of UNRWA wards reside in what was the British Mandate in 1922 or what was annexed by Jordan with Arabs given citizenship. Almost all of them have self-determination, either as citizens of Jordan or under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza. There are really only Syrian and Lebanese “refugee” descendants which need to be addressed.
And those in Syria and Lebanon should move to a new Palestinian State.
Before Israel left Gaza in 2005, U.S. President George W. Bush sent Israeli Prime Minister a letter in April 2004 to encourage the Israeli action: “It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair, and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”
The Democratic Party long held the same notion in its platform stating “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.” The Obama/ Biden Administration had that statement removed in 2012, stoking Palestinian anger/hope which bubbled into 2014, 2021 and 2023 wars from Gaza against Israel, each under either President Obama or President Biden.
The United Nations and Saudi Arabia need to deliver the message ending the ‘right of return’ so that Palestinians know these intifadas to destroy Israel are over. It is time for Palestinian Arabs to focus energies on building institutions, economy and society, and abandon the genocidal efforts to destroy the Jewish State.
UNRWA should announce a wind down of all camps in Gaza, the West Bank and Jordan, and funnel those monies to actual refugees who really need the services, fleeing their homeland to faraway countries where they are strangers not knowing the language, people or land. Saudi Arabia should play a role in rebuilding the Gaza infrastructure together with Israel, and push the Iran-Hamas alliance into the dustbin of infamy.
The future for coexistence relies on terminating the ongoing failed policy promoted by the United Nations for 75 years, and a new Saudi-Israeli alliance might be the pathway to broader peace.
The media and United Nations are partially culpable for the current violence in the Middle East as they have been deliberately lying to the people in the region and the world.
Let’s speak honestly about the situation.
LIE: Palestinians are in favor of two states. So claims Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. It is simply untrue, as shown in repeated Palestinian polls.
LIE: Israelis are storming al Aqsa. This is repeated in Palestinian media to incite the Muslim world to attack Jews. It is plainly false unless a person can call a handful of Jews walking around the Temple Mount during regular visiting hours – nowhere near the al Aqsa Mosque – some kind of ‘storming’.
LIE: The al Aqsa Mosque Compound / Temple Mount is only holy for Muslims. This piece of fiction is repeated frequently in Muslim capitals around the world. But it’s also said at the United Nations, which marked the holiest site for Jews as purely a Muslim site in official maps.
LIE: Gazans want the more moderate Palestinian Authority as the government, not Hamas. A wishful sentiment and complete lie, as shown in repeated polls. Hamas controls 58% of the parliament and would win presidential elections if held now. Even James Zogby of the Arab American Institute bemoaned the “deformity of Palestinian culture” which favors violence, when he addressed the United Nations in June 2023, while The New York Times falsely states otherwise.
LIE: Settlers are more dangerous than Palestinian Arabs. So said Wennesland before the October massacre when he addressed the United Nations Security Council. But his own figures show that Palestinians killed FIVE TIMES more Israelis than Israeli ‘settlers’ killing Palestinians in the second quarter of 2023, and 2.5 times as many in the first quarter of 2023.
LIE: The Israeli government is more extreme and right-wing than Hamas and Fatah. The media repeatedly inserts a narrative that the current Israeli government is the most right-wing ever and that one minister had a photo of Baruch Goldstein, a murderer of 29 people, in his house. But the media NEVER informs readers that Hamas is a terrorist group with a genocidal jihadi charter calling for the death of Jews and destruction of Israel. It does not mention the dozens of Palestinian schools, squares and tournaments named after mass murderers of Jews. It does not mention that the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is a holocaust denier.
LIE: Gaza is an open air prison. The reality is that Gaza is a terrorist safe haven in which Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and many other terrorist groups train and plan terrorist attacks.
LIE: The Palestinians are ready to make peace. Not only do Palestinians not favor a two state solution, they cannot even make peace between themselves. The West Bank and Gaza Strip are severed. Hamas and Fatah cannot agree to any power-sharing arrangement. Palestinians have been unable to have a vote since 2006. And the current president is viewed as so corrupt and ineffective that any agreement he would theoretically sign with Israel would be worthless on the Palestinian street.
LIE: ‘East Jerusalem’ is Occupied Palestinian Land. While people may argue whether the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza are occupied Palestinian land, there is no scenario in which anyone can claim the eastern portion of Jerusalem, including the Old City was ever Palestinian. It wasn’t earmarked to be Palestinian in the 1947 Partition Plan which never took place, was illegally annexed by Jordan from 1950 to 1967, and part of Israel since that time. The place ‘East Jerusalem‘ only existed from 1949 to 1967, nineteen years in the city’s 4,000 year history.
LIE: Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem are stateless. Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem got resident status when Israel formally annexed the eastern part of the city and reunited it in 1980. Palestinians can apply for Israeli citizenship and thousands already have become Israelis.
LIE: Israel is an apartheid state. Israel enables all citizens to vote, become part of the government, own real estate, attend schools, and more. Israel is the most liberal country for 1,000 miles in any direction. That is in sharp contrast to the Palestinian Authority that is a truly apartheid and antisemitic entity that wishes to have a country free of any Jews.
LIE: Israel engaged in ethnic cleansing of Arabs. Israel gave all people in the land citizenship when it declared statehood in 1948, including non-Jews. The population of Arabs in both Jerusalem and all of Israel has grown more than Jews in Jerusalem and Israel, respectively, and also more than Arabs in neighboring countries. It was Jordan that ethnically cleansed all Jews from eastern Israel and eastern Jerusalem in what became known as the Jew-free “West Bank.”
LIE: Israel wants to take over the entire region. The halls of the United Nations are crowded with “intellectuals” who say “The Zionist idea to dominate the area from the Nile to the Euphrates, is well known,” making the Jews look greedy in taking “Arab land,” as portrayed in the New York Times. It is simply untrue, as proved by Israel giving up land to Egypt, Palestinian Authority and Jordan, while all Israel sought in exchange was peace.
LIE: Jews lived very well in Muslim lands and they just chose to immigrate to Israel once it was founded. Jews survived as second class dhimmis in Arab lands for centuries, paying a special jizyah, non-Muslim tax. After Israel was founded, Arab nationalism swept the region and antisemitic laws and pogroms forced roughly 1 million Jews to flee the homes they had in Muslim lands. The New York Times shares a very different narrative.
LIE: Only Arabs are indigenous to the holy land.The New York Times will try to instill that only Arabs are indigenous to the holy land. The fact is that while many Arabs came to the region in the seventh and eighth centuries, Jews have been in the land for over 3,000 years. Jews are the only people to establish their kingdom and capital there. Judaism is the only religion that is specifically tied to a land – the land of Israel. Further, while many Jews came to the land between 1920 and 1948, there were more Muslims that entered the land under the British than Jews.
LIE: Israel is a European colony. So says college professors parroting an Arab narrative. The fact is that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel and the British didn’t send any citizens to settle the land, they simply facilitated Jewish immigration to their homeland.
LIE: The United Nations and UNRWA are impartial and just providing assistance to “refugees.” The UN has adopted Palestinians as its permanent wards as has devoted numerous distinct agencies, like UNRWA, and resolutions for this particular group.
LIE: Gazans and West Bank Arabs are “refugees”. The world bemoans the status of millions of “refugees” who are simply not, and never were, refugees. These people live in the same land with the same people with the same language and culture just a few miles from where grandparents used to live. They have self-determination. At best, one can refer to them as descendants of internally-displaced people.
LIE: The current violence is because Hamas and Iran want to derail the Saudi Arabian – Israeli normalization. The October massacre was over a year in the making and pre-dated the aggressive discussions of normalization. The horrible truth is that the United States allowed Iran to reach the point of being nuclear weapons capable, so now feels compelled to give Saudi Arabia nuclear power to balance the arms race in the Middle East. As a condition for the U.S. giving the Saudis nuclear power, the Americans are insisting on normalizing relations with Israel. This is a war that is much more about Iranian and Saudi nuclear ambitions, not that Iran is upset about a normalization agreement between Israel and KSA.
LIE: Hamas is a “resistance movement”. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. It “resists” Jewish presence in the Middle East. Palestinians support its mission, if not always its tactics.
LIE: Israel deliberately targets civilians.Israel takes more precautions than any other fighting force to limit civilian casualties. It drops leaflets to get people to move and calls their cellphones. It has dummy rockets that “knock” on the roof a minute before an armed missile hits a building to allow people to leave. It gives time for civilians to move out of the fighting area. But Hamas and its suporters encourage the civilians to stay putting them in harm’s way. Hamas builds its terrorist infrastructure and shoots rockets from mosques and schools. And Hamas brutally focuses on civilians for torture, butchering small children and burning families alive.
The list of lies goes on.
The effect of all these lies is a twisted idea of reality. It produces a fictional narrative that Palestinians are moderate and really support a two-state solution but the right-wing Israeli government is blocking it. The Israelis are racists who are trying to take over Palestinian land as they covet the entire region. First the Jews stole the land from Arabs as a colonial power, subjugated and ethnically-cleansed them from the land, and they continue to try to steal more, as they brutalize the local Arab population in an “ongoing Nakba“.
In reality, it is Palestinian Arabs who refuse to accept a Jewish State in the region. They rejected it in 1947, 1948, 1967, 2000, 2008 and every day. They want the entire region to be dominated by Muslim Arabs and support the killing of Jews until they “liberate” the land “from the River to the Sea.” Israel does its best to protect itself from the genocidal neighbors next door.
People are realizing that students on college campuses have been misinformed and indoctrinated about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but so has the world. We must all confront the false narratives about the conflict so we can honestly pursue a better future.
The New York Times has a long disgraceful history minimizing antisemitism both during Arab-Israeli wars and in every day life. It similarly highlights Islamophobia, even though Muslims in America suffer a fraction of Jewish hate crimes.
The paper’s jaundiced coverage is continuing during the 2023 Gaza War.
In two separate incidents, a Muslim boy and an elderly Jewish man were killed in the United States. The Times reporting on the tragedies were polar opposites.
For the killing of the Muslim boy, the Times referred to it as an active event with “fatally stabbed…attack” while the Jewish man passively “died.” One situation was clearly out-of-the-blue killing a child, while the 69-year old Jew was cast as partially to blame in an “altercation at dueling protests.”
In describing the attack on a Muslim, the Times called it an “Anti-Muslim Attack” and “a hate crime,” but no such language was used for the murdered Jew.
The uncle of the Muslim boy is featured face-on and his name was used. For the Jew, the picture was of just the backs of several people. His name and age went unmentioned.
The effort to minimize antisemitism is not accidental, as the paper actively tries to tell its declining readership that anti-Zionism and antisemitism have nothing to do with each other, and antisemitism is not really that big a problem.
Take a look at past NY Times coverage to appreciate this deformity.
First One Through 