On June 5, 1968, on the one year anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, shot and killed Senator Robert Kennedy while he was campaigning to be the president of the United States. Sirhan assassinated the American politician because of his support for Israel.
On October 7, 2023, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War, the Iranian proxy of Hamas massacred 1,200 people in Israel and took over 250 people hostages. In the ensuing months, other Iranian proxies went to war with Israel including Hezbollah from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen, while the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump as he campaigned to be the next president.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., Saturday, July 13, 2024. (photo: Gene J. Puskar / AP)
On February 1, 2024, the FBI filed a lawsuit against members of the US designated foreign terrorist group Hamas. The suit mentions Iran 79 times as a partner for Hamas’s October 7 massacre, as well as ongoing support for the group. Beyond that gruesome day, the suit alleges that Hamas and Iran “knowingly and intentionally combined, conspired, confederated, and agreed together and with each other to kill nationals of the United States.“
The Iranian proxies are public with their threats on the U.S. On October 28, 2023, one of Hamas’s leaders broadcast “The U.S. Administration and the Western countries supporting the aggression are full partners with the occupation in the genocidal war and the cascade of blood that flows from defenseless civilians.This blood will be a curse and a volcano of fury from the masses of our Ummah [i.e., the Muslim community] and the free people of the world against these killers.” An October 18 broadcast from Hamas had a similar message that Hamas is “stating loud and clear that the American administration and the Western countries that support the aggression are full partner countries along with the occupation forces in this annihilation war.” On December 2, 2023, a Hamas official said on Hamas media that “[t]here is not a single crime that the U.S. has not committed against Gaza. May Allah settle the score with America, and may He take revenge on that criminal Nazi country.”
The jihadi war against the United States predates the October 7 jihadi massacre. For example, as stated in the lawsuit, “On or about December 22, 2017, Hamas spokesman Abd Al Qadir Al-Hawajiri spoke at a Hamas rally that was broadcast on a Hamas media outlet. In his speech, Al-Hawajiri condemned American support for Israel, proclaiming that ‘that entity [i.e. , Israel] will cease to exist, as will America.‘”
The vitriol against the United States accelerated after President’s Trump’s pro-Israel actions, specifically mentioning “the American Declaration that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem to be the entity’s [i.e., Israel’s] capital, as well as to America’s recognition of the legality of the settlements.”
But the jihadi war against Israel is not about the “settlements” or the capital, but Jewish presence in any form. As Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of the Hamas movement said months before he was assassinated in Iran, “We do not want to see you [Jews] on this land; this land is ours, Al-Quds is ours, all of it is ours… there is no place or residing for you.” He went on to commit to waging war and never negotiating or compromising with Israel.
Iran and Hamas actively recruited monetary support from the United States and elsewhere to wage their genocidal war. In November 2020, Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV held a “First Electronic Pioneers Conference” in which Haniyeh said “We need to upgrade the support, from support through soft power to support by means of money and weapons. Yes, I would like to make it perfectly clear: I am talking about support by means of money and weapons, for the mujahideen and the murabitun [the people who harass Jews visiting the Jewish Temple Mount] in Jerusalem and its environs.” Members of South African parliament were in attendance.
Millions of dollars were routed – and continue to be routed – to Hamas via Gazan charity groups. That money is used to kill Israelis, Americans and to fund assassination attempts on American leaders.
Jihadi groups are not just waging a war on Israel but also on America. The genocidal assassins are not limited to the fanatical leaders of Iran and Palestinian groups and include members of the socialist-jihadi alliance in the United States who provide material support for the violence.
The plight of Jews today can be traced directly to President Barak Obama’s second term from 2013 to 2016. The rampant antisemitism in the United States and death and destruction in the Middle East today stem from Obama’s failed and deliberate strategies as outlined below:
Obama’s minimization of antisemitism
Enabling Iran to have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons
Handing billions of dollars to Iran and its terrorist proxies
Not encouraging the Iranian revolution to topple the government
Throwing Middle Eastern allies under the bus
Changing Democratic Party position that Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) should move to Israel instead of a new Palestinian state
Stating that the presence of Jews in Jerusalem caused problems rather than Arab antisemitism
Making Jews living in Jerusalem illegal
Fostering the Islamic takeover of American universities
Bringing many refugees from Syria and Somalia to the US
Minimizing Antisemitism
Obama’s desire to minimize the problem of antisemitism stemmed from his focus on repairing relations with the Muslim world which he felt was badly damaged by the prior administration’s war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. It later extended to prioritizing other victims of preference, Blacks and other majority-minorities in the United States over Jews.
The most glaring example of Obama’s blindness to Muslim antisemitism was the February 2015 shooting in a kosher store in Paris, France. Obama said the shooting was “random” and his spokesperson then doubled down in clarifying the comment that there was no anti-Jewish motivation of the jihadi radicals.
At his final State of the Union address in 2016, Obama said nothing about antisemitism and only flagged ‘Islamophobia’ despite anti-Jewish hate crimes being 2.2 times more frequent than anti-Muslim hate crimes according to the FBI. Obama said nothing about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s rampant anti-Jewish smears and Holocaust denial contests as he cozied up to the Islamic zealots.
Enabling Iran to have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons
Despite aggressive sanctions which started under President George Bush in 2005, Obama signed an agreement which left Iran’s entire nuclear program intact including its uranium mines, milling and enrichment facilities and nuclear reactors. Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities coupled with its emerging nuclear weapon program has enabled it to act with near impunity throughout the Middle East. It has put the region on edge with Saudi Arabia now insisting on getting weapons of mass destruction to balance the Shiite-Sunni regional dominance.
While Israel had relative peace for the past fifty years as the only country with nuclear weapons, we are seeing the ramifications of large Muslim Arab countries also possessing such weaponry, courtesy of Obama.
Handing billions of dollars to Iran and its terrorist proxies
Iran has been using its proxies to kill and terrorize Jews for years, especially in the aftermath of Obama giving billions of dollars to Iran. The first installment of $1.7 billion in 2016 was sent in cash. Estimates for the amount of money that was ultimately released as part of the Iranian nuclear deal are as much as $150 billion from several countries according to FactCheck.org, with more conservative figures being $50 billion.
The funds released to Iran have helped fund Iranian proxies like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Each group has intentionally killed Israelis over the past year, with Hamas’s savage massacre of October 7, 2023 being the most heinous and gruesome.
Not encouraging the Iranian revolution to topple the government
The ascendency of the antisemitic genocidal regime in Iran was not a foregone conclusion. The Iranian people had started a ‘Green Revolution’ in 2009 with the expectation that Obama would give America’s support to install a moderate regime. Obama declined to do so, and thought he could negotiate a nuclear arms deal with the radical zealots. That decision led to Secretary of State John Kerry concluding one of the worst foreign policy deals in American history a few years later.
Throwing allies under the bus
As opposed to toppling genocidal regimes, Obama supported the ouster of friends.
Obama started his presidency with a trip to Cairo, Egypt in 2009, but ultimately stabbed the American ally in the back. When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced pressure to resign in 2011, Obama let him fall. It welcomed the democratically-elected head of the terrorist group Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Morsi instead. Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region became alarmed “with the U.S. position, publicly pushing Mubarak out. And frankly so are we—this isn’t how you handle issues in region.”
Obama made his focus on Iran known to the whole world from the outset when he first met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2009 at the White House. Rather than strongly stand by his ally Israel, he used the opportunity to say “Iran is a country of extraordinary history and extraordinary potential, that we want them to be a full-fledged member of the international community and be in a position to provide opportunities and prosperity for their people.”
President Obama meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2009
This narrative of Iran being “extraordinary” has continued to be pushed by the liberal mainstream media. When the New York Times publishes articles about Israel and Iran, it doesn’t show images of Iranian missiles but female shoppers, making Israeli leaders look foolish for being alarmed for no reason.
Screenshot of New York Times article on October 28, 2024
The Times even had vacation packages to Iran which it advertised as “Persia. Iran. For 2,500 years, this powerful country has entranced, mystified and beguiled the world. Discover the ancient secrets and modern complexities of this influential land on a 13-day itinerary, visiting some of the world’s oldest archaeological sites and the family home of the religious leader who engineered Iran’s transition to an Islamic republic. Welcome to the once-forbidden land of Iran.” It similarly called Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco amazing places to visit. But not Israel which it only promotes through a Palestinian lens as a place of “struggle” (jihad in Arabic).
Changing Democratic stance that Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) should move to Israel instead of a new Palestinian state
When Obama was elected to his first term, the official 2008 Democratic party platform had a few key statements about Israel and the region:
On Hamas: “The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements.”
On “Refugees: “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.”
On borders: “All understand that it is unrealistic to expect the outcome of final status negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
On Jerusalem: “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.”
Hamas’s current war on Israel to descend on Jerusalem, destroy the Jewish state and bring millions of SAPs into Israel was essentially blessed under the second Obama administration.
Stating that the presence of Jews in Jerusalem caused problems rather than Arab antisemitism
In October 2014, the Obama Administration’s Josh Earnest said “The US condemns the recent occupation of residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan by people whose agenda provokes tensions.” The message was clear: Jews buying homes and living in eastern Jerusalem is terrible because the Jews are stirring tensions, not because Arab Muslims are consumed with Jew hatred.
The New York Times followed Obama’s lead a few days later and portrayed the residents of Silwan as peaceful Arabs who were set upon by a few crazy Israelis moving next door: “An influx of right-wing Jewish settlers who have acquired property in the area in recent years have made the neighborhood a flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The Jews were the extremists and caused violence, not the other way around.
Obama’s inversion that Jews are the racist right-wing troublemakers while Palestinian Arabs (who voted the antisemitic genocidal group Hamas to a majority of parliament) as peace-seeking individuals has become mainstreamed in the media today.
Making Jews living in Jerusalem illegal
As Obama ended his second term, he decided to cap his vilification of Jews and Israel by allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass in December 2016, which declared it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), including in the Judaism’s holiest city of Jerusalem. It called for countries to treat E49AL/ West Bank as distinct from the rest of Israel, despite the Palestinian Authority signing the Oslo Accords which recognized Israeli control over parts of the region.
Fostering the Islamic takeover of American universities
While Obama was restricting where Jews could live in the Jewish holy land, he was welcoming tens of thousands of Muslims from the Middle East into American universities.
The Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program was launched in 2003 to soften the image of America’s war on terror. Obama ramped up the program in 2009. By the 2015/6 academic year, 61,000 Saudi students were in American universities. That high figure represents 0.2% of the entire population of Saudi Arabia to a single country. By way of comparison, the ENTIRE American students abroad cohort all over the world is around 162,000, or 0.05% of the U.S. population. Imagine 650,000 American students all learning in India for the year!
Along with the Muslim students came billions of dollars. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim Arab countries funded departments, handed scholarships and enabled the growth of Students for Justice in Palestine hate groups to gather strength on over 200 campuses. These groups have led the harassment and intimidation of Jews at levels over five times higher than campuses without these groups according to analyses by the AMCHA Initiative. These universities routinely teach that Israel is a “imperialist colonialist power,” as though Jews do not have thousands of years of history in the holy land.
Bringing many refugees from Syria and Somalia to the US
In addition to the influx of money and students from Muslim countries into American universities was the growth in the number of refugees from the Middle East around the United States. While prior administrations had never permitted more than 25,000 refugees into the US from the Middle East, by 2016, Obama had welcomed nearly 45,000, primarily from Syria and Somalia.
The current war on Jews in the United States and Israel, home to 85% of world Jewry, was fueled by President Obama’s push to elevate the Muslim world, and the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular. The empowerment of Iran and its proxies in the Middle East have killed thousands of Jews, while the encouragement of Islamic power in the US has fueled antisemitic hate crimes here.
The jihadi-socialist alliance which aims to destroy western democracies is first-and-foremost focused on the Jewish State of Israel. It attempts to mask its deep antisemitism by calling Israel a “European colonial project,” in a sick attempt to strip Jews of their history and heritage in their holy land.
Among the various smears of the antisemitic horde are claims that Israel – and many western countries – engage in a variety causes to shield their deeply racist philosophies. The color-coded lexicon includes “socialist rhetoric around the kibbutzim and labor politics (“redwashing”), environmentalism (“greenwashing”), human rights (“bluewashing”), feminism (“purplewashing”), queer liberation (“pinkwashing”), and religious and ethnic diversity and inclusion (““faithwashing”).” The jihadi-socialists don’t defend the customs of the Islamic countries but simply try to belittle western democracies by ignoring the open societies and focusing on fake charges of “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.”
Atop the aggressive assaults on liberal democracies like Israel, the anti-West legions accuse any corresponding finger-pointing back at the radical Islamic countries as a form of “Islamophobia” which uses “racist stereotypes about the Arab and Muslim world as exceptionally and irredeemably patriarchal and homophobic.”
First the antisemites claim Jews have no history in the Jewish holy land, then they accuse the country of “genocide” and “pinkwashing” their crimes. They deflect any Jewish protest as a form of Islamophobia. Quite a mental and ethical contortion.
Perhaps the next step for the antisemitic armies will be to wave the banners of THEIR values more clearly, and defend the public hanging of gays as keeping with their strict interpretation of the Quran. They might site the U.S. State Department’s report that Iranian “lesbian and bisexual women are denied full rights as women,” as a source of pride. Palestinian scholars calling for gays to be thrown off rooftops will be quoted in English at the United Nations.
Maybe they will print t-shirts, hoist placards and use megaphones to quote the Iranian penal code sections 108 to 113 which call for the execution of men who commit sodomy.
To date, the socialist-jihadi alliance is in full attack mode against Israel and the West. When we witness the pivot to “PinkDirtying,” we will know that the Globalize the Intifada jihad is underway.
For thousands of years, Jews have been hunted, caged, expelled and exterminated.
In 1791, Catherine II confined Jews into the “Pale of Settlement” which consisted of only 25% of Russian lands and forbade them from living anywhere else. Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s restricted Jews to ghettos before shipping them to extermination camps. The Germans and their allies killed 6 million Jews, one-third of the global population.
Today, radical jihadi organizations in the United States and elsewhere want to liquidate the land of Israel of its Jews, where roughly 45% of world Jewry lives. Groups like Within Our Lifetime and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) were gleeful as Gazans went door-to-door on October 7, 2023 to rape women, shoot children before their parents and burn families alive.
WESPAC and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) stand before Jewish schools and organizations and chant “by any means necessary” to intimate and harrass American Jews that the global intifada is here to claim more victims.
Members of WESPAC gather before a Jewish Day School in Westchester, NY calling for “Liberation by any means necessary” after the October 7 slaughter of 1,200 Jews in Israel
What is the defense against such people? Have they passed the point of rehabilitation? Should the focus be on limiting their power and influence? If so, by what means? Should they be prosecuted? Shut down or denied tax-exempt status?
Or is it to fight back similarly “by any means necessary,” that if they advocate for an immoral war, then the proportionate response is also by any means necessary, including advocating carpet-bombing Gaza? If they will protest in front of Jewish organizations, should Zionists map out every Muslim organization using the same tactic and confront children in school for complicity with heinous crimes against humanity?
Masked people outside of Columbia University calling for destroying the Jewish State “by any means necessary”
Jews and Zionists have tried to find a way to coexist with Arabs since they started returning to the Jewish holy land in greater numbers in the 1840s. The Arab response since 1920 has been a complete rejection of Jewish presence and rights.
Perhaps now is the time to not reply “in-kind” and refuse to allow evil actors to dictate the relationship between the groups.
Perhaps it is the moment for Jews to liberate themselves from antisemitism that has plagued them for centuries by being more assertive in claiming their basic human rights, which are being denied both by Arabs and the United Nations:
Declare United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 which made it illegal for Jews – and only Jews – to live in Judaism’s holiest city of the Old City of Jerusalem, a flagrant antisemitic edict, inherently illegal, and null and void as it denies Jews basic human rights
Declare that the Jordanian Waqf no longer can demand that Jews – and only Jews – cannot pray at Judaism’s holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount, as it is a flagrant violation of Jews basic human rights
Antisemitic anti-Zionist groups are calling for violence to ethnically cleanse Jews from their holy land – as Palestinian Arabs have done for a century – and to come after Jews and Zionists globally. In reply, Jews and Zionists should stand tall and demand “by human rights means only”, demand basic civility to live freely anywhere and everywhere, and to pray openly at their holiest location.
The defenders of free speech on campus are out in force. Far-left members of congress like Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman defend the right of agitators to yell for the genocide of Jews and destruction of the Jewish State as a matter of “uncomfortable speech” that should be allowed. Lawyers debate what crosses the line when calling for killing a group of people generally as being protected speech in public spaces but similar language directed at individuals and/or what could be considered an immediate call for violence, which would be prohibited speech.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was spotted smiling at the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University. (Photo: Reuters)
One would therefore imagine the free speech advocates easily standing alongside students drawing the Islamic prophet Mohammed on placards around campus, and most definitely, showing Mohammed in art classes, much the way paintings and statues of Jesus, Moses and David are discussed.
But the opposite has been the case.
Professors are being fired or intimidated to not show artwork with Muhammed. In Minnesota, Erika López Prater was fired from her position at Hamline University for showing a 14th-century painting depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson on Islamic art. A student complained that she was upset and that it was blasphemous to show a depiction of the Islamic prophet and got the school to fire the professor. The professor had zero malicious intent and was simply reviewing artwork of religious figures but was nonetheless terminated.
The French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo often lampoons religions and has made cartoons of the Islamic prophet as well. Jihadi radicals were incensed when their prophet was the subject matter, and shot up the company’s offices in 2015. The Islamic killers then shot up a kosher supermarket which had nothing to do with the magazine, simply to kill Jews.
A couple of months later in 2015, Pamela Geller held a “Draw Muhammed contest” in Texas, and two Muslim extremists shot up the event but were themselves killed. Both the Geller and Charlie Hebdo events were lampooning religion and Islam specifically, but covered under American and French ideals of free speech.
It will be an interesting spectacle to watch campuses with anti-Israel protests have counter-protests with Mohammed featured prominently on their placards with such statements like “Would Muhammed endorse Hamas’s rape of women?” and “What would Muhammed say about Hamas’s shooting the elderly?” Will Ilhan Omar rise to the defense of actual peace advocates the way she defends supporters of genocide?
“We are still in shock at the scope and magnitude of the violence. If words cannot express the pain we feel in witnessing such loss, I cannot fathom that of the families of the victims. My prayers for their comfort have kept me sleepless. What we have just witnessed is a hate crime against an already victimized community, and it violates our principles, both as Americans and as Muslims. I join the millions of Muslims in our country who are repulsed by such an affront to our or any faith.” – Nihad Awad, National Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
These were not the words of the head of CAIR after thousands of Palestinian Arabs invaded Israel and tortured and butchered 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. It was his thoughts shared in an article by Time Magazine after a single Muslim man killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida in June, 2016.
When it came to the October 2023 sadistic killing of Jews, Awad shared on X/Twitter that the Israeli dead deserved their fate: “Palestinians have been experiencing ethnic cleansing by Israel for 75 years [from the founding of Israel in 1948]” and “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
The rape of Jewish women and burning families alive was seemingly not “an affront to our [Islamic] or any faith.” The shooting of Holocaust survivors was not a “hate crime against an already victimized community.” The young Jewish children taken hostage were not in his “prayers for their comfort.”
Leaders of CAIR see Zionists, including American Zionists and people who visit or work with Israel, as “enemies.”
Zahara Biloo, the San Francisco Executive Director of CAIR specifically called out “Hillel chapters on our campuses” and many Jewish groups. She denounced any normalization of interaction with “polite Zionists” whom she falsely claimed are inherently anti-Muslim. “I’m not going to sugarcoat that. They are your enemies,” which include anyone who argues for the continued existence of Israel, including in a two state solution.
CAIR strongly backed Biloo and said that it would “continue to proudly stand by Zahra and all American Muslim leaders who face smears and threats because they dare to express an opinion about Palestinian human rights,” which for CAIR means demanding the destruction of the Jewish State and confronting Zionists.
The leading American-Islamic organization has made clear that it believes that Jews and Zionists are inherently anti-Muslim and the State of Israel is an affront to Islam. For CAIR, Palestinian human rights demand the destruction of Israel, and the group will celebrate the demise of anyone who protects the Jewish State.
Note, for the 2021-2 Congressional election cycle, CAIR gave perfect scores to only a handful of politicians who supported all of its goals: Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA); Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI); Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY); and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). All members of the far-left.
The crowds coming to Jerusalem were enormous during the holy month of Ramadan. Despite ongoing Palestinian terrorism slaughtering many Israeli civilians, Israel facilitated the large Muslim crowds into the Old City of Jerusalem.
Tens of thousands Muslim worshippers pray near the Dome of the Rock at Al-Aqsa mosque compound / Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem on April 17, 2023, on the night of 27 Ramadan, celebrated as Laylat al-Qadr, one of the holiest nights during Ramadan. (Photo by HAZEM BADER / AFP)
On April 17, some 280,000 people in total entered the Temple Mount compound for prayers during Laylat Al Qadr, also known as the Night of Destiny. Police said that the crowds peaked at 130,000 inside the compound at any one time. Noon prayers the Friday before were estimated to have had 250,000 people.
The Israeli government banned all non-Muslims from visiting the site to make it easier for Muslims to reach the compound. Despite the efforts to accommodate prayer, many leading Palestinians turned what should have been a time of contemplation and appreciation, into caustic calls against the Jewish State.
The former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sabri, said at Friday prayers “There is no room for compromise on Al-Aqsa or space for negotiations around it and we will not give up one iota of its land.”
The political-terrorist group Hamas which rules Gaza and makes up a majority of Palestinian parliament issued a statement calling “on international rights and legal groups to condemn and expose Israeli crimes against occupied Jerusalem and its Palestinian population. The Israeli occupation continues to target Palestinian Jerusalemites, by detaining them, banning them from accessing the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Old City, and imposing hefty fines on them, in a bid to force them from the holy city.” The statement further “called on all Palestinians and the Arab and Muslim world to provide the Palestinian population of occupied Jerusalem with all forms of financial and popular support to confront the Israeli occupation and its policies against them.”
Both Israel and Palestinians prove repeatedly that the Jewish State is the only honest and safe caretaker of the holy sites in the holy land.
The United Nations marked the “International Day for the Prevention of Violent Extremism as and when Conducive to Terrorism” on February 12, 2023. To mark the occasion, the head of the U.N., Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres condemned the scourge when he led that “Terrorism is an affront to humanity.”
It is indeed heinous and evil to the core.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, January 2023
The leader of the global body unfortunately then went woke and counterfactual when he called out only one variety of the evil: neo-Nazis.
“Terrorist and violent extremist groups are finding fertile ground on the Internet to spew their vicious venom. Neo-Nazi, white supremacist movements are becoming more dangerous by the day. They now represent the number one internal security threat in several countries — and the fastest growing.“
The neo-Nazis and White Supremacist movements are absolutely evil and dangerous. But they are a small fraction of violent extremism that has infected the world.
In 2020, an estimated 22,847 people were killed by terrorism, below the previous decade annual average of roughly 26,000 deaths. The leading countries were Afghanistan; Nigeria; Congo; and Ethiopia by a wide margin. The countries with the next highest number of deaths from terrorism were Syria; Yemen; Somalia; Mozambique; Burkina Faso; Mali and Iraq.
The data for 2021 from another source listed the worst countries as: Afghanistan; Iraq; Somalia; Burkina Faso; Syria; Nigeria; Mali; Niger; Pakistan; Cameroon; India and Mozambique. An almost identical set of countries.
It may not surprise anyone that the none of these murders were from Neo-Nazis and White Supremacists. By far, the leading cause of deaths from terrorism every year is from the noxious evil of radical Islam.
The leading cause of deaths from terrorism every year is from the noxious evil of radical Islam
The world is so cowed by the power of radical Islamic jihadists that it refuses to confront it, let alone call it out directly. Instead, it bows to its master, as over 25% of the United Nations’ member countries have a Muslim majority which may not take kindly to being called out. So the timid Portuguese U.N. Secretary General gives them cover and beats up Europeans and other western countries.
It is time to admit that the United Nations is hopelessly broken, when it becomes a vehicle to protect the worst regimes in the world.
It is time to admit that the United Nations is hopelessly broken, when it becomes a vehicle to protect the worst regimes in the world.
As we watch Islamic extremism kill tens of thousands of people and decimate societies every year, we bicker about White supremacy and nationalism. It is through that jaundiced lens that leftists at the United Nations and mainstream media berate Israel, blind to the radical jihadist neighbors attempting to destroy the Jewish State, and acutely sensitive to a false notion of White Israeli Privilege (when less than one-third of Israelis are Ashkenazi Jews).
In the 1986 film “Highlander”, immortal demi-gods roam Earth, interacting with people but caring mostly about other immortals. They live knowing that they must confront others like themselves and battle to the death, because in the end, only a single one can exist.
Monotheistic faiths often behave similarly.
Adherents of Christianity, Islam and Judaism have fought each other for supremacy. Many wars demanded death or conversion. As it related to places, the victor often took over holy sites and either demolished them or changed them to the winner’s religion, demonstrating superiority of their God.
Consider the Hagia Sophia in today’s Istanbul, Turkey. The building was originally built as a church around 537CE. When Ottoman Muslims conquered the city in 1453, they converted the church into a mosque. It remained so until the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, when shortly thereafter, the secular Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk turned it into a museum. In the summer of 2020, Islamist Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan converted it back to a mosque, angering much of the western world.
Christianity and Islam battled for superiority in Europe and in the holy land for centuries. From 1095 to 1291 the church waged several crusades. The demand for armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem set the region on fire, with the paltry number of Jews in Europe and holy land left as victims on both sides.
When Christians ultimately failed to take Jerusalem, they turned to purge the Jews and Muslims of Europe. Various edicts preceded and followed the expulsion of the Jews of Spain in 1492 and in Portugal in 1497. Thereafter, Muslims were effectively routed from the peninsula, virtually completely by early in the 17th century.
Polytheists fought with monotheists as well. When Alexander the Great came to the Jewish holy land, he Hellenized the region. When the Romans came a few hundred years later, they destroyed the Second Jewish Temple and installed pagan gods. They renamed Jerusalem and the region in an attempt to vanquish the monotheist Jews.
Jews however, have uniquely not waged religious wars. While Christians and Muslims have long histories of invading lands and forcing people of different faiths to convert, Jews have no such imperative.
The reason is quite simple and completely misunderstood by non-Jews. While most religions contend that their belief system is supreme and that adherents to other faiths are either an affront to their god(s) and/or are doomed to damnation, Judaism is a particular faith, not a universalistic one. It does not demand that people of other faiths convert or that they are damned. It was always designed to be a local religion in the land of Israel for a specific tribe – the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Other faiths are free to worship as they desire.
The notion seems conceited to many and has sometimes led to anti-Semitism.
How can a supreme God produce a bible just for one community? If that were true and others want such relationship with God, they need to become the new Jews. This replacement theology placed Christians as the successors to Jews through Jesus. Islam held much the same, replacing Christians via their prophet Mohammed.
The Jews contend that they didn’t supplant any faith nor have they been supplanted. However, they do object to their religious places of worship being destroyed.
While Christians and Muslims may seek to place the Dome of the Rock and al Aqsa Mosque on top of the Jewish Temple Mount to show that their faith is supreme and replaced the old, Jews have no such dogma. There is no desire to “supplant”; just to have their own place of worship once again.
The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound. The Dome of the Rock has the gold dome in center right. Slightly below it is the al Aqsa Mosque with a gray dome.
Today, Islamic fanatics shout that “al Aqsa is in danger” to foment a jihad against the Jews. It is based on tenets not found in Judaism but in their monotheistic faith. Jews simply want to pray on the Temple Mount and rebuild their temple, but not to confront or show superiority to Islam.
The sentiment is captured in the Jewish Bible in a section read on the eighth day of Passover, in the book of Isaiah. While Isaiah 11:6 is famous, reading through to ninth sentence captures the fuller message:
6 The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
That “holy mountain” is the Jewish Temple Mount. It can house the monotheistic faiths that believe in peace and coexistence. “The wolf will live with the lamb” will occur when the world’s great religions internalize their common bonds and stop fighting each other for dominance. Together, “they will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” enabling the Third Jewish Temple to exist beside the al Aqsa Mosque.
The Islamic false perception that al Aqsa is in danger is rooted in its own conception of religious superiority and how it is manifest. When Muslim leaders internalize that Judaism has no such ethos, hopefully it will welcome the building of the Third Jewish Temple and help realize the vision of the prophet Isaiah.
As Passover, Easter and Ramadan all converged this year, tensions ran hot in Jerusalem. In that backdrop, Reuters seemingly wanted to fan some Arab fire against the Jews.
In an article called “Jordan’s king agreed with U.S. Biden on need to defuse Jerusalem tension – state media,” Reuters acted as the Jordanian mouthpiece without fact-checking anything in its coverage. It wrote that Jordan’s King “Abdullah, whose Hashemite dynasty is the custodian of Muslim and Christian sites in the Old City, has spearheaded a diplomatic offensive to put pressure on Israel, whom he blames for the escalation at the Aqsa compound, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.”
This is not true.
The 1994 Israeli-Jordanian Peace Treaty, Article 9.2 stated “In this regard, in accordance with the Washington Declaration, Israel respects the present special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in Muslim Holy shrines in Jerusalem. When negotiations on the permanent status will take place, Israel will give high priority to the Jordanian historic role in these shrines.”
Jordan is not a “custodian” but has a special role, and it only relates to Muslim sites.
The deeply flawed Reuters article also noted that “The confrontations since the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that have coincided with Passover have raised religious passions amid international concerns about a slide back into a wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Why did the article point out ‘the Muslim holy month’ but declined to comment about the ‘Jewish holy week’ of Passover? Why did the article fail to state that Judaism calls for Jews to visit the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem three times a year – including Passover – but there is no such specific call for Muslims to visit Jerusalem EVER.
The article failed to note that 150,000 Palestinians visited the Jewish Temple Mount/ al Aqsa Mosque on Friday – a single day total – when the entire population of Jews that ascended to the Jewish Temple Mount was a mere 4,200 people OVER AN ENTIRE WEEK.
Instead, Reuters concluded the article with this unchallenged piece of biased inanity:
“Jordan and fellow Arab states accused Israel in a meeting on Thursday in Amman of restricting the right of worship of Muslims while allowing ultra-nationalist Jews under police protection to enter the mosque compound.“
Reuters did not describe the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who visited the site as Islamic radicals, but opted to paint a handful of Jews visiting their holist location during the holiday which specifically calls for them to visit, as “ultra-nationalist Jews.” A reader is directly led to the incorrect conclusion that a handful of Jews has spurred the problem, rather than Hamas and Hezbollah which have been urging violence in the holy city.
Jews fill the Western Wall Plaza (in lower center of photograph) during Passover as they are limited in their access to their holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount
The article also failed to report that the Israeli government, succumbing to threats of more Islamic radical violence, banned Jews from visiting the Mount during the remaining days of Ramadan, even while Passover was still being celebrated.
Reuters hit piece on religious Jews and elevation of the stature of the small Jordanian king was a disgraceful piece of journalism. That its smears get picked up and reprinted by media outlets around the world makes it a global Jewish blood libel.
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