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.
Shoplifting has become de facto legal in California. Mobs enter shoe stores, pharmacies, department stores and ransack the location of its goods. The scene has become rampant after the state’s left-wing government passed laws minimizing the theft of items below $950 to only a misdemeanor, which police do not prosecute.
Store owners are helpless to confront the new normal. They have instructed their security officials to no longer confront shoplifters and allow the lawlessness to run amuck. The lack of consequences has enshrined anarchy, with hundreds of brazen store invasions in the state occurring monthly.
Jews in the United States and Israel suffer personal assaults under the common umbrella of immunity.
University professors are granted tenure and cannot be fired unless there are particularly outrageous actions. Knowing this, people like Columbia professor Joseph Massad tells students that the Jews in the Bible are actually “Palestinian Hebrews.” He shared his feelings of “jubilation and awe” about the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel. He and other professors routinely hold classes that Jews have no history in the holy land and are engaged in a project of “European Settler Colonialism.“
No worries. Columbia has Massad teach a class on Zionism.
Antisemitic and anti-Israel Columbia University professor teaches course on Zionism
Liberal governments and organizations started taking positions that “over-policing” of majority-minority groups like Blacks was systemic and a key issue in holding minority groups down after the death of George Floyd in May 2020. The Southern Poverty Law Center made this clear in October 2020 when it essentially removed Black hate groups from its database because it may have been used to “justify the over-policing and surveillance of communities of color.” Black “separatist” movements would no longer be classified as hate groups because of society’s power imbalance; they were just punching up “because they oppose a white supremacist power structure.”
Blacks were granted immunity from being called racists, to commit non-hate crimes against Whites.
In San Francisco in 2018, the school board voted to rename schools which might be perceived to carry “white supremacy,” which included removing the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Abraham Lincoln from the schools. At the same time, they voted to teach the students Arabic with an external group that called Israel an “apartheid state” that engages in “colonialism” which should be free “from the river to the sea.”
Anti-Zionism as well as denial of Jewish history and rights was being instilled into the fabric of the future. Don’t like it? Too bad. Teachers’ unions are fighting hard to keep parents out of the classroom.
Los Angeles teacher unions organize for anti-Israel indoctrination
Good luck trying to topple the teachers’ unions which are a specialized protected class by Democrats. They are free to act with impunity as they have carte blanche immunity.
This happens constantly at the United Nations. Its facilities are considered “inviolable” so Gazans and terrorists use them to store and fire rockets at Israel – whose schools are not “inviolable.” Tens of thousands of Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) join UNRWA to get immunity, free to collaborate with a host of Palestinian terrorist groups. They believe they can rape as a form of “resistance,” blessed by the UN which has canonized every “refugee.”
The head of the United Nations made clear that this protected class of people have immunity, and Israel cannot judge or punish the rapists and murderers. The Palestinian Arabs are free to carry out their barbarism with impunity.
It is a sad truism that social unrest bleaches racism and antisemitism. But that is just the start.
The granting of broad immunity to particular people because they are viewed as deserving of special protection appears noble, only at first glance. Empathy that enables and encourages lawlessness comes for the Jews. Always.
It has now been revealed that Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told the administration of Columbia University to “keep heads down” and ride out the controversy of antisemitism on campus. He said that issue of rampant Jew hatred were “political problems are really only among Republicans,” and that Jews and the country would soon move on.
To unpack those statements, the most powerful Democratic politician outside of the Executive branch dismissed the Jew-hatred at Columbia despite one of the rabbis on campus telling Jewish students to go home, “no one should have to endure this level of hatred, let alone at school.” He encouraged the university to do nothing to assist the beleaguered Jews, and that once Democrats took over the House of Representatives, university presidents would no longer be dragged to Washington.
Others also believe that only Republicans cared about the systemic Jew hatred at American universities. Rep. Virginia Foxx, Chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said that Democrats would drop investigating Jew hatred at universities should they win the House in the November 2024 election.
Schumer’s suggestion that leaders wait out setbacks in attacking Jews has precedent.
During Donald Trump’s term in office, former Secretary of State John Kerry under Democratic President Barack Obama passed a message to Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority “that he should stay strong in his spirit and play for time, that he will not break and will not yield to President [Donald] Trump’s demands.” Kerry predicted that Trump would last a single term and then a Democratic Administration would go easy on the PA, and apply hard pressure on Israel.
Sen. Chuck Schumer and Secretary of State John Kerry discuss the Iranian nuclear deal in 2015
Democrats know that Jews are a minority-minority, a very small and forgiving people. The old guard Democratic leaders like Schumer and Kerry believe that Jews’ ongoing quest for “tikkun olam / repairing the world” would include self-annihilation, if so required. They believe they know history that Jews (non-Orthodox at least) will look past any insult and cleave to the Democratic Party regardless of actions. Jews will give up land, rights and dignity just as they handed over the Judaism’s holiest site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, if peace so dictated.
The new generation of Democratic leaders is less convinced. It is waging a war to strip Jews of power, position, wealth and property in a broad redistribution to majority-minority groups like Blacks, as chanted by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, and their sponsor at Justice Democrats.
The cleft in the Democratic Party between the old and new guards is a tactical decision whether to wait for Jews to hang themselves or to give clearance to rob, rape and murder them immediately. Regrettably – no, frighteningly – the party’s view of Jews has been buried under an avalanche of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) that elevates Victims of Preference, even when those groups are directly coming for Jews.
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.
On December 21, 2020, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed Tor Wennesland to be the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. The appointment was headlined over and over again in the official UN announcement. However, Wennesland was also appointed as Guterres’s Personal Representative to The Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, which was not highlighted.
Wennesland’s appointment as the UNSG’s representative to the PLO and PA has made his involvement in the “Middle East Peace Process” a sham. He has shown favoritism to the Palestinian Arab point of view repeatedly, and made his official coordinator for the peace process completely biased and unworkable.
Wennesland’s horrific bias was most glaring in the immediate aftermath of Hamas’s brutal slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel and abduction of over 250 hostages. On the day after the savage massacre, Wennesland said the “priority now is to avoid further loss of civilian life & deliver much needed humanitarian aid to the Strip.” His “priority” was not on Israeli hostages. His “priority” was not on wounded Israelis. His “priority” was not on securing the safety of Israelis. His “priority” was not no bringing Hamas terrorists to justice. The UN Secretary General’s priority was on Gazans.
Wennesland repeated his priorities for Gazans a few days later on October 11, not on the Israeli victims.
When the Hamas mastermind of the October 7, 2023 massacre was finally killed a year later, Wennesland would simply “take note of the killing” and not call it a “watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism,” the way Ban Ki Moon stated about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. That’s because Guterres thinks that Hamas speaks for the Palestinian people, as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said specifically “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
On October 2, 2024, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz decided to bar Guterres from the country because of Guterres’s anti-Israel statements and actions, the last being Guterres refusal to condemn Iran’s launching of 180 missiles at Israel. Guterres later condemned the attack and the UN Security Council said it continued to back Guterres.
Yet the fact remains that Guterres has surrounded himself with people who support Hamas and the PLO more than Israeli civilians. His gross bias and ineptitude has led to the worst loss of life in the region in centuries.
As well as a horrible spike in antisemitism around the world.
Another Guterres antisemitic/anti-Zionist ally is Francesca Albanese, the UN’s “Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967.” She has repeatedly been condemned for antisemitic remarks, including that Jews have no history in the holy land and are “colonizers.” UN Watch has tracked her comments supporting Hamas and their “resistance” against Israelis and the ADL has monitored her repeated antisemitism and Holocaust distortions.
The United Nations – spearheaded by its Secretary General – is endorsing a war against a member state and normalizing a violent jihad against Jews everywhere. The United States should call for the immediate removal of Guterres as well as his henchmen and women, or announce that it is defunding the global body and closing the headquarters in New York City.
Watch Holocaust denier and Hamas promoter Francesca Albanese talk at the September 2024 webinar at Brown University below. She will be speaking throughout the US in the coming weeks.
Alt-left anti-Zionist Jews were once again given a major platform on the anti-Israel Amanpour & Co. on PBS. This week, it was Arielle Angel, Editor-in-Chief of Jewish Currents, a magazine devoted to progressive causes and more increasingly, the destruction of the only Jewish State.
Michelle Martin acted as a fair interviewer and gave Angel numerous attempts to criticize Hamas and rampant antisemitism (6:05). Angel would not take the bait and instead responded (6:55) that “30% of the Jewish community holds views that are consistent with non- or anti-Zionism, and that number rises to 40% for those under 44 [years old].” Angel did not provide any source for her figures. When she went for a source, she quoted deeply antisemitic and anti-Zionist Brown University which claimed that there are close to 100,000 Gazans killed by Israel, a figure which is more than two times quoted by Hamas.
At 8:30, Martin asks Angel to define Zionism. Angel didn’t answer and instead simply insisted that Zionism and Judaism are completely distinct, “there was a Judaism before Zionism and there will be one after. (9:15)”
Pressed by Martin again at 10:00 to define anti-Zionism, the core of Angel’s narrative, Angel was flummoxed. She offered that Zionism is “hazy” as “a marker of belonging without a firm definition.” She then answered that anti-Zionism for her now means understanding the Palestinian point of view, meaning “apartheid,” “being killed or massacred at will,” and “ethnic cleansing and mass murder.”
Angel went on to say that she is against an “ethnocentrist state” and that millions of Stateless Arabs from Palestine (“SAPs” or “Palestinian Refugees”) should be allowed to move into Israel regardless of what the government of Israel wants. She argued that the world must stop Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza which feels like the silent world which allowed the Holocaust of Jews to transpire in the 1940s.
Martin asked Angel to explain how Israel could allow itself to become a multi-ethnic society when it is completely surrounded by ethno-states, which have also repeatedly gone to war against Israel. Angel replied that Israel isn’t safe now anyway and incorrectly said that Hamas has accepted “1967 borders,” but it’s the Israeli government that wants all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
It would appear that extremist left-wing Jews have deeply internalized the 1988 foundational charter of Hamas which stated in Article 31, “Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam… It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region… The Zionist Nazi activities against our people will not last for long.”
Anti-Zionist left-wing Jews have become the spokespeople for Hamas, advancing narratives and policies to facilitate the destruction of the Jewish State. They wish for Jews to become dhimmis once again, living under the wing of jihadists. It’s a small price for Israeli Jews to pay for the mental health of progressive diaspora Jews.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was censured by a bipartisan Congress for making a statement “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” generally understood to be a demand for the destruction of Israel, a strong American ally in the Middle East. Tlaib defended her comment as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”
What are Tlaib’s parameters for freedom and human rights for all people regardless of faith?
Will Tlaib support Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, complete with a synagogue, much like Muslims have the right to pray at the compound?
Will Tlaib support Jews living throughout the land, including in Bethlehem, Hebron and Jericho, like Muslims are capable of doing?
If so, Tlaib should urge the U.S. administration to work to rescind United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 – allowed to pass by the Democratic administration of President Obama – which specifically made it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines in the Old City of Jerusalem. Such action coming from a Palestinian-American member of Congress would carry particular weight.
If Tlaib says her call for freedom for everyone in the holy land means that Jews can live and pray throughout the holy land, including worshipping on the Jewish Temple Mount, the censure against her should be revoked. If she cannot support full rights for Jews, she is revealed as being an antisemitic jihadist waging a religious war in the holy land.
Have you ever heard of anyone refer to themselves as a Yugoslavian citizen of Slovenia? Of Montenegro? Can you imagine the media using such language for those people?
I am sure that there are some people who live in the various lands of former Yugoslavia – the six republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as the two regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina – who are not happy with the current configuration of the region. Some may dislike their ruling government or have been forced to relocate from one part of former Yugoslavia to another to be near kinsmen, maybe Croats moving from Serbia or vice versa.
Former Yugoslavia before being broken up in 1992
But no one uses “Yugoslavian citizen of Croatia” to make the point that they are an ethnic Serb living in Croatia. To do so would mean that they cannot incorporate the actual partition of the country into their worldview, and imagine that they are living in the past, in a pre-Yugoslavian break-up. Those people would be mocked as unable to deal with the dissonance of their current situation to their preferred reality.
Roughly 9% of Montenegro is Bosniak and they refer to themselves as Montenegrin or Montenegrin Bosniaks. Should they call themselves “Yugoslavian citizens of Montenegro,” people might wonder if they were rebels looking to wage war against the current government or mentally unstable.
That is exactly what anti-Israel jihadists have chosen to do, calling Israeli Arabs “Palestinian citizens of Israel.”
Before Israel declared itself a state in May 1948, there were Palestinian Jews, Muslims, Christians, Bedouins and Druze. But after the armies of the neighboring Muslim countries came to pitch battle with the local Muslim Arabs to destroy Israel, the region of Palestine ceased to exist, and became Egyptian-controlled Gaza, Jordanian-annexed West Bank, and the State of Israel. Those were the 1949 Armistice Lines until the Muslim countries waged war against Israel again in June 1967 and lost those regions.
1949 Armistice Lines with Egyptian-controlled Gaza and Jordan’s illegally annexed western bank of the Jordan River
People who discuss an “Ongoing Nakba” like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) think of the 1948-9 war to destroy Israel as an ongoing project. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas calls all of Israel a “painful settlement,” an affront to Muslim-superiority. Tlaib and Abbas want Israeli Arabs to not give any legitimacy to the Jewish State, and to time travel to 1947 when the region of Palestine still existed.
Israeli Arabs aren’t interested.
According to a 2019 Israel Democracy Institute survey, over three-quarters of Israeli Arabs think of themselves primarily as Arab or Muslim, with a nationality of “Palestinian” (13%) and “Israeli” (10%) far behind, and almost indistinguishable.
Muslim women ready to enter the Kotel / Western Wall Plaza (photo: First One Through)
Anti-Israel troublemakers from around the world continue to deny the reality of a thriving State of Israel and use language of “Palestinian citizen of Israel” that imagines that Palestine was once a country, only consisted of Muslim Arabs and still exists underneath the racist veneer of a Jewish State. Such language is not only wildly delusional but a rejection of peaceful coexistence.
When notorious terrorist Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in May 2011, United Nations committees issued various congratulatory statements.
UN Secretary General said “The death of Osama bin Laden, announced by President [Barack] Obama last night, is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism. The crimes of Al Qaeda touched most continents, bringing tragedy and loss of life to thousands of men, women and children. The United Nations condemns in the strongest possible terms terrorism in all its forms, regardless of its purpose and wherever it is committed.”
UN Security Council statement read: “Recalling the “heinous” terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, as well as the numerous attacks perpetrated by the Al-Qaida network around the world, the Security Council welcomed today the news that Osama bin Laden would never again be able to perpetrate such acts of terrorism.”
“The Security Council’s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee welcomes the news on 1 May 2011 that Usama Bin Laden will never again be able to perpetrate acts of terrorism and refers to the Presidential Statement of the Security Council dated 2 May 2011 in this regard.”
Israel did not receive a similar wave of congratulations in successfully killing Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas and chief architect of the gruesome October 7, 2023 massacre. As opposed to the commentary above, the UN used its various panels on October 17 and 18, 2024 to condemn Israel.
In a discussion about “Global Poverty,” Mauritania offered “Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon has led to inhuman conditions, high levels of food insecurity and extreme poverty. Israel has targeted valuable infrastructure, including schools, mosques and churches as well as water and sanitation facilities.”
In a discussion about the “Rule of Law,” Oman “condemned Israel’s bombardment of hospitals, schools and other sites in which Gazan civilians have sought refuge, also warning against pursuing a policy of collective punishment,” while the representative from Palestine said “For 76 years, the Israeli exceptionalism has haunted the development of the rule of law and the advancement of the protection of civilians in an effort to make might right.”
In a discussion about “Machine Autonomy,” the representative from the League of Arab States “proposed an embargo on arms supplies to Israel.”
In a discussion about “Internally Displaced People,” Algeria called Israel a “killing machine,” while a Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression said that Israel was killing journalists “with total impunity” and was alarmed that Israel was attempting to call anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism.
In a discussion about “Colonialism,” Pakistan’s representative said “No Israeli massacre and brutality will extinguish the struggle for freedom and self-determination of the people of Palestine.”
In a discussion about “Food Rights,” a Special Rapporteur on the right to food said “Israel’s war proved to be a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.”
For those scoring at home, the Taliban in Afghanistan and China’s treatment of Rohingya were never mentioned. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was only referenced once in the report on food rights.
For his part, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres admonished Israel about the importance of UN’s military force in Lebanon, which has not prevented Hezbollah from digging tunnels to Israel or stockpiling weapons.
The UN Security Council hasn’t issued any statement since the October 17 killing of Sinwar.
No one at the UN denies that Sinwar planned and called for the massacre of over a thousand people and abduction of hostages. But since they also believe the targeted victims were Jews who perpetually carry some guilt like the mark of Cain, that he is absolved of all crime.
Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof writes about foreign and domestic affairs from a liberal and Arab point of view, honed by his Harvard and American University in Cairo education, and years at the anti-Israel New York Times.
His antipathy for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish State is only matched by his ignorance.
New York Times opinion by Nicholas Kristof on October 20, 2024
Kristof wrote an opinion in the aftermath of Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the savage October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel. He led with a call for the United States to pressure Netanyahu, and repeated the demand throughout his article.
Kristof said that Hamas will never surrender, so it’s up to the United States to apply significant pressure on Israel to declare victory against the unwavering foe. His ignorant view is not supported by polling data. Since the war started, Gazans have lowered their support for war to 36% from 51% right before October 7, 2023. Gazan support for negotiations has more than doubled from 19% in September 2023 to 40% in September 2024.
Similarly, Gazan support for the October 7 massacre dropped dramatically over the last six months from 71% to 39% as the war they initiated has become a dismal failure.
September 2024 PCPSR poll
Kristof continues with the lie that Israel’s defensive war is creating a new “generational threat” from young Gazans seeing the destruction all around them. Yet the opposite is true, that the United Nations educational system has created the “generational threat” of teaching Palestinian Arabs that their future is inside Israel, while Israel’s decisive defensive war is convincing Arabs that violence is not an answer.
Pressure needs to be applied to the UNITED NATIONS, not on Israel, to declare unambiguously that the future for the UNRWA wards lies in Gaza and the West Bank, not Israel; specifically, that there is no ‘right of return’ to homes where grandparents once lived inside Israel. Similar pressure needs to be made on the media to stop platforming lies, particularly from jaundiced woke jihadists.
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Write to Kristof’s assistant spencer.cohen@nytimes.com as well as letters@nytimes.com that Kristof’s views of Israel are disconnected from reality.
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