Boat packed with as many as 750 fleeing migrants capsizes off Greece in June 2023
Since 2014, the United Nations International Organization of Migrants estimates that 56,912 migrants and refugees are dead or missing. This year is set to be perhaps the deadliest on record, as thousands of people flee their homes due to war or poverty.
The United Nations and media spend a scant moment mourning these poor souls. Men, women and children who reluctantly ran to far-away lands in pursuit of peace were quickly forgotten. No actions are taken to prevent the frequent tragedies.
The United Nations has other priorities:
For synthetic “refugees” over real refugees; and
For people who seek to murder over defenseless souls
The UN has dressed up Palestinian Arabs who have been living in the same land for generations, as a special class of “UNRWA Refugees”. It pardons their jihadi violence against Israeli Jews as a matter of routine and concocted resolutions.
The media closes its eyes and minds to the facts that Palestinian Arabs are not refugees who do not deserve a special UN agency accompanied by a promise of invading a UN member state. Politicians suspend belief that they favor a two state solution while simultaneously advocating that the Jewish State shouldn’t be Jewish and forced to take in millions of Arabs from a few miles away.
The UN held a week-long conference on counterterrorism in June, and subsequently informed Israel that only the rest of the world can combat the global scourge. Israel must accept jihadi violence as penance for its existence.
The UN Security Council is now scheduled to meet to invert reality in discussing Israel’s successful raid to eliminate terrorists in Jenin but will not convene to dismantle UNRWA camps in Gaza and the West Bank which serve as the incubators for Muslim extremists.
It is terribly sad that politicians, the United Nations and media do not attend to peaceful people in actual dire need. It is a horrific state of reality, that the world supports jihadi extremists living next to Israel in their quest to kill Jews and the only Jewish State.
For many years, Palestinian Arab leaders warned Israel against dividing the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem in time and place. That reality may be coming closer.
The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound
For centuries, Muslims had prevented Jews from going to their holy places in the Jewish holy land. In both Hebron and Jerusalem, Muslims declared that Jewish holy sites were purely Islamic and denied Jews any rights. That changed after the neighboring Arab states conspired to destroy Israel in June 1967 but lost control of those two holy cities which Jordan had illegally annexed in 1950.
After the 1967 war, Jews were finally able to go into the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs, which Muslims call the Ibrahimi Mosque. Israel made the site available to both Jews and Muslims, and in June 2023, opened an elevator to facilitate visitation by handicapped persons in a broad effort of inclusivity.
While Israel took over the Old City of Jerusalem in the same June 1967 Six Day War, it handled the situation very differently, giving administrative control of the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Mosque Compound to the Jordanian Waqf, while Israel maintained security control. Even after eastern Jerusalem, including the site, was officially annexed as part of Israel, the Waqf continued to forbid Jews from praying at their holiest location, even as they allow a small number of Jewish visitors.
In October 2014, a Palestinian attempted to assassinate Rabbi Yehuda Glick because he advocated for peace and equal rights for both Jewish and Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount. In response, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority declared “Israel’s leaders are making a big mistake if they think they can turn back history, to impose a reality, and to divide the al-Aqsa Mosque [into separate prayers times and areas] as they divided the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.”
Rabbi Glick survived the four bullets, and was nominated to the Israeli Knesset in 2016, continuing to advocate for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount. His efforts resulted in few practical changes, however, the number of Jewish visitors to the holy site has steadily increased since that time.
For his part, Mahmoud Abbas continues to warn Israeli leaders about Jewish prayer and dividing the Temple Mount. In April 2022, Jordanian politicians joined in condemning then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s non-controversial comments that Jews, Christians and Muslims should all be free to celebrate their holidays (Passover, Easter and Ramadan), which Arab leaders viewed as a precursor to dividing the Temple Mount.
The back-and-forth continues.
In early June 2023, Amit Halevi, a member of Knesset from Likud, put forward an official proposal to divide the religious site between Jews and Muslims, calling for the southern 30% of the compound – which includes the al Aqsa Mosque – to be for Muslims, and the northern 70% – which includes the Dome of the Rock where the Jewish Temples stood – to be for Jews. The political-terrorist group Hamas declared that such proposal was part of an “Israeli religious war launched by the fascist Israeli government… [and] the Al-Aqsa mosque will remain an exclusively Muslim holy site and the Palestinian people will continue to defend the mosque against Israeli partition and Judaization schemes.” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh voiced concerns about the “order to impose temporal and spatial division in the blessed al Aqsa Mosque. We warn the occupation authorities against taking such a step that would have unpredictable results.”
Most of the media ignored the story, presumably because Halevi is a low level MK without portfolio, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he will uphold the Waqf’s antisemitic “status quo” banning Jewish prayer at the site.
The event may be unreported, but the situation will not remain ignored.
There are competing natural desires which have long brewed in the holy land: for Palestinian Arabs to return into the land of Israel to towns where grandparents had lived; for Jews to pray openly and frequently at their holiest site on the Temple Mount; and to live throughout the area. For years, the United States attempted to keep a lid on those aspirations until President Obama reversed precedent, nodding to Arab migration into Israel (2012), while making it illegal according to international law for Jews to move to the eastern parts of Jerusalem and the holy land (2016), and maintaining the ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.
The “status quo” is not a ban on Jews praying on the Temple Mount but of competing points of tension. The large holes in the holy land dam are readily apparent to everyone. One can ignore them and wait for the fissures to crack open unpredictably, or facilitate the spillway, with some Jews praying openly and discretely at their holiest site.
The latest Palestinian poll of June 14, 2023 showed a familiar preference for violence that has been a constant sentiment for years. Now a new headline has emerged: that Palestinians think Israel will disappear within the next 25 years.
Preference For Violent Jihad
When asked about the most positive things to happen to Palestinians over the past 75 years since the reestablishment of the Jewish State of Israel in the so-called “Nakba catastrophe”, the number one response was the establishment of the terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Second, were the two “Intifada pogroms” which killed over 1,000 Israeli Jews. Trailing those responses was the creation of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) and last, the formation of the more moderate political party, Fatah.
A large majority of 71% are in favor of the formation of the newest terrorist groups “Lion’s Den” and “Jenin Battalion” which sparked the dramatic rise in deaths among both Israelis and Palestinians over the past two years. An incredible 86% of Palestinian Arabs think the terrorist groups should operate outside of the PA. Not surprisingly, with such support, 58% expect “these armed groups to expand and spread to other areas in the West Bank.”
When asked about the most effective means of creating a Palestinian state, “the public split into three groups: 52% chose armed struggle [aka violent jihad] (55% in the Gaza Strip and 49% in the West Bank), 21% negotiations, and 22% popular resistance.”
These findings are not meaningfully different than results of past polls. The alarming question about the preference to kill Jewish civilians inside of Israel was not asked in this latest poll. In March 2023, 61% were in favor of such terrorist attacks (question 70).
The End of Israel
The quarterly Palestinian poll occasionally introduces new questions based on recent events. For example, this poll asked about opinions related to the Iranian-Saudi reproachment. Last poll asked whether people were in favor of killing two Israelis who drove into the town of Huwara (a vast majority were).
In the latest poll, people were asked a more general question about the future of Israel as the country celebrated its 75th anniversary. In response to the question of Israel making it to its 100th anniversary, “two-thirds say Israel will not celebrate the centenary of its establishment, and the majority believes that the Palestinian people will be able in the future to recover Palestine and return its refugees to their homes.”
While the world debates how to set the “peace process” on track and solely blames the Israeli government for the failure of progress, Palestinians have mentally moved on, and see the end of the Jewish State in their lifetimes and its replacement with an Arab country.
ACTION ITEM
While the world debates how to set the “peace process” on track and solely blames the Israeli government for the failure of progress, Palestinians have mentally moved on, and see the end of the Jewish State in their lifetimes.
CONTACT Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-CT) “Palestinians polled themselves once again and not only show a strong preference for violence but see the end of Israel in the near future. Stop efforts to condition aid to Israel.”
The holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel held two parades over the past couple of weeks. One was done by the right-wing and the other by the left-wing. Each side claimed the moral high ground and accused the other of acting in bad faith.
Let’s speak about both honestly.
The Flag Parade
On May 18, thousands of Israelis marched through the streets of Jerusalem carrying Israeli flags to mark the reunification of the city at the end of the 1967 Six Day War. The tremendous pride in country and messianic feel of Jews controlling Judaism’s holiest site for the first time in almost two thousand years was palpable at the time, and many tried to recreate that sense of awe 56 years later.
Marchers near Damascus Gate of Old City during Jerusalem Day, 2023
The parade route into the Old City to the Western Wall could have worked its way through the Jewish Quarter but the nationalist spirit of the marchers directed them through the Arab Quarter, essentially re-educating the Arabs about their defeat. While the march was basically peaceful, roughly 2,500 police officers came to maintain order as past years saw scuffles as the Arabs in the Old City resented the march.
The Gay Pride Parade
On June 1, thousands of Israelis marched through the streets in a gay Pride Parade. While such a parade would have happened without controversy in the liberal and secular city of Tel Aviv, the religious beliefs of devout Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem caused friction.
Thousands of police came to protect the marchers as there were attacks in past years. This year’s event proved peaceful and uneventful.
Some Truths
The Flag and Pride Parades were both legal and unnecessarily provocative. The right wing Jewish nationalists did not need to go through the Arab Quarter and the left wing secular Jews did not need to march through religious sections of the country. Each sought to drive home their own point that they are free and able to hold such events, and enjoyed rubbing the spectators’ noses in the fact.
The left-wing media only focused on the right-wing in both cases. CNN described a “contentious flag march” in which a” number of Palestinian shopkeepers told CNN before the event that they would close their shops in the Old City for fear of attacks by far-right Jewish nationalists.” The New York Times covered the “Conflict With the Far Right Shrouds Jerusalem’s Pride Parade,” with the backdrop of “the most hard-line and religiously conservative government in the country’s history took power.”
Both the right-wing and left-wing held their parades in Jerusalem being proud and provocative, yet the mainstream opinion shapers could only find fault with right-wing and religious Jews. It fed their macro narrative of right-wing White Supremacist Jews as the elite amongst the bigots, despite being the most persecuted group in the world.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a message on March 30, 2023 related to the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. He offered words for the whole world.
How easily hate speech — a key indicator of the risk of genocide — turns to hate crime. How complacency in the face of atrocity is complicity. And how no place, and no time is immune to danger — including our own.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
Unfortunately, the global body – as well as many countries and people – turn a blind eye to the rampant hate speech in Palestinian society.
On May 15, 2023, the United Nations gave a platform to the acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The man who wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial gave a master class in antisemitism.
Abbas claimed that Jews have no history in the Jewish historical homeland. He said that Jews never even had a single temple in Jerusalem.
Abbas said that Jews were implanted into the land of Israel by the British and Americans who wanted to export the Jews which they despised. He argued that doing so made the Jews indebted to their western benefactors to serve as a colonial outpost.
Abbas called the Jews a bunch of liars – on par with Nazi Germany’s propagandist Joseph Goebbels, who was instrumental in the genocide of European Jewry.
Abbas’s performance was a reminder of his past antisemitic tirades when he praised the Arab assassins of Jewish civilians, calling them “martyrs” for the Palestinian cause, who will always get pay-to-slay money, even “if we had only a penny left.“
Horrifically, the United Nations was not “complacent in the face of these atrocities” but an active participant.
The UN continues to give the Palestinian leader the floor to air his antisemitic vitriol. It continues to push money into the terrorist enclave of Gaza, headed by Hamas, with the most antisemitic governing charter ever written. The global forum echoes Palestinians’ demands for apartheid, denying Jews the basic right to pray at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount, and to live in the center of their holy land.
Palestinian hate speech was once again given a platform at the United Nations, inflaming danger to Jews everywhere, and “the risk of genocide.”
On May 21, 2023, the U.S. State Department issued a statement about Israeli “Settlements in the West Bank.” It read:
“We are deeply troubled by the Israeli government’s order that allows its citizens to establish a permanent presence in the Homesh outpost in the northern West Bank, which according to Israeli law was illegally built on private Palestinian land. This order is inconsistent with both former Prime Minister Sharon’s written commitment to the Bush Administration in 2004 and the current Israeli government’s commitments to the Biden Administration. Advancing Israeli settlements in the West Bank is an obstacle to the achievement of a two-state solution.”
There were many things covered in this paragraph:
Israeli law about whether building in the “Homesh outpost” is legal;
The 2004 exchange of letters between Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon and U.S. President George W. Bush;
The current Israeli commitments to the Biden Administration; and
Whether Israeli Jews “living in the West Bank is an obstacle…to a two-state solution.”
Israeli Law
First, it’s a bit rich for the United States to make comments about Israeli law. I cannot imagine that the U.S. would take kindly to any country opining on its rulings on imminent domain, seizing land to build a wall with Mexico, or any other real estate matter.
While Israeli courts have ruled against approving building on privately owned land, the courts have also legalized previously unauthorized settlements. Countries modify their rulings depending on societal needs of the moment. For example, the Israeli courts had approved Israeli taking ownership of the homes they own in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem but then suspended the eviction of the Arab squatters because of violence. Real estate in Israel is a matter of law as well as of security and order.
The 2004 Exchange of Letters
In the middle of the 2000-2005 Arab pogroms which killed over 1,000 Israelis, Israeli PM Sharon decided that he was going to build a security barrier to stop terrorism emanating from the West Bank, and to pull all Israelis out of Gaza. In exchange for these actions, U.S. President Bush issued a letter in support of the actions with U.S. commitments.
The State Department just referenced the 2004 Sharon letter because while Sharon understood there was no chance for peace with Palestinians at that time, he “decided to initiate a process of gradual disengagement with the hope of reducing friction between Israelis and Palestinians.” Sharon’s “Disengagement Plan” called for pulling all Israelis out of Gaza “as well as other military installations and a small number of villages in Samaria,” which included the town of Homesh and three other nearby villages.
The Israeli Disengagement Plan was not a “commitment” as described in the latest State Department statement. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Sharon made clear that it “represents an independent Israeli plan” designed to create space between the parties while terrorism was ongoing.
In addition to incorrectly calling the dismantling of Homesh a commitment, the State Department ignored U.S. commitments that Bush made to Sharon in that exchange of letters.
The Bush letter repeatedly stated that the U.S. is committed to fight Palestinian terrorism and incitement and that it will work to “prevent the areas from which Israel has withdrawn from posing a threat.” That was in 2004 and Israel left Gaza the following year in 2005.
Then what happened?
The Palestinians held elections in 2006 under America’s watch, and the terrorist group Hamas won a majority of Parliament. In 2007, Hamas routed Fatah and took control of Gaza, and proceeded to launch wars against Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014 and more recently.
So much for America’s commitment to preventing the abandoned areas “from posing a threat.”
Further, in another part of his letter, Bush stated clearly that “in light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli populations centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.” In plain English, that meant that the United States acknowledged that Israel will annex sections of the West Bank.
Yet the Obama Administration broke that commitment to Israel when it allowed United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass in 2016, making it illegal for Israelis to live east of “the armistice lines of 1949.”
In short, Israel made no commitments in the 2004 letter while the United States trampled on its commitments to Israel.
Current Commitment to Biden Administration
Israel met with the U.S. and Palestinian Authority in Egypt in March 2023 and issued a joint statement which covered a number of issues including “an Israeli commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for 4 months, and to stop authorization of any outposts for 6 months.” As Homesh was an existing settlement until it was dismantled in 2005, it is debatable whether allowing its redevelopment runs counter to Israel’s statement.
It should be noted that the Palestinian Authority has completely ignored its stated March 2023 commitments, as it continues to incite violence.
Jews As Obstacle to Two State Solution
Roughly 25% of Israeli citizens are non-Jews, so the notion that a theoretical Arab state of Palestine cannot be viable with a small percentage of Jews is ridiculous. It can only be viewed as an “obstacle” to two states if the Palestinian Authority refuses to have any Jews living in the country.
And if Palestine can only be created as a Jew-free state, it should never be admitted to the United Nations or recognized by any country.
Road in Judea and Samaria
The State Department is “deeply troubled” by Israeli action in the village of Homesh because its accounting of history and facts are deeply flawed. More generally, if the U.S. assumes that a Palestinian State must be Jew-free, it should adamantly oppose its existence.
Should pressure mount on Israel to evacuate Homesh again, it should turn to those agitators and get their support for the Israeli Jews to take ownership of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah.
On May 10, 2023, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sponsored a resolution, “H.Res.388 – Recognizing the ongoing Nakba and Palestine refugees rights” which was co-sponsored by five fellow extremist members of Congress, Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Cori Bush (D-MO). The same cohort pushed a resolution last May called “H.Res.1123 – Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights.” The two bills are similar but by no means the same, and the latest version reveals the deep toxicity of the current anti-peace anti-Israel narrative.
The insertion of one word in the resolution’s title – “ongoing” – captures much of the difference between the 2022 and 2023 versions of the bill. While the 811-word, May 2022 Res.1123 gave an alternative version of actual history, whitewashing the crimes committed by Palestinians in the 1930s and 1940s when it worked with the Nazis in Europe and British in Palestine to facilitate the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Holocaust and to launch a war on Jewish survivors in Palestine, the 2023 resolution claims that the war of Israel’s independence is very much part of the Palestinian psyche TODAY.
The May 2023 1,327-word Res.388 claims the so-called “nakba” “is the root cause” of the Palestinian conflict and that there will not be peace “without addressing the Nakba and remedying its injustices toward the Palestinian people.” The resolution holds the United States accountable that it must force the State of Israel to accept millions of Stateless Arabs whose parents or grandparents left Israel while they waited for five Arab armies to perform a second genocide of Jews in a generation.
Both the Democratic and Republican Parties were historically very clear on the issue of “refugees.” The 2008 Democratic platform specifically said “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 2004 letter from U.S. President George W. Bush to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said almost the exact same, that “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 entire idea of a two state solution is a Jewish state and an Arab state, not a bi-national state of Israel and an Arab state of Palestine.
Palestinian polls, as recently as January 2023, show that Palestinians believe that the conflict started with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, promoting a Jewish State, together with the immigration of Jews. Relatively few blame the conflict on the 1948 or 1967 wars. It is the presence of Jews that is the core problem for Palestinian Arabs, not Arabs being unable to live in the same apartments as their grandparents had lived in.
If the 2023 resolution simply misrepresented the core of the conflict or misquoted bipartisan policy for the descendants of Palestine refugees, that would be bad enough. The resolution went much further.
The resolution called upon the president to use the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention Act of 2018, named after a Jewish Holocaust survivor, against the Jewish State in regards to its treatment of Arabs. The fact that Hamas, a political-terrorist group governs half of the Palestinian Arabs and has over half of the seats in the Palestinian parliament is ignored, as is its antisemitic charter which calls for a jihad on Jews and destruction of the Jewish State. Today, nearly two-thirds of Palestinians (61%) support killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. Somehow, this resolution turns an act meant “to prevent and mitigate acts of genocide and other mass atrocities against civilians” AGAINST THE DEFENDERS OF CIVILIANS IN FAVOR OF THE PERPETRATORS.
Nearly two-thirds of Palestinians (61%) support killing Jews inside of Israel, but Rep. Tlaib and her antisemitic squad want to use the Elie Wiesel Genocide Prevention Act to protect Arabs killing Jews
The “Nakba” was a self-inflicted event in the 1940s when Arabs rejected coexistence with Jews and launched a war to destroy Israel, which they fortunately lost. Outrageously, on the 75th anniversary of the rebirth of the Jewish State, six extremist members of congress put forward a resolution asking the United States to join the Arabs to continue their fight to end the Jewish State.
ACTION ITEMS
EMAIL REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN (NY16) “Your ongoing extremism and co-sponsorship of an ‘ongoing Nakba’ resolution at Israel’s 75th anniversary is both a whitewashing of the contribution of Palestinians to the deaths of thousands of Jews in the 1940s, and a hostile action to dismantle the only Jewish state today.”
EMAIL SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY) “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”
EMAIL SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY) “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”
EMAIL WHITE HOUSE “The Nakba Resolution put forward by two New York Democratic members of congress is appalling and offensive. To mark the rebirth of the Jewish State in the shadow of the Holocaust in this way, as nearly two-thirds of Palestinians polled say they are in favor of killing Jewish civilians in Israel is sickening.”
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.
Three leaders of the terrorist group, Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) were assassinated by the Israeli military this week. As such, on May 10, The New York Times decided to devote an article to inform readers about the organization.
The Times’ description stands in sharp contrast to that supplied by the US State Department.
Issue
NY Times
State Department
Year founded
1980s
1970s
Purpose
“to fight the Israeli occupation“
“committed to the destruction of Israel and to the creation of an Islamic state in historic Palestine, including present-day Israel.”
Backers
N/A
“PIJ receives financial assistance and training primarily from Iran. PIJ has partnered with Iran- and Syria-sponsored Hizballah to carry out joint operations.”
History
Limited to last summer, when “Israeli military began the hostilities when it assassinated a leader of Islamic Jihad…. Islamic Jihad responded…”
“PIJ terrorists have conducted numerous attacks, including large-scale suicide bombings, against Israeli civilian and military targets…”
New York Times and the U.S. State Department offer starkly different descriptions of Palestine Islamic Jihad
According to the anti-Israel NY Times, PIJ merely fights “the Israeli occupation,” while the State Department correctly notes that the group is “committed to the destruction of Israel.” The gap in understanding the nature of the group is enormous, and renders the entire review by the Times as a deliberate whitewashing of the terrorists’ activities.
The paper went on to describe the attacks of last summer, which it pinned on Israel killing one of its leaders making PIJ simply retaliating to the Israeli provocation. The paper paints Israel as the aggressor, when in fact, as described by the State Department, PIJ has long conducted “numerous attacks, including large scale suicide bombings, against Israeli civilians.”
All of the terrorist group’s activities are bankrolled and supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is actively pursuing nuclear weapons. That important point about a group which launches thousands of missiles into Israel, went unmentioned in the Times article.
The New York Times correctly labeled PIJ as a terrorist group but turned the narrative upside down, making Israel the aggressor against an organization merely opposed to “Israeli occupation.” To read the Times, one might think that the State Department incorrectly labels PIJ as a terrorist group instead of Israel, a narrative being orchestrated by left-wing extremists in Congress, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.
Well before the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) launched the First Intifada in 1987, and the guerilla war from 2000 to 2004 which they whitewash calling the “Second Intifada” to make it sound like a peaceful uprising, the Arab world launched the “Intafa”, expelling Jews from Muslim countries.
After Israel declared itself as an independent country on May 14, 1948, the surrounding Arab nations invaded the Jewish State. Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and Saudi Arabia sent their armies and weapons to annihilate the 650,000 Jews in Israel. Meanwhile, the rest of the Arab World set their sites on driving 850,000 Jews from their lands.
The Muslim Arab countries of Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen ethnically cleansed their countries of Jews over the next decades. The Muslim (non-Arab) countries of Afghanistan and Iran would do much the same.
In 1948, Palestinian Arabs sought to kill 650,000 Jews and to destroy Israel but failed in their goals which they call a “nakba” meaning “catastrophe.” However, the greater Arab world succeeded in ethnically cleansing 850,000 Jews from their countries starting in that year, in their “intafa” or effort to “expel” the Jews.
Palestinians ask that you remember their failure and forget their success, a red flag of a deep victim mentality. It’s a thin veneer masking the attempted genocide and successful ethnic cleansing of Jews which they continue to pursue. Ideally, they urge, with your support.
First One Through 