Background Checks, a Palestinian Military and Israeli “Military Occupation”

Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist and candidate for United States president, has been vocally against the Israeli government which he has called “racist,” and against Israel’s “military occupation” of Palestinian land which denies the Palestinians “dignity.”

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the notions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being a racist, or whether there is a “military occupation,” it requires a certain twisted logic for Sanders to condemn Israel and advocate for Palestinians, while simultaneously advocating for strong background checks in regard to gun safety.

Liberals may note that Sanders spent twenty years opposing any gun control including background checks as a senator from a rural state but he has taken to aggressive background checks now that he is running for president. His campaign specifically calls out:

support [for] “red flag” laws and legislation to ensure we keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and stalkers”

Under current federal law, those convicted of domestic abuse can lose their guns if they are currently or formerly married to their victim, live with the victim, have a child together or are a victim’s parent or guardian. Sanders supported a 2019 amendment expanding the law to stalkers and current or former dating partners. His current campaign pledge of “red flag” laws would further extend those laws to enable law enforcement to seize guns from people who are accused of being a potential threat, even if they have not been convicted of anything.

So Sanders believes that the second amendment of the United States, “to keep and bear Arms,” is not really a right but a privilege, and one which can not only be taken away once convicted by a court, but even with a mere accusation.

Advocates like Sanders argue that such legislation is required to address gun violence – against women in particular – even if it may mean that some Americans are able to own guns while others are not.

Which brings us back to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Sanders objections to Israel.

For decades, the working assumption of a two-state solution included the proviso that a new Palestinian state would be demilitarized, meaning that it would have no standing army. The Trump peace plan advocates for the same, specifically calling for Israel to have full control of border crossings and control of the air. Objectors have stated that such ruling denies Palestinians their dignity and leaves them under Israeli military control. These objectors claim that a Palestinian state without an army is no country at all.

Curiously, many of these detractors in the United States are also progressives who support strict gun control to protect victims and curb violence. However, they excuse the wars, intifadas, stabbings, rockets and bombings of Palestinian Arabs against Israelis. They ignore the incitement to violence and the demonization of Jews from the Arab media and leadership. They discount the antisemitic laws which call for the death penalty for any Arab selling land to Jews. They scoff at polls which show that 93 per cent of Palestinian are antisemitic. For them, the Palestinian Arabs are the victims and any law or aggression they take are purely defensive in nature. It is a “resistance.”

Members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip [File: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

But the reality is clear: Jews are the most persecuted people in history. Arabs have attacked them since they began coming back to the land of Israel in the 1920’s. To this day, the Palestinian Arabs continue to pay people who kill Jews and voted Hamas to 58% of parliament with the most antisemitic charter in the history of the world.

So the future of a possible two-state solution will have Israel controlling Palestine militarily. It may not meet Bernie Sanders’ ideal of Palestinian “dignity,” but there has never been a group which failed a background test so fantastically.


Related First One Through articles:

Losing Rights

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians”

International-Domestic Abuse: Obama and Netanyahu

Israel and Wars

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Half Standards: Gun Control and the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Deal

Empowering Women… To Murder

The New York Times Excuses Palestinian “Localized Expressions of Impatience.” I Mean Rockets.

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

To Serve Jews, United Nations Style

In 1962, the television show The Twilight Zone aired a show called “To Serve Man.” The show featured aliens arriving at the United Nations in New York City who presented themselves as saviors who would bring forth a new era of peace and prosperity for mankind, ending starvation and wars on Earth. Their proposal was greeted warmly, and their manifesto, “To Serve Man,” was understood as a friendly call to service mankind. Only as humans alighted the alien spacecraft to embark on a mission of bi-planet relations, was it revealed that their manifesto was actually a cookbook and humans were on the alien menu.

The friendly face of the United Nations itself is such an alien creature, whose stated mission to service is limited to its authoritarian masses, while it places Jews and the Jewish State in its cross-hairs for devouring.

The United Nations in New York City

The UN was formed at the end of World War II as an outgrowth of the League of Nations. Its new mission was more aggressive than its predecessor, and sought to ensure human rights and promote coexistence as a reaction to the terrible global war and genocide of Jews. But the years after 1945 witnessed the emergence of dictatorships, monarchies and authoritarian regimes around the world which joined the UN, changing its mission to a distorted notion of human rights and decency.

The sole Jewish State became the most targeted country by the United Nations. The various UN agencies advanced specific standing items which called out Israel. So it was a regular day at the UN when the General Assembly passed a resolution in 1975 that equated the national aspiration of Jews as uniquely detestable, with the Zionism is Racism resolution. It was more of the same when the UN Security Counsel declared in 2016 that no Israeli Jews should be allowed to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines.

The hunger for Jews continued in February 2020, as the antisemitic UN added to its menu, featuring not only Jews but also companies that service Jews.

A February 12, 2020 report to the UN Office of Human Rights listed 112 companies which are “involved in certain activities relating to settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” A total of 94 companies are Israeli and the balance are headquartered in six other countries including the United States. American companies listed include Expedia, Trip Advisor and Airbnb.

So imagine the following scenario: an Israeli Jew and and Israeli Arab who both live in the Israeli city of Jaffa decide to move to the Old City of Jerusalem. The United Nations brands the Israeli Jew as an illegal settler, but not the Israeli Arab. When each of them decides to rent a room in their apartment on Airbnb, the action of the Jew is considered a grave human rights issue, but not when the Arab uses the Airbnb service.

This backward Taliban mentality has become a core of the UN, as anti-Zionism fervor has characterized the reestablishment of the Jewish State as an appalling injustice which must be righted by serving it up whole to its rightful Arab owners.


In 1945, Jews welcomed the creation of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In theory and in hope, the new world order was designed to protect everyone including Jews who would be guaranteed the right to own property (Article 17) and pray at Judaism’s holy sites (Article 18). At inception, the UN seemed to be an organization meant to service all of mankind, but like an episode of the Twilight Zone, the UN blueprint became a recipe book to devour Jews, the Jewish State and any person or organization who services Jews.


Related First One Through articles:

Nicholas Kristof’s “Arab Land”

Real and Imagined Laws of Living in Silwan

The Nerve of ‘Judaizing’ Neighborhoods

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

Anti-“Settlements” is Anti-Semitism

The United Nations Bias Between Jews and Palestinians Regarding Property Rights

Google to Stop Displaying Pictures of Israeli Flags in East Jerusalem and West Bank

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

A Review of the Fifteen US Slates for the World Zionist Congress

The World Zionist Congress is holding elections through March 11, 2020. There are fifteen slates running from across the political and religious spectrum. They represent roughly 1,800 individual candidates.

In the last election held in 2015, there were eleven slates representing 1,100 candidates. Reform Judaism took the greatest number of votes by a wide margin, surpassing the combined total of the Conservative and Orthodox slates.

2015 World Zionist Election
United States’ Election Results

Slate Votes Seats
ARZA – Reform Judaism 21,766 56
Mercaz USA – Conservative Judaism 9,890 25
Vote Torah: Religious Zionists 9,594 24
American Forum for Israel 3,773 10
HATIKVAH: Progressive Zionists 3,148 8
ZOA 2,738 7
Zionist Spring 2,696 7
World Sephardic Organization 1,650 4
Alliance for New Zionist Vision 735 2
Green Israel 443 1
Herut North America 304 1

In this WZC election, one of the 2015 slates – Green Israel – did not run again. Two slates modified their names and there are five new slates including Eretz HaKodesh (#1); Dorshei Torah V’Tziyon (#7); Kol Yisrael (#14) and Shas (#15, which was part of Ohavei Zion in the US).

The full list of slates is as follows (with the ordering / numbering having been chosen by the AZM at random):

  1. Eretz Hakodesh: Protecting the Kedusha and Mesorah of Eretz Yisrael
  2. Vote Reform: ARZA Representing the Reform Movement and Reconstructing Judaism
  3. Israel Shelanu (Our Israel)
  4. Orthodox Israel Coalition – Mizrachi: Vote Torah
  5. Vision: Empowering the Next Generation
  6. MERCAZ USA: The Voice of Conservative/Masorti Judaism
  7. Dorshei Torah V’Tziyon: Torah and Israel for All
  8. Hatikvah: Progressive Israel Slate
  9. Ohavei Zion: World Sephardic Zionist Organization
  10. Herut Zionists: The Jabotinsky Movement
  11. ZOA Coalition: Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Torah from Sinai, Make Israel Great (MIG) & National Pro-Israel Partners – Courageously Defending Israel, Sovereignty & the Jewish People
  12. American Forum for Israel
  13. Americans4Israel: Unity, Peace & Security
  14. Kol Yisrael: For the love of Israel – Making Zionism Compelling in the 21st Century
  15. Shas Olami

As in the past election, the main distinction between the slates mostly breaks down according to religious and political philosophy as portrayed on the graphic below.

 

Religiously Oriented
From Most Right to Most Left

Shas Olami (#15)
Eretz Hakodesh (#1)
Orthodox Israel Coalition – Mizrachi (#4)
Dorshei Torah V’Tziyon (#7)
MERCAZ USA (#6)
ARZA-Vote Reform (#2)

Politically Orientated
From Most Right to Most Left

ZOA Coalition (#11)
Herut Zionists (#10)
Israel Shelanu (#3)
Hatikvah (#8)

Outside of Religion and Politics

Kol Yisrael (#14)
Americans4Israel (#13)
Vision (#7)

Many of the groups have a philosophy combining both politics and religion, and only a few have tried to stay out of politics and religion at all such as Americans4Israel.

The Jerusalem Program
and the Deserved Disqualification of Hatikvah (#8)

There are not many requirements to vote in the WZC elections. Most are basic criteria such as being Jewish, 18 years old, a permanent resident of the United States and not having voted in the latest Knesset elections. The more affirmative declaration asks people to accept the “Jerusalem Program.”

The Jerusalem Program was first established in Basel, Switzerland at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and has changed very little since that time. Small modifications were made after significant events in the life of Israel, including modifications in 1951, 1968 and 2004. All modifications were made by consensus.

Key points of the Jerusalem Program highlight the particularity of Israel as the home of the Jewish people. For example:

  • Strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic society…”
  • “Ensuring the future and distinctiveness of the Jewish people by furthering Jewish, Hebrew and Zionist education…”
  • “… representing the national Zionist interests of the Jewish people…”
  • “Settling the country as an expression of practical Zionism.”

The program clearly focuses on Israel as a Jewish State, not a bi-national state. The focus is on Jews, Judaism and Hebrew, not on Arabs, Islam and Arabic.

Yet one of the slates running for the WZC – Hatikvah (slate #8) – opposes those basic principles. Its members include The New Israel Fund, J Street, T’ruah, Americans for Peace Now. The New Israel Fund is actively trying to promote a bi-national state and tear down the distinctiveness of the Jewish State. J Street lobbied the US’s Obama Administration to enable United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which labeled the Old City of Jerusalem as illegal Occupied Palestinian Territory, the very opposite of settling Jews and strengthening the Jewishness of the country. Leaders of T’ruah loudly came to defense of Linda Sarsour, a vocal anti-Zionist. According to the philosophy of the far-leftist groups of Hatikvah, 11 million Palestinian Arab refugees from across the world – including Israel – should similarly have their own “World Palestinian Congress” to direct Israeli money towards Arab priorities inside of Israel.

While the groups in the Hatikvah slate stated they support the Jerusalem Program to get on the ballot, it has the equivalent honesty of the Pope saying he’s Jewish. It is a Trojan horse to break the very Jewishness of the Jewish State.

Suggested Slates

Competing slates hurt each other as there is a defined number of seats available. Two similar parties might end up losing a seat by dividing their votes, so it makes the most sense for everyone to rally around a single slate within a cluster which best represents their preferences.

Below are suggested slates to improve the probability of your vote having impact. While there are fifteen slates running, only six of them should be given serious consideration.

Right Religiously/ Right Politically: Vote Slate #4, Orthodox Israel Coalition. OIC has a proven ability to get votes. Don’t dilute and divide the focus among Shas Olami (#15) and Eretz Hakodesh (#1).

Right Religiously / Left Politically: Vote Slate #7, Dorshei Torah V’Tziyon. There is no other option.

Non-Religious / Right Politically: Vote Slate #11, ZOA. A proven vote-getter, avoid the smaller Herut (#10) and the niche Sephardic (#9) and Russian (#12) groups.

Non-Religious / Left-Politically: Vote Slate #3, Israel Shelanu. As noted above, Hatikvah (#8) should not be allowed to participate in the WZC as its actions and deeds are counter to the Jerusalem Program. The best platform is therefore with Israeli-Americans.

Non-Religious / No Politics: Vote Slate #14 Kol Yisrael. This group is about countering antisemitism and promoting Israel without getting into the common fights around the role of religion and politics. It’s appeal and mission are broad and inclusive. While Americans4Israel slate #14 has roughly the same mission, the two will dilute each other so people should rally around one. Vision, slate #7 is much the same.

Left Religiously / Left Politically: Vote Slate #6 Mercaz USA. While the ARZA Reform movement has been a dominant slate in the WZC for many years, its leadership has spent too much time bashing the government of Israel publicly and not using its platform to advocate for the Jewish State. Meanwhile, the Mercaz Conservative Movement has been a more constructive progressive voice while also demonstrating its ability to attract voices and advance its agenda.

Whatever your leanings, take the time to vote at zionistelection.org


Related First One Through articles:

J Street is Only Considered “Pro-Israel” in Progressive Circles

A Basic Lesson of How to be Supportive

Unity – not Unanimity – in the Pro-Israel Tent

There are Standards for Unity

The Anger from the Zionist Center

The Anti-Israel Community in a Jewish House of Worship

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

Facts and Stats about the World Zionist Congress Elections

The World Zionist Congress, the organization started by Theodor Herzl in 1897, is having elections again through March 11, 2020.

The organization’s continued existence – let alone the election – is seemingly a curiosity. Why continue an assembly whose mission has already been achieved? The dream of Jewish sovereignty in part of the Jewish homeland was reached in 1948, and throughout Jerusalem in 1967. Is the dream of Zionism still unfulfilled? Does it morph over time?

Or is the WZC simply a manifestation of a collective aspiration, no different than Israel’s national anthem, the Hatikvah, which still speaks of “The Hope” of returning to the land of Zion. Does it remain the country’s national anthem to this day because the hope remains unfulfilled as being free doesn’t end with sovereignty but with true enduring freedom, that the hope is sovereignty that stretches over the entirety of the Jewish homeland, or because one doesn’t stop aspiring to something like love, once already in love?

The Election

The American Zionist Movement is in charge of running the elections in the United States. AZM has been around for 80 years and is an umbrella group of 33 Zionist groups. Its staff includes three full-time people and three consultants.

The election is open to every Jew over 18 years old (as of June 30, 2020). It costs $7.50 to register for the elections, down from the $10 fee in 2015, as AZM is striving to increase voter turnout.

At stake is the direction of roughly $1 billion, which is the collective budgets of the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency, JNF-KKL and Keren Hayesod. Various WZC sub-committees will influence the allocation of resources and policies of those organizations. For example, the international program “Birthright” which brings young Jews for a free trip to Israel might either visit Judea and Samaria or be restricted from visiting it depending on whether right-leaning or left-leaning slates get elected to the WZC.

There are fifteen slates in this 2020 election, representing roughly 1,800 candidates with a wide range of viewpoints. A review of those slates can be found HERE.

The WZC Election by the Numbers

The draw of the WZC appears to have faded over the last few decades, at least in the United States. The 56,450 votes cast in 2015 at the last WZC election, was a paltry sum by historical standards. While WZC elections are supposed to be held every five years, it was not held in 2010. In 2006, a total of 75,686 Americans voted in the elections, a total of 88,753 in 2002, and in 1997 the total was 107,832. If those drops of 18%, 15% and 25% between elections look depressing, consider that the 1987 WZC election had 210,957 Americans voting, meaning that during the eventful decade between 1987 and 1997 – those years which included the First Intifada and the Oslo Accords – American apathy towards Israel doubled, if one could use votes in the WZC as a proxy.

Perhaps it is unfair to state that American Jews were distancing themselves from Israel in the 1987 to 1997 decade. The Oslo Accords were controversial for many, and maybe Americans concluded that the concept of the Israeli government considering the views of American Jews when making policy was either historical or a marketing ploy. Just as the national anthem of Israel, “The Hope,” would appear as a more logical dream for people OUTSIDE of Israel than its inhabitants, the idea of being a “free people in our land, the land of Zion and Jerusalem,” may have held – and holds – different meanings for Israeli and Diaspora Jews: for the former it is a dream of daily peace, while for Diaspora Jews it is an aspiration to bond the Jewish collective of the people, religion and land. Zionism means different things to people around the world, and certainly on a daily practical level for Israelis living in a hostile neighborhood. The Israeli government may care about the opinions of Diaspora Jews, but within limits, and certainly as it relates to daily security.

In regards to the WZC elections, the United States is unique in that it reaches out to its Jews to vote for its representatives. Of the 525 seats in the World Zionist Congress at this election, the United States is allotted 152, or 29% of the seats. Roughly 37% of the seats go to Israel and 34% to the rest of the world based very roughly on the world’s global Jewish population. Israel allocates its seats based on the members of Knesset and the countries of the world allow their major Jewish organizations to directly decide on their representatives.

The WZC voter turnout has been spotty. The United States has eleven states with populations which are over two per cent Jewish. These “Jewish states” did not have great turnouts at the 2015 WZC elections, with fewer than half having one percent of their populations voting. Meanwhile, some smaller states like Oklahoma and Arizona had great turnouts in 2015, with 4.9% and 2.9% of the Jewish populations voting, respectively. As a consequence, the Jews of Oklahoma had a greater impact than the Jews of Oregon, even while the Jewish population was less than one-tenth the size.

2015 World Zionist Election
States with Highest Percentage Jewish Population

State Per Cent Jewish Population Per Cent of Jews Voting in WZC
California 3.2% 0.5%
Connecticut 3.3% 0.8%
Washington, D.C. 4.3% 1.6%
Florida 3.3% 0.4%
Illinois 2.3% 1.4%
Massachusetts 4.1% 0.8%
Maryland 4.0% 1.2%
New Jersey 5.9% 1.4%
Nevada 2.7% 0.1%
New York 8.9% 1.0%
Pennsylvania 2.3% 0.7%

The global community got seats according to their Jewish populations. While Israel and the USA got 190 and 145 seats at the 2015 election, respectively, other countries received significantly fewer seats: France (23), Canada (20), England (19), Australia (13) and Argentina and Russia each with 10. There were 25 countries with fewer than ten seats. Some countries received “penalties” from the Zionist Supreme Court which reduced their seats, resulting in Germany and the Netherlands each having no representation.

The political leanings of the various countries’ ruling authorities were clear. France voted 30% of their members to Likud and England 36%, while Australia only allotted 8% of the seats to Likud. Putting the various parties into groupings of Left, Center and Right shows an interesting divide in the Jewish world’s orientation towards their religious and political leanings as shown in the table below:

2015 World Zionist Election
Global Religious and Political Leanings

Left Center Right
Israel 29% 21% 50%
US 61% 5% 34%
ROW 47% 14% 39%

Note: Left consists of Kadima, Mercaz Olami, Zionist Union, Arzenu and Meretz; Center consists of Yesh Atid, Kulanu, Confederation, Over the Rainbow and undefined; Right consists of Likud, Mizrachi, Beiteinu Olami and Ohavei Tzion

Israel is more right-leaning and the United States is much more left-leaning than the rest of the world. Almost no Jews in the US vote for centrist slates, a unique phenomenon.

If you want to have your opinions reflected in the direction of Zionism over the next five years, register and vote at zionistelection.org


Related First One Trough articles:

I am a Zionist. A Deep Zionist. An Amazed Zionist. A Loud Zionist.

The Anger from the Zionist Center

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The Best Palestinian Response to the Trump Initiative is Welcoming Jews to Palestine

US President Donald Trump put forward a new Middle East Framework called “Peace to Prosperity” (P2P). It was the first Middle East framework offered since the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 (API). The API was, not surprisingly, heavily biased towards the Palestinian Arabs’ demands and not Israeli security. It did not advance peace but rather ushered wars from Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014, a war from Lebanon in 2006 and a “stabbing intifada” from the West Bank in 2015.

Unlike the API, Trump’s P2P plan was focused on Israel’s security (and Palestinians’ prosperity), and the Palestinian Authority considered it a non-starter before they even saw it. The acting-President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas has refused to even entertain discussing it.

That is a mistake.

The underlying issue of Israel’s security manifests itself in the plan in a few ways, most notably, that all Palestinian border crossings must be managed by Israel and that a future State of Palestine must be demilitarized. If the PA were to refuse to accept those two principles, there is indeed nothing to discuss regarding any of the other key items for Palestinians such as land, refugees and Jerusalem.

However, if Abbas accedes to those two Israeli security points, he will likely be able to gain much on the other issues that matter to him and to the Palestinians.

Consider the land.

The P2P plan has Israel assuming sections of the West Bank including the entirety of the Jordan Valley. It leaves the Palestinian territory as a patchwork of parcels, with the towns in which Jews reside being annexed by Israel dotted, in between.

However, the Palestinians might be able to obtain almost the entirety of the West Bank if it grants Palestinian citizenship to all of the inhabitants of the Jewish towns. This action would be much like the Jewish State’s in 1948 when it granted Israeli citizenship to all of the Arabs. The Jews would make up a much smaller percentage of Palestine than Arabs’ in Israel today.

As the border would be controlled by Israel, only a sliver of land between Palestine and Jordan would be required to be Israeli instead of the whole Jordan Valley, much like the plan assumes Israel having a thin sliver of land buffering Palestinian territory in the Negev and Egypt. The net result would be the Palestinians gaining almost the entirety of the West Bank other than a sliver along the Jordan River.

The willingness to accept Jewish citizens into Palestine might also open a window for Israel to accept many Arab refugees into Israel, rather than just giving them compensation as mapped under the P2P plan. A new Arab spirit of coexistence might stimulate Israel to take as many as 50,000 Arab refugees per year for a number of years, with the balance receiving compensation and settling in a new Palestinian State.

The capital of a Palestinian State could also become more dynamic, with Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem becoming parts of a Palestinian capital.

In short, Palestinians can gain a lot on all of their key negotiating points by working off of the Trump peace initiative if they endorse coexistence and welcome Jews into a new state. In contrast, the current path of continued demonization of Israel and the denial of Jewish history and rights will only further cement the stagnation for Palestinians in regards to both peace and prosperity.

Palestinians should call the Israeli bluff, and see if hundreds of thousands of Jews are willing to live as a minority in Palestine. If the Israelis balk, then the BDS movement will likely advance globally. However, if the Israelis endorse the principle, Israel will be blocked from annexing any land (pro-Arab), while United Nations Resolution 2334 will be deemed moot and the global BDS movement will come to an end (pro-Israel).


Related First One Through articles:

The Palestinian’s Three Denials

The Peace Proposal Monologues

Taking it Straight to the People: Obama and Kushner

The Cancer in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Is Trump Seeing Mid-East Countries to Combat Religious Extremism, or Visiting Religious Sites to Promote Coexistence?

Palestinian Arabs De-Registering from UNRWA

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

Palestineism is Toxic Racism

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Considering Carter’s 1978 Letter Claiming Settlements Are Illegal

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

American Leaders Always Planned on Israel Absorbing Much of the West Bank

The liberal press is counting on people’s terrible memory and fondness for their cherished presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama to convey a false history of the Middle East. It boldly lies that American politicians have always viewed the contours of Israel to be roughly along the 1949 Armistice Lines, commonly referred to as the Green Line and that Israel would uproot its’ civilian population in the West Bank much as it did in Gaza. Consider The New York Times’ article “What’s in a Peace Plan: Settlements and a Goal of a Palestinian State” on January 30, 2020. The article was full of distortions including: “The United States has long voiced support for the creation of a Palestinian state with only slight adjustments to the Israeli boundaries that existed before the Arab-Israeli war of 1967, when Israel wrested the West Bank from Jordan, and Gaza from Egypt.”
The New York Times January 30, 2020 Page A8
That is total nonsense, meant to make Donald Trump’s plan look like a complete break with the past (a past which must be noted never produced a peace deal). To describe reality, read the letter that President George W Bush wrote to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on April 14, 2004, after Sharon announced that he was going to withdraw all Israelis from Gaza: “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, and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities.” That is the essence of the Trump plan – reflecting the reality of over half a million Israelis living in communities in the West Bank. This position of Israel incorporating Israeli population centers in the West Bank was reflected in the Democratic party as well, until Obama pivoted away from Israel towards the Muslim world in the hope of creating a “new beginning.” Look at the 2008 Democratic platform’s point on Israel: “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.” The Democrats-of-old also agreed with the Trump initiative recommendation that Jerusalem remain a unified city and the capital of Israel. The 2008 Democrats stated: “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.” But the current contenders for the president from the Democratic Party (other than Mike Bloomberg) have run from Israel and the notion that Jerusalem should remain the unified capital of Israel. They are the one’s who have turned on long-standing American policy, not Trump. But the liberal media will lie, distort history and tell you #AlternativeFacts like “Israel wrested the West Bank from Jordan” without adding that Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and Israel took the territory – which Jordan had illegally annexed in 1950 – in a defensive war. The Times article likewise wrote that “[p]revious American proposals spoke of uprooting tens of thousands of Israelis from the settlements to return those areas to Palestinians.” As seen above, that’s a lie. Further, there could be no “return… to Palestinians” as the Israelis would have had to return the land to Jordanians who illegally occupied the land, not Palestinians who never controlled the area. Do not be swayed by the #FakeNews that the Trump peace plan is a radical change of American policy. It just appears that way after eight years of Obama distancing himself from Israel and the current anti-Zionist edge infecting the left-wing media and politicians. Before Obama, Israel truly was a bipartisan cause in which the contours of the Trump peace plan would have been endorsed by all.
Related First One Through articles: When the Democrats Opposed the Palestinian “Right of Return” The Democrats’ Slide on Israel Bernie Sanders is the Worst U.S. Presidential Candidate for Israel Ever Will the 2020 Democratic Platform Trash Israel? The Peace Proposal Monologues New York Times Lies about the Gentleness of Zionism Related First One Through videos: The 1967″Borders” (music by The Kinks) US and Israel Are There For Each Other (music by Michael Jackson) Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The Peace Proposal Monologues

The Trump administration put forward a new Middle East Peace Plan as the latest installment of a series of frameworks over the years to try to find an enduring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Like every proposal before it, it was declared dead on arrival.

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 28: U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House on January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. The news conference was held to announce the Trump administration’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images/AFP

The Israelis had made numerous direct overtures for peace through the years, from its founding in 1948, post the 1967 war and in 2008, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented a plan that met nearly every desire of the Palestinian Authority. But in the end, the Arabs rejected every Israeli effort to find peace.

So third parties took a stab at putting forward their versions of a workable peace. The last serious attempt was advanced by the Arab League in 2002, known as the Arab Peace Initiative (API) which was advanced by Saudi Arabia. The API, not surprisingly, was heavily biased towards the Palestinian Arabs. The Obama Administration worked off of the API in trying to strike a peace agreement, and secured small adjustments from the Arab League to make it more palatable for Israel to accept, such as the notion of including “comparable and mutual agreed minor swap of the land” in 2013.

But the plan did not meet Israel’s basic security needs, and no peace agreement was advanced, particularly after Hamas’ 2014 war against Israel and the Palestinian Authority fomenting the “stabbing intifada” in 2015.

President Trump, in concert with his pro-Israel advisers including Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, realized that a new paradigm needed to be advanced.

Trump’s team spent years developing a new framework based on a long-term vision for the region, rather than simply trying to get Israel to accept the API which would have left it very vulnerable in a tumultuous region. This new initiative recognized several inherent flaws of the Obama-approved API, including lies which had become mainstreamed, or as US founding father Thomas Paine once said “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.

  • “East Jerusalem.” There is no place called East Jerusalem any more than there is a place called East Berlin. That name existed for only 18 years of the city’s 4,000 year history and was an artifice of war that ended in 1967.
  • “Occupied East Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was NEVER slated to be under Arab control in international agreements including the San Remo Agreement, the Mandate of Palestine or the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. To call it “occupied Palestinian territory” is a complete lie.
  • Refugees. Refugees are people who left a COUNTRY, not a mandate territory or a specific town. To extend the farce of calling for a return of “refugees” when the mandate was later advocated to be split for two peoples is against the very nature of the goal. To continue the charade for several generations entrenches resentment and has long been an obstacle to peaceful coexistence.
  • “Inalienable rights.” The United Nations has pushed forward the notion that Palestinian Arabs have “inalienable rights” of sovereignty. That would make them the only people with such rights – do Hispanic people who lived in New York City in the 1970’s have inalienable rights to their own country? People only have inalienable rights to self-determination.

Beyond the outright lies which have permeated discourse in the Arab-Israel conflict, there has been a denial of facts:

  • Return of “territories.” Israel has already complied with UN resolutions to return territories won in the 1967 War: it returned the Sinai to Egypt and handed Gaza to the Palestinians, the first time Palestinians ever had self-rule of a territory.
  • War from Palestinian territories. Since the Palestinians have ruled Gaza, they launched thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian neighborhoods.
  • Inability to Compromise. The two Palestinians factions have not even been able to negotiate between themselves, so how realistic can it be that they will ever agree to peace with Israel.
  • Rights. Only under Israel has there been freedom of access and freedom to worship for all religions, as opposed to the Arabs from 1949 to 1967 which barred Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem and Hebron.
  • Growth. The Arab population in the West Bank has grown significantly more than the Arab populations in all of the neighboring countries from 1967 until now, demonstrating the positive and stable environment of Israel for all of its inhabitants.

The Trump peace plan takes reality into account as it seriously addresses the security risks of the region. It is a constructive document to counter-balance the flawed Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, and will hopefully enable the parties to chart a course towards an enduring peace.

Like Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” play which included a series of skits meant to address violence against women, the Middle East Peace Monologues now has a new installment to address the violence against and isolation of Israel. The question is whether this latest addition will break the impasse to become a dialogue.


Related First One Through articles:

Enduring Peace versus Peace Now

Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions

Failing Negotiation 101: The United States

Failing Negotiation 102: Europe

Republicans Do Not Believe There is Any “Occupation”

The Debate About Two States is Between Arabs Themselves and Jews Themselves

Compensation Fund for Palestinian Arabs’ and MENA Jews’ Lost Property

The UN’s #Alternative Facts about the 1967 Six Day War

Related First One Through videos:

Abbas Demands RESPECT (music by Aretha Franklin)

Obama’s Confused Foreign Policy (music by Genesis)

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

The Callous-tinian Pause

As is their custom, Palestinian Arabs are calling for a “day of rage” because of what might possibly come out of the Trump Administration this week regarding a proposed peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Palestinians had called for a similar day of “mass protests” when the Trump Administration said that Israeli settlements are not inconsistent with the law in November 2019. At that time, various PA officials made statements about their position of a “rejection and condemnation of the Israeli-American settlement enterprise that aims to eliminate the Palestinian cause,” and that they reject “Zionist and American hostile policy… [that are designed to] liquidate the Palestinian cause.

The Palestinians similarly called for a “day of rage” in March 2018 after Trump moved the US embassy in Israel to its capital city of Jerusalem. Palestinian officials said they “will continue to protest against this decision and the plan to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, as well as attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause.” There were “days of rage” when Israel put metal detectors on Jerusalem’s Jewish Temple Mount after Arabs killed a few people on the holy site.

What is this “Palestinian cause” that is threatened by Jews living alongside Arabs in the West Bank as they do in Israel, and which cannot stand to have the US embassy in Jerusalem? Why do Palestinians hold days of rage when Jews visit the Temple Mount or Israel shows any signs of controlling the site? Why launch this latest “day of rage” before even hearing Trump’s peace plan and stating “[t]he Palestinian leadership, with the support of our people, will fail attempts to liquidate the Palestinian cause?

Do Palestinians believe that they will expel all Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem just as the Jordanians did in 1949? Is the “Palestinian cause” designed to deny Jews their presence, rights and dignity to live, visit and pray at Judaism’s holiest site? Was the Arab happiness about Obama’s endorsement of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 about  expunging the history of Jews in Jerusalem and rolling back the “Judaization” of the city?

It would appear that the “Palestinian Cause” has much less to do with the rights of Palestinians than denying the rights of Jews. Its goal is to reintroduce the 18-year ban on Jews which Arabs introduced and enforced during that window of their control of Jerusalem from 1949 to 1967: the “Callous-tinian Pause.”


Jerusalem’s Old City pre-1949, with the Tiferet Yisrael and Hurva Synagogues,
both destroyed by Arab armies.

This Palestinian cause of a Callous-tinian Pause SHOULD be deliberately and specifically liquidated, their calls for days of rage be damned.


Related First One Through articles:

The Arguments over Jerusalem

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Dignity for Israel: Jewish Prayer on the Temple Mount

Considering Carter’s 1978 Letter Claiming Settlements Are Illegal

Palestineism is Toxic Racism

Jizyah for Jews in Jerusalem

Jerusalem’s Old City Is a Religious War for Muslim Arabs

Related First One Through video:

Israel Provokes the Palestinians (music by The Clash)

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

Organized and Disorganized Antisemitism

Analysts have been attempting to place anti-Semites and anti-Semitic attacks into neat buckets for a long time. Recently, people have described the hatred as stemming from three main sources: the alt-right and the alt-left, and in Europe, Muslim antisemitism while in the United States the third category is Black antisemitism. Some argue that groups like the Black Israelites are essentially alt-right Black supremacists, while others consider they are alt-left members of the Black community who “punch up” against the perceived wealthy Jewish landlords and bankers and established white society. Perhaps followers of the Nation of Islam are a mixture of all the groups.

There is merit to this approach but I would suggest that there’s an advantage at looking at the global antisemitism as coming in two main forms without getting into particulars of the attackers’ skin color or religion as it clarifies how to deal with the hatred: organized and disorganized antisemitism, which should be fought directly and swarmed aggressively, respectively.

Organized Antisemitism

Organized antisemitism is easy to recognize because its actions and words are consistent. There is no surprise when a member of the group takes action against a Jewish person or property, as the language of hatred and disdain are in plain sight.

Consider one of the most anti-Semitic groups in the world today, Hamas. It drafted its foundational charter in 1988 based in large part on the Russian forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the worst possible reading of the Koran.

When Hamas launched wars against Israel in 2008, 2012 and 2014, there was no surprise. When it fired rockets against civilians in Israel, no one was shocked. This is a group that does not simply want to have an Arab Palestinian state, they want to rid the land of Jews whom they view as “sons of apes and pigs” and nefarious Nazis, not simply “colonial invaders.”

Fatah, the competing Palestinian political party is only slightly less organized in its Jew hatred. It does not have a charter which demonizes Jews; they prefer to do that on a daily basis with specific actions. These include naming schools and parks after terrorists, paying salaries to terrorists who kill Jews, and having a law which calls for capital punishment for any Arab selling land to Jews. Their party leader and president Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral dissertation on Holocaust denial and he routinely denies that Jews have any history or ties to Jerusalem and bemoans the “Judaization” of Judaism’s holiest city.

It is no surprise that the Palestinian Arabs are the most anti-Semitic according to polls by the ADL, as their two principle political parties function as organized anti-Semitic organizations.

In the United States, organized antisemitism can be found as well.

The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is the most infamous hate group in the country. It hates Blacks, Jews and others who are not White Christian. It was birthed at the end of the Civil War and was effectively reestablished after World War I in the 1920’s. Some claim that it was the rise of the KKK and its anti-immigrant policies that led the United States to curtail immigration years before the stock market crash of 1929.

Black anti-Semites exist alongside White anti-Semites. The leader of the Nation of Islam is a proud anti-Semite who calls the Jews “vermin” and “Satanic” to a standing ovation of thousands of people.

The largest organization that promotes Jew hatred is the United Nations. While it does not state that it is against Jews in its literature, its actions clearly treat the sole Jewish State as a pariah entity, condemning it more frequently than the other 192 nations combined. It holds Israel to a double standard and doesn’t bat an eyelash when member states talk of destroying the country.

Many media organizations are also overcome with antisemitism, such as Al Jazeera and The New York Times. They routinely call Israel racist and exaggerate real or perceived crimes committed by Jews and under-report when Jews are victims. They claim to be balanced and even-handed but their words make clear their systemic culture of Jew-hatred.

The commonality of the organized anti-Semitic groups are their consistency. They do not waiver in their attitudes towards Jews. They trade in tropes and peddle the vile. They call out the Jew consistently, day by day, page by page. They use their podiums to encourage others to join the jihad, the riot, the pogrom, and the genocide of the Jews and the Jewish State.

Hamas’s 2014 war against Israel, the 2016 United Nations Security Council resolution declaring that Jews living in their holiest city of Jerusalem is illegal and the 2018 alt-Right shooting of a Pittsburgh synagogue are recent examples of organized antisemitism.

Disorganized Antisemitism

Disorganized antisemitism is not carried out by established organizations but by individuals and newly formed groups. They are inspired by the organizations which spout Jew-hatred, but don’t necessarily belong to them.

Consider the European riots against Jews in 2014 while Hamas waged its war against Israel. Many people in cities throughout the continent attacked local Jews, incited by local imams, an antisemitic press and a United Nations which routinely vilified Jews and the Jewish State’s defensive war.

The 2015 attacks by West Bank Palestinians against Jews was called a “stabbing intifada” carried out by “lone wolves.” Those attackers watched Palestinian TV and heard the words of their leaders to kill the Jews. They may or may not have been active politically but they had been brain-washed Jew-hatred for years.

Black Americans have been told by their leaders that they have suffered from rich Jewish landlords and bankers. Therefore it may not have been a surprise when they shot up a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, NJ and axed Jews in Monsey, NY.

People have tried to downplay disorganized antisemitism as a non-issue; one-off attacks committed by desperate people which can be ignored. The liberal approach portrayed the attackers as as much the victims as the actual victims, whether the perpetrator was a disenfranchised Black man or beleaguered Palestinian. They refused to recognize the individuals’ inherent guilt or call out the organized antisemitic infrastructure as being culpable for inciting the antisemitic voices in their heads.

So newer organizations have begun to take shape which adopt the models of the prior organized antisemitic groups. BlackLivesMatter produced a manifesto calling Israel an apartheid state and the Woman’s March snuggled up to Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Zionists were labeled as monsters and a new crop of antisemites were born.

Carmen Perez, Bob Bland, Tamika D. Mallory, and Linda Sarsour attend the TIME 100 Gala on April 25, 2017, in New York. CHARLES SYKES / INVISION / AP)

The Appropriate Response

It is easy to address organized antisemites: block them at every turn. Cancel the subscription to the New York Times and don’t watch any videos produced by Al Jazeera or AJ+. Push the United States to block anti-Israel UN resolutions, defund anti-Israel UN organizations like UNRWA and run foreign policy directly between nations and not via the corrupt UN regime.

Shout down anti-Semites who want to march or speak in your town, whether they be the KKK or the Nation of Islam. Call members of Congress to not accept endorsements from people associated with these groups.

And in regards to the blossoming anti-Semitic organizations like BLM and the Woman’s March, demand that they change their platforms or be treated in the same manner as the established antisemitic organizations.

As for the “lone wolves,” surround them, do not empower them. Bombard them with actual facts about Jews and the Jewish State to counter the antisemitic propaganda they have been taught. Engulf them with a robust Jewish presence, letting them know that Jews will not disappear the way they did in Hebron in 1929, and that they should get used to seeing them as neighbors.

A peaceful world of coexistence must be built on some plain truths, and those include honest assessments of relationships. It is time to aggressively COMBAT organized antisemitism and SWARM disorganized antisemitism. The future security of Jews depends on it.


Related First.One.Through articles:

The Big, Bad Lone Wolves of Terrorism

The Personalisation of War

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

The New York Times Excuses Palestinian “Localized Expressions of Impatience.” I Mean Rockets.

While Palestinians Fire 400 Rockets, the United Nations Meets to Give Them Money

The United Nations Can Hear the Songs of Gazans, but Cannot See Their Rockets

The United Nations’ Incitement to Violence

The War Against Israel and Jewish Civilians

Bitter Burnt Ends: Talking to a Farrakhan Fan

The Nerve of ‘Judaizing’ Neighborhoods

Black Lives Matter Joins the anti-Israel “Progressives” Fighting Zionism

In The Margins

Considering Nazis and Radical Islam on the 75th Anniversary of D-Day

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis and FirstOneThrough

Is Columbia University Promoting Violence Against Israel and Jews?

Columbia University has claimed to be a champion of free speech. It was in that spirit that it invited the noted anti-Semite Malaysian Prime Minster Mahathir Mohamad to speak on campus in September 2019. Mohamad has called Jews “hook-nosed,” said they “rule the world by proxy” and questioned the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. He has even said he is “glad to be labeled anti-Semitic.”

That same week, seemingly to make the Jewish students on campus feel particularly unwelcome, one of Columbia’s professors, Lis Harris, released her book “In Jerusalem.” The student-run Columbia Spectator magazine reviewed the book in its Winter 2019-20 edition.

The review was shocking in seemingly endorsing the author’s contentions that Israel is an oppressor of Palestinians without adding any facts or context.

The article is set up to inform the reader that the book will have a natural “pro-Israel” tenor, as the author Lis Harris “grew up in a secular Jewish family in the United States fully alert, she says, ‘to the wrongs done to the beleaguered Jews across the ocean,’ but with little sense of the ‘wrongs done to the Palestinian people.’” Ah, if someone with a pro-Israel bias can see how terrible Israel is, it certainly must be true. The birth of a woke anti-Zionist is a cause for a progressive party.

Facts in the review and/or the book were seemingly few in the offering.

We are told that the book tries to look at the conflict through the lens of two families, a Jewish one living in “West Jerusalem” and a Palestinian one “living across the border wall in East Jerusalem.” This is fiction. There is no “border wall” between “West Jerusalem” and “East Jerusalem.” In 1967, Israel tore down the fence that divided the Jerusalem after Jordan illegally attacked Israel, and reunited the holy city. There is no West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem, and the fence which had existed from 1949 to 1967 was explicitly declared to NOT be a border by Israel and Jordan in their Armistice agreement. The “security barrier” which Israel began to erect in 2002 to stop the terrorism of Palestinian Arabs from the West Bank is to the east of unified Jerusalem.

Perhaps the facts make the author’s shuttle diplomacy seem less daring, but it’s a sad intro for a writer “who spent more than ten years gathering research and interviews for the book.” The book established zero credibility from the outset.

The review then moves from the gross inaccuracies to ignoring Jewish history and blessing Arab terrorists.

We are informed that the stories in the book are told by “accomplished women” and intelligent and respected family members who “want peace and a fair solution to the conflict.” The Jewish woman’s aunt escaped Nazi Germany who found asylum in Mandatory Palestine “as a refuge from violence.” There is no mention that Mandatory Palestine was designed to REESTABLISH the Jewish homeland years before Nazis came to power. Jews were not dumped into Mandatory Palestine in a reaction to the Holocaust; the land of Israel has been the Jewish homeland for 3,700 years. Modern Zionism pushed for Jewish sovereignty in that land decades before the State of Israel came into being. That’s why Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority since the 1860’s, all facts not covered in the review and presumably not in the book.

This Jewish aunt “is juxtaposed with the experience of Niveen’s [the Arab’s] aunt. At twenty-one, Rasema Odeh was accused of terrorism, illegally tortured, and served ten years at the Ramla prison… Rasmea’s story is shocking, but the chapter devoted to it is one of the book’s best.” The review made it sound like Odeh was a poor victim, unjustly “accused of terrorism.” It neglected to state that she was convicted of terrorism in which she placed a bomb at a supermarket killing two civilians (her accomplices openly admitted such on Palestinian TV). It failed to state that Odeh lied about the events in getting a visa into the United States in 1994 and was stripped of her citizenship in 2017 and deported. It failed to note that many countries – including Germany in 2019 – banned her from speaking in public and denied her a visa as she calls violence against Israel. The mayor of Berlin said about Odeh that “anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic resentments, wrapped up in liberation rhetoric, have no business here. I am glad that we have found a way to stop this propaganda.

This “juxtaposition” of a Holocaust survivor finding refuge at the expense of Palestinian Arabs seems to take a page out of the book of pathological liar U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) who claimed she found comfort that her ancestors created a safe haven for Jews when they actually did everything they could to kill the Jews and/or keep them out of Palestine. It is called Seeing the Holocaust Through Nakba Eyes, which turns the Jews from victims to oppressors, and the Palestinians from participants in the Holocaust to victims themselves.

The article continues with more inanity such as “Harris is clear-sighted and firm in her own view that the Israeli government is more oppressor than victim. She does not condemn the Palestinian people fighting to live in their occupied home of East Jerusalem (but neither will she excuse the violence of Hamas).”  No commentary that the Arab population in the eastern part of Jerusalem has grown FOUR TIMES since 1967, a rate that surpasses the population growth of Arabs in any neighboring country. It also neglects to mention that Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem have the option of becoming Israeli citizens and thousands have opted to do so. Palestinians aren’t “fighting to live;” they are fighting to evict the Jews and destroy the Jewish State.

The Spectator adds that “Harris was able to comment on President Trump’s rash recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” Rash? Was President Truman’s recognition of Israel in 1948 also rash? The snide comment didn’t even attempt to hide the reviewer’s bias.

In summation, the review states that “through the people she comes to know in Israel and Palestine, Lis Harris sees hope, and this brave new book ultimately helps us see it too.” Palestine? The United States recognizes no such country. And to the extent that it recognizes “Palestinian Territories,” those are limited to Gaza and Areas A and B, and certainly not “in Jerusalem.”


Columbia University has chapters of anti-Israel hate groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace as student-run groups on campus. Their voices seem to have penetrated not only the student-run paper and magazine but the University itself which includes a faculty with anti-Israel authors and promoters of boycotts of Israel, and enabled the invitation of proud anti-Semites like the Prime Minister of Malaysia onto its campus. Beyond the student agitators, maybe the university’s anti-Israel platform was purchased by foreign donors like Saudi Arabia who pumped more than $193 million into Columbia between 2011 and 2017.

In October 2019, a report entitled “A Hotbed for Hate” produced by the Alumni for Campus Fairness listed over 100 anti-Jewish incidents at Columbia and Barnard since the 2016/7 academic year. In addition to the on-campus activities like a swastika painted on a Jewish professor’s office, the report listed numerous faculty members who deny the history of Jews as well as peddle forms of Holocaust denial.

At the very moment when antisemitism is on the rise, the murder of Jews is becoming commonplace and the demonization of Israel is accepted, it is a travesty that New York City’s only Ivy League school gives credibility, honor and an open mic to such vile sentiments.


Related First.One.through articles:

Arabs in Jerusalem

The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ

Ending Apartheid in Jerusalem

The War Against Israel and Jewish Civilians

Students for Justice in Palestine’s Dick Pics

A Response to Rashid Khalidi’s Distortions on the Balfour Declaration

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

The Remarkable Tel Jerusalem

Both Israel and Jerusalem are Beyond Recognition for Muslim Nations

750 Years of Continuous Jewish Jerusalem

Today’s Inverted Chanukah: The Holiday of Rights in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria

The Arguments over Jerusalem

“East Jerusalem” – the 0.5% Molehill

Jerusalem, and a review of the sad state of divided capitals in the world

When You Understand Israel’s May 1948 Borders, You Understand There is No “Occupation”

First.One.Through videos:

The Green Line (music by The Kinks)

Judea and Samaria (music by Foo Fighters)

The Anthem of Israel is JERUSALEM

Subscribe YouTube channel: FirstOneThrough

Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis