Category Archives: Israel

Squeezing Zionism

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Zionism started before the First Zionist Congress in 1897 and before Theodore Herzl wrote “The Jewish State” in 1896. However, the core elements of Zionism that people recognize came from the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Those key elements found their way into the 1920 San Remo Conference and ultimately, the 1922 League of Nation’s Palestine Mandate. Those key points are:

  • Jewish History in the Holy Land: “recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine”
  • Reestablishing the Jewish homeland: “recognition… to the grounds for reconstituting their [Jewish] national home in that country [Palestine]”
  • Immigration: “shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions”
  • Owning land: “shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes”
  • Citizenship: “facilitate the acquisition of Palestinian citizenship by Jews who take up their permanent residence in Palestine”
  • Freedom of worship and religion: “securing free access to the Holy Places, religious buildings and sites and the free exercise of worship…. complete freedom of conscience and the free exercise of all forms of worship, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, are ensured to all. No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.“

Each of these principles is under attack.

History

Palestinian Arabs did not always doubt the history of Jews in the Holy Land. In the 1920s, the official guidebook of “Al Haram al Sharif” published by the Supreme Moslem Council, stated that the Temple Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute” (page 4). Yet today, the entire history of Jews in the Holy Land is challenged by Palestinian Arab extremists (and “moderates”).

  • Acting President of Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations General Assembly several times. In those speeches he spoke of the history of Jesus and Mohammed in the Holy Land, but ignored the history of the Jews in the land including: Jacob; Joseph; Joshua; David; and Solomon.
  • Various leaders of the PA have declared that: there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem; if there was a Temple it wasn’t on the Temple Mount; and Israel is manufacturing ancient artifacts to fabricate a Jewish connection to Jerusalem.
  • Abbas claimed that Israel has attempted to “Judaize” Jerusalem, including claiming that the Western Wall is actually Islamic and known as the al-Buraq wall.
  • Abbas claimed that Jesus was a Palestinian, rather than a Jew.  His comments have continued to be repeated by PA officials and television.
  • Arab states are so upset about the history of Jews in the Holy Land, that 22 Arab states pressured UNESCO to cancel an exhibit called “People, Book, Land — The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land”

Tel Dan
Inscription dating to 840 BCE in Tel Dan, northern Israel
referring to the “House of David”

Recently, some politicians outside of Israel have finally begun to push back on the Arab narrative that denies Jewish history.  US Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), remarked in December 2015 that “denying the historic connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem is false. Amazing archeological discoveries are frequently made that prove the roots of the Jewish people are in Israel.”

royal-seal
Seal of King Hezekiah found in Jerusalem, around 700 BCE

Arabs came to the Holy Land during the Islamic invasion of the 7th centuries.  An Arab claim to being indigenous to Israel is like the Portuguese claiming to be indigenous to Brazil because they have been there for hundreds of years. There were people who lived there for thousands of years before the new people invaded, and continue to live there and claim the place as their home.

RECONSTITUTING The Jewish Homeland

The Arabs hope that by denying the history of Jews in the Holy Land, they can claim that they are the indigenous people of the land, and Jews are simply European colonialists. The claim that Israel is a new colonial force is repeated often by Palestinians and plays well to Europeans that have rethought their own colonial past.

However, Israel is not, nor has it ever been, a European colony.

Jews have lived in the Holy Land for over 3,700 years and were the only people to have independent political governments in the land.  They are also the only people to have their religious holiest sites in the land.

It is not a coincidence that Arabs shout to “Free Palestine” as opposed to “Create Palestine” as a new independent country.  The Arabs claim that the land was never home to Jewish Kingdoms and has always been Arab land.

Taylor_Prism-1
The Prism of Sennacherib, from roughly 689 BCE describing his attack on
the Jewish King Hezekiah in Jerusalem, as mentioned in 2 Kings: 18:13

Immigration

Arabs sought to deny Jewish immigration to Palestine immediately after the San Remo Conference.  Several Arab riots broke out in the 1920s, and in the 1930s the Arabs were able to convince the British to curtail Jewish immigration.  In 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust in Europe, the British issued the White Paper which capped Jewish immigration at 75,000 people for five years.  The goal was to keep Jews as a permanent minority in Palestine.

Arabs and left-wing Israeli radicals continue to call on limiting Jewish immigration to Israel.  In December 2015, Haaretz columnist Amira Hess said at a conference run with the New Israel Fund that Jewish “immigration to Israel under today’s circumstances — especially on the part of citizens of free Western countries — constitutes complicity in the crime.”

Owning Land

The British and Arabs reduced the amount of land available for Jews to settle since the time that the Mandate took effect in 1922.

  • By 1928, the area now known as Jordan, was split from Palestine.
  • In 1929, after Arabs massacred Jews in Hebron, the British evacuated all of the remaining Jews from the city
  • In 1937, the Peel Commission suggested partitioning the land into two
  • In 1940, British drafted the Land Transfer Regulations which limited where Jews could purchase land to only one-third of the remaining part of Palestine
  • In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into Arab and Jewish States
  • In 1949, after five Arab armies attacked Israel at its founding, Jordan illegally annexed Judea and Samaria and evicted all Jews from the territory, including the eastern part of Jerusalem, counter to the Fourth Geneva Convention
  • In 1967, after Jordan (and Palestinians who were then Jordanian citizens) attacked Israel and lost the area that they had termed the “West Bank,” they still fought to keep Jews from living in the land

The Jordanians had a Land Law in effect in the West Bank that prohibited the sale of any land to Jews from 1949 to 1967, punishable by death.  In 1997 – AFTER the Oslo Accords between the Palestinian Authority and Israel – the Palestinians confirmed that such land sales to Jews would be considered treason and a capital offense.

ezra nawi
Radical left-wing activist Ezra Nawi blew whistle on Arabs selling land to Jews
was arrested by Israel in January 2016

Citizenship

When the British left Palestine in 1948, Israel gave citizenship to everyone in Israel – Jews and non-Jews alike.  However, after the Arabs attacked Israel and Jordan assumed control of the West Bank, Jordan only granted citizenship only to Arabs.  The 1954 Jordanian law extending citizenship to Palestinian Arabs spelled out that Jews were excluded: “Any person who, not being Jewish, possessed Palestinian nationality before 15 May 1948 and was a regular resident in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan between 20 December 1949 and 16 February 1954.”

Arab groups like Adalah and left-wing groups like the New Israel Fund (NIF) complain today about Israel’s Law of Return that allows Jews to become citizens of Israel on an expedited manner, a Law that non-Jews cannot use, claiming that such law is discriminatory. The groups fail to note that Israel institutes a Law of Return in the same manner that dozens of other countries use such a law to enable people with a lineage to the country to become citizens quickly.  The Jewish people have ties to the prior Jewish kingdoms in the Holy Land, while the Arabs, many of whom arrived over the past century, but certainly not before the 7th century, have no such ties.

When you see an advertisement about “social justice” and “equality” from groups like the NIF, they are attacking these fundamental principles of Zionism and common international laws.

NIF equality

Freedom of Worship

When the League of Nations endorsed the principles of Zionism, they also sought to ensure equality and fairness for the Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants throughout the region.  One of the areas that they highlighted was the access to each religion’s holy places.  In theory.

Jews were banned from visiting or worshipping on the Temple Mount back in the 1550s under Suleiman I. The Ottoman Muslim leader enabled Jews to pray at the Western Wall, or the Kotel, but denied them their historical access to their holiest place. Moslems similarly forbade Jews from visiting their second holiest place, the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs in Hebron.

When Israel took control of the post-1929 Palestine Mandate land in 1967, they sought to reestablish Jewish rights at the holiest Jewish places – just as called for in international law endorsing Zionism.

As detailed in “The United Nations and Holy Sites in the Holy Land,” Israel attempted to assert Jewish rights at their holiest places including: The Temple Mount; the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs; Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem; and Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem/Nablus. It has been a struggle.

To this day, Jews are still banned from worshipping on the Temple Mount. This is just fine with the United Nations as highlighted in “The UN’s Disinterest in Jewish Rights at Jewish Holy Places.”

The United Nations Complicity in
Squeezing Zionism

It is understood that the Arabs would argue strongly for their own cause.  They have pursued an Arab and Muslim maximalist approach to the Holy Land for centuries.

However, the United Nations has backtracked significantly from its early endorsement of Zionism.  Under British administration, immigration was cut and the ability to own land was diminished.  When it came to vote at the United Nations to admit Israel as a new country, to “reconstitute the Jewish homeland,” Britain abstained.

The United Nations learned from Britain, and has continued to squeeze Zionism, such as recanting on the principle that Jews should have the freedom to worship at their holiest places, as discussed above.

While the UN constricted Zionism, it expanded the cause of Palestinian Arabs:

  • it created a new definition of “refugee” which included someone that left a house and town, rather than a country
  • It uniquely extended the definition of “refugees” to descendants, where the UN now considers there to be over 11 million Palestinians
  • The UN created a stand-alone refugee agency for Palestinian Arab “refugees” (UNRWA) that live in the surrounding area to the Holy Land, giving services to over 5 million people. Every other refugee in the world gets a single under-funded agency
  • UNRWA has promoted a narrative that all 5 million “refugees” will get to move to Israel, even though they are neither refugees nor have any right to move to Israel under the country’s Law of return
  • The UN altered its mission for refugees to one of protection and settlement (as it does throughout the world), to one that seeks to undermine Zionism

In 1975, the UN General Assembly endorsed Resolution 3379 stating that “Zionism is Racism,” essentially nullifying on the basic arguments and rights of Jews to their homeland.  The effort to limit Zionism had become an effort to terminate it.

Summary

The “Zionism is racism” declaration was ultimately overturned in 1991, in part, because of the efforts of the United States.  As US President George Bush argued before the UN: “Zionism is not a policy, it is the idea that led to the creation of a home for the Jewish people, to the State of Israel. And to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of the Jews in World War II, and indeed throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism, is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations. This body cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel’s right to exist.”

Zionism has been getting squeezed since 1917, in rights, size and scope.  As Zionism has been squeezed, so has the State of Israel itself.

The “Freedom CHOIR (Freedom of worship and religion; Citizenship; History; Owning land; Immigration; and Reconstituting the Jewish State)” which are fundamental building blocks of Zionism, are under attack.  The Arabs have intensified their assault to include basic facts of Jewish history.  The British and United Nations have constricted Zionism in size and scope.  Left-wing radical groups have now joined the chorus using “progressive” language of “justice” and “equality,” while using the identical arguments of racists that seek to reject Israel.

Review the points of the Freedom CHOIR. Do you believe in Zionism?  Will you join the CHOIR or seek to silence it?

Related First.One.Through articles:

The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

The United Nations Applauds Abbas’ Narrative

Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

Real and Imagined Laws of Living in Silwan

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The Invisible Anti-Semitism in Obama’s 2016 State of the Union

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President Barack Obama gave his final State of the Union address on January 12, 2016.  He gave an outline of a speech in four parts: economic opportunity; technology; a safe America; and politics, as he projected a future world ten-plus years out.

obama 2016 SOTU
Obama State of the Union Address
January 12, 2016 (photo:  M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO)

Safe America: Regarding a safe America, Obama continued to limit his global enemies to two parties: al Qaeda and ISIL/ Islamic State. Other countries that shout “Death to America! Death to Israel” like Iran were not labeled enemies that threaten the USA.  Obama mentioned Iran just a single time, when he extolled the “principled diplomacy” that “avoided another war.”  That may have been true in 2015.  But the future in ten-plus years that he facilitated, is a nuclear weapons-armed Iran.

A fanatical, anti-Semitic, America-bashing country with weapons of mass destruction is not a recipe to “keep America safe.”  Unless, of course, Obama has banked on Iran limiting its attack only against Israel, as he doubts that Iran would consider attacking the “most powerful nation on Earth.”

Politics of religions: When Obama delved into politics, he not-so-subtly put Donald Trump in his crosshairs as he said “When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalized, or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer.  That’s not telling it like it is.  It’s just wrong.  It diminishes us in the eyes of the world.  It makes it harder to achieve our goals.  And it betrays who we are as a country.”

Obama berated Trump for his comments about Muslims in the past. This time, he extended his comments passed the politics of Trump, to anti-Muslim actions in the United States generally.  While he repeated prior statements that anti-Muslim actions betray the values of the United States, he added the dimension that Islamophobia “diminishes us in the eyes of the world.”  The two additions are noteworthy.

As detailed in “Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism” an average American Jew is over TWICE as likely to be attacked as either a Muslim or black American.  Yet anti-Semitism is never flagged by Obama.  That is actually too kind.  Anti-Semitic attacks are often whitewashed by the Obama administration, such as his denial that Jews were targeted in Paris in January 2015.

Obama’s SOTU remarks add some color to his blindness.  He is concerned that Islamophobia “diminishes us in the eyes of the world.”  Not so anti-Semitism.

Anti-Semitism has a long history in the world.  Over the past eighteen months it has reared it’s ugly head again in Europe. It is pervasive in the Middle East.  As such, flagging anti-Semitism may diminish America’s standing in the world.

There are 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and only 16 million Jews, a 100:1 ratio.  Islamophobia upsets at least 1.6 billion people and few seem to notice or care about the more prevalent anti-Semitism.  So Obama omitted discussing anti-Semitism and only highlighted the less common attacks on Muslims.

 

In his seventh year as president of the United States, Obama finally made his views on anti-Semitism a little more clear: Jews and Israel are small sacrifices to ensure a safer America.

Related First.One.Through articles:

“Jews as a Class”

Obama’s “Values” Red Herring

Obama’s Select Religious Compassion

Bibi’s Paris Speech in Context

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel

Failures of the Obama Doctrine and the Obama Rationale

Joe Biden Stabs a Finger at Israel

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Adalah, Dismantling Zionism

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Adalah is also known as the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel. It is funded by a number of left-wing organizations including: the New Israel Fund (NIF); the Ford Foundation; the Open Society Foundation (George Soros); Oxfam; and the European Commission.

Adalah claims to be “an independent human rights organization and legal center which… works to promote and defend the rights of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, 1.2 million people, or 20% of the population, as well as Palestinians living in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT).”  It’s agenda is much more aggressive than simply defending Israeli Arabs.

The group seeks to replace Israel as a Jewish State with a bi-national, multi-cultural state.

adalah person
Adalah protested Israel’s ban of Islamic party in Israel, November 2015.  Caption states “Raed Salah, the head of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, gestures  in Nazareth on Nov. 17 after an Israeli police raid at the movement’s office.(Atef Safadi / European Pressphoto Agency).”  The four-finger “gesture” is the salute “R4bia” supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.  The United Kingdom also declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in December 2015.

Dismantling the Jewish State

Adalah’s goal is a new Israel, which would no longer have any Jewish preferences, such as special symbols for Jews (in the national anthem and flag), nor special treatment for Jews (such as quick and easy approval for Israeli citizenship).

Adalah’s mission can be clearly seen in its “Democratic Constitution” for Israel, proposed in 2007:

  • Setting Israel’s borders at the 1949 Armistice Lines/ “1967 borders”
  • The “Right of Return” of all Palestinian Arabs that left the region, together with their descendants, back to Israel
  • “[T]he return of land and properties [for all Arab refugees] on the basis of restorative justice”
  • Israel would become a “democratic, bilingual and multicultural state,” replacing the Jewish State, because it views Israel as racist due to “the exclusion of the Arab minority based on the definition of the state as Jewish.”

The group rejects the international laws of 1920 (San Remo Conference) and 1922 (Palestine Mandate) that specifically called for “reconstituting their [Jewish] national home” THROUGHOUT Palestine, as Adalah claims that such international actions ultimately turned Arabs from a majority into a minority “against their [Palestinan Arab] will.”

The organization’s mission is to remove any particular “Jewishness” of Israel, and then flood the country with millions of Arabs to make Jews the minority. Homes would be taken away from Israeli Jews and handed to Arab “refugees.”

Refusing Equality for Israeli Jews

While the group fights against what it calls Israeli laws with embedded “racial inequality,” it shows no interest in promoting equality for Jews.

  • Where is the Adalah protest that Jews should not be barred from living in Judea and Samaria?
  • Where are the Adalah lawsuits to enable Jews to pray openly on the Jewish Temple Mount?
  • Why does the group find it offensive for Arabs with Israeli citizenship to be called “Israeli Arabs” and insists on being called “Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel?”  Are they demanding dual citizenship with a future Palestinian State?  Will they advocate that Israeli Jews should similarly get dual citizenship?
  • Adalah highlights that Arabs have lived in the region for generations which entitles them to particular rights in their homeland, yet they deny the history of the Jews and their rights to a homeland in the Holy Land.

Is equality for Adalah only a one-way street where Arabs get access and rights but Jews are denied?

Adalah: Having Your Country and Eating It Too

Adalah’s goals are clear.  It seeks a two state solution for the region: one is called Israel, in which Jews are allowed to live as a minority in a bi-national state with a Palestinian Arab majority; the other country is called Palestine, which will have no Jews nor Jewish rights to their holy places.

As “Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel” are part of the broader Palestinian people, they would have citizenship in both countries, while Jews would be limited to just living in Israel.  Over time, it is easy to visualize a future where those two Palestinian Arab states would merge.  Goodbye Israel.

20151119_161515
Full page NIF ad in The Jewish Week, November 20, 2015
stating it supports “Israelis working for a shared society” and claiming those opposed to NIF have an “ultranationalist agenda”

“Pro Israel” groups like the New Israel Fund state that they “are working for civil rights, social justice and religious tolerance.”  Those are noble goals. However, why does NIF support organizations like Adalah which seek to destroy the Jewish State?  Why does NIF label those people who want to see Zionism flourish in the Holy Land as “ultranationalist?”

Adalah openly opposes the vision of Zionism’s founders, as well as international laws which called for re-establishing the homeland of the Jewish people.  How can NIF give Adalah funds ($1.875 million from 2008-2014) and claim that it is “pro-Israel?”

However the NIF chooses to stretch the definition of “pro-Israel,” it is certainly is not pro-Zionism.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

“Peace” According to Palestinian “Moderates”

Oxfam and Gaza

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UN Media Centre Ignores Murdered Israelis

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In what has become a routine abuse of facts, the United Nations Media Centre continued to edit comments that have to do with Israelis being attacked and murdered by Palestinian Arabs.

On December 15, 2015, High Commissioner for Human Rights, Cécile Pouilly gave a press briefing about situations in “Burundi, Israel / Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Cuba.”  In her opening statement about Israel, she said the following:

“We continue to be gravely concerned at the unrelenting violence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Israel. Since the current escalation started at the beginning of October, 21 Israelis and 117 Palestinians have lost their lives (along with two foreign nationals), with thousands more injured.

Although international attention on the crisis has waned, the level of killings, injuries and arrests has continued, with on average one person dying every day.“

The UN Media Centre reported the comments as follows:

“Although international attention has waned regarding the crisis in Israel and the Occupied Palestine Territory, the United Nations human rights office today warned that the region is still rife with violence and the recent escalation in the fighting has claimed 117 Palestinian lives, along with two foreign nationals and injured thousands more.”

Poof.  The murdered Israelis were erased.  The Palestinians and two foreign nationals were killed, but the murdered Israelis were wiped from the comments and history of the United Nations Media Centre.

pouilly
Cécile Pouilly, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. (Photo: OHCHR)

While the various UN bodies have long established anti-Israel biases, the media centre which summarizes the comments of hundreds of those same UN bodies, further sanitizes Palestinian Arab crimes and ignores the suffering of Israelis.

How much hatred for Israel can an organization have to deliberately omit Israelis, while mentioning every other person killed?  How far has the UN stretched itself to adopt an unbalanced, extremist Palestinian narrative?

When will western countries demand sanitizing the United Nations?

Related First.One.Through articles:

UN Press Corps Expunges Israel

UN Comments on the Murder of Innocents: Henkins

UN Comments on the Murder of Innocents: Itamar and Duma

The United Nations Audit of Israel

The United Nations’ Remorse for “Creating” Israel

The UN Can’t Support Israel’s Fight on Terrorism since it Considers Israel the Terrorists

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Liberals’ Biggest Enemies of 2015

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Hillary Clinton is no FDR

In October 2015, the Democratic presidential candidates held a debate. The debate moderator quoted a line from Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he ran for president in 1932 “judge me by the enemies I have made,” and asked the candidates to describe enemies they are most proud of. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded “well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians, probably the Republicans.” This response drew huge applause from both the Democratic audience and the left-wing media.

It was nice of Clinton to mention at least one foreign entity when she recalled her enemies. After all, she was Secretary of State for four years during the War on Terror. However, I guess she felt that she did not do a very good job fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Boko Haram or other radical jihadist groups to mention any of them. She certainly did not want to draw attention to her handling of Libya where she overthrew the government and then let the Islamic State take over the country.  Or the way she oversaw leaving Iraq, letting the Islamic State take over that region.  Or her refusal to engage in Syria to let Syrian leader Assad kill hundreds of thousands of his own people… and cede some of that country to the Islamic State too.

The radical jihadists probably view Clinton as their best friend.

clinton_12521_7769
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with Libyan soldiers declaring victory,
October 2011  (photo: Reuters)

Clinton did not highlight foreign enemies because they got the better of her. The one foreign entity that she mentioned was Iran, where she ultimately supported a deal that left the Iranian nuclear infrastructure intact.

No, Clinton mentioned DOMESTIC enemies. She mentioned the NRA (the National Rifle Association) which fights to protect the second amendment of the Bill of Rights. The right that the NRA defends have arguably much greater standing than Clinton’s favored group, Planned Parenthood (which she loudly defended in her remarks), which performs and advocates for procedures that are not specifically enumerated in the U.S. constitution.

Clinton’s calling out of Republicans as an enemy was also telling. Was she targeting 41% of American citizens, or just the Republicans elected to government office?

In a two-party system such as the United States, the democracy requires each party to exist. The other party is not an enemy which seeks to harm the country that must be vanquished. It is a counter-party with a different set of priorities and/or policies to govern. Each party serves an important and essential role in balancing budgets and laws to avoid a run-away system of governance by executive fiat.

Yet the person with arguably the most experience in government of any of the presidential candidates, believes the worst enemies she has encountered are: a group that tries to defend the U.S. constitution; and either half of the country or the other political party that enables America’s democracy to exist.

Perhaps Clinton should familiarize herself with the rest of FDR’s 1932 speech in which he also said “we are not Democrats, we are not Republicans; we are a people united in a common patriotism…. My friends, my policy is as radical as American liberty. My policy is as radical as the Constitution of the United States.”

Today’s leading liberal put fellow Americans in her crosshairs.  Her battle plan is to shape a democracy of her liking, bending to her interpretation of law.

Liberal American Jews’ Number One Enemy is Israel

American Jews tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections, as roughly 70% of Jews are registered Democrats.  J Street, a left-wing group did a poll in September 2015 that concluded that 68% of Jews would vote for Hillary Clinton (the 68% figure would actually be the worst showing for a Democrat amongst Jewish voters since Michael Dukakis secured 64% of the Jewish vote in 1988).

Regarding the U.S.A., many liberal Jews focus their efforts on attacking conservative American policies.  When it comes to Israel, liberal Jews are twice as likely as conservative Jews to berate the Jewish State.

In October 2013, the Pew Research Center conducted a poll with the following findings:

  • 50% of Republican Jews had a very strong emotional attachment to Israel, compared to 25% for Jewish Democrats
  • 67% of Republican Jews feel that Israel was given to Jews by God, while only 30% of Democratic Jews felt that way
  • Meanwhile 56% of Jewish Democrats felt that Jewish “settlements” in Judea and Samaria hurt Israel’s security, while only 20% of Republican Jews considered Jews living in homes east of the Green Line a security threat
  • Under President Obama, 66% of Republican Jews felt the US was not supportive enough of Israel, while 62% of Democrats thought that Obama had it just right

J Street pushed very aggressively against the current Israeli government run by Likud’s Benjamin Netanyahu as detailed in “The Fault in our Tent: The Limit of Acceptable Speech” including advocating that the U.S. government should vote against Israel at the UN Security Council.

Like J Street, the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz held a conference in the United States in 2015, along with the liberal group the New Israel Fund, NIF.  The HaaretzQ conference included peculiar (alarming?) demonstrations of removing the Israeli flag from the stage as it offended some speakers, and a Haaretz columnist describing Jews who move to Israel as committing a “crime”, as Jewish Aliyah should be illegal.  That line received wide applause from the liberal crowd.

Palestinian Authority member, Saeb Erekat, speaks at the Haaretz and New Israel Fund conference in Roosevelt Hotel, NYC, on December 13, 2015. Photo by Amir Levy/Flash90 *** Local Caption *** ???? ?????? ???? ??? ??? ???? ????? ????? ?????? ????? ?????????

Palestinian Authority member, Saeb Erekat, at the Haaretz and New Israel Fund conference in NYC, on December 13, 2015. (Photo by Amir Levy/Flash90)

Another left-wing group, Jewish Voice for Peace, JVP, claims to advocate for “social justice, equality, human rights, respect for international law, and a U.S. foreign policy based on these ideals.”  The group’s interpretation of their mission is that Israel, by its very nature as a Jewish State, cannot meet these ideals, so their mission is to push the U.S. to dismantle the Zionist project.  JVP’s 2015 conference loudly supported the BDS, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement of Israel.

Even the president of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, a less radical liberal Jewish group, described a handful of Jews living in Hebron in just 3% of the city as a “self-imposed existential threat” to the country.

Liberals have become convinced that most Jews and the Jewish State are the enemies of peace.  It’s a line familiar to anyone that has read the Hamas Charter.

Recently, liberal groups have focused their attention on checking off each of Natan Sharansky’s “3 D Test” of anti-Semitism: demonization; double standards; and delegitimization.

  • Demonizing the Israeli Defense Forces, as groups like NIF fund Breaking the Silence
  • Double standards for Israel, the most liberal country for a thousand miles in any direction, as JVP reserved its criticism, condemnation and calls for divestment only against Israel
  • Delegitimization, as the Haaretz conference and speakers sought to remove Jews and Jewish symbols from the land

Jewish liberals think like Hillary Clinton: the enemy is from within, and must be stopped by all measures possible.

Conclusion

Tuvia Tenenbom wrote a book in 2015 called “Catch the Jew!” where he assumed a Sacha Baron Cohen/Ali G/ Borat kind of persona in Israel and the West Bank.  At times he pretended to be Jewish, Christian or Muslim, and sometimes German or Israeli.  He was a “Master Agent” and donned whatever role would get people to open-up and speak freely about their thoughts about Israel, Palestine, Jews and Arabs.

Tenenbom’s book spared no one.  He saw racism and petty-mindedness in every corner of the Holy Land.  The food and land received the accolades, while the residents of the land and consumers of the food were roundly criticized.

However, Tenenbom’s conclusion broke the region into shades of black: while he cringed at Jewish and Arab racism, he at least understood it.  There’s a selfish motivation to wanting an Arab-free or Jew-free country.  However, he viewed the liberal Europeans who fund NGO’s to “Catch the Jew” as a more vile form of racism, a deeper shade of black. How racist can one be to travel over a thousand miles to criticize Jews?

But the darkest shade of black, the worst kind of person to Tenenbom, were the self-haters.  Groups like Rabbis for Human Rights and individuals like Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy were skewered the most.  Tenenbom concluded that Germans do not have to openly be anti-Semitic anymore; they can just fund self-hating Jews and let them destroy Israel by themselves:

“If logic is any guide, Israel will not survive.  Besieged by hate from without and from within, no land can survive for very long.”

Liberals often laugh at conservative Americans who proudly wave their flag.  I used to think it was because liberals thought conservative Americans to be primitives who “cling to religion and guns” as Senator Barack Obama said when he ran for office in 2008.  However, in 2015, it became clear that liberals do not look down in a condescending manner at fellow countrymen, but stare across their neighbor’s yard through a rifle scope.

In 2015, liberals declared that the enemy is from within.  What battles will that bring in 2016?

Related First.One.Through articles:

A Disservice to Jewish Community

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel

Joe Biden Stabs a Finger at Israel

Parallel and Perpendicular Views of Iranian Nuclear Deal

Rick Jacobs’ Particular Reform Judaism

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Full page NIF ad in The Jewish Week, November 20, 2015
claiming those opposed to NIF have an “ultranationalist agenda” and implying
that Israel without NIF intervention would be an illiberal, racist country

Stabbing the Palestinian “Right of Return”

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The “Stabbing Intifada” in which Palestinian Arabs attack Israeli civilians has effectively ended the issue of the Palestinian “Right of Return.”

A Palestinian demonstrator raises a knife, during clashes with Israeli police, in Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, Friday, Oct. 9, 2015. Recent days have seen a string of attacks by young Palestinians with no known links to armed groups who have targeted Israeli soldiers and civilians at random, complicating Israeli efforts to contain the violence, which has been linked to tensions over a sensitive Jerusalem holy site. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

A Palestinian raises a knife during clashes with Israeli police, in Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, Friday, Oct. 9, 2015. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

Palestinian Arabs have been arguing for a return to Israel for several decades. They claim that 5 million Palestinian Arabs are have a legal right to move to Israel as declared by the United Nations. The claim has always been flawed:

Refugees: As detailed in “Palestinian Refugees or SAPs,” the definition of a refugee is someone who leaves a country, not a land. Under the most generous definition of “refugee,” there are only 30,000 Arab refugees alive who left Israel after the country was created in 1948-9. The 5 million descendants of various refugees who left Israel before the country was created are provided services by the United Nations, but are not refugees entitled to a “right of return.”

Live in Peace: The basis of the Palestinian Arab claim for the right of return under international law stems from UN General Assembly Resolution 194 which stated “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”

The phrase “live at peace” is the core of being able to move to Israel. No one will be entitled to any compensation or consideration without the clear intent of living in peace with Israelis in the Jewish State.

According to an Anti Defamaition League poll in May 2014, almost every Palestinian (93%) was considered an anti-Semite. Not a good place to start for moving to the Jewish State and living in peace.

In December 2015, Palestinians conducted their own poll of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank about the “stabbing intifada” against Jews. It concluded that “two-thirds support an armed intifada and the current wave of stabbings.”

Based on the estimate of 30,000 Arab refugees alive today, the poll would imply that only one-third, or 10,000 would potentially be interested in living in peace with Israelis (if not killing someone would be used as the barometer of “living at peace”).

 

The number of Arab refugees from Israel is now declining rapidly as they enter old age.  It appears that the stabbing intifada will not only delay any chance for peace between Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, it will also guarantee that one of the points for negotiation will no longer be relevant.

Related First.One.Through articles:

An Inconvenient Truth: Palestinian Polls

“Peace” According to Palestinian “Moderates”

Palestinians are “Desperate” for…

UNRWA’s Ongoing War against Israel and Jews

Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR

The Israeli Peace Process versus the Palestinian Divorce Proceedings

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New York Times’ Lost Pictures and Morality for the Year 2015

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On December 27, 2015, the New York Times shared its thoughts for a “Year in Pictures.” The Sunday Review was dominated by the waves of refugees and migrants from the MENA region (Middle East and North Africa) as well as pictures of terrorism that touched much of the world. For the Times, this excluded Israel.

The Times led its discussion with an opening paragraph: “This was the year of the great unravelling, with international orders and borders challenged or broken, with thousands of deaths, vast flows of migrants and terrorist attacks on some of the most cherished symbols of civilization, both Western and Muslim.”

It continued with some reviews of terrorism: “Palmyra and Paris (twice), Aleppo, Homs, Kobani and even San Bernadino, Calif…. The outrages of Boko Haram and the Shabab in Africa. The abuse of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar. The war in Ukraine and the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. New tensions in the skies over the Baltics and a Russian plane shot down by a NATO country for the first time in decades.

The ruins still in Gaza, a year after a brutal and inconclusive war, and Israel hunkering down in a region losing its compass. Even the energetic secretary of State, John Kerry, has given up on serious negotiations for Mideast peace.”

In a year where Palestinian Arabs repeatedly attacked Israel civilians killing dozens, the Times decided to highlight the Gaza war of a year ago and dismissed the shift of the Arabs’ battlefront to Judea and Samaria from Gaza. It was not an oversight, as relayed in the Times’ actual pictures.

The chronology of pictures of the year included a number of pictures related to terrorist attacks:

  • A large picture of politicians holding hands in Paris after the January attacks (no attribution given to the killers);
  • A large picture in Kenya after students slaughtered in April (attribution to “Shabab militants”)
  • A small picture in South Carolina in July where “A Confederate flag was removed from the state house after the massacre of black churchgoers in Charelston.”
  • A large picture from Gaza in August with a caption “Concrete salvagers in a building destroyed by the 2014 war between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.”
  • A large picture of a victim from the Paris attacks in November (no attribution of who were the terrorists)
  • A medium sized picture of mourners in Paris honoring the victims of the November murders (no attribution)
  • A large picture of mourners in Lebanon from terrorist bombings in November (no attribution)
  • A small picture of people in California after a December attack with a caption “A candlelight vigil commemorated the victims of a mass shooting by a radicalized Muslim couple.”

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New York Times’ large picture of ruined building in Gaza

What message could a person extract from the New York Times review of the significant events of the year? Much of the same message that the Times imparted throughout the year:

  • Terrorist attacks in the United States were not as significant as attacks elsewhere in the world
  • The Islamic State/ISIS was not labelled as responsible for any of the terrorist attacks in the world
  • The dozens of Israelis killed in the fall of 2015 were not mentioned in text nor portrayed in pictures, as the Times did not view Israelis as terrorist victims
  • Gazans were portrayed as victims, a year after their elected terrorist leaders launched their latest battle to destroy Israel and kill Israeli civilians.

The New York Times became more deliberate in separating radical Islam from global terrorism, just as President Obama did and while Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump drew attention to the issue. The only mention of Islam in the picture captions was in the very final picture of the year.

The Times has always been deliberate about Israel. Israelis who were shot, stabbed and run over were not victims of terrorism. Israelis did not suffer. Israelis did not mourn.

However, Palestinian Arabs who have continued to fight for the destruction of Israel were featured among pictures of the sufferers and mourners.

If the trends continue, the New York Times’ 2016 Year in Pictures” will likely feature the western world as the radical terrorists.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Every Picture Tells A Story: Only Palestinians are Victims

Every Picture Tells a Story: The Invisible Murdered Israelis

Framing the Israeli-Palestinian Arab Conflict: WSJ and NY Times

Every Picture Tells a Story: Arab Injuries over Jewish Deaths

Every Picture Tells a Story: Versions of Reality

The New York Times Picture of the Year, 2014

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New York Times’ Tales of Israeli Messianic War-Mongering

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Summary:  One year after acknowledging that Palestinians were to blame for the failed Israeli-Palestinian Authority peace process, left-wing NY Times contributor Roger Cohen cast Israelis as fanatical nationalists and Palestinians as passive, despondent victims. The Times’ cure for Jews’ violent adherence to their religious texts is punishing settlers with BDS, while the paper distanced Muslims from their religion and called for greater compassion towards these innocents.

 

Just in time for Christmas, Roger Cohen decided to write about the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict. Again.

In an article called “The Assassination in Israel that Worked,” Cohen portrayed an Israeli society overrun with religious fanatical murderers. He described the killer of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Yigal Amir, as “a religious-nationalist follower of Baruch Goldstein, the American-born killer of 29 Palestinian worshipers in Hebron in 1994.” He wrote about Jews living east of the Green Line (EGL) as obsessed with “Messianic Zionism,” at odds with the concept of democracy. Because Palestinians are desperate for their own state, Jews living in EGL make “violence inevitable” according to Cohen. He argued that the UN’s creation of Israel “was territorial compromise, as envisaged in Resolution 181 of 1947, calling for two states, one Jewish and one Arab, in the Holy Land. This was humankind’s decision, not God’s.” In short, according to Cohen, the vast Messianic cult of violence in Israel seeks all of the Holy Land, but the rights of Jews are limited to just half of the land as dictated by man’s laws.

Lastly, Cohen argued, the only way to push back against the right-wing Israelis and their government was to employ different angles of the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) in which Obama should “close American loopholes that benefit Israeli settlers.”

Here is a bit of education for Roger Cohen (maybe the byline was wrong and this was written by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, the loud advocate of BDS?):

A smaller percentage of Jewish “settlers” are murderers, than are terrorists which are Muslim.  The Cohen opinion piece would lead a person to believe that every Jewish “settler” takes up arms against Arabs, while the reality is that almost every Jew living in the land seeks to live in peace with their Arab neighbors. Baruch Goldstein was an anomaly, not the rule.

Why would the Times print such an inflammatory piece against Jews when it is in the midst of a blitz about the dangers of “Islamophobia”?  The Times wrote over-and-again that most Muslims are peaceful and that Muslim terrorist abuse the interpretation of Islamic holy texts.  Yet the Times was eager to describe Jewish killers as motivated by the plain reading of the Jewish holy texts, and suggested that any Jew living in Judea and Samaria is either a potential killer, or instigates Palestinian violence.

It is untrue, unfair and reeks of hypocrisy to portray Jews in such a manner.  There are almost no Jews in Judea and Samaria that committed murders, but the Times labelled all “settlers” as devout killers.  Meanwhile, the global jihadist movement enlisted thousands and slaughtered thousands, and the Times rallied to the defense of Muslims.

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“Islamophobia” Op-Eds from Paul Krugman on December 11, 2015, and
Nicholas Kristof on December 13, 2015

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Front Page of NY Times Sunday Review on “Islamophobia”
on December 13, 2015

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Front Page New York Times story on December 15, 2015 about
Young Muslims suffering from “Islamophobia”

Jews are entitled to live in EGL/ Judea and Samaria according to international law. The 1922 Mandate of Palestine by the League of Nations clearly and specifically encouraged Jews to live throughout the Holy Land, including areas now known as the “West Bank.” The Mandate included language that specified that no one should be prevented from living anywhere because of their religion.

“Messianic Zionism” may be a driving force motivating some Jewish families to move to the region, just as they might move to Haifa or Be’er Sheva. Some people are motivated by Zionism without a Messianic component, while others go for good jobs in the only liberal democracy in the Middle East.  The motivation for living there is irrelevant; the right of Jews to live anywhere in the Holy Land was established in international law.

“Violence is inevitable” because Arab don’t want Jews as neighbors, not because Arabs want a state.  Arabs have been killing Jews in the Holy Land for 100 years.  In several episodes in the 1920s, including the brutal Hebron massacre in 1929, Arabs called for ridding the land of Jews.  On the eve of the Holocaust, they launched multi-year riots (1936-9) slaughtering dozens of Palestinian Jews and convinced the British to limit Jewish immigration, causing the death of hundreds of thousands of European Jews.

Whites in the 1950s also did not want to live with black neighbors. Racism and anti-Semitism are to be condemned, not rationalized.  Shame on the New York Times for defending Arab attacks on Jews.

The establishment of Israel as a Jewish State has been rejected by the Arabs for 100 years, and counting.  Cohen pointed to the United Nations Partition Plan which called for creating a Jewish State in 1947.  He failed to say that the Arabs REJECTED that plan.  They opted to launch a war against Israel instead.

Israel has continued to seek peace with its neighboring Arab countries: Jews approved the partition plan in 1947; the country uprooted Jews living in Sinai in 1982; it handed various cities to the Palestinian Authority in 1995; it uprooted Jews from Gaza in 2005. Israel made various peace offers to the Palestinians, including in 2000 and 2008. The Palestinians reacted to each offer with wars, and continue to reject Israel as the Jewish State to this day.

Conclusion

One year ago, Cohen wrote “Why Israeli-Palestinian Peace Failed. “ In the article, he acknowledged various Israeli peace efforts including settlement freezes and prisoner releases.  In exchange for the Israeli gestures, the Palestinian Authority created a reconciliation government with the terrorist group Hamas, and joined international bodies counter to the agreed upon peace framework.  The peace talks collapsed.

Cohen has now concluded that while the Palestinians suffer from ineptitude and corruption, at the end of the day, their cause is just.  The Palestinians are not only despondent, but desperate for an external force to advance their vision of a state.  Cohen believes that Obama should begin to advance various iterations of BDS on Jews living east of the Green Line to assure the Palestinians goal of a Jew-free state (Obama has indicated in the past that he approves of a Judenfrei Palestine). Cohen had no suggestions – or concerns – of how to make Palestinians approve of the Jewish State living in security.

The radical left-wing call for BDS of the Israeli territories is easier to make when one ignores the 99% of peaceful families living in Judea and Samaria.  So Cohen, and other Israel-bashers paint all of these Jews as “Messianic Zionists” who are out of touch with reality.  They are either murderers of Arabs like Baruch Goldstein, or of the peace process with Arabs like Yigal Amir.

Cohen fails two of Natan Sharansky “Three Ds” test for anti-Semitism: demonization and double standards.  To rephrase the great ballad-rocker Meatloaf, Two of the Three IS Bad.

When will the Times and the left-wing fringe look at the Jewish families with an iota of the compassion they shower upon peaceful Muslims?

Related First.One.Through articles:

Palestinians are “Desperate” for…

Nicholas Kristof’s “Arab Land”

Framing the Israeli-Palestinian Arab Conflict: WSJ and NY Times

Names and Narrative: The West Bank / Judea and Samaria

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

Every Picture Tells A Story: Only Palestinians are Victims

The Narrative that Prevents Peace in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Israel and Wars

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The New York Times on the History of Gush Etzion

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The New York Times actually tried to give its readers some history of Gush Etzion for a change. Unfortunately, it still missed the critical points.
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New York Times article from December 15, 2015
In an article entitled “West Bank Shopping Center, a Symbol of Coexistence, is Shaken by Violence,” the Times gave more detailed history than typical when it provided background on the Gush Etzion “settlements” in Judea and Samaria/ West Bank of the Jordan River.  While the paper would typically state that “the world considers all settlements seized by Israel in 1967 as illegal,” it opted to give more historical context on December 15th.  It wrote:
“Gush Etzion, or the Etzion block, a cluster of more than a dozen Jewish settlements, lies south of Jerusalem, in the Bethlehem area. It is often described as part of the Israeli “national consensus,” a chunk of West Bank land seized from Jordan in the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 that many Jewish Israelis assume will always be part of Israel, and it holds a special status in the country’s psyche, associated with tragedy and triumph.

The first Jewish settlers arrived in the 1920s. Four communities were established by the 1940s but they were destroyed in the war of 1948 over the creation of Israel. Jordanian forces killed scores of Jews who tried to defend the area and took scores more captive.

After Israel captured the West Bank in the 1967 war, a group of Israelis, including some descendants of those who had fought to defend it in 1948, reestablished Jewish settlements there.

The Palestinians and much of the world consider all settlements in the territories seized in 1967 as illegal and an obstacle to establishing a Palestinian state. While most peace plans envisage exchanges of land that could leave at least part of Gush Etzion under Israeli sovereignty, Israelis and Palestinians have never agreed on the size of the block.”

The Times opted to repeat its often used language – twice – but it did give much more history than it normally does.  However, while it described Jews moving to area in the 1920s, and some of the new residents as descendants of those original settlers, the reader was still left with the wrong impression that Jews are living there illegally.
Key points that were omitted from the article:
  • The 1922 League of Nations Mandate specifically gave Jews the right to live and establish themselves THROUGHOUT the Holy Land. This was a matter of international law and the Jews availed themselves of this legal right.  In 1922, there was no concept of a “West Bank.”  It was all just “Palestine” and Jews legally purchased land and built homes in Gush Etzion.  As stated in Article 6, the Mandate “shall facilitate Jewish immigration under suitable conditions and shall encourage, in co-operation with the Jewish agency referred to in Article 4, close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands not required for public purposes.”  Further, Article 15 of the Mandate specifically stated that no part of Palestine should be off-limits to people based on their religion: “No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants of Palestine on the ground of race, religion or language. No person shall be excluded from Palestine on the sole ground of his religious belief.”
  • When Jordan illegally attacked Israel in 1949 and killed the Jews in Gush Etzion, it did not undermine the legal rights Jews had for living in their homes.
  • Jordan’s illegal expulsion of all of the Jews from the region in 1949 counter to the fourth Geneva Convention was not mentioned by the Times.
  • The fact that Jordan illegally annexed the region in 1950 in an action that was never recognized by any country was also omitted.
  • Jordan (and Palestinians who had been granted Jordanian citizenship) attacked Israel in 1967, counter the Israel-Jordan Armistice agreement, and Israel was legally justified in responding in self-defense.
  • Jordan gave up all claim to the region in 1988.
It was nice to see the Times take steps to educate readers a bit more about Gush Etzion.  However, the details provided still left a reader with the impression that Jews live in Gush Etzion illegally, and it is only a matter of “national consensus” that leads Israelis to believe that the bloc will be formally part of Israel.  The many illegal activities of Jordan also continue to be ignored.
Perhaps the full facts disturb the Times’ narrative too profoundly to detail.

Related First.One.Through articles:

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“Peace” According to Palestinian “Moderates”

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Liberals, including the left-wing paper The New York Times, often suggest that there are many leading Palestinian Arab and Israeli Arab moderates who genuinely want peace with Israel. US Secretary of State John Kerry warned Jews and Israelis about failing to fully engage “the moderate Palestinian leadership,” which could lead to “extremism.”

Over the past six weeks, one has to wonder what kind of “peace” these “moderates” have in mind.

Mahmoud Abbas

On October 28, 2015, the acting-President of the Palestinian Authority addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland. In his prepared remarks he said that Israeli occupation of Palestine has been in place since Israel’s founding in 1948. He viewed all of Israel as illegitimate, and Palestinian land.

Abbas is a proud Holocaust denier as well as denier of Jewish history in the holy land. His anti-Semitic call for a Jew-free country has been endorsed by the Obama administration, and his basic refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish State make the goal of achieving peace with this straw man a laughable fantasy.

Ayman Odeh

The NY Times was very quick to promote the prospects for Israeli-Arab peace as one of the leaders of the Joint Arab List, Ayman Odeh, was coming to New York to address groups of Jews.  On December 10, the Times ran an article “Arab-Israeli Parliament Member sees Prospect for Peace,” which described a hopeful Ayman Odeh’s thoughts about peace because “many parts of the Jewish population were able for the first time to hear us.”  Somehow, the deafness on the part of Arabs to recognize the Jewish State doesn’t seem to bother him.

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New York Times article on December 10, 2015

On December 10, Ayman’s vision of Israel was brought to the open (except for readers of the NY Times since it opted not to print the follow-up story).

Ayman was due to speak to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.  However, when Ayman noticed that the meeting was taking place on the same floor in the building as the Jewish Agency (a group that facilitates Jews moving to Israel) and other Zionist organizations, he refused to go up the elevator.  He insisted that the meeting location be moved so he would not have to be on the same floor as “organizations whose work displaces Arab citizens.“  The organization’s leader, Malcolm Hoenlein refused to change the meeting location and the meeting was cancelled.

Saeb Erekat

On December 13, 2015, perennial spokesperson for the Palestinians, Saeb Erekat came to speak at a conference run by the left-wing Israeli newspaper Haaretz and left-wing foundation, the New Israel Fund. Before taking the stage, he demanded that the Israeli flag be removed from the room.  The event organizers quickly complied.

“Moderates” seek a new State of Palestine,
not Peace with Israel

Many progressives have opened up various venues for engagement with Arabs to move a peace process forward.  As part of those efforts, they have chosen to label various Arab leaders as “moderates” and partners for peace.

However, these Arab “moderates” repeatedly make clear – in public, and in front of them – that they view the Jewish State of Israel as illegitimate.  The only rightful rights in the holy land belong to Arabs; if Jews are to remain in the land, it will only be subject to Arab review and approval.

Consider what these “moderates” say in private to their own constituents.

For Palestinian Arabs, there is one goal in the “peace process” and it is not peace with the Jewish State, but the establishment of a new State of Palestine.  The only difference between Arab moderates and extremists, is that extremists want to remove Israel in its entirety immediately, while moderates want to start with a Palestine in half of the holy land, before they assume complete control of the land.

John Kerry, Haaretz, the New York Times and other liberals loudly proclaim that the Palestinian Arab leadership are moderates who seek peace with Israel, but refuse to describe and detail all of the Arab comments and actions which clearly spell out their permanent hostility towards the Jewish State.

The fact that these “moderates” do not represent the general Palestinian public is yet all the more frightening, as 67% of Palestinian support the “stabbing intifada” according to the latest Palestinian poll.

The New York Times may highlight Ayman Odeh’s call that peace is possible since the “Jewish population can hear us.” But the world has news sources and blogs like First.One.Through that are read broadly around the world, that listen to more than just the sound-bites that dreamy liberals promote.

Peace partners are still not present.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Israeli Peace Process versus the Palestinian Divorce Proceedings

The Narrative that Prevents Peace in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

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

What do you Recognize in the Palestinians?

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