Israel successfully eliminated several terrorists in the United Nations-administered zone in Jenin and confiscated many weapons. Rather than consider why the UN harbors so many terrorists, the global body used the opportunity to fundraise.
Under the banner of “Jenin Emergency”, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) ran a series of advertisements appealing for funds for the “Jenin Palestine Refugee Camp.” It inverted reality and made the terrorist enclave the victim of Israeli aggression, rather than self-reflect as to why the UN is the mother hen of a terrorist training facility.
Other charities jumped into the circus and started spending money on promoting this false narrative to collect monies for their coffers, even a peaceful sounding group like “Save the Children.”
The “DONATE” and “DONATE NOW” buttons flooded the screens with appeals for “humanitarian aid” for the “suffering and hardship that the children in the Jenin refugee camp are enduring.” The sites relayed stories of an assault of the “Israel Armed Forces” on residents of Jenin. Nowhere was there a discussion of the Arab killers who live in their midst and the overwhelming support that the terrorists receive from their neighbors.
Today, 57% of Palestinians support terrorist attacks against Jewish civilians inside of Israel.
The Palestinians have already started their “intifada” and have gone on the offensive asking for donations to fund their terrorism against Jews. While the poorly named “Second Intifada” witnessed Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran being the main sponsors of the murderers, today, anti-Israel charities are asking the rest of the world to underwrite the spilling of Jewish blood.
On March 9, 2023, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) spoke in Congress about his views on discrimination, specifically against what he thought were attempts to harm the transgender community with a proposed bill to prevent trans-women from competing in sports against biological women. He spoke about the history of discrimination in the United States saying “whether they are Black, Latino, Asian, LGBTQ, poor, people with disabilities, women, we have an ugly history of discrimination in this country.”
In calling out eight groups of people facing discrimination, he omitted the most targeted people of hate crimes: Jews.
Not only did Bowman ignore the most prevalent form of hate crimes in his denouncement of discrimination, he implied that most of the offenders are White. Meanwhile, according to FBI statistics, it is Black people who are disproportionately the attackers of the LGBT community, accounting for 27.2% of such hate crimes even though they are 13.6% of the overall population.
Bowman’s antisemitism and race baiting is so ingrained, that he cannot fathom facts, and instead promotes himself with political theater performed for a narrow slice of his constituents.
Many people waited for the United States Supreme Court to rule on a case of trademark infringement before leaping into the market with their own parody products. The case involved a dog toy named ‘Bad Spaniels’ that mimicked Jack Daniel’s Whiskey. The justices came back with a unanimous 9-0 ruling in favor of BS arguing that no one could possibly confuse a ‘poop-themed’ dog toy for the alcoholic beverage.
One of the first new products to hit store shelves was “U.N.Circumcized”, which sported the United Nations global body logo, with a tagline which offered “protection for the world’s bodies, except for Jews.”
Another person opted to open a store across the street from the United Nations called Hunter College Store for Jihad. It had highly flammable Israeli flags, a map of all Jewish institutions in America following the format of the Massachusetts Mapping Project, and several life-sized effigies in nooses with masks of various Jewish and Israeli personalities.
The court trial of the man who killed eleven people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA began on May 30, 2023. The murderer, Robert Bowers, faces a total of 63 federal crimes which include:
11 counts of obstruction of free religious exercise resulting in death;
11 counts of hate crimes resulting in death;
Two counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon and resulting in bodily injury;
Two counts of hate crimes involving an attempt to kill;
Eight counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon, and resulting in bodily injury to public safety officers;
Four counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving use of a dangerous weapon and resulting in bodily injury to public safety officers;
25 counts of discharging a firearm during those crimes
The case is not being built solely on the fact that Bowers killed eleven innocent people and threatened to kill others, but with the added emphasis on the “obstruction of free religious exercise” and of “hate crimes.”
The United States has a law which lays out the protection afforded to people and property associated with religious worship. 18 U.S. Code 247 is called “Damage to religious property; obstruction of persons in the free exercise of religious beliefs,” and lays out the principle of religious protection. Section (a)(2) refers to circumstances in which a person “intentionally obstructs, by force or threat of force, including by threat of force against religious real property, any person in the enjoyment of that person’s free exercise of religious beliefs, or attempts to do so.”
This US law has commonalities in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Articles 2 and 18 of the UDHR entitle everyone “to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”
Despite embracing the basic human rights to the free exercise of religious belief, the United States continues to support the “status quo” demanded by the Jordanian Islamic Waqf to prohibit Jews from praying at Judaism’s holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
While Israel enabled over one million Muslims onto the Jewish Temple Mount during Ramadan, not a single Jew is afforded this basic human right. To add insult to injury, rather than denounce the heinous antisemitic law, the United Nations and United States decry the Jewish protestors as “extremists” inverting the right and the wronged.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivered a message on March 30, 2023 related to the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994. He offered words for the whole world.
How easily hate speech — a key indicator of the risk of genocide — turns to hate crime. How complacency in the face of atrocity is complicity. And how no place, and no time is immune to danger — including our own.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
Unfortunately, the global body – as well as many countries and people – turn a blind eye to the rampant hate speech in Palestinian society.
On May 15, 2023, the United Nations gave a platform to the acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The man who wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial gave a master class in antisemitism.
Abbas claimed that Jews have no history in the Jewish historical homeland. He said that Jews never even had a single temple in Jerusalem.
Abbas said that Jews were implanted into the land of Israel by the British and Americans who wanted to export the Jews which they despised. He argued that doing so made the Jews indebted to their western benefactors to serve as a colonial outpost.
Abbas called the Jews a bunch of liars – on par with Nazi Germany’s propagandist Joseph Goebbels, who was instrumental in the genocide of European Jewry.
Abbas’s performance was a reminder of his past antisemitic tirades when he praised the Arab assassins of Jewish civilians, calling them “martyrs” for the Palestinian cause, who will always get pay-to-slay money, even “if we had only a penny left.“
Horrifically, the United Nations was not “complacent in the face of these atrocities” but an active participant.
The UN continues to give the Palestinian leader the floor to air his antisemitic vitriol. It continues to push money into the terrorist enclave of Gaza, headed by Hamas, with the most antisemitic governing charter ever written. The global forum echoes Palestinians’ demands for apartheid, denying Jews the basic right to pray at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount, and to live in the center of their holy land.
Palestinian hate speech was once again given a platform at the United Nations, inflaming danger to Jews everywhere, and “the risk of genocide.”
These pages have reviewed that Christians love visiting Israel (a majority 56% of tourists in 2018!) and that Muslims barely come despite the supposed significance of the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Here we will dive a bit deeper into the countries that make up tourists to Israel.
In 2019, before the pandemic impacted travel, 4.55 million tourists visited Israel. The United States numbered almost 1 million, and every continent was represented in the top 20 originating places, with the exception of Africa. Despite the proximity and Israel being lumped into the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region by many, the Jewish State has few personal ties with Africa.
It is perhaps not surprising that France was the second highest source of tourists destined for Israel, as it is home to the second largest Jewish population (estimated around 450,000) after the USA. Many people from France have moved to Israel, with an estimated total of 3,500 in 2021, behind the USA at 4,400, and the Former Soviet Union at 10,500.
Italy, which does not have a large Jewish population (under 30,000) had 190,000 tourists visiting Israel, as they came to visit the Christian holy sites.
When normalizing for the population size of each country, the large countries like India and China fall out of the top ranking. In fact, only European countries made the list of top 20 countries when reviewed on a normalized basis.
Interestingly, the top six countries with a high percentage of people visiting Israel do NOT have many Jews. Among the top 20, only seven countries (listed in yellow above) have more than 25,000 Jews.
It is perhaps not a surprise to see non-Islamic Cyprus as the dominant tourist country, as it is very close to Israel and Israelis visit the country all of the time – including to get married. Lithuania, Switzerland, Latvia, Romania and Austria round out the tourists who come to Israel frequently, countries which USED to have a significant number of Jews before World War II.
Lithuania’s Jewish population was estimated at 263,000 people in 1939. Today’s estimates is 2,250. Latvia had about 95,000 Jews at the eve of World War II. Today’s population is about 8,000. Romania’s Jewish population is down to about 3,000 people. Austria had about 190,000 Jews in 1938 with Vienna alone having 22 synagogues. Today there are about 10,000 Jews.
The popularity of people visiting Israel has not translated into those governments’ supporting Israel at the United Nations. As seen below, Hungary was the only country to support Israel more than EIGHT PERCENT of the time from 2015 to present according to UN Watch.
Voting records of countries on Israeli resolutions at United Nations (2015-present), source: UN Watch
Many Muslim majority countries do not recognize Israel and several are technically in a state of war with the Jewish State. Only eight Muslim countries list their tourists to Israel. Of them, only Jordan, which abuts Israel and claimed half of its land as its own until 1988, had over 100 visitors per 100,000 people – 172.2, on par with Hong Kong – and half the rate of Germany.
Muslim Country
Total visitors
Visitors per 100,000
Indonesia
38,700
14.1
Turkey
32,000
37.7
Jordan
19,200
172.2
Malaysia
14,700
43.8
Egypt
8,000
7.3
Morocco
3,500
9.4
Uzbekistan
3,400
9.7
Azerbaijan
3,200
31.6
Muslim countries visiting Israel, 2019
Every Muslim country voted against Israel at the UN 100% of the time.
The populations which come to visit the Jewish State today include its only non-Muslim neighbor and those who live among Jewish ghosts who had lived throughout eastern Europe in the ghettoes of the Pale of Settlement. Today’s ghetto has its own flag with a Jewish Star, and it remains to be seen if it can withstand the pandemic of antisemitism which still permeates the world.
Many countries and municipalities have adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, and U.S. President Joe Biden is considering doing so as well. However, he is getting pushback from some anti-Zionist corners, as people feel that the several examples cited in the IHRA definition stymies legitimate criticism against Israel.
In fact, the opposite is true. There are clear examples of antisemitism which are presently excluded in the IHRA definition which would encompass the land of Israel.
Denial of Jewish History
It is outrageous to deny any people their history, and the IHRA definition narrowly covers this topic as it relates to the genocide of European Jews in the Holocaust. However, it omits doing this in a more general manner, such as denying the 4,000 years of history of Jews in the holy land, that the Jewish Temples stood in Jerusalem and that Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s.
Would anyone ever consider denying the history of Black slavery? To do so would clearly mark such person as a racist.
So it is with denying Jewish history, especially in the land of Israel.
Denying the Right of Jews To Live Somewhere
Redlining where people can live has an ugly history and is known as being part of structural racism. For centuries, many countries barred where Jews could live and confined them to ghettoes.
The world promotes this today, passing laws that Jews are forbidden to live in certain parts of the land of Israel which they consider purely “Arab land.” In 2016, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334 which labeled Israeli “settlements” east of the 1949 Armistice Lines as “illegal.” While an Israeli Arab is free to move to eastern Jerusalem, an Israeli Jew is considered a “settler” who should be barred from owning land in the center of the Jewish holy land.
It’s a repulsive antisemitic statement. No one would ever consider legitimizing a law that Kurds should be banned from owning land in Istanbul, or Algerian Muslims in Marseilles. Yet somehow, the long antisemitic history of banning Jews from living in certain locations thrives today, in the land of Israel of all places.
Denying the Right of Jews To Pray At Their Holiest Site
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Articles 2 and 18 clearly allows all people the “freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” Such right covers Jews at their holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Yet the United Nations and several nations bow to the antisemitic demands of Muslim nations that Jews should be banned from this basic human right. It is a flagrant offense, and doing so specifically and only for Jews reeks of Jew hatred.
The Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem from the roof of the Hurva Synagogue (photo: First One Through)
People are concerned that the IHRA definition of antisemitism has too many references to the Jewish STATE of Israel when in fact it has too few mentions of the Jewish LAND of Israel. Specifically, denying Jewish history in the land, denying Jews the right to live in the land and denying Jews the right to pray at their holiest sites are blatant and obvious examples of antisemitism which should be covered.
Structural Jew-hatred exists at the highest levels of governments and should be addressed directly as antisemitism gains momentum on the extremes of left and right.
ACTION ITEM
The IHRA antisemitism definition is missing denying Jewish history in Israel, denying Jews the right to live in Israel, and denying Jews the right to pray on the Temple Mount
EMAIL REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN “Stop allowing antisemitism to grow. Push President Biden to support the IHRA definition of antisemitism which further includes: denying Jewish history in the land of Israel, denying Jews the right to live throughout the land, and denying Jews the right to pray at their holiest site of the Temple Mount, each a blatant and obvious example of antisemitism.”
Two Jewish cousins, Aviel and Biyamin Hadad, as well as three guards were gunned down near the Djerba Synagogue in Tunisia. The cousins were part of a large Jewish contingent which came to the synagogue as part of Lag B’Omer festivities.
Binyamin Haddad, left, and his cousin, Aviel Haddad, who were killed in a shooting in Djerba, Tunisia on May 9, 2023. (Courtesy of the family)
The Jewish community in Tunisia is a shadow of its former self, as the Islamification of the country at its independence in 1956 made the Jews unwelcome, as they were relegated to second class “dhimmi” status. For example, from that time, all Jewish businesses were forced to take on a Muslim partner.
In 1957, the old Tunis Jewish cemetery was expropriated, and in 1960, the great Tunis synagogue was destroyed. Jews began to flee the country in 1961 as they were throughout the Muslim Arab countries. Tunisia only allowed Jews to take one dinar with them, as the country confiscated the rest of their possessions, in a massive theft as part of its ethnic cleansing.
These are plain facts. All rewritten in The New York Times telling of the horrific shootings.
According to the Times, the killer “shot indiscriminately near the synagogue”, “killing two visitors and two guards.” It then added color that there was “no motive for the shooting, in which a 42-year old French national, whom the authorities described as a French-Tunisian, and a 30-year Tunisian were killed.”
No mention that the two visitors were Jews and no mention of anti-Semitism.
Instead, the synagogue is referred to as a tourist site, which came under attack much like other tourist sites had been attacked in Tunisia. The synagogue was simply a “tourist attraction” which had also been attacked in April 2002, “killing 21 Western tourists.” The Times worried that “Tuesday’s shooting could harm the country’s crucial tourism industry,” a real problem, as the country is “in a political and economic crisis.”
In regards to the routing of the country’s Jews, the paper said that the “community shrank as Djerban Jews migrated to Israel or France,” and “in general, the Jews and Muslims of Djerba have coexisted peacefully.”
A complete disregard of the Islamic nationalism which routed the Jewish community.
As for that attack in 2002 which the Times said “militants detonated a truck bomb at the synagogue,” it is worth telling some uncomfortable truths about that event, as detailed by Aaron Zelin in his work “Fifteen Years after the Djerba Synagogue bombing.” To summarize:
The mastermind of the April 2002 attack was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), one of the masterminds of the attacks of 9/11 and responsible for the beheading of Jewish journalist Daniel Pearl.
The attack was conducted by a Tunisian, Nizar Nawar in conjunction with al Qaeda. While trained in Afghanistan, he received logistical support in Spain and France.
A statement of responsibility was released after the attacks by Jaysh al-Islami Li-Tahrir al-Muqadisat (JITM, or the Islamic Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites, a front name for al-Qa`ida) via fax to the Arabic newspapers Al-Hayat and Al-Quds al-Arabi, “that Nawar carried the attack out in the name of Palestine against the Jews”
Zelin noted a connection between the training and choice of targets of jihadi attacks. “Global jihadis have retained a focus on Jewish-related entities. Nawar chose to attack a Jewish synagogue in Tunisia, while more recently, Mehdi Nemmouche attacked the Jewish Museum of Belgium in Brussels. Part of this trend is due to the continuing resonance of the Palestinian plight within the broader Muslim world, which jihadi groups co-opt to gain legitimacy, support, and new recruits.”
“In the aftermath of the Djerba synagogue bombing, the Tunisian government was initially dismissive of any ties to terrorism, suggesting the attack was only an accident. A sense of denial about the threat contributed to a fundamental lack of understanding within Tunisia’s political establishment of jihadism.”
“Tunisians have long been involved in international terrorism plots, attacks, and foreign fighting. This trend is likely to continue, especially as so many Tunisians have gone to train in Libya, Iraq, and Syria over the past six years. The Nizar Nawars of today are finding a melting pot of contacts and networks they can tap into, just as Nawar himself did more than 15 years ago.”
The 2002 attack was clearly an antisemitic attack by pro-Palestinian global jihadists, not a generic al Qaeda attack against tourists the way the Times portrayed. As in 2002, the Tunisian government denies the charge of antisemitism, saying “Tunisia will always remain a land of tolerance and coexistence,” and that the purpose of the attack was to “sow the seeds of discord, damage the tourist season and damage the state.”
The Global Intifada has begun, and the media will not even say that Jews died or antisemitism exists, and the Arab world is narrowly focused on the impact to their pocketbooks.
A horrible massacre took place in a mall near Dallas, Texas. Eight people were killed and many more injured by a 33-year old man named Mauricio Garcia. The police and the media are actively speculating about the motive for the rampage.
Many media outlets noted that Garcia had a swastika over his heart and that his social media contained posts and images espousing “white supremacist and neo-Nazi views.” But the similarity in coverage ended there.
CNN said that Garcia had posts which “espoused antisemitism.” NBC News led with a headline that the “Texas mall shooter ranted against Jews, women and racial minorities.” The ADL also led its headline that “Shooter in Allen, Texas, Embraced Antisemitism, Misogyny and White Supremacy.” The BBC quoted from the ADL, and Forbes referenced NBCNews, both covering “antisemitism, misogyny and white supremacy.”
NBC NewsCNNADLForbesBBC
This isn’t really surprising coming from a person praising Hitler and sporting a swastika.
What is alarming is that The New York Times excluded mentioning antisemitism as a possible motive. It only wrote that his online profile was “rife with hate-filled rants against women and Black people.”
New York Times excluding antisemitism as a motive behind massacre
The Times knows about Jew hatred, having covered the rise in antisemitic attacks in the United States in an article on March 23, 2023. That article selectively flagged white supremacist attackers, even though a great many anti-Jewish attacks were committed by Blacks and Muslims. Perhaps the paper was taking the lead from the Southern Poverty Law Center which does not want to highlight crimes by Blacks or Muslims as it fears doing so will lead to over-policing.
While the Times has long ignored rampant antisemitism by Palestinian Arabs and Black people, the paper has seemingly taken the next step in its downward spiral to hell, and now also ignores antisemitism from neo Nazis.
In a highly partisan world, there should be moments when people of opposing sides bond and find common purpose. “Fight Cancer” or “Don’t Drown Cats” are examples of easy themes for all to embrace, especially if there are no specific requirements that accompany the chant, such as spending billions of dollars to effectuate the cause.
New York City attempted to pass such banal resolution, declaring April 29 as “End Jew Hatred Day.” The text of the resolution summarized the terrifying statistics of Jews being singled out for attacks. There was no mention of Israel or the Palestinian conflict. Nothing highlighted that most of the anti-Semitic attacks in NYC were coming from Blacks and Muslims. There was no request for money or any action.
The resolution was toothless, a simple vote to support the Jewish community.
Yet it failed to pass unanimously.
Of the 51 members on the New York City Council, two opposed the measure and four abstained. All six who rejected supporting Jews, are members of the Progressive Caucus and the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus. Five of the six are women and belong to the Women’s Caucus.
The two members who voted against the measure are:
Shahana Hanif explained her vote against Jews saying that “They [Jews] have not stood up for Muslims, they have not stood up for trans New Yorkers or anybody.”
Councilmember Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn) on April 28, 2022. (Photo John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)
Charles Barron said that there is “inconsistency of members of the Jewish community, particularly its leadership, in speaking out against hatred, like hatred of the Palestinian people, like the State of Israel murdering Palestinian women and children and stealing the land.”
Hanif and Barron – politicians elected to protect their constituents – essentially said that Jews do not deserve protection and have collectively earned the hatred and wrath of society.
Sponsors of the resolution to combat Jew Hatred in New York City
While all six of the councilmembers who rejected the resolution denouncing anti-Semitism were members of the Progressive Caucus, only one of the resolution’s fourteen sponsors (Kristin Richardson Jordan) was a progressive.
Progressive minority groups are not only excluding Jews – the most persecuted group in the country – from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), they are turning a blind eye and enabling antisemitism to fester.
First One Through 