Category Archives: Jews

Jews, Judaism and Israel

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There are many debates being waged around the world about whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, how it is possible that some Jews may be against Israel, and why some Jews who do not believe in either God or religion are still considered Jews. This article will not tackle all of those issues but will seek to define, segment and size the nature of Jews, Judaism and Israel to better frame discussions on those topics.

Judaism

Judaism is a religion that takes the source of its teachings from the Five Books of Moses. Biblical scholars over thousands of years have interpreted the various events and commandments found in the Old Testament to frame how a Jewish person should act and live. The approaches changed over the millenia, with some sects like Sadducees, Essens and Karaites fading away while the Pharisees survived with the publication of the Talmud.

Over the last few hundred years, newer religious denominations came about including Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism. Each adopted different approaches as to whether the Bible was written by God or was simply divinely-inspired, and how to translate the ancient stories into relevant lessons for today.

Jews

Jews are most often defined by their lineage. Abraham, the father of monotheism, is considered the first Jew in Judaism. His grandchild Jacob became known as Israel and Jacob’s sons were the basis for the twelve tribes and the nation of Israel. Jews consider themselves direct descendants of these biblical characters.

According to the Orthodox and Conservative streams of Judaism, a person’s religion is decided by matrilineal descent (the religion of the mother), while the Reform and Reconstructionist groups have a broader allowance, in that they include patrilineal descent as well. Converts are also welcomed as Jews (although they are not encouraged) and tradition maintains that the new Jews do not only take upon themselves the religion, but the ancestry of Jews as well. A convert’s new Hebrew name will be “______ son of Abraham” or “_____ daughter of Sarah” to show that they are now included as part of the heritage of Jewish peoplehood.

Israel

Judaism is a unique religion in that it has ties to a specific piece of land. The Bible clearly relays to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the descendants afterwards that the land of Canaan is their inheritance. The Bible describes specific commandments that can only be kept in Israel, and to this day, every Jew around the world prays facing the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel.

Jews have always lived in the LAND of Israel. Indeed, they were the only religious group to move to the holy land throughout the 19th century and Jews have been a majority in the city of Jerusalem since the 1860’s, BEFORE the push for Jewish sovereignty and advent of Modern Zionism.

Jews, Judaism and Israel

Despite the intersection of Jews, Judaism and Israel, not every Jew follows the religion nor lives in Israel.

Religion and Zionism In Israel

There are roughly 14.2 million Jews alive in the world today. Of that total, roughly 6.7 million live in the Jewish State of Israel. There are another 2.3 million non-Jews that live in Israel, with a population that now exceed 9 million.

  • Religious Jews 3.4 million
  • Secular Jews 3.3 million
  • Non-Jews 2.3 million
    • Total 9.0 million people in Israel

The Pew Forum estimates that Haredi and Orthodox Jews account for 10% and 12% of Israeli Jews, respectively, with Conservatives and Secular Jews accounting for 28% and 49% of the Israeli Jewish population, respectively. Using a Venn diagram, one can plot the 3.3 million Secular Israelis as being Jews connected to the land of Israel (People + Land) but not to the Religion.

Among the religiously-affiliated Israeli Jews, the Haredi Jews are the least Zionistic, while most of the other streams are very passionate about Israel having Jewish sovereignty. The black hat/ Haredi community is less enamored with the Modern Jewish State as it is not based on Orthodox religious law and many believe that such a state should only come into being with the arrival of the Messiah.

Denomination Population% Total Zionist% Total
Haredi 10% 0.7 10%            0.1
Orthodox 12% 0.8 100%            0.8
Conservative 28% 1.9 95%            1.8
Secular 49% 3.3 90%            3.0
Total in millions 6.7 5.7

If one were to assume that only 10% of the Haredi population are Zionists and almost all of the other denominations are Zionists, roughly 1 million Jews in Israel today would not be considered ardent Zionists.

This is not an oxymoron, and goes to the nature of the confusion of different people’s opinions about Zionism. Many Jews living in Israel are against the GOVERNMENT, not the idea of Jews living in the land. Haredi Jews consider themselves anti-Zionist because they think a secular Jewish state has no legitimacy in the Jewish holy land. However, they believe very strongly that the land is the Jewish holy land and they have the right to live Israel. This is in sharp contrast to Muslim anti-Zionism around the world which believes both that the Israeli government should be destroyed and that Jews should be expelled from the land.

Diaspora Jewry on Israel and Judaism

A little more than half of world Jewry lives outside of Israel, roughly 7.5 million people. The vast majority of diaspora Jews live in the United States (over 5 million) with France, Canada and the United Kingdom accounting for over 1 million more.

The United States is a bit of an anomaly compared to Jews around the world, with strong Conservative and Reform movements. In much of the rest of the world, Jews are either Orthodox or secular. In considering the breakdown of Jews in the Venn diagram, assumptions are made for the 5.3 million Jews in the U.S. and then for the rest of the world.

America Population% Total Zionist %  Total 
Orthodox 10% 0.5 50%            0.3
Conservative 18% 1.0 70%            0.7
Reform 35% 1.9 40%            0.7
Unaffiliated 37% 2.0 20%            0.4
Total in millions 5.3 2.1

The Pew Forum estimated the breakdown of Jewish denominations in the United States and the percentages for people who consider themselves Zionists are educated guesses. The Conservative denomination is assumed to be the most pro-Israel, as the Orthodox group includes Anti-Zionist Haredi factions. Using these figures would suggest less than 40% of American Jewry is pro-Israel.

Different percentages are used in making estimates in the rest of the world, below:

ROW Population% Total Zionist %  Total 
Orthodox 25% 0.6 60%            0.3
Conservative 10% 0.2 70%            0.2
Reform 30% 0.7 40%            0.3
Unaffiliated 35% 0.8 40%            0.3
Total in millions 2.2 1.1

The figures for the 2.2 million Jews in the rest of the world are broad estimates. In some countries like France, 60% of the population is Sephardic which almost always considers itself Orthodox, even when not actively practicing Judaism. In general, the unaffiliated/ Reform account for a majority of the population.

Among the diaspora Jews outside of the U.S., Israel holds a more significant role as they suffer more discrimination and are much more likely to emigrate to the Jewish State. Using these figures – which are arguably low – approximately half of the Jews in the rest of the world would be considered active Zionists, 10% more than American Jewry.

Laying out these figures in the Venn diagram above shows that there are about 5.6 million affiliated Jews, of which roughly three-quarters are pro-Israel. This compares to approximately 8.5 million unaffiliated Jews of which only 45% are pro-Israel.

**This breakdown might be viewed by many as unfair. For example, according to Pew, 87% of American Reform Jews consider themselves only Jews through Peoplehood and not religion, while 50% of Unaffiliated Jews felt the same way. This would suggest 4.0 million Affiliated American Jews (both People and Religion) as opposed to the 1.5 million used in the chart above.**

However, the concept remains the same. There are Jews who consider themselves only Jews in the notion of peoplehood, those who consider themselves both Jews by peoplehood and religion, and further, those within each camp who consider themselves tied to Israel (whether they live there or not) and those who do not. The warring factions within the Jewish people of Zionist/anti-Zionist and Jewish anti-Semites often breakdown among these categories.

Jews, Judaism and Israel are all deeply connected yet are distinct at the same time. Before delving into the nuances related to antisemitism and anti-Zionism, it is important to understand the important interrelationship of land-government, people and religion while also acknowledging the varied preferences among Jews in how they define themselves and convey their passions.

Related First.One.Through articles:

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The Non-Orthodox Jewish Denominations Fight Israel

Not Remembering, Forgetting and Never Knowing

From Promised Land to Promised Home

In Defense of Foundation Principles

An Orthodox Rabbi at the Capitol

Iran’s New Favorite Jewish Scholars

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The Jewish Israeli Rosa Parks

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On December 1, 1955, a black seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her seat at the front of the bus for a white man. In those days, segregation, the law that kept races apart, ruled the land. While black people were allowed on public transportation, they had to cede their seats in the front of the bus to white people. On that day 64 years ago, Rosa Parks was defiant and would not cater to the indecent law. Riots ensued, but ultimately, in 1964, the United States passed the Civil Rights Act which desegregated society.

Eight years earlier, on November 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted to partition the remaining portion of the British Mandate of Palestine (the land east of the Jordan River had previously been handed to the Hashemite Kingdom at the sole discretion of the British), into distinct Jewish and Arab states. While the vote was designed to create peace by separating the two peoples living in the land by establishing two clear majority-societies based on religion and culture, it still sought to allow the minority populations to live, pray and work in the majority-ruled lands. To minimize religious tension, the holy cities of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem were voted to be placed under an international regime.

But the Arabs rejected the partition vote as they considered all of the land to be Arab and Muslim, and launched a war to destroy the Jewish State. At war’s end, they evicted all of the Jews from the lands they conquered, including all of the holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron. The Arabs forbade any Jew from living, praying or visiting their Jewish holy sites during their period of control from 1949 to 1967.

The Arabs would try to destroy Israel again, with the Jordanian Arabs (and Palestinian Arabs whom had been granted Jordanian citizenship) attacking Israel in 1967, losing their illegally seized lands. Under Jewish control, Israel opened up the holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Hebron and enabled everyone – even Jews! – to visit, but they opted to maintain the ban on Jewish prayer at Judaism’s holiest locations, the Temple Mount, hoping to placate the broader Muslim and Arab worlds.

It did not.

The Arab and Muslim countries dug in deeper and turned the United Nations into a complete circus of antisemitic hate. While Palestinians began hijacking planes over the following decade, the other Arab nations advanced the political theory that Zionism was racism on November 10, 1975. After the United States finally led its repeal in December 1991, the Arab world advanced the same premise at the 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism, pushing the notion that not only should Jews be barred from living in parts of the holy land, but their refusal to acquiesce to antisemitic edicts was itself racist.

The September 2000 visit by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount coincided with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s destruction of the Oslo Accords and launch of the Second Intifada which killed thousands. Rabbi Yehuda Glick’s advocacy for Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount in October 2014 also brought Palestinian terrorist to shoot him and launch a “stabbing intifada.” As the antisemitic Hamas Charter says, “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” The presence of Jews in Muslim lands and holy sites is considered appalling.

The United Nations joined the chorus penned by over 50 Arab and Muslim nations that Israeli Jews should not be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount, nor live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines in the Old City of Jerusalem and in the “West Bank,” the lands which the Jordanians had seized. In December 2016, the UN Security Council, with the tacit approval of the United States’ Obama administration, passed Resolution 2334 which said that banning (not even segregating!) Israeli Jews is legal, and that such people have no rights to live and work in their holy land.

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jewish Rosa Parks who defy the notion that laws banning Jews from natural activities which others enjoy is in any way immoral or illegal. These Jews live in Judea and Samaria, in the Old City of Jerusalem and Hebron and fight for open access and prayer at their holy sites on the Temple Mount of Jerusalem and throughout the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron. Perhaps it is time to erect a monument for these “settlers” at the UN Plaza, much as Rosa Parks got a statue in Montgomery, AL.


Jerusalem on Sukkot, a full Kotel Plaza,
but no Jews on the Temple Mount

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A Native American, An African American and a Hispanic American walk into Israel…

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It is Time to Insert “Jewish” into the Names of the Holy Sites

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Join Facebook group: FirstOne Through Israel Analysis

The Anti-Israel Community in a Jewish House of Worship

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On November 26, 2019, a progressive Reform Temple in Westchester County, New York brought together a collection of people from the far-left and anti-Israel community to talk about the situation in “Israel/Palestine.” The discussion was civil and disappointing.

The Israel Action Committee of the Temple Israel of New Rochelle put together the event with “Friends of Mossawa,” an organization based in Tarrytown, NY which claims to fight for equality in Israel, and the United Nations, an organization which claims to be a unifying agency for people all over the world. As the evening demonstrated, what unites these parties is their strong distaste for Israel.

The speakers included Laura Wharton, a left-wing, anti-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu member of Jerusalem’s City Council; Rana Abu Farha, a host on the Palestinian run Ma’an 24 news show; and Hanan Al Sanah, a representative of an NGO in the Negev which advocates for Bedouin women. It was moderated by Paul Warhit, President of the Westchester Jewish Council.

Hanan Al Sanah, Rana Abu Farha, Laura Wharton and Paul Warhit at TINR
November 26, 2019
From the outset, the tone of the two hour evening discussion was clearly not going to follow the script as laid out in the invitation “The Lived Reality in Israel and the Palestinian Territory: Current Political Developments and the Prospects for a Peaceful Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.” The members of the TINR clergy and Israel Action Committee who welcomed the fifty-person audience repeatedly referred to “Israel/Palestine,” and not the “Palestinian Territory,” upgrading the PA-ruled lands to an actual country. They also noted that one of the evenings invited speakers, Ali Ghaith, an “activist and freelance journalist” was not able to attend as he had recently written a negative piece about Netanyahu and was therefore not able to get a travel visa from Israel. Various people in the audience booed Israel’s actions.

The Left-Wing Israeli Politician

Wharton began the discussion stating that she has “complete solidarity with the Palestinian people” and would state later that she is both pro-Israel and pro-Palestine. Her comments during the evening really only proved the latter.

Even though she serves as a member of the Jerusalem’s City Council, she was woefully ignorant of the city’s composition stating that only about 2,000 Jews live in “East Jerusalem,” even though the actual number is over 200,000 in the eastern part of the city.

Wharton was particularly worried about mixed Arab-Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. She said that it was “worrisome that more Israelis are moving into Palestinian neighborhoods,” especially right-wing Israelis. She said that Jerusalem will ultimately need to be divided as part of a peace agreement and the Jewish presence among the Palestinians made that separation harder. She voiced her belief that the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall should remain in Israeli hands, but the balance of East Jerusalem should be part of Palestine, with Christian holy places under the jurisdiction of the United Nations.

Wharton believed that the problems in Jerusalem paled relative to the West Bank. She commented that the settlements are illegal by international law and many are also illegal under Israeli law. She believed that all of the settlements complicated matters significantly by placing Jewish towns alongside Arab towns. Neither she nor the moderator chose to mention how Jews and Arabs get along just fine in Haifa, the headquarters of Mossawa.

Wharton ended her remarks by stating that she supported the B.D.S. movement of Israeli goods made in the West Bank but urged people in the audience to not boycott Israel in its entirety, as it silenced the voices of the dovish Israelis like herself and gave ammunition to the right-wing.

The Anti-Israel Palestinian Newscaster

Rana made Laura’s pro-B.D.S. comments look tame.

She decried the “occupation” throughout her remarks, stating that the over 130 Israeli settlements consisting of 1 million Jews pushed 2.5 million Palestinians to live in “ghettos.” (The actual number of Jews in the West Bank is half that number). She said that Netanyahu went to war in Gaza the other week because he feared he was losing the election so thought it would help to kill Arab civilians to excite the Israeli public. She added that the entire notion that Israel is democratic is a joke, and that it just holds election as a marketing ploy to the western world that it shares democratic ideals when it is really just a racist colonial occupier. The moderator chose not to push back aggressively on these libels.

The Palestinian newscaster went on that she thought that every single settler must leave the West Bank and that all 6 million Palestinian refugees (there are actually 5.5 million registered with UNRWA) should be allowed to move to Israel. When asked by Warhit how Israel could possibly allow 6 million Arabs into the country to overwhelm the Jews, she simply stated that “it’s their land so it’s their choice.” The members of the UN and Friends of Mossawa who sat in the audience grunted their approval. Warhit could only summon that he appreciated her position about getting rid of the settlements but could not imagine Israel allowing 6 million Arabs into the country. The TINR organizer of the event admonished Warhit to not share his opinion and just get the panel talking.

The Bedouin Arab

Compared to the other people on stage, Hanan was actually quite good, even while her English was the weakest. She said that she considered herself an Israeli but was frustrated by the country’s lack of investment in the Bedouin community and Israel’s refusal to allow them to live in their traditional lifestyle. At the same time, she acknowledged that she was also frustrated by her own Bedouin traditional lifestyle that kept women illiterate and as second-class citizens. She was advocating for change in the Bedouin culture to empower women, but for more of the traditional status quo from the Israelis to not force them to move into conventional cities.

End Points

The Q&A at the end of the panel discussion was mostly a repeat of prior comments. When asked about the Palestinian and left-wing Israeli poll in the summer of 2018 that showed that almost all Israeli Arabs were in favor of capping the number of refugees coming to Israel and in favor of Israel’s Nation State Law, the denials began to flow.

The questioner was first directed by the panelists to call Israeli Arabs as “Palestinian Citizens of Israel” and told that the poll figures must be wrong. Both Laura and Rana mentioned the huge protests in the streets after the Knesset passed the law which undermined the poll’s statistics. Wharton considered the poll’s point of Israeli Arabs wanting to cap refugees as perhaps stemming from Palestinian Arab viewpoint of Israeli Arabs as collaborators with Israel while they suffered in refugee camps. Rana effectively ignored the question and repeated that all of the Palestinians have a natural right to return to their homes (or more accurately, grandparents’ homes).

At program’s end, when Rana was asked how many Jews she thought could live in a Palestinian State, she repeated that every settlement had to be removed. Pushed further if she would accept a situation in which every Israeli soldier left the land, and every Jewish civilian in the West Bank opted to become a Palestinian citizen, she reiterated her stance that no settlers could remain. When challenged as to why she would take such an antisemitic stance to forbid any Jew from living in a Palestinian State, the organizer of the event from TINR jumped in and said “don’t put words in her mouth” and then tried to escort her out of the room.

Temple Israel of New Rochelle is proud of its progressive bona fides. Its rabbi serves on the board of J Street (a left-wing Israel advocacy group), Planned Parenthood, and Rabbis for Human Rights. It was therefore not surprising to see such a progressive organization give a warm welcome to people advocating for a boycott of Jews in the West Bank, expulsion of all the Jews living there, and changing Israel into a bi-national state. Such is the state of progressive views about Israel today.

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The Fault in Our Tent: The Limit of Acceptable Speech

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Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions

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The United Nations is a group of 193 countries of various sizes, races, religions and political philosophies. From the time the UN was created in 1945 as an outgrowth of the League of Nations until today, the total number of member countries has swelled, mostly with monarchies, dictatorships and authoritarian regimes. As such, votes in the UN General Assembly are often at odds with decency and freedom, such as the 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution.

To counteract the world circus, the UN established the UN Security Council which was chaired by world powers to “lead” in matters of security. Regrettably, the makeup of the council’s five permanent representatives from the United States, Russia, China, France and the United Kingdom already included two non-Democratic countries. Depending on the makeup of the additional five rotating members in the UNSC, it was often left for the United States to be the sole voice of logic, reason and empathy.

Those voices of reason and decency were absent when the two most left-wing US presidents sat in office: Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) and Barack Obama (2009-2017).

Anti-Jewish Jerusalem Resolutions Under Carter

While anti-rational anti-Israel UNGA resolutions started soon after Israel took lands in its defensive war in June 1967, the anti-Jewish nature of the UNSC resolutions gained credibility and momentum in 1980 under the watch of President Carter.

As Israel prepared to annex the eastern part of Jerusalem which had been illegally annexed by Jordan in 1950, and declare the city Israel’s undivided capital on July 30, 1980, the UN Security Council began to pass resolutions attacking the move in harsh language.

The March 1, 1980 UNSC Resolution 465 stated (incorrectly) that:

  • the Fourth Geneva Convention related to Israelis moving into Jerusalem. It was nothing of the sort. Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860’s and were expelled from the eastern part of the city by the invading Jordanians. Jerusalem was designated by the UN in 1947 to be an internationally-administered city, a “corpus separatum,” not part of another country to which the Geneva Convention applies.
  • As noted above, Jerusalem was neither a Palestinian nor Arab territory as “deplored” in the UNSC resolution.
  • The comment that the UN cared about Jerusalem’s “need for protection and preservation of the unique spiritual and religious dimension of the Holy Places in the city,” when it did nothing about the Jordanian expulsion of the Jews, annexation of the city and refusal to allow Jews to enter, pray or live in the city was insulting, disgusting and reeked of Jew-hatred.
  • Further calling for all Jews to be evicted from Jerusalem to reestablish the “demographic composition” of the purely Arab Old City which the Jordanians had created and enforced, blessed the Muslim antisemitism.

And the United States under Carter let such vile resolution pass, as it did a few months later on June 30 when the UNSC passed Resolution 476 which called on the entire world to join in on the antisemitic edict as it sought to enforce its ban on Jews in the city.

On December 6, 2017 President Trump marked the United States objection to and rejection of the UNSC resolutions and recognized the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and soon moved the US embassy to the city.

Anti-Jewish Judea and Samaria Resolution Under Obama

In the waning days of the Obama administration, the anti-Israel voices inside the White House and the United Nations pulled together anti-fact anti-Israel UN Security Resolution 2334.

  • The UN resolution’s use of the term “Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967” is interesting nomenclature. The UN does not recognize Palestine as an official country. Does the resolution refer to Armistice Lines that Israel agreed to with Jordan (not Palestine)? Does it refer to incremental land that Israel took beyond the 1947 Partition Plan up to those Armistice Lines?
  • The resolution again “condemned” the shift in the “demographic composition” of that “Palestinian Territory including East Jerusalem.” Too many Jews. Too many Jews. Too many Jews. Too cynical? Do you think that the resolution was concerned that the Arab population grew four-fold from 1967 to 2017? I don’t think so.
  • The presence of those Jews was deemed a threat to “the viability of the two-State solution based on the 1967 lines.” While past resolutions were only concerned about arriving at a peace agreement, now the contours of the peace agreement which was theoretically to be negotiated between the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs themselves, now had a predetermined outcome. So why negotiate at all?
  • If the presence of Jews threatened the existence of an Palestinian state, does the presence of Arabs threaten Israel? If so, the UN’s declaration that Palestinian refugees should be moved into Israel is a direct threat to the viability and existence of a member state of the UN, a war crime.
  • The resolution declared definitively that any place in which an Israeli Jew lives beyond the June 4, 1967 lines has “no legal validity“
  • Significantly called on the entire world to actively “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967” in a move not seen in any disputed territory around the world.

This last statement enabled the UN to compile a “blacklist” of companies operating in the Israeli territory of Area C (which was agreed to by the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo Accords). So on November 12, 2019, the European Union declared that labeling products made in Area C had to have a distinct label than items produced in Israel.

Not a week later, it was time for the Trump Administration to respond in kind.

On November 18, 2019 the Trump Administration marked the United States objection to UNSC Resolution 2334 and stated that Israeli civilian settlements are NOT illegal and do NOT hamper peace.

President Trump has sought to reverse the terrible damage done by the Carter and Obama administrations at the United Nations with its overtly anti-Jewish resolutions, by standing proudly and defending the Jewish State. Hopefully other countries will follow.


President Trump visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem,
the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site, in May 2017

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President Herod

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There once was a mad king who lived in Judea in the first century BCE who was one of the greatest builders in the holy land. His second coming may be here.

U.S. President Donald Trump has never been shy about taking claim for accomplishments. In his remarks about the trade war with China, he referred to himself as “the chosen one,” which many people thought was akin to anointing himself as the Messiah, as the Jews are commonly known as “the chosen people.” A more apt comparison might be to a particular king in Judea from 2,000 years ago.

Like King Herod (73 – 4 BCE), Trump is an accomplished builder. Herod built the expanded Temple Mount to enable better flow of thousands of Jews to the Second Temple in Jerusalem, aqueducts in Caesarea, the large edifice atop the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs in Hebron and many other buildings across the holy land. For his part, Trump has built numerous buildings in New York City and around the world. In addition to those buildings which he financed, there are many others which bear his name.

In addition to their real estate bona fides and reaching political stardom, both Herod and Trump have been characterized as paranoid madmen. Herod had many people close to him killed, including his wife and her sons; Trump has preferred to off people on Twitter who do not show complete loyalty.

But more than anything else, Donald Trump may earn the title of President Herod for continuing to fortify Jewish permanence in their holy land.

Just as Herod was able to secure more lands for Judea from his patrons in Rome, Trump has recognized Israel’s capital in Jerusalem, its rule in the Golan Heights, and on November 18, 2019, the natural and acceptable existence of Jewish homes throughout Judea and Samaria, in contrast to the United Nations which labeled them as illegal (with the tacit nod from former President Obama).


President Trump visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem,
the first sitting U.S. president to visit the site, in May 2017

For those people excited about the various efforts of Trump on behalf of the Jewish State, history shows that celebrations can be short-lived. The Jewish Temple was destroyed in 70 CE, only seven years after the Temple Mount complex was completed. Just sixty-five years later after the failed Bar Kochba revolt, the Romans expelled the Jews and renamed Judea as Syria Palestina, thoroughly weakening the Jewish people and their presence in their homeland. Herod’s glorious buildings remained, but were assumed by pagan and Arab interlopers over the following centuries.

Donald Trump knows that to make an enduring mark in history, he can forge a peace agreement in Israel when so many others have failed, and/or he can further help build the Jewish State. While he hopes to achieve both, he is not waiting on the latter and is actively supporting America’s ally.

Trump may have picked the “chosen one” moniker for himself, but others may begin to refer to him as President Donald Herod.

Related First.One.Through articles:

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Black Hate Crimes of 2018

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The FBI released its annual report of Hate Crimes for 2018 this week. It’s always a sad report to learn about the number of attacks committed against people for who they are, whether for their race, religion or sexual orientation. These are crimes between complete strangers, who simply attack other people because of bias.

Once again, crimes committed based on racial hatred were the most common, followed by religion. Once again, attacks against blacks were the most frequent and assaults on Jews were the most common for religious-based crimes. Those items received the headlines in the media.

What was not covered was that an average Jew was almost three times as likely to be attacked as an average black person (896 attacks against a Jewish population of 5.4 million compared to 2,325 attacks against roughly 40.5 million black people). The news also didn’t cover that Hispanics continue to commit the fewest number of hate crimes, even while they are trending upwards (committing 7.5% of all hate crimes in 2018, up from 6.0% in 2016, even though they account for close to 17% of the population).

More disturbing, was the enormous increase in hate crimes committed by black Americans.

While the number of total hate crimes in 2017 jumped by 15%, driven by a 20% spike in hate crimes committed by white people, the 2018 statistics were vastly different. The total number of hate crimes increased by just 1%, but hate crimes by black people jumped an astounding 32%. The most significant was the spike of black hate crimes committed against Jews, jumping 58% compared to 2017. Overall, black hate crimes account for 29.0% of all hate crimes, up from 25.4% in 2017, even though blacks account for just 12.3% of the total population.


Black gang in Brooklyn, NY attacking synagogue

Is black antisemitism on the rise because of the vile speeches of Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan? From the BlackLivesMatter platform that vilified the Jewish State as participating in apartheid? That the mayor of New York (who is married to a black woman) decided to ignore black antisemitism, where an average Jew is 13 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than an average black person? That progressives have embraced the notion of intersectionality and joined forced with radical black and Muslim voices in attacking Jews as part of the white elite establishment which must be torn down?

Eleven Jews were murdered in the United States in 2018, just for being Jewish, compared to four black people and three white people killed for the color of their skin. There were four times the number of anti-Jewish attacks as anti-Muslim. But the media will tell you that ‘Islamophobia’ is the major problem while the candidates for president solely focus on racism against blacks.

There was a time when blacks and Jews stood together against hatred and when black leaders celebrated the Jewish State. But those days seems to be long gone, with only a few voices like Chloe Valdary raising their voices in support of Jews and the Jewish State, and clearly rebuking antisemitism.

The black and Muslim progressive alliance may not only be pushing America against the Jewish State; it may be also be encouraging blacks to attack American Jews.

Related FirstOneThrough articles:

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Farrakhan’s Democrats

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

Ilhan Omar Isn’t Debating Israeli Policy, She is Attacking Americans

Bitter Burnt Ends: Talking to a Farrakhan Fan

Anti-Semitism Is Harder to Recognize Than Racism

I See Dead People

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Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

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Pakistan’s Muslim Leader Cannot Address Fellow Muslim Leaders

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The leader of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan, took to the floor of the United Nations for almost an hour in September 2019. He covered four principle areas, including “Islamophobia” and the conflict in Kashmir. He shared his thoughts and observations and asked the western world and the United Nations to take particular actions; actions he did not consider for fellow Muslim leaders.

Pakistani President Imran Khan at United Nations, September 2019
(photo: AFP)
Consider his remarks about Islamophobia which he claimed came into being after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. At 23:27 of the speech he said:

“In the western society, and quite rightly, the Holocaust is treated with sensitivity, because it gives the Jewish community pain. That’s all we ask. Do not use freedom of speech to cause us pain by insulting our holy prophet.”

Nazi Germany’s butchering of one-third of the world’s Jews is “rightly… treated with sensitivity” in the western world. But it is not treated with any sensitivity in the Muslim world.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been hosting Holocaust cartoon contests since 2005, shortly after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s inauguration as president. The contests have continued after he left office, including a contest in 2016 which awarded $50,000 towards the top three winners.

Palestinian Arabs elected Mahmoud Abbas to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority in 2005. Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial. For its part, Abbas’s rival political party Hamas, a designated foreign terrorist organization, has a charter lifted from the anti-Semitic forgery the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In Hamas’s enclave in Gaza, it refuses to allow the United Nations to teach about the Holocaust in UNRWA schools.

And while Pakistan’s leader was asking the western world to use the same care in talking about the Islamic prophet as it does in talking about the Holocaust, the Prime Minister of Malaysia was spitting Holocaust denial uptown at Columbia University.

Khan did not care about reciprocal respect, common courtesies or similar sensitivities. He knew that Muslim leaders would never insult the Islamic prophet, and narrowly addressed his remarks to the non-Muslim world, even when he fully understood that the Muslim world offered no comparable concern for Jews.

The hajj of hypocrisy at the United Nations would continue.

The main focus of Khan’s remarks were about the disputed territory of Kashmir. At 47:47 he said:

“What is the world community going to do? Is it to appease the market of 1.2 billion [people in India] or is it going to stand up for justice and humanity? If this goes wrong – you hope for the best but be prepared for the worst – if a conventional war starts between the two countries, anything could happen. But supposing, a country seven times smaller than its neighbor is faced with a choice: either you surrender or you fight for your freedom until death, what would we do? I ask myself this question. And my belief is that there is no God but one. And we will fight. And when a nuclear armed country fights to the end, it will have consequences far beyond the borders. It will have consequences for the world… This is a test for the United Nations. You are the ones who guaranteed the people of Kashmir the rights of self-determination.”

The words were unmistakable: the Pakistani leader urged the United Nations to take action to protect the people of Kashmir, or the outnumbered people of Pakistan would resort to using nuclear weapons against India, and maybe elsewhere.

But how did Pakistan and the United Nations react in early 1967, when the leaders of the Arab Muslim world threatened to wipe Israel off of the map? The population in Egypt was 32.5 million, in Syria 5.7 million, and in Jordan 1.4 million, a combined total that was 14 times the Israeli population of 2.75 million, or twice the disparity between India and Pakistan today.

During the Six Day War, Pakistan sent members of its air force to fight alongside its Muslim brothers, despite its overwhelming numerical superiority. To clear a pathway for the genocide of the Jews, the United Nations pulled its UNEF observer force from the Sinai peninsula and Gaza in May 1967 at the urging and direction of Egypt. Both the UN and Pakistan participated in the stated goal of destroying the nascent Jewish State, not two decade post the Holocaust.

The leader of Pakistan was no doubt sincere about his long-winded requests and warnings before the United Nations. His hypocrisy was equally as true.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

Seeing the Holocaust Through Nakba Eyes

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

Pick Your Jihad; Choose Your Infidel

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

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

Both Israel and Jerusalem are Beyond Recognition for Muslim Nations

I’m Offended, You’re Dead

Blasphemy OR Terrorism

Reuters Can’t Spare Ink on Iranian Anti-Semitism

Active and Reactive Provocations: Charlie Hebdo and the Temple Mount

Blessing Islamophobia

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Anti-Semitism Is Harder to Recognize Than Racism

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America’s “call-out” culture has seemingly had a very easy time identifying racism, but a much more difficult time seeing anti-Semitism.

Consider a new potential cast member for Saturday Night Light, Shane Gillis, who was found to have made off-color comments in the past. He was terminated this week before his first day on the job and the media was clear that his racist jokes were the cause:

The list goes on.

Every headline made it clear that Gillis made racist remarks. They were not “perceived as racist,” “allegedly racist” or people “claimed they were racist” or “objected to the comments.” For the racist jokes – meant for amusement, not malice – the media was definite in calling it out without condition.

But the same cannot be said of antisemitism.

The founders of the Women’s March repeatedly smeared Zionism and said that Jews who back the Jewish State are sinister. The female founders stated that they were proud of their association with the vocal anti-Semitic preacher Louis Farrakhan. No matter. In commenting about three of the four founders stepping down from their post this week because of their comments and associations, the media made their comments very conditional:

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)

For the media, the antisemitism was not so clear. The women were simply accused of antisemitism, but did not necessarily say anything antisemitic. Even while the intent of the women was to vilify, demonize and dehumanize, the media opted to bracket and condition the antisemitism, while doing nothing similar for Gillis’s racist jokes which were meant to entertain.

Even the most clearly vile and noxious antisemitism spewed from the mouth of the leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, got a pass from the press.

Shane Gillis also denied that he’s a racist and was just trying to be funny, but his protest did not make it into the headlines.

When the anti-male and anti-White comments by New York Times Asian female columnist Sarah Jeong came to light including “White men are bullshit,” “#CancelWhitePeople,” “white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants” and “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men,” the Times pardoned her comments and let her remain on staff.

So we are left to question the disparity.

Is the source of the comment the differentiator? Are the racist comments from white men perceived as worse than those coming from women or minorities?

Consider a leading white male politician in the United Kingdom who has made antisemitic and anti-Israel comments as matter of ritual. The antisemitism in the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn has become so intense, that many Jews have left the party and the parliament itself. Still, the press conditioned the accusations against the Corbyn and the party:

This liberal white male was given the soft-touch by the media.

He was not alone.

When acting-President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas said that Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust because of their behavior, and that Europeans have hated Jews for centuries because of their “function,” the press was tepid in labeling his outrageous statements as anti-Semitic.

The media is uniquely adept at clearly identifying and calling out racist speech while it contorts itself around antisemitism, noting that some people (you know who those pesky critters are, the media keeps telling you they’re racists) might possibly consider certain comments as problematic and allege antisemitism. Such manipulations makes room for the hatred and gives it air.

That action itself is antisemitic as well.

Related First.One.Through articles:

For The NY Times, Antisemitism Exists Because the Alt-Right is Racist and Israel is Racist

A Review of the The New York Times Anti-Israel Bias

Ramifications of Ignoring American Antisemitism

Covering Racism

New York Times Finds Racism When it Wants

Mayor De Blasio is Blind to Black Anti-Semitism

Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

What Kind of Hate Kills?

Where’s the March Against Anti-Semitism?

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The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

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The week before Israeli elections always brings out the bile in the anti-Zionist New York Times. This election, scheduled for September 17, was no exception.

The front page screed (not worthy of being called news) on September 14, 2019 called “A Challenge to the Essence of Old Jerusalem, Coming by Cable Car,” was written by Michael Kimmelman, an architecture critic, leading a reader to imagine a piece covering the “essence” of Jerusalem’s architecture and the proposed modern cable car. While the article did touch on those points, the observations were drowned out by the paper’s anti-Jewish narrative of Judaism’s holiest city.


Front page and page A8 of the September 14, 2019 New York Times

The opening paragraph directs the reader that Jerusalem is a city of Muslims and Christians and… well, there aren’t any Jews.

“At a glance, Jerusalem’s Old City and its surroundings still look pretty much as they must have looked centuries ago. The Old City’s yellow walls still read in silhouette against an ancient landscape of parched hills and valleys. The skyline is still dominated by the city’s great Muslim and Christian shrines: the gold, glistening Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Jesus was said to have been buried.”

Has Kimmelman even visited the city? The “parched hills and valleys” are dotted with modern apartment buildings and hotels. The Old City skyline includes the newly rebuilt Hurva Synagogue (2010), reconstructed now for the third time, first built in 1694.

Jerusalem’s Old City with a mix of Muslim, Christian and Jewish sites
(photo: First.One.Through)

The article’s second paragraph showed ignorance in addition to blindness.

“But this is about to change. Israeli authorities have approved a plan to build an elevated cable car to the Western Wall, the holiest site in the Jewish world, by 2021.”

The Western Wall, the Kotel, is not the holiest site in Judaism; that is the Temple Mount. The Kotel is only a retaining wall of the Temple Mount where Jews have been relegated to use since Suleiman I kicked the Jews off of the Temple Mount in the 16th century.

With bona fides of ignorance established, the author leaned into his bias, pointing a finger at “right-wing Israeli leaders” as the promoters of a plan which “has provoked howls of protest from horrified Israeli preservationists, environmentalists, planners, architects and others who picture a global heritage site turned into a Jewish-themed Epcot.”

This is the “essence” of the article.

Israelis enjoy a full-throated democracy and opine on everything. Such a new visible transportation system would obviously prompt outcries, mostly on the basis of aesthetics, which is presumably why it was an architecture critic penning the article. But The Times’ anti-Israel politics quickly overwhelmed the story.

The article stated that the cable car proposal is being advanced by “right wing” leaders and opposed by many Israelis. The “global heritage site” – which readers were just educated has no Jewish ties – will be transformed by the radicals into a Jewish Disneyland (ie. fake and cheesy to bring in tourist dollars). Even fellow Jews were nauseated. The Arabs must be apoplectic.

Queue the Times’ right-wing racist Prime Minister Netanyahu theme music.

Moving quickly from the architecture of the site, Kimmelman went full-politics describing Netanyahu’s announcement of annexing “nearly a third of the occupied West Bank.” This diversion from transportation and architecture into politics went to the heart of the author’s view: the cable car is a Jewish takeover of Arab sites and heritage. Tying those themes together Kimmelman continued:

“The cable car project is an example, illustrating how Israel wields architecture and urban planning to extend its authority in the occupied territories. Whatever its transit merits, which critics say are negligible, the cable car curates a specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem, furthering Israeli claims over Arab parts of the city.“

For the Times, the environmentally-friendly approach of helping bring the over 2.4 million tourists visit the Kotel in the cramped ancient city had little to do with tourism or transportation, but served as yet another example of Israel’s right-wing government turning Arab lands into Jewish assets. The article never mentioned that Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem for 150 years, that two Jewish Temples stood at the center of the Temple Mount, nor that Jerusalem is the focus of prayer for Jews around the world.

Instead, the article continued on a theme that Jewish fanatics were forcing Arabs from their homes and entrenching an illegal occupation.

“From Mount Zion, the cars will land near the Western Wall, on the rooftop of what is to be multistory center for a right-wing Jewish settler organization called the City of David Foundation, in the midst of a Palestinian district of East Jerusalem called Silwan. The City of David oversees archaeological excavations centered on uncovering biblical Jewish remains in an effort to cement an ancient Jewish connection to a contested site. Israel considers East Jerusalem annexed, but international law considers it occupied territory.”

A paragraph so rich in alternative facts and fake history, it deserves to be unpacked:

  • The City of David Foundation is not a “right-wing settler organization” but a foundation which promotes archaeological discovery and tourism, something that people of all religions and political persuasions enjoy.
  • The City of David does not “oversee” excavations; they help fund the work which is performed by the Israel Antiquities Authority.
  • The area of Silwan was originally founded by Jews from Yemen in early 1880’s. It is not a “district of East Jerusalem.” East Jerusalem was a blip in history that lasted for only 19 of Jerusalem’s 4,000 years, which ceased to exist over 50 years ago. Further, it is not “Palestinian,” but a predominantly Arab neighborhood which also includes Jews.
  • The notion that the only reason that Israel is doing excavations is to “cement an ancient Jewish connection to a contested site” is vile and disgusting. Israel has archaeological excavations all over the country – do Jews need to validate their history everywhere in the holy land? Uncovering the unified Jewish capital city of King David and King Solomon from 3,000 years ago is an exciting discovery for the entire world and each discovery is a celebration for anyone who has read the bible. But not for Kimmelman, who added “Archaeology works hand in glove here with settler efforts to press Jewish claims to the land.“

Remarkably, the article descended into further conspiracy theories from there.

Kimmelman wrote that Israelis treat Arabs as invisible and are forcibly evicting them from their homes to make way for this attraction. The goal is to give tourists a “Jewish version of the city’s history” from a time when “there were no Christians or Muslims.”

The author leaves the reader with the feeling that it is also the current intent of the right-wing settler government of Israel to see a city devoid of Muslims and Christians, as “the cladding of East Jerusalem’s settlements in Jerusalem stone, the architectural uniform traditionally worn by buildings in Jewish West Jerusalem, helps spread the image of a single Jewish city.”

For the New York Times, the “essence” of the Old City of Jerusalem is its Arab character navigated via narrow walkways, now being violated by right-wing Jewish invaders changing and scarring its demographics, character and approach. Especially at election time, the Times wants to warn everyone that the “essence” of this Israeli government is racist colonial Jewish supremacists.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The New York Times will Keep on Telling You: Jews are not Native to Israel

The Remarkable Tel Jerusalem

The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ

The Dark Side of Jerusalem Day: Magnifying the Kotel and Minimizing the Temple Mount

Ending Apartheid in Jerusalem

The New York Times Inverts the History of Jerusalem

The New York Times Major anti-Netanyahu Propaganda Piece

750 Years of Continuous Jewish Jerusalem

Arabs in Jerusalem

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

Palestinians agree that Israel rules all of Jerusalem, but the World Treats the City as Divided

The Arguments over Jerusalem

Reunified Capitals: Berlin @25; Jerusalem @47

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Palestineism is Toxic Racism

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Racism is a form of hatred which believes that all members of a particular group are inferior and/or evil. In itself, it is ugly but not dangerous, a localized noxious belief system based on bigotry. Racism becomes toxic when it spreads and obtains power.

Such is the state of Palestineism, the effort to weaken, shrink and destroy Israel because it is a Jewish State, as well as to vilify Jews and deny their rights, history and dignity in the Jewish holy land.

The Arab World

Palestineism has been present in the Arab and Muslim world for a hundred years.

Denying Jews and the Jewish State has been at the forefront of the Palestineism. Even before Jews reestablished Jewish sovereignty in their holy land in 1948, Arabs rioted and killed Jews throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s, and petitioned the British who oversaw the Palestine Mandate to bar and limit the entry of Jews during the Holocaust in Europe. When Israel declared itself a Jewish state, the armies of five neighboring Arab Muslim countries invaded with the stated desire to destroy it completely. The Arabs evicted Jews from all lands they seized and specifically forbade Jews from obtaining citizenship (Article 3). Fellow Arab and Muslim nations followed suit, with ten Arab and Muslim countries expelling one million Jews after Israel was founded, irrespective of whether their fellow Jewish countrymen were Zionists.

To this very day, there are 30 Arab and Muslim countries which refuse to acknowledge the basic existence of the only Jewish country despite 20% of Israel’s population being Muslim, even while they recognize other countries including Myanmar which actively persecutes Muslims. The acting-President of the Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas continues to refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish State, an acknowledgement which would have no impact on creating a new state of Palestine.

The Arab world’s objection to Israel is specifically that it is that is it Jewish.

The Palestinians elected Hamas to 58 percent of the Palestinian parliament in 2006 with this antisemitic jihadist charter full of sinister conspiracy theories about Jews (Articles 17, 22 and 30, among others).

The institutionalized Arab hatred of the Jews has developed into a full-blown vile ideology, as it attempts to validate its desire to wipe out Jews from the region.

  • The foundational document of the Palestinian Arabs claims that Jews have no history in Palestine, erasing the history and essence of the Jewish people (Article 18).
  • Throughout the Muslim world, Jews are actively dehumanized and stripped of their dignity, referred to as the “sons of apes and pigs.” It is a doctrine of racial superiority which is morally condemnable.
  • Mahmoud Abbas said that Jews have been hated for centuries because “of their function,” which is why they are always massacred. He continued his screed that in recent history, the “imperialist powers” tossed those unwanted Jews out of their countries into the Middle East, poisoning Palestinian land with the wretched people. It is blame-the-victim approach worthy of a sickening governing body which excuses honor killings of women.

The fabric of Palestineism is that Jews are disgusting foreign invaders who have no rights nor claims to Arab land.

This immoral Palestineism ideology manifests itself in many ways:

  • The Palestinian Authority has a law which calls for the death penalty for any Arab who sells land to a Jew.
  • The PA gives lifetime stipends to Arabs who murder Jews.
  • The Palestinians refuse to allow Jews to step foot on Arab college campuses in the West Bank, even journalists who loudly condemn Israel.
  • When Muslims ruled Hebron, they refused to allow Jews from entering their second holiest place, the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs.
  • Muslim Arabs continue to refuse to let the Jews pray at their holiest location, the Jewish Temple Mount.

The list goes on.

Palestineism, in its very essence, is about the repression of the dignity and integrity of Jews as human beings, with full rights to live and worship freely in their holy land. The toxicity has spread from the leadership and the state-controlled media to infuse the people who are the most anti-Semitic in the world.

Palestineism in The Rest of the World

Palestineism was built on Jew-hatred and conspiracy theories. The calls that Jews are “colonialists” and invaders of “Arab land” has been picked up by others, including leaders in the western world.

In Great Britain, Jeremy Corbyn is a member of the Labour Party who adopted Palestineism early in his career, often comparing Israelis to Nazis. He was once an outlier, but the toxicity infected the rest of the party when he was elected the party leader in September 2015 and began replacing senior party people with like-minded racists. Jews began to leave the Labour party in droves – including members of parliament – finding the antisemitism intolerable.

In the United States, Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) were elected to congress in November 2018, and accused Jews of having dual loyalty and buying off members of the government to support Israel, racist tropes which the two Muslim women have not made about Irish-Americans, Mexican Americans or any other group. They contend that the most liberal nation in the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is an apartheid state, inverting the root cause of racism in the region, deflecting Muslim antisemitism. Meanwhile, these same members of Congress believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran which hangs gays by cranes in the streets and is the leading state-sponsor of terrorism, should not only not be boycotted, but given a legal pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran has called for the destruction of Israel – coincidence?

Palestineism is employing the boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) Israel, the sole Jewish state as a tool in its jihad. Corbyn, Omar and Tlaib are pushing for economic warfare against Israel, supposedly in the name of giving Palestinian Arabs a state.

The European Union is considering unique labels for products manufactured by Jews in the Israeli territory of Area C in the West Bank, but not those manufactured by non-Jews. It is the very definition of racism in suppressing the dignity of one human being over another. Will it label products made by Hindus and Muslims in Kashmir differently? By Christians and Muslims in Cyprus?

The toxicity of racism embedded in the Palestineism is not just spreading, it is being mainstreamed and defended by political leaders outside of the Muslim and Arab world. Denying Jewish history and repressing Jewish dignity are no longer viewed as morally condemnable and socially unjust, but essential ingredients to the creation of a Palestinian state, because those sentiments are demanded by the Arab world and Palestinian leadership. As it is considered improper to malign the “marginalized” in liberal circles, the alt-left is parroting the Palestineism propaganda, rather than condemning the racism.

So, schools in the Palestinian territories named for terrorists get European funding. Textbooks which deny the humanity and history of Jews are disseminated by the United Nations. Monies which flow to the murderers of Jews are reimbursed by Arab and non-Arab countries alike.

It is the very embodiment of toxic racism.

Palestinian Arabs could achieve sovereignty and statehood in Gaza and Areas A and B tomorrow, but Palestineism has more malicious demands: that Israel not be a Jewish State; that Jews be forbidden from living anywhere in Palestine; and that Jews be denied access and rights to their holy sites. It is Palestineism that is the roadblock to creating a state of Palestine and an enduring peace in the region, nothing else.

Palestineism is a sinister jihad, a direct antisemitic assault on the humanity, dignity and integrity of Jews, Judaism and the Jewish State and the polar opposite of coexistence and decency. It must be condemned loudly, clearly and often by everyone.


Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), advocate for boycotting Israel,
upon being sworn in as a new member of the US Congress

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Palestinian State I Oppose

Rep. Ilhan Omar and The 2001 Durban Racism Conference

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Squeezing Zionism

The Three Camps of Ethnic Cleansing in the BDS Movement

Time to Define Banning Jews From Living Somewhere as Antisemitic

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