The Inalienable Right of Jews to Pray on The Temple Mount

Posted on November 29, 2021 by First.One.Through

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) laid out 30 principles which all people are afforded around the world. The United Nations often quotes it, except when it relates to Jews.

UDHR Article 2 states that all people all entitled to rights and freedoms, regardless of “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.” That clearly covers Jews – even those from Israel or from disputed territories.

UDHR Article 18 covers faith, including its practices: “Everyone has the right 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.” Many Muslim countries trample on the ability to change religion, banning apostasy in their constitutions, a flagrant violation of the UDHR which is never discussed at the United Nations due to Muslim Privilege.

The ability for Jews to pray as is their historic custom and right is not ignored at the UN, but countered in a ban outrageously embraced and enshrined.

The Jewish Temple Mount

The holiest location for Jews is the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. It has been the center of Jewish focus and prayer for over 3,000 years, after King David moved the Jewish people’s capital there from Hebron, and his son, King Solomon, built the First Temple. For most of the first thousand years, Jews had a temple at different times on the site, offering animal sacrifices in accordance with the direction of the Hebrew bible. After the Second Temple was destroyed in 70CE, Jews still climbed the mount to offer silent prayer, and did so for 1,500 years.

The Ottomans came to the Jewish holy land in 1517, and Suleiman I (1494-1566) rebuilt much of Jerusalem including the iconic city walls. As part of his vast Jerusalem projects, he kicked the Jews off of the Temple Mount and afforded them a small sliver of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount – the Western Wall or Kotel – for prayer. Jews have effectively been banned from praying on their holiest site since that time.

The Ottoman Empire ended in 1916 but the world did not consider addressing the catastrophic dangers of deeply-rooted anti-Semitism, racism and xenophobia until after World War II and the Holocaust of European Jewry.

The Enabling Hands Blocking Jewish Prayer Rights

In December 1948, the world sought to put an end to wars and hatreds and drew up the UDHR in the hope that people could be respectful to others who are different. The mention of religion in the articles was a direct result of the atrocities which befell Jews at the hands of non-Jews, as described in the preamble, regarding the “disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind.“

Yet as the global body drafted these rights, the Jewish State was fighting for its very survival against several invading Arab armies. The invading Jordanian army ethnically-cleansed all Jews from the eastern part of the holy land, including the Old City of Jerusalem, just a few years after the Holocaust. The Jordanians went on to ban Jews from even visiting or praying in the city, including at the Kotel and Temple Mount.

The vile Muslim anti-Semitism was addressed when Jordan attacked Israel again in June 1967 and lost its illegally seized lands, enabling Jews to move into their holy city once again. However, to facilitate a ceasefire with the various Muslim countries which had tried to destroy the Jewish State, Israel allowed the Jordanian Waqf to continue to administer the Temple Mount and maintain its ban on Jewish prayer.

To this day, the United Nations demands a change in the status quo of Israel controlling the eastern part of Jerusalem including the Old City, while simultaneously demanding maintaining the anti-Semitic policy of banning Jews from praying at their holiest site. It’s practical madness, in trying to appease the dozens of Muslim UN member nations while trampling on the basic human rights of Jews.

This Chanukah, at a time when Jews around the world place their menorahs in their windows to show the world that they celebrate Jewish prayer rights on the Temple Mount, let’s demand that the government of the State of Israel assert with clarity that the dignity of Jews matters. Jews have an inalienable right to pray at their holiest location, the Jewish Temple Mount.

*Menorah at the Kotel, beneath the holiest site for Jews where the original seven-branched menorah stood on the Temple Mount.*

Tolerance at the Temple Mount

The Green Line Through Jerusalem

The United Nations and Holy Sites in the Holy Land

Joint Prayer: The Cave of the Patriarchs and the Temple Mount

Oh Abdullah, Jordan is Not So Special

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Heinrich Himmler’s Heirs, “Freedom Loving Arabs”

Posted on November 2, 2021 by First.One.Through

Heinrich Himmler, the head of Nazi Germany’s infamous SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads), was responsible for conceiving and overseeing implementation of the “Final Solution,” the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe.

When Himmler took over the SS in 1929, it had just 280 people. By the time the Nazis were voted into power in 1933, it had 52,000. Over the next few years, Himmler fused the SS with other “security” organizations like the Gestapo in 1939, empowering him to execute his vision of “racial purity” and extermination of the Jews.

When the Nazis took over Poland in 1939 and later the Soviet Union, Himmler’s power expanded into the new territories. He dispatched Einsatzgruppen, essentially mobile killing units who targeted Jews and Roma for annihilation. To achieve his goal of the complete eradication of these untermenschen, Himmler oversaw a vast concentration camp system.

Himmler’s enormous hatred for Jews extended beyond his direct reach. He held meetings with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, who had already met with Adolf Hitler in 1941, professing natural loyalty to Nazi Germany as they had a common enemy in the British and the Jews. Hitler was taken by the Palestinian Arab’s anti-Semitism, saying that Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews, that naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine, which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests.

*Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini with Nazi leader Heinirich Himmler*

On November 2, 1943, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, Himmler sent his fellow anti-Semite a telegram wishing him a “great victory” in his battle against the Jews.

*Telegram from Heinrich Himmler to Grand Mufti on November 2, 1943*

In 1945, Nazi Germany was defeated and Hitler and Himmler died, but the sick hatred for Jews did not disappear.

The orphaned Jews of Europe came to Palestine to join fellow Jews in trying to start a new life but were confronted by Arabs which sought to annihilate the survivors. In every decade the local and regional Arabs launched wars against the Jewish State, killing whomever they could, refusing to recognize its existence.

Eighty years ago, the Nazis were the “standard-bearer in the battle against world Jewry” who appreciated “the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs, particularly in Palestine, against the Jewish invaders.” Today, it is a disparate collection of organized and disorganized alt-left and alt-right anti-Semites who rally to the new standard-bearer against world Jewry, Palestinian Arabs.

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Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

The Re-Introduction of the ‘Powerful’ Jew Smear

Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians

Will Palestinians Ever be Taught About the Holocaust?

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The Grapes of Isolation

Posted on October 17, 2021 by First.One.Through

I planned on hosting a kiddush in shul the Shabbat of reading Parshat Lech Lecha. Approaching my 1,000th article on Israel, Jews and Judaism, it seemed that the weekly portion about God giving the land of Canaan to Jews for an ever-lasting inheritance would be an appropriate time to mark the milestone. Further, as I was planning on returning from a three week holiday in Israel just the week before, I could wrap up all of the messages very nicely.

Life does not always move according to plan.

In early summer, when I booked the flights for my family to see my son studying in Israel over the Jewish Holidays in September, it seemed that the trip would happen without issue. The May missile barrage against Israeli towns launched by Palestinian Arabs in Gaza had stopped, and Israel was leading the world in vaccinations against COVID-19. But the pandemic cases and deaths in Israel began to spike as the summer went on, so the country instituted a number of policies which made the trip a remote possibility. Would we spend two weeks in quarantine in our hotel room for a three week trip? Yes, we would see our son for a week, but the entrapment seemed excessive for the duration of our visit.

We cancelled the flights and made plans to stay at home for Yom Kippur and Sukkot.

The kiddush was still on, although we pivoted it to Parshat Noah as there was a bat mitzvah already on the calendar for the desired Shabbat. The question of when was addressed, but the how-what was now the focus.

Israeli-themed food was obvious, but what selections? Jews in Israel come from around the world and each have brought their own delicacies. Shwarma, kruv, Israeli salad, kebabs and Moroccan carrots were early choices, to be accompanied by chulent, fish balls, tabouleh and a wide assortment of salads.

The how was equally important. Since the start of the pandemic, the synagogue had been hosting small kiddushes outside in an open tent. With the weather getting colder in October, it was unclear if we could have a larger than normal event in the current configuration.

We opted to take our chances.

The day arrived and indeed the weather was a bit cold and the wind surpassed breezy, but people seemed to enjoy the tasty food. It was nice seeing people from different shuls of varying denominations from across the political spectrum, celebrate the milestone together.

Towards the end of the kiddush, a friend from a different community arrived to my great surprise and delight. While far to the left of me politically, we both try our best to promote Israel in the United States. I had not seen him since before the pandemic.

After our hellos, he asked “where’s the chulent?” and we headed off towards the table near the scotch and drinks. As he made a plate for himself, I looked to the drinks table to pour something to accompany his dish. My eyes were drawn to a bee flying around inside a virtually empty large bottle of grape juice.

The bee went up and down repeatedly, never getting quite so high to emerge from the narrowed opening, nor so low as to get trapped in the remaining juice on the bottom. It shuttled a bit forward and backward, up and down. I had seen other bees checking out the exposed salmon, but how did this one fly into a bottle? I imagined that it must have landed near the opening and then tasted the droplets of grape juice while it walked around drinking to its delight. Before long, it was inside the container upside down and opted to take flight, finding itself effectively locked inside.

As I stared at the phenomenon, a gust of wind took the stacks of paper plates and napkins airborne and scattered them around the parking lot, breaking my gaze. After gathering them up, my friend and I went back to staring at the bee, comfortably ensconced in the jar.

Just then, it dropped to the bottom and splashed into the juice. As its wings got covered in the purple liquid, my friend exclaimed “aha!” as I pointed at the spectacle. We were not sure if this was a moment of triumph for the bee, reaching the core of its desires, or marking its end, forever trapped.

We exchanged glances and questioning smiles. As we turned back to the show, we saw that the bee had taken flight again.

I nodded a grin as I tapped my friend’s shoulder, and told him that I will be booking my flight to Israel before the end of the weekend.

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Westchester County, NY Should Adopt the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

Posted on September 3, 2021 by First.One.Through

The spike in antisemitic incidents in the United States over the past few years is alarming. Jews are being physically attacked, killed and verbally assaulted, while their properties are being vandalized.

The New York / New Jersey / Connecticut tri-state region has been hit particularly hard. Murders in Jersey City and Monsey; bricks and punches thrown in people’s faces in Brooklyn and synagogues in Riverdale; swastikas painted in schools in Columbia University, New Rochelle High School and Westchester parks. The list is long.

*Three swastikas were painted in Pelham’s Middle School in October 2019*

With the onset of the coronavirus and fighting in the Middle East, things have gotten even worse.

As the first known patient with COVID-19 came from the Orthodox Jewish community of New Rochelle, antisemitic slurs have become more common for Jews walking the streets and shopping in stores. When fighting broke out among Arabs and Jews in Israel, a mob brutally beat a Jew walking the streets of Manhattan.

Westchester County, sitting in the intersection of the tri-state region and home to one of the largest concentrations of Jews in the United States, must take action.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) developed a working definiton of antisemitism in 2016 to help countries and municipalities develop policies to help fight the scourge. The IHRA definition of antisemitism is endorsed by major Jewish organizations including the ADL and the AJC. Major counties and cities in New York have begun endorsing the definition including Nassau County and the Village of Great Neck.

Westchester County should endorse it as well.

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Trends in Anti-Muslim and Anti-Semitic Attacks Post-9/11

Posted on September 2, 2021 by First.One.Through

As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States approaches, various news outlets are discussing the animosity towards Muslims that became a reality in America after the terrorist attacks by nineteen Muslim men, directly killed nearly 3,000 people and many times that number indirectly in the years that followed. Other than giving a platform for American Muslims to talk about their experiences with prejudice, little analysis into the hate crime statistics has been shared.

So here it is.

Before the September 11th attacks, almost every religious-based hate crime reported by the FBI was against Jews. From 1998 to 2000, a total of 89 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported, or about 30 per year. In comparison, over that time period, over 3,500 anti-Jewish attacks were reported by the FBI, or 39 times as many. That dynamic changed with the jihadist terrorism against the USA in 2001.

The spike was immediate and significant.

In 2001, a total of 546 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported, a 16.5 times jump from the prior year. White people committed 200 of those offenses, a high number relative to the 29 attacks committed by Black people. The numbers declined rapidly in 2002, but the number of anti-Muslim attacks has remained significantly above the pre-9/11 days.

Anti-Muslim attacks increased again with the influx of Muslim refugees from Syria and elsewhere in 2015 and 2016, reaching a high of 381 in 2016. The number of incidents declined significantly since then, with 219 attacks reported in 2019, a 43 percent decline in three years.

In regards to the perpetrators of the offenses, from 2000 to 2009, Whites committed an average of 69.9 attacks per year, compared to 16.8 for Blacks. The numbers increased for both groups in the 2010-2019 decade, with Whites and Blacks committing an average of 97.3 and 25.2 attacks, respectively, representing a jump of 39% for Whites and 50% for Blacks.

By way of comparison, Jews suffer many more hate crimes than Muslims but the trend line is quite different.

Attacks against Jews was consistently above 1,100 attacks per year through the year 2001. It was only in 2002 that anti-Semitic attacks began to decline, reaching a low of 635 attacks in 2014. This was a period marked by the War on Terror around the world, and in Israel, it included the Second Intifada/Two Percent War (2000-2005), the election of a Holocaust denier to the Palestinian presidency and a jihadist terrorist group to a majority of the Palestinian parliament (2005 and 2006) and wars from Gaza after the Hamas takeover of the Strip (2008, 2012 and 2014). Perhaps Americans sympathized with Jews and the Jewish State in the global war on Islamic extremism, as attacks on Jews declined significantly over those thirteen years.

But the trend reversed as anti-Semitism began to spike at the same time as anti-Muslim attacks picked up in 2015. Most recently, crimes against Muslims have been declining while anti-Semitism has been rising.

A review of the offenders perhaps reveals some clues.

From 2000 to 2009, Whites committed an average of 181.0 attacks against Jews while Blacks committed an average of 17.8 attacks per year. But from 2010 to 2019, Whites committed an annual average of 137.3 attacks while Blacks committed 28.5. So while anti-Semitic attacks among Whites declined by 24% over the past decade, it increased 60% among Blacks.

The past decade witnessed a spike in religious-based hate crimes committed by Black people at a greater rate than White people, and against Jews in particular, as the average **anti-Semitic hate crimes committed by Whites has declined by 24%**. (source: FBI Hate Crime Statistics)

The sharp increase in Black anti-Semitism came most recently in 2018 and 2019, with all-time record levels of attacks by Blacks on Jews. This coincides with the election of the “Squad” to Congress – and two Muslim women, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, in particular – who pushed anti-Semitic tropes that Jews control the military, the press, the government and do it all as a means to profit from the poor. The ridiculous shouts of “from Ferguson to Palestine” shouted by the likes of CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill and “from Detroit to Gaza” shirts sold on Rashida Tlaib’s website, were malicious attempts to portray Jews as militant exploiters of Blacks and Muslims all around the world. Shockingly, Democratic leaders protected their anti-Semitic minority members and advanced anti-Islamophobia measures rather than protecting Jews.

Not surprisingly, attacks against Jews increased and those against Muslims decreased.

In 2019, an average American Jew was roughly three times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an average Muslim (1,032 Jewish victims in a population of 5.7 million versus 227 Muslim victims in a population of 3.3 million). Jews always suffered more than Muslims and the gap is growing.

In summary, there were almost no anti-Muslim attacks in the United States until the Islamic extremist attacks of September 11, 2001. The spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes went on for a year, and the situation then dramatically improved. That turnaround enabled American Muslims to assume positions of power in the United States, which they have used to further protect Muslims and fuel minority attacks against Jews.

Twenty years ago, foreign jihadists hijacked a small part of the U.S. transportation system to viciously attack America’s financial, military and political centers. Today’s jihadists are aggressively weaponizing the U.S. educational system, the government and the media, to attack Jews around the world.

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David Duke, Ilhan Omar and the Three Lenses of Anti-Semitism

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Mum on Black, Brown and Leftist Anti-Semitism

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Evicting 70,000 Dead Settlers From Jerusalem

Posted on August 31, 2021 by First.One.Through

The Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem is the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world. Existing east of the Green Line (EGL) in eastern Jerusalem, it is considered “Arab land” by the New York Times, illegal by the United Nations, and against the desires of the acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who craves a country with eastern Jerusalem as his capital, devoid of any Jews.

*Ultra-Orthodox Jews visit graves at the cemetery on the Mount of Olives facing the Old City of Jerusalem. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)*

There are somewhere between 70,000 and 150,000 Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives and include famous people such as Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro (Bartenura 1445-1515), Rabbi Yehuda Hehasid (1660-1700), Holy Land scholar Rabbi Yehosef Schwartz (1804-1865), leading Zionist Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (1798-1878), the champion of revitalizing the Hebrew language Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922), Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), and poet SY Agnon (1887-1970). The vast majority of the graves date from the 15th and 16th century, when the Ottoman Turks rebuilt the city walls of Jerusalem. While some older graves dating back 3,000 years are also found there, many of the older tombs are found east and west of the City of David which stretches south of today’s Old City walls, in and around Siloam/Silwan. Thousands of years ago, Jews placed their dead in the chalky caves in the area, and gathered the bones a year later to place them in ossuaries.

*View of Mount of Olives cemetery from the Old City including ancient tombs; archeologist Gabriel Barkay before ancient burial caves around Jerusalem (photos: First One Through)*

When the Jordanian army invaded Israel in 1948 and seized the eastern portion of Jerusalem the following year and illegally annexed it in 1950, they desecrated and damaged the cemetery. Some tombstones were used to construct the Arab Legion camp as far away as Jericho.

The cemetery is frequently vandalized. In 1990, Arabs broke over ten tombstones, including that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s grandfather. In 2015, during the Palestinian Arab stabbing rampages, vandals smashed numerous tombstones at the site.

*The caretaker of the Afghan section of the Mount of Olives Cemetery inspecting vandalism. (photo: Marc Israel Sellem/ The Jerusalem Post)*

The Palestinian Authority has not clearly articulated whether its demands for “East Jerusalem” requires uprooting over 70,000 dead Jews on the Mount of Olives, but it is likely that Hamas does not mind coexisting with dead Jews, as the political-terrorist group continues to hold the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed over seven years ago in Gaza.

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The Long History of Dictating Where Jews Can Live Continues

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The Old City of Jerusalem’s “Settlers’ Quarter”

Posted on August 26, 2021 by First.One.Through

Anti-Semitism wears many masks, the most prominent these days is anti-Zionism. The malicious malady has related hats, including denying Jewish history, distorting Judaism and opposing the rights of Jews to live in certain places.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, has locked arms with alt-left Jews in some of these sinister proclamations, especially concerning Jews living over the 1949 Armistice Lines struck between Jordan and Israel. That “Green Line” was specifically defined as never to be regarded as a border, and the 1950 Jordanian annexation of the “West Bank” was deemed illegal by the international community, marking that invisible line as a footnote in history penned in disappearing ink. No matter, anti-Semites have a long history of dictating where Jews can and cannot live, whether the Pale of Settlement in Russia or ghettoes throughout Europe.

Consider the recent BBC coverage of the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem.

*The BBC using a map produced by B’Tselem, a group which markets itself as an “information center for human rights in the occupied territories.”*

The dotted lines (at least they are dotted!) represent the 1949 Armistice Lines between Israel and Jordan, which disappeared in 1967 when Jordan attacked Israel again and lost the entirety of eastern Jerusalem and the “West Bank.” Note that the map’s legend refers to the dotted line as “pre-1967 ceasefire line,” which implies that there was a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, as Jordan is not mentioned (this is deliberately misleading). The map’s purple areas are marked as “Israeli settlements.” Are they?

In the lower portion of the map is the Old City of Jerusalem. Marked in purple is the Jewish Quarter, a place with over 750 years of continuous Jewish presence except for the window of Arab rule when the Jordanians ethnically-cleansed all of the Jews from 1949 to 1967. According to this map, any JEW – not Israeli – living east of the Green Line (EGL) is a “settler.”

There are thousands of Israeli Arabs living in EGL including the eastern part of Jerusalem. Israel gave all the Arabs in the city permanent resident status in 1967 and has afforded them the right to apply for Israeli citizenship. Thousands have already taken such citizenship and thousands more have applied. Yet the B’Tselem/ BBC map doesn’t mark the homes of Israeli Arabs in purple but only the locations where Israeli Jews live.

*Jewish men, women and children living in the Jewish Quarter of their holiest city*
*are marked with the term “settler”*

Adolf Hitler accused the Jews of being sly manipulators who steal, as he roused Germany to rout the Jews. He painted their stores with the word “Jude” and made them wear yellow Jewish stars with the word in the center, so they could be easily identifiable for insult and attack by passers-by, and interrogated and ultimately expelled for annihilation by government officials.

So it is today with the term “settler,” even in the Jewish people’s holiest city.

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The Green Line Through Jerusalem

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“Settlers” Now Means Jews Stepping Over The Green Line

To Serve Jews, United Nations Style

First One Through music video:

The Green Line (music by The Kinks)

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Elul and the UN’s Durban Conference

Posted on August 22, 2021 by First.One.Through

The Hebrew month of Elul is the last month of the year and traditionally marks the beginning period of repentance in the Jewish calendar. It is on the first day of the month that the prophet Moses ascended Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago, and forty days later, on Yom Kippur, when he descended and broke the tablets when he saw the Children of Israel worshipping beside a statue of a golden calf.

To mark the period of repentance, rabbis instituted a tradition of reciting Psalm 27 at the end of morning and evening prayers. It is a call for God to protect Jews from their enemies.

As we approach the twentieth anniversary of UN Durban Conference and the attacks of 9/11 which both occurred during Elul, and how governments and people choose to commemorate those events, two sentences in the psalm deserve deeper exploration. Sentences 11 & 12:

ה֤וֹרֵ֥נִי יְהֹוָ֗ה דַּ֫רְכֶּ֥ךָ וּ֭נְחֵנִי בְּאֹ֣רַח מִישׁ֑וֹר לְ֝מַ֗עַן שֽׁוֹרְרָֽי׃ Show me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my watchful foes.

אַֽל־תִּ֭תְּנֵנִי בְּנֶ֣פֶשׁ צָרָ֑י כִּ֥י קָמוּ־בִ֥י עֵדֵי־שֶׁ֝֗קֶר וִיפֵ֥חַ חָמָֽס׃ Do not subject me to the will of my foes, for false witnesses and unjust accusers have appeared against me.

While the Psalm is set up to seek God’s protection from armies (verse 3), the lines above highlight that enemies include those who wish to undermine Jews with slander. The “watchful foes” scrutinize every action and then bear “false witness” with accusations that seek to seriously harm Jews as they enter the high holidays.

The United Nations, a body conceived of to promote peace and reduce bloodshed, has become a platform for “false witnesses and unjust accusers” which lambast Israel. UN Watch noted that in 2020, the UN General Assembly passed 17 resolutions condemning Israel, while passing a total of six against the rest of the world.

Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said that the “farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the UN’s automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone’s human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations is to scapegoat Israel.“

United States Secretary of State Colin Powell said much the same as he withdrew from the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa on September 3, 2001:

“Today I have instructed our representatives at the World Conference Against Racism to return home. I have taken this decision with regret, because of the importance of the international fight against racism and the contribution that the Conference could have made to it. But, following discussions today by our team in Durban and others who are working for a successful conference, I am convinced that will not be possible. I know that you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of “Zionism equals racism;” or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust; or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel; or that singles out only one country in the world–Israel–for censure and abuse.“

Flyer at 2001 World Conference Against Racism with a picture of Adolf Hitler with caption “What if I had won?” and continued that there would be no Israel nor bloodshed of Palestinians (source UN Watch)

The United Nations has promoted and given legitimacy to the “watchful foes” of Jews – both around the world and in the United States, at governmental levels, among lay leaders and ordinary citizens – to promote vicious slander against Israel and the Jewish people. As those lies are becoming mainstreamed, it is time to stop reciting Psalm 27 quietly but “with shouts of joy, singing and chanting,” (verse 6), for God to cause these evil people and organizations to “stumble and fall” (verse 2).

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Torching Each Corner to Get Rid of the Jews

Posted on August 9, 2021 by First.One.Through

I had always been told that my paternal grandmother’s family came from Sighet, a decent sized town in Romania along the Ukrainian border. It was considered a small source of familial pride as it was the same home town for Eli Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who wrote about the Holocaust.

Some years ago, upon speaking to my grandmother’s brother about the place where the family grew up as my grandmother died before I was born, I learned that history takes a bit of time, both to happen and to explain.

My great uncle informed me that his family grew up in a small shtetl, a small Jewish village, some miles away from Sighet. One evening, when he was about eight years old, a fire broke out in a corner of the shtetl. All of the people in the town, including himself, rapidly lined up to pass buckets of water one to the other to help put out the flames. He recalled that while he was passing buckets he heard someone shouting that another fire had broken out on the other side of the village. The villagers started to shout how to break the line into two to deal with the second blaze, when they looked up to see a third blaze in another corner of the town. And then a fourth.

The local anti-Semites had come to incinerate their town.

He recalled how the following morning the family grabbed what belongings they could manage, and walked to Sighet as the smoke from his village filled the air. He told me the name of that former village, and as I quickly forgot the foreign sounding name, I internalized how history had forgotten it too.

So, yes, the family did live in Sighet, but it wasn’t really the town of his birth. Our family had already been routed by local anti-Semites a couple of decades before the Nazis came for the Jews of Sighet.

The alt-right relentlessly pursued the Jews of Europe and Russia for hundreds of years, sometimes as part of the ruling class and other times by the hands of a band of locals. In each circumstance, they knew how to rout the small collection of Jews.

The Four Corners of Anti-Semitism Today

In many parts of the world, the ruling class is being taken over by extremists. The alt-left made inroads in America’s Democratic Party with the Democratic Socialists of America getting seats in Congress with members including Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The DSA was following the playbook of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom, where Jeremy Corbyn pushed anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism and extremist ideas to take over the party.

*The DSA invited disgraced anti-Semite and former leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn to address their annual convention.*

The alt-right still exists around the world and in America but shunned and sidelined by civilized society. Not so the alt-left, which has bonded with Islamic extremists to gain power, and with the alt-right in the cause of setting fire to Jewish homes.

American Jews are surrounded on all sides by anti-Semitic extremists, and there are neither sufficient volunteers to pass buckets to extinguish the flames of hatred nor to expel the sinister arsonists.

Related First One Through articles:

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Your Father’s Anti-Semitism

25,000 Jews Remaining

Bernie Sanders’ Antisemitic and Anti-Zionist Friends

David Duke, Ilhan Omar and the Three Lenses of Anti-Semitism

The Right Number of Anti-Semites in Congress

Mum on Black, Brown and Leftist Anti-Semitism

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Rashida Tlaib’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’

Posted on August 5, 2021 by First.One.Through

Successful race baiters become famous and powerful. They first attract attention which brings in followers, and then money and ultimately true power.

Adolf Hitler produced his manifesto called ‘Mein Kampf” meaning ‘My Struggle” which sought to air his grievances about the state of German society and the struggles of the common man. He used the Jew as his scapegoat, at times attacking the Hebrew Pinata for being poor, dirty and smelly, and at other times for being a rich banker who profited off the work of others. He portrayed the Jews as leeches which sucked the blood and labor of poor workers and profited in a sneaky plan for world domination.

Some selections on his second “powerful parasite theme”:

Jewish parasites: “In the business world things were even worse. Here the Jewish people had really become ‘indispensable.’ The spider began slowly to suck the people’s blood out of its pores. By way of the war societies one had found the instrument with which to put an end, bit by bit, to a national and free economy.“

Jews stealing in secret: “they try to cheat the whole world with their tricks; they are lazy, but with their pretended ‘silent’ work they create the appearance of an enormous and equally laborious activity; in short, they are cheats, characters of political profiteering, who hate the honest work of others. Just as such a folkish moth always appeals to the darkness of the silence, one can bet a thousand to one that under its cover he does not produce, but only steals from the fruits of the labor of others.“

Jewish profiteers and desire for world domination: “Jews are the regents of the stock exchange power of the American Union. Every year they manage to become increasingly the controlling masters of the labor power of a people of 120,000,000 souls; one great man, Ford, to their exasperation still holds out independently there even now. With rapacious cleverness they knead public opinion and form from it the instrument of a struggle for their own future. Already the greatest heads of Jewry envisage the approach of the fulfillment of the hereditary slogan of the great devouring of the nations.“

Hitler was appalled that people would come to the defense of the Jews, knowing that they profit off of the toil and suffering of others:

Don’t defend Jews who profit off your misery: “If the Hungarian government hangs ten Jewish stock exchange profiteers, whose money is sticky with the blood and the sweat of hundreds of thousands of honest people, we protest, we cry about pogroms and we demand the boycott of an entire State.”

Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in July 1925 as a poor man in prison. Within eight years he was the chancellor of Germany.

The Alt-Left’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’

The National Socialist German Worker’s Party of the 1930’s and 1940’s was commonly called the Nazi Party. It is associated with the far right’s desire for racial purity, demonization of inferior races and elevation of proper Aryan Germans. It drew its inspiration from Hitler’s manifesto.

Today’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a far-left group which shuns much of the ideology of the Nazi Party while embracing other key tenets.

It does not follow Hitler’s screed against the dirty, smelly Jew or other poor people as the party argues that it is fighting for the poor working class. Instead the alt-left goes all-in against the rich “ownership class” which robs from poor people of their work and dignity. Jews just happen to be the mascot of the evil profiteers, whether in Gaza or Detroit.

Randi Weingarten, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, a lobbying group with 1.7 million members which pumps millions of dollars into Democratic politicians’ pockets, declared that American Jews are “part of the ownership class…. now want to take that ladder of opportunity [education] away from those who do not have it.” (Weingarten is married to Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, who sits on the Rabbinical Committee of the left-wing group J Street, and was just appointed by President Biden to join the US religious freedom commission. An interesting spectacle of Jews eating their own).

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a proud member of the DSA made her own declaration about Jews:

“As I think about my family in Palestine, that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful Black city I grew up in … you know I always tell people that cutting people off from water is violence, and they do it from Gaza to Detroit, and it’s a way to control people, to oppress people. And it’s those structures that we continue to fight against. I know you all understand the structure we’ve been living under right now is designed by those who exploit the rest of us, for their own profit. I always say to people ‘I don’t care if it’s around the issue of global human rights, and our fight to free Palestine, or to pushing back against those who don’t believe in a minimum wage or those who believe we don’t have a right to healthcare and so much more.’ And I tell those same people, that if you open the curtain and look behind the curtain, it’s the same people who make money and—yes they do—off of racism, off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money and you saw it, it was so exposed during the pandemic…. They made record profit.”

It’s a wonderful summation of Hitler’s thesis, that Jews operate in the shadows to profit off the suffering of others.

*Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a DSA event under tagline “From the Ashes of the Old: Socialism for a new tomorrow”*

The DSA is remarketing key talking points of the Nazi Party under the banner “From the ashes of the old: socialism for a new tomorrow.” Who would imagine that the heirs to Hitler’s ideology that Jews are puppet masters exploiting the labor and suffering of the masses, would be Jewish and Muslim women?

Related First One Through articles:

The Re-Introduction of the ‘Powerful’ Jew Smear

Christiane Amanpour is More Anti-Semitic Than Ilhan Omar

David Duke, Ilhan Omar and the Three Lenses of Anti-Semitism

Peter Beinart is an Apologist for Anti-Semites

I See Dead People

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