On December 16, 2020, The New York Times editorial board elected to give its entire opinion page to long-time journalist Thomas Friedman to discuss a topic he knows nothing about: rural America.
The one-time foreign affairs correspondent presented his bold idea that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris should become the czar of rural America and bring broadband to bridge the “connectivity gap.” He wanted this accomplished not so much for the benefit of rural America but to put on a show that Democrats care about these lagging Americans, so those red states might loose a touch of their rosy glow and prevent Democrats from getting trounced in the next election cycle.
What Friedman failed to understand and convey in the editorial was that the Trump administration committed billions of dollars to bring broadband to rural America.
Friedman further noted that Harris “is a natural bridge builder to a more inclusive America.” Maybe Freidman is not aware that non-partisan GovTracks observed that Harris was the least bi-partisan U.S. senator. She also scored as the most extreme leftist in her voting record, even more than proud Democratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders and closeted Democratic-Socialist Elizabeth Warren.
But don’t let history get in the way.
The Times will have its urban readers believe that rural Americans are waiting for Democrats to save them, but all Friedman’s editorial really showed was his ignorance and contemptible view that non-urban Americans are just pawns for progressive politics.
Both the political right and left are coming after the large social media platforms due to their powerful influence over society. The right has complained about the censorship executed by the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for silencing conservative voices while the left has voiced concern about these perceived monopolies destroying competition. The left has mostly been dismissive about the idea that the corporations have a left-leaning disposition, and if they do, they are nonplussed. If corporations are allowed to contribute to election campaigns (see Citizens United v. FEC which the left abhorred), they should similarly be free to share or block content.
As to the question of whether shadow-banning is real, consider this blog of FirstOneThrough which has a right-of-center orientation to American and Israeli politics.
On a typical week, Facebook would account for over 10 times the number of referrals to an article as search engines. That pattern was relatively consistent whether there were few or several posts.
But the pattern broke during the election cycle.
Weeks Ending
FB Average
Search Average
Ratio
Dec 13
672
58
13x
Nov 8
181
56
3
Sep 20
823
60
13
Aug 2
538
48
11
Jun 14
926
71
14
Impact of Facebook Shadow Banning on views of First One Through blog
During the seven week cycle before the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the blog remarkably went from getting roughly 13 times as many views from Facebook than search engines to only 3 times as much. The change was completely the result of a sharp decline in Facebook readership, as the volume produced from search engines remained constant.
That meant that fewer people had a chance to read the analysis of a vocal Libertarian and Zionist leading up to an important election. Once the election passed, Facebook permitted viewership patterns to return to normal (as of the following five weeks).
How and why did this happen?
Did a liberal reader flag the October 1 article “Vote Harvesting,” a completely true first-hand account of watching how a local election official can influence who gets to vote? Did Facebook decide on its own that posts from a writer who penned on September 25 “NY Times Tries Hard to Paint Obama/Biden as Pacifists and Trump as Mercenary” is an opinion to be silenced? Did an anti-Israel agitator do their utmost to flag a blogger who wrote on September 27 about the vile anti-Semitic Hamas Charter and how former Democratic U.S. President Jimmy Carter backed the Hamas terrorist group?
Whatever the origin of shadow ban, it clearly happened.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Facebook and Twitter’s actions around the closely contested election on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020, in Washington. | Bill Clark/Pool via AP
If Facebook wants to present itself as a biased platform like MSNBC or Fox News, that’s fine. A private platform can take whatever form it chooses. While it may be annoying when a media company like The New York Times pretends to be unbiased and not left-leaning, the tilt is well known and consistent. Only people living in a liberal bubble believe it to be a neutral and factual publication.
However, what kind of platform swings alt-left for just moments in time like during an election season? If the analysis presented by a blogger is offensive, then make it clear for that person to take their business and opinions elsewhere. Always.
What was done by social media in this instance was clear election-meddling, and on the grandest of scales due to the enormous power of social media. (\According to Pew research, 43% of Americans got their news from social media in 2018, a number that surely went up by 2020. That growing figure is despite a majority of people (57%) being skeptical of what they read.
In 2008, Barack Obama and his supporters were very effective in using social media, especially relative to John McCain supporters according to Pew Research. Obama voters surpassed McCain voters in posting content online (26% vs. 15%) and engaged politically on social media (25% vs. 16%) to yield a very successful outcome. But now, the social media companies themselves are keeping the gap in favor of Democrats by blocking the distribution of conservative posts.
Shadow banning in social media is very real and can easily tip presidential elections that are decided by less than one percent of voters in a couple of states. It is frightening and appalling that we no longer have to only fear the actions of foreign actors in the conduct of our democracy but the large social media platforms themselves.
Not long after Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, he made overtures to the Palestinians in the hopes of brokering a peace deal. He invited the acting-President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to the White House on May 3, 2017. They discussed tackling terrorism and building economic prosperity for Palestinian Arabs and the promise of working together to build a better future for the region.
Shortly thereafter, on May 23rd, President Trump visited Abbas in Bethlehem and reiterated the need to confront terrorism, “Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded…. The terrorists and extremists, and those who give them aid and comfort, must be driven out from our society forever. This wicked ideology must be obliterated — and I mean completely obliterated — and innocent life must be protected.”
Just a week later, Trump handed a peculiar gift to Abbas: on June 1 he removed the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
ANO was part of the October 1997 initial class of FTO’s along with HAMAS and Hizbullah. ANO carried out roughly 90 hijackings, assassinations and kidnappings of diplomats, and attacks on synagogues during the period 1974-1992 killing about 300 people to earn the FTO designation. The group targeted people viewed as moderates – including Palestinians – who contemplated the ongoing existence of the Jewish State. When Abu Nidal died in 2002, the group went inactive.
Which begs the question of why Trump took a 15-year defunct group off of the FTO list, right after meeting with Abbas.
Terrorist Sabri al-Banna, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Nidal
Abbas was (and remains) a very unpopular leader among Palestinian Arabs who have wanted him to resign according to each poll taken over the last many years, with 64% holding such opinion at the time of the Abbas-Trump meeting. Abbas polled to come in third in a theoretical three-candidate presidential race at that time!
So Trump threw Abbas a bone to boost his standing among Palestinians, to demonstrate that he could deliver results with the new U.S. President. It was arguably a meaningless gesture as the group was inactive, but it was symbolic in clearing the name of one of the most radical and notorious Palestinian terrorist groups.
In exchange for the Trump pardon of the ANO, Abbas advanced the idea of stopping the pay-to-slay program in which the PA paid the families of terrorists in Israeli jails. The proposal landed with a thud among the Palestinians, with a nearly unanimous 91% of Palestinians standing opposed to messing with the martyr-moolah.
Things then soured at the United Nations.
Abbas met with Trump on September 20, 2017 and voiced optimism regarding the efforts Trump’s team had made with over 20 meetings with Palestinian officials in the first months in office, but he then launched his habitual screed before the United Nations General Assembly with comments about Israeli Jews living in “East Jerusalem” which will “stir religious animosity and may lead to a violent religious conflict,… playing with fire … drag[ing] us into a religious war. This is dangerous, extremely dangerous for you and us,” in a not so subtle threat of a global jihad against Jews.
Abbas further threatened Jews and insulted Trump by declaring at the end of his speech “I salute our glorious martyrs and our courageous prisoners in Israeli jails,” to appease his Arab base. This embrace of terrorism and public challenge of Trump’s demand to stop rewarding terrorism was too much. Less than three months later, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.
Abbas squandered Trump’s gift of removing an evil jihadist group from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations to gain Palestinian support. Instead, he elected to boost his own jihadi bona fides and stood before the world glorifying Palestinian terrorists who killed Israelis and threatening a global jihad if Jews continued to live in their holiest city of Jerusalem. Trump’s reaction was swift in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Abbas’s political self-immolation continues to burn to this day.
In the waning days of the Obama-Biden administration, President Obama decided to stick a finger in the eyes of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and all Israelis, breaking with decades of U.S. policy allowing UNSC Resolution 2334 to pass, declaring that Israeli Jews living east of the 1949 Armistice Lines was illegal. The action set the stage for various BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movements of Israel around the world.
Now, as the Trump administration heads into its final days, it is also considering some parting actions, following up on its pro-Israel initiatives according to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Below are some recommendations.
At the United Nations
The hostility towards Israel at the United Nations has not abated. While the United States will not be able to get any pro-Israel items through the UN Security Council, it could set markers for future U.S. administrations.
EndingPhrase“occupied East Jerusalem” and “Haram al Sharif”. The UN regularly passes resolutions which are incorrect and insulting to the Jewish State. As all of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem were separated in the 1947 UN Partition Plan (which did not pass) and the Jordanian annexation of eastern Jerusalem was illegal, there is no basis for calling the eastern part of the city as “occupied Palestinian territory.” Additionally, only calling Judaism’s most holy location, the Temple Mount, by its Islamic name is insulting. The US should declare that it will automatically oppose any resolution with such flawed verbiage, regardless of the contents of the resolution.
Dignity for Jews at the Temple Mount. UN resolutions routinely call for dignity of Palestinians but only security for Jews. They also calls for changing the status quo of Jerusalem but not for the holy sites. This outrage and hypocrisy is disgusting. A call for Jews to be allowed to pray on the Temple Mount at specific times just as the Muslims and Jews share the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron should be clearly articulated.
Biased Supporter of Israel. The Palestinians complain the United States is not a neutral mediator in trying to resolve the conflict. It should not be. Not only is Israel a strong American ally but the Palestinians have not abandoned the incitement and reward for terrorism. Further, until the UN stops singling out Israel in its resolutions, the U.S. should make abundantly clear that it will stand with Israel in the global forum and not pressure Israel into any concessions with the Palestinian Authority.
Refugees
The situation of Palestinian “refugees” going on for generations and not having self-determination must end. It is bad for the Palestinians and is bad for the peace process which cannot move forward as it undermines the very basis of two states for two people.
Prepare the Compensation Mechanism.UNGA Resolution 194 which passed in 1948, sought to bring refugees who fled the war back to their homes or compensate them for their losses, provided they were willing to live in peace with Israel. Many wars, intifadas, electing a Holocaust denier to the presidency and a terrorist group to the majority of parliament long sealed the fate of how this would play out. It is time to begin tabulating the compensation for ALL Palestinians who fled from the war (not just those under the UNRWA mandate). Similarly, compensation for the Jews who fled from Arab lands should also be calculated.
Demand Self-Determination Now. Every person as a human right to self-determination. The Palestinians who live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan (even though almost all of them were born in those countries) should be granted citizenship and full rights in each respective country immediately. The people who live in Gaza, Areas A and B under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian Authority should be able to vote in Palestinian elections, and all people – Jew and Arab – who live in Area C should be allowed to vote in Israel, if and until other dynamics change that administrative equation.
Dissolve UNRWA. The unique agency for Palestinians is bloated in terms of funding and personnel compared to the global UNHCR and foments hatred for the Jewish State. It’s duties should be folded into UNHCR immediately and ultimately the need for the group disappears with the actions taken above.
Jerusalem
Jerusalem has been home for the three monotheistic religions for over a thousand years, and only under the Modern State of Israel have all religions been able to live and pray in their holy city.
More Jewish homes. While the city has blossomed, it has done so very unevenly. The Arab population continues to grow dramatically (counter to the false claims that Israel is ‘ethnically cleansing’ the city), with the Arab population growing 38% between 2000 and 2010 and then 29% between 2010 and 2018. Meanwhile the Jewish population in the city only grew by 12% and 13% in those time periods, respectively. All of the growth for Jews was from births as there was actually a net migration out of the city of thousands of people (6,000 in 2018 alone) because of limited housing and costs. The US should support the building of additional homes in and around Jerusalem.
Muslim population of 196,900; 272,000; 349,600 and 439,600; 491,800; 555,800 for Jews
Security
Israel has the terrorists group Hezbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza at its borders. Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which supports both groups, has threatened to wipe Israel off of the map. The Obama administration gave over $100 billion to Iran and a legal pathway to nuclear weapons threating the survival of Israel.
Bunker Busters. The United States is one of the few countries that has the weaponry to blast underground facilities. These armaments should be sold to Israel to enable it to deal with the nuclear facilities in Iran and the missiles in Lebanon.
Palestinian Terrorists. The US should make clear that no terrorist group will be allowed in a Palestinian government. Should any group not give up all weapons to the Palestinian Authority and commit to recognize Israel in becoming part of a Palestinian government, the US should cease all aid in all forms to the Palestinians, and label the PA itself a terrorist group.
Terrorism in Territories. The State Department under the Obama administration gave scant attention to terrorism that was not committed in Israel proper. Such approach fueled additional terror. It is bad enough when the UN and BBC blame the victims, but the US should make clear that any and all terrorism committed anywhere is appalling and commit to fighting terrorism aggressively, something the Obama administration only did for other countries.
Anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism is found throughout the world both in official laws and in civilian actions. The United States should encourage other countries to join Israel in routing this global scourge.
Jews Should Never Be Banned. The world has a long history of placing Jews in ghettoes and determining where they can and cannot live. It’s a disgrace. Israel is not the world’s Pale of Settlement and Jews should be allowed to live and work anywhere. Anti-settlements is anti-Semitism in its core and should be called out as such. The U.S. should call on all governments to condemn the notion of “Judaizing” a neighborhood, regardless of where it is located.
Anti-Kosher/Halal and Anti-Circumcision Bills. Many governments are advancing laws targeting Jews and Muslims, making it impossible to live peacefully as neighbors. The U.S. should be a beacon of openness by calling out anti-circumcision and anti-ritual slaughter laws which are thinly-veiled methods of getting rid of Jews and Muslims.
Overall, the Trump administration should recommit to the 2004 President Bush letter to Ariel Sharon which gave Israel assurances to take risks for peace. The formula led Israel to give up Gaza which rapidly became a hotbed for radical Islam and terrorism. There is no chance Israel will take any future actions to make additional concessions to the PA which not only give it moral support but guarantees for its dignity and security.
The politeness of politics catering to anti-Semites has hindered the promotion of Jewish rights for too long. The Trump administration can still take actions to right these historical wrongs.
Over the past several years, people on the political left-of-center chose to label those right-of-center as ‘Nazis.’ Actual Nazis, not just ‘depolrables‘ the way Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had called them.
Current Democratic President-elect Joe Biden said that President Donald Trump was “sort of like Goebbels,” referring to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda machine’s mastermind. The left-wing media leveled accusations that Trump welcomed Nazis into the Republican Party. There were slurs by lower level Democratic politicians about Republican rivals in local elections that they were Nazis. And so many American citizens – including employees at Google tasked with fact-checking – condemned conservative commentators such as Ben Shapiro (who is an Orthodox Jew), as modern Nazis.
All of this slander despite Trump having an Orthodox Jewish daughter, creating a new position in the State Department to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, and being the most pro-Israel president in American history.
Meanwhile, these same leftists simultaneously refuse to call out as Nazis the most anti-Semitic people committed to killing Jews and to destroying the Jewish State.
Palestinian Arabs voted the terrorist group Hamas to a majority of Parliament with the most anti-Semitic foundational charter ever written. The bile in its charter and daily calls to murder Israeli Jews are readily available to see, yet the left-wing media writes that Palestinians are “resorting to violence.” On the rare occasion that the left-wing media labels Hamas as a terrorist group, it calls it a “right-wing” one, even though it is nothing of the sort but a devoutly Muslim one.
Cover page of the Philadelphia Daily News in December 2015 essentially calling President-elect Trump a Nazi “fuhrer” for a “Muslim ban,” a fake media charge
We are now at a pivotal time when the Democrats who besmirched those to the right of them as Nazis are about to assume control of the White House. This Biden/Harris ticket said it will reverse many pro-Israel positions taken by the Trump administration. Kamala Harris said the new administration “will take immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people, address the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, reopen the US consulate in East Jerusalem and work to reopen the PLO mission in Washington.” [note that the US consulate was in WESTERN Jerusalem, not East Jerusalem]. The new administration said it is eager to re-enter the JCPOA which gave Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which has threatened to destroy Israel, a legal pathway to nuclear weapons.
These are all plain and terrifying facts.
If this country truly wants to unify and overcome hate, this administration, the media and every American must finally stop besmirching people with whom they disagree as ‘Nazis’ and simultaneously condemn and punish the terrorists and genocidal maniacs hell-bent on killing Jews and destroying the Jewish State.
The middle has been collapsing for some time. Senators like Joe Lieberman (D-CT) and John McCain (R-NV) could no longer exist in today’s political climate. The moderates in both the Republican and Democratic parties have been expunged in their respective primary seasons.
Fringe parties like Democratic Socialist and the Working Families Parties have successfully inserted themselves into America’s main parties. Far left extremists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar are no longer on the outside looking in, but have seats in Congress, are members of important committees and been endorsed by the heads of the Democratic National Committee and the Speaker of the House.
In New York State, Democrats forcibly retired politicians that considered bi-partisanship a noble idea. The majority Democratic Party is now looking to seal the fate of the state by actively looking to expel the last of the moderates and achieve a super-majority to advance extremist ideas. The terms “DINO” and “RINO,” Democrats In Name Only and Republicans In Name Only have become slurs.
The dynamics extend beyond state politics and congress. The Democratic Party has selected, Kamala Harris, the most liberal and least bipartisan member of the Senate to be Vice President. They have made clear their intentions to establish long-term changes to America in packing the Supreme Court and adding Washington, D.C. as a new state.
For their part, the Republicans can’t stand the incumbent president of their own party, with dozens upon dozens shunning Trump. It’s an unheard of dynamic in the history of American elections: Republican hate Republicans and Democrats hate Republicans. It sounds like an easy vote this election.
Not so.
The cleft in society will not be bridged with endorsing a party that has swung far from the center. It will also not be cured with a vote for an Independent or Libertarian, which might feel like good, but does as much as throwing a pebble into the trench.
In this contentious election, the best path forward to heal the country is to vote purple – not all blue (Democratic) or pure red (Republican) up and down the ballot, but to vote for a mix of both parties. If you live in a deep blue state, vote straight red, and if you’re in a deep red state, vote blue in every race. Americans must force the parties to find common ground, as a sweep for Democrats or Republicans in 2020 is a vote for extremist ideologies and policies.
The protests in the streets of America have ranged from Black Lives Matter, COVID-19 lockdowns, abortion, immigration policies and more
The pandemic of our time has killed over a million people worldwide. One would imagine that such a global scourge might bring people together, or at least allow the media to rise above partisan politics.
But that is wishful thinking. There are other pandemics today including the polarization of politics and the death of unbiased media.
Consider the graphic shown on The Wall Street Journal’s cover page on October 15, 2020. It showed that despite the summer flattening of the positive cases of COVID-19 in Europe, the continent has spiked alarmingly and now surpasses the U.S. in terms of cases per million people.
Cover page of the WSJ with graphic showing steep increase in COVID cases in Europe, now surpassing the United States
This graphic, together with the article on page A9 exposed a narrative quite different than the Democratic Party is actively imparting to voters just a few weeks before elections – that the Trump Administration has been a grotesque failure at handling the pandemic, particularly relative to the rest of the world.
So The New York Times came to put the anti-Trump narrative back on track the following day.
New York Times cover page of October 16, 2020 with three large US maps and a chart dominating the entirety of the page
The entire middle of the front page from the very top to the very bottom was covered with graphics in red. The title of the charts read “U.S. Virus Cases Climb Towards Third Peak.” This was the message that the Times wanted readers to focus on, that things are getting real bad once again in the United States. The cases in Europe went unmentioned.
Reuters covered both stories over the past several days, in particular highlighting the troubling trend in Europe in severalarticles. One of the articles included this remarkable comment, that “Europe is reporting more daily cases than India, Brazil and the United States combined.” As of this writing, the NY Times has ignored the devastating trend in Europe.
The pandemic is destroying lives all around the world while the liberal and conservative media outlets post alternative facts to make us love or hate politicians. It’s a sad state of affairs and one likely to just make us all sicker.
When Facebook announced that it was banning Holocaust denial on October 12, many people celebrated. The dismissive language and attitudes related to millions of slaughtered Jews during World War II is viewed by many as not only offensive but the foundation for new hate crimes today. As such, the removal of such content and the platform’s limitation on sharing such articles was welcome news for many well-meaning people.
But censorship is a cruel hack that silences opinions and stories that stray from today’s new strictly-enforced orthodoxies.
This blog has been writing stories consistently for six years covering anti-Semitism, Zionism and American politics. The opinions have taken sharp aim at the liberal press’s criticisms of Israel during that time and was never shy in highlighting the deep anti-Semitism found in the foundational documents of Palestinian society, including the Hamas charter.
The articles have principally been shared on Facebook. Consequently, the platform’s decisions on which articles should be censored due to content – or author – directly impacts the blog’s viewership.
And since the end of September, the readership has suddenly plummeted.
Historically, popular First One Through articles were read by thousands and typical articles were read by several hundred. It was rare to ever have an article be consumed by fewer than 80 people. But over the past three weeks, not a single article has surpassed that total.
Friends found the story on vote harvesting impossible to believe and asked that I take it down since it was fanning distrust in the upcoming elections. It is a sentiment shared by the censors at Facebook. It has seemingly marked the FirstOneThrough blog as dangerous for society and is curtailing its viewership.
The notion that the good guys always win or that truth will always prevail are myths. Emboldening powerful platforms to censor stories it deems unworthy or incompatible with its worldview is toxic to a healthy democratic society.
First they came for my articles but I did not speak up because they did not censor mine…
Many people have their taste in music locked in by their mid-20’s. They typically find it hard to add new artists to their song lists and revert to their old favorites each day.
Similarly, people see their spouses and old friends through old lenses. They don’t really age in their minds who remain as youthful and energetic as their memories allow, not as they truly exist today.
We see this dynamic playing out in politics today as well.
The Palestinian Arabs call for a new state to be established on lands ruled by Jordan and Egypt way back in 1967. The fact that over fifty years have passed since those illegal occupiers were routed by Israel does not seem to faze the leadership of the Palestinian Authority. Many Palestinian Arabs are even more ambitious with seemingly older memories when they chant “we don’t want two states; we want ’48,” in a call to recreate a reality from 1948 before the Jewish State was reborn.
American voters are doing it as well. They have deluded themselves into believing they are voting for Joe Biden as he was in 1988 and not the man as he exists today in 2020. They ignore his clearly compromised facilities and pretend he is up to the task of running the country.
I do not fault people for seeing the world as they want it to be or as they really visualize it. But it is madness to pretend that others share their time-warped perceptions. It is delusional, off-putting and not constructive.
When a fellow American says they cannot vote for a 2020-Joe Biden or an Israeli says that he is not going back in time to set borders from 1948 or 1967, it doesn’t mean that they do not share some common desires like peace in the Middle East or a president that is not Donald Trump. It means that they see the world as it truly exists today and will act accordingly.
Looking at the world through vintage glasses is wonderful when engaging with close friends and family members but is dangerous when negotiating or entering the voting booth. Democrats are doing both when they dismiss the Trump peace plan which considers reality in Israel and its territories, and when they delude themselves into talking about 2020-Joe Biden as if he’s still 1988-Joe Biden.
First One Through 