Category Archives: Palestinians

No One Mentions Actual Palestinians’ Sentiments

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To listen to the United Nations and to read the mainstream media, one would think that there is a true understanding of Palestinian Arabs. The Palestinian advocates argue on their behalf so often, one naturally assumes that they have their current sentiments thoroughly summed up.

Alas, “hope” was not just the aspirational theme for Barack Obama, but the mantra of the Palestinian fan club. The UN, alt-left press and politicians are on a marketing and propaganda mission, and facts are a necessary casualty.

Some examples touted repeatedly by the UN and left-wing extremists include: that the principal issue for Palestinians is the Israeli “occupation”; that the people of Gaza just want to live in peace alongside Israel; that they are ruled by an Islamic militant group they don’t want or like; and that they support a two-state solution.

These are all lies.

The Palestinians poll themselves every three months whose findings showcase the opposite sentiments. Here are some recent findings from March 2021:

Palestinians are primarily concerned about the failure of their own economy and leadership. The number one issue which Palestinians want the Palestinian Authority to address is the economy. The second issue is the rampant corruption in the leadership ranks and in public institutions. Coming in third is not wanting Israeli Jews to live in the West Bank and Gaza and dealing with the Israeli military. (When the question was asked slightly differently in the same poll, the top three issues included reunifying Gaza and the West Bank – “occupation” came in fourth).

Palestinians are not in favor of a “two-state solution.” Roughly 57% of Palestinians oppose the idea, with Gazans opposing it even more (65%) than Arabs in the West Bank (51%).

Gazans support attacking Israelis. Roughly 70% of Gazans said that they support physically attacking Israeli civilians inside of Israel. That is down from 77% who were in favor of attacking Jewish civilians in December 2020. This seemingly outrageous and horrific question is actually asked each quarter, and the high positive response rate shows why.

Palestinians hate their “moderate” leader. Roughly 68% of Palestinians want acting President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas to resign immediately.

Palestinians want a terrorist to serve as president. When offered the idea of voting for anyone for president, the leading candidate is Marwan Barghouti (22%) a terrorist convicted of killing five people and sitting in an Israeli jail. The runner-up is Ismail Haniyeh (14%), the head of the terrorist group Hamas.

These findings are consistent with the 2014 ADL poll which found the Palestinians to be the most anti-Semitic in the world (93% – almost every Palestinian Arab harbors anti-Jewish attitudes), who elected a Holocaust denier as president and the anti-Semitic Hamas terrorist group to 58% of the parliament in the last elections.

Yet this entire fact-pattern is concealed in the narrative packaged to the world. Without the underlying information, people cannot ponder their own assessment of the Arab-Israel conflict.

A thoughtful reviewer of the situation armed with facts might consider that Palestinian Arabs are running their own version of the region’s “Arab Spring” in which locals rebel against their leaders because of systemic corruption of governmental institutions and terrible economic conditions. In the Palestinian Arab Spring, the local Arabs see more to be gained in attacking the wealthier Jewish State next door rather than their own leadership so as to 1) get the west to spend more monies in rebuilding their failed institutions and infrastructure, 2) win more land or trade from Israel, 3) push as many stateless Arabs as possible into the richer Israel in a “right of return”, or 4) ultimately get a one-state solution in which all of the Arabs get a huge upgrade by merging into Israel, a first world functioning country. Such viewpoint leads to a conclusion that the latest May 2021 fighting was principally a response to PA President Mahmoud Abbas cancelling the first elections to be held in 15 years, not protests to a localized eviction of squatters in Jerusalem.

If the world knew of the Palestinians’ anti-Semitism, preference for violence and a one state- solution, and their primary disgust at their own leaders’ failures, perhaps they would be less likely to believe the chants at the United Nations, from “progressive” politicians and the alt-left media that it is Israeli actions which are to blame for the current death and destruction. It would plainly reveal the alt-left’s ongoing global quest of moving assets from those with more to those with less, regardless of the actual situation in the Middle East and merits and methodology of doing so.

The press prefers to censor conservative and pro-Israel platforms as it publishes its #AlternativeFacts and #FakeNews spouted from its favorite progressives. The United Nations whitewashes the hatred and crimes of its adopted Palestinian wards as it attempts to create a Palestinian state regardless of its costs.

The Palestinian propaganda machine has a pre-packaged narrative and solution which they want the world to swallow whole: Israel – like the United States – was built on racism and theft, and it must abdicate/share its land, wealth, military capabilities, technology, security, dignity and independence with its impoverished neighbor. Sharing the frightening facts and horrible sentiments of Palestinian Arabs undermines that goal.

Related First One Through articles:

Socialists Employ Arabs’ Four Step Battle Plan

The NY Times Will Not Write About the Preferred Violence of Palestinians

NY Times Hides Abbas’s Violence and Pence’s Truth

The United Nations’ Incitement to Violence

UN Concern is only for Violence in “Occupied Palestinian Territory,” not Israel

The Palestinians aren’t “Resorting to Violence”; They are Murdering and Waging War

Will a Jailed Terrorist or a Terrorist Group Run the Palestinian Authority?

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English Lesson: Eviction, Expulsion and Ethnic Cleansing

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Progressive politicians and the left-wing media are using three terms interchangeably regarding Arab residents of Jewish Israeli-owned homes in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem. Doing so is not only inaccurate but inflammatory.

Here is a primer to understand the difference of the terms:

  • Eviction is the act of removing a single entity (person/ family) from a single location.
  • Expulsion is the act of removing a single entity from an entire region.
  • Ethnic Cleansing is the act of removing an entire ethnic/ religious group from an entire region.

The situation in Sheikh Jarrah is an eviction. It pertains to Arab squatters who have not paid rent to their landlords for several years. These tenants are not being forced from the neighborhood and are free to move into adjacent apartment buildings inside of Jerusalem. The Israeli courts, which have jurisdiction on the matter whether someone believes that the eastern section of Jerusalem is Israel or believes Israel is responsible as the “Occupying Force,” ruled that the evictions are legal.

This case is discrete. Israel is not involved in a massive expulsion of Arab residents from Jerusalem. As proof, from 1980, the year Israel formalized Jerusalem as its eternal undivided capital in its Basic Laws, until 2019, the Arab population in Jerusalem grew 3.4 times, dwarfing the Jewish population growth rate which was only 1.9 times over that period. The number of households (homes/ apartments) for Arabs rose 188% since 1990 compared to just 64% for Jews. Further, all Arab residents can apply for Israeli citizenship and these past few years have seen a spike in Arabs becoming Israelis.

In sharp contrast, an example of ethnic cleansing can be seen by what the Jordanian Arabs did to Jews in Jerusalem from 1948 to 1954. First they invaded Israel and killed or expelled all of the Jews from the “West Bank” region they illegally seized. They destroyed 58 synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem and barred any Jews from even visiting their holiest location during their duration of illegal rule. And they annexed the entire area including eastern Jerusalem, passed a law making it illegal to sell land to Jews and granted citizenship to anyone “not being Jewish.“

That’s actual ethnic cleansing, which is a very different dynamic than Arab residents of Jerusalem have experienced under Israeli rule.

But the alt-left is doing its utmost to paint Israel as racist:

  • Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said that Israel “is practicing ethnic cleansing.“
  • Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said “This [Jerusalem] deputy mayor is describing ethnic cleansing here, yet everyone is [sic] the West is pretending that’s not what’s happening to Palestinians.“
  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke about “the expulsions of Palestinians.“
  • The New York Times wrote about “the plight of six Palestinian families facing expulsion from their homes.“

These lies have inflamed the passions of radical jihadists. Hundreds of people have died and millions of dollars of damage has been done in large part because of the incitement.

Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who has has often been accused of anti-Semitism, lead the false charge against Israel of an “ethnic cleansing” of Jerusalem Arabs. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call) 

Progressive politicians and the far left media have a direct hand in the deaths and injuries of hundreds of Arabs and Jews in and around Israel over the past weeks. While their lies and smears caused horrific damage thousands of miles away, it is a price the alt-left is willing to pay to boost their bona fides with anti-Zionist extremists who support them and keep them in positions of influence.

Related First One Through articles:

The Original Nakba: The Division of “TransJordan”

The Three Camps of Ethnic Cleansing in the BDS Movement

“Ethnic Cleansing” in Israel and the Israeli Territories

The Long History of Dictating Where Jews Can Live Continues

NY Times Select “Evictions” in Jerusalem

Will the UN Demand a Halt to Arabs Moving to Jerusalem?

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A Proper UN Security Council Resolution on Israel and HAMAS

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Adopted by the Security Council on XX May 2021

The Security Council,

Recalling the wars between Israel and HAMAS in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014,

Recalling the vast network of tunnels used by HAMAS to abduct Israelis run underneath civilians homes and neighborhoods,

Recalling the incendiary balloons sent into Israel destroying fields over the past two years,

Recalling the 1988 HAMAS Charter which calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews,

Recalling the 2007 rout in Gaza by HAMAS and the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority, and HAMAS’s usurpation of the administration of the region,

Reaffirming its strong commitment to the unity, sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Israel,

Reaffirming the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority as the one government responsible for all Palestinian territories,

Recalling the Oslo Accord signed and agreed to by Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding the administrative control of Areas A, B and C,

Strongly condemning the ongoing rocket barrage in early May 2021 against Israeli population centers including the Ben Gurion International Airport, and calling for an immediate cessation of such HAMAS attacks without preconditions,

Stressing the need for de-escalation across Israel and Gaza and calling for implementation of a ceasefire and the immediate cessation of hostilities against Israel,

Expressing concern at the ongoing political, security, economic and humanitarian challenges in Gaza, including the ongoing violence and threats arising from the illicit transfer, diversion, destabilising accumulation, and misuse of weapons,

Reiterating its call for all parties within the Palestinian Authority to adhere to resolving their differences through dialogue and consultation, reject acts of violence to achieve political goals, and refrain from provocation,

Expressing its alarm that areas of Gaza remain under the control of HAMAS and about the negative impact of their presence, violent extremist ideology and actions on stability in Gaza and other Palestinian territories, including the devastating humanitarian impact on the civilian populations,

Recalling the listing of HAMAS and associated individuals on various terrorist lists including by the United States, the European Union and Israel,

Noting the critical importance of effective implementation of the sanctions regime imposed by Egypt and Israel to stop the import of weapons by HAMAS into Gaza,

Condemning in the strongest terms the attack on Ben Gurion airport and the over 2,000 missiles fired into Israel by HAMAS,

Expressing grave concern at the threat to peace and security in Israel and Gaza arising from the illicit transfer, destabilising accumulation, and misuse of missiles,

Condemning in the strongest terms violations of International Humanitarian Law in firing missiles from dense civilian populations, turning innocent civilians into human shields,

Determining that the situation in Gaza continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security,

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

1. Declares the need for the full and timely implementation of the political transition of power from HAMAS to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza;

2. Decides that HAMAS and its leaders listed in the annex be placed on a global sanctions list;

3. Encourages the Palestinian Authority to bar HAMAS from participating in any future parliamentary or presidential elections;

4. Encourages Member States to place HAMAS on it terrorist list and impose necessary sanctions until it gives power over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority;

5. Affirms that the recruitment or use of children in armed conflict in violation of international law;

6. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.

Rockets are launched towards Israel from Rafah, in the southern the Gaza Strip, controlled by the terrorist Palestinian Hamas political party, on May 12, 2021. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)

Related First One Through articles:

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

New Head of UNRWA is Another Hamas-Sympathizer Politician

The United Nations Once Again “Encourages” Hamas

UN Breakthrough? “Hamas continues to directly threaten the security of Israel”

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Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials

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There was a time when all elected officials recognized a designated terrorist organization and did not call it a force for “resistance.”

There was a time when the media would call all designated terrorist groups as “terrorist groups” and not selectively call Palestinian ones “Islamic” and “militant” groups.

But anti-Semites and anti-Zionists have penetrated the halls of Congress and the field of journalism, so its time to lay out the goals of HAMAS as written by HAMAS for everyone to understand:

The following are actual quotes from Hamas’s foundational charter in 1988. Palestinians voted Hamas to 58% of parliament with this charter:

  • “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
  • “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
  • “raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” (Article 3)
  • “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine” (Article 6)
  • “Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
  • “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” (Article 12)
  • “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time” (Article 13)
  • “In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)
  • Zionist “organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.” (Article 17)
  • “In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money” (Article 20)
  • “With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein…. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” (Article 22)
  • “The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” (Article 28)
  • “the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control.” (Article 30)
  • “Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam… It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region… The Zionist Nazi activities against our people will not last for long.” (Article 31)
  • “The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… here is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one’s country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values… fight with the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)
  • “everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty while loudly proclaiming: Hail to Jihad. Their cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished” (Article 33)
  • “Moslems were able to retrieve the land only when they stood under the wing of their religious banner… This is the only way to liberate Palestine… Nothing can overcome iron except iron.… confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it… rid themselves of the effects of ideological invasion.” (Article 34)

Hamas is anti-Semitic. Hamas is evil. Hamas is genocidal. Hamas’s existence – and support of it – is a crime against humanity.

Hamas school

Send the Hamas Charter excerpts to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, links below:

Democrats: Gregory Meeks (NY) (Chairman); Brad Sherman (CA); Albio Sires (NJ); Gerald Connolly (VA); Theodore Deutch (FL); Karen Bass (CA); William Keating (MA); David Cicilline (RI); Ami Bera (CA); Joaquin Castro (TX); Dina Titus (NV); Ted Lieu (CA); Susan Wild (PA); Dean Phillips (MN); Ilhan Omar (MN); Colin Allred (TX); Andy Levin (MI); Abigail Spanberger (VA); Chrissy Houlahan (PA); Tom Malinowski (NJ); Andy Kim (NJ); Sara Jacobs (CA); Kathy Manning (NC); Jim Costa (CA); Juan Vargas (CA); Vicente Gonzalez (TX); Brad Schneider (IL)

Republicans: Michael McCaul (TX); Christopher Smith (NJ); Steve Chabot (OH); Joe WIlson (SC); Scott Perry (PA); Adam Kinzinger (IL); Lee Zeldin (NY); Ann Wagner (MO); Brian Mast (FL); Brian Fitzpatrick (PA); Ken Buck (CO); Tim Burchett (TN); Mark Green (TN); Andy Barr (KY); Greg Steube (FL); Dan Meuser (PA); Claudia Tenney (NY); August Pfluger (TX); Peter Meijer (MI); Nicole Malliotakis (NY); Ronny Jackson (TX); Young Kim (CA); Maria Elvira Salazar (FL)

Related First One Through articles:

The New York Times wants the military to defeat terrorists (but not Hamas)

The United Nations Once Again “Encourages” Hamas

CNN’s Embrace of Hamas

Differentiating Hamas

Hamas Thanks Israel Bashers Who Post and Blog

Strange difference of opinion on Boko Haram and Hamas in New York Times

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Does the UN Only Grant Inalienable Rights to Palestinians?

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On November 10, 1975, the United Nations went on an anti-Zionism tear. There were two disgraceful resolutions passed on that day, UNGA 3376 and 3379. UNGA 3379 was known as the “Zionism is Racism” resolution which uniquely defined the national aspirations of Jews to reestablish their homeland as racist. It took until 1991 for the United States to successfully repeal that resolution.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then the American ambassador to the United Nations, addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Nov. 10, 1975, the day the General Assembly adopted the “Zionism is racism” resolution. Moynihan said that the U.S. “will never acquiesce in this infamous act.”

However, UNGA 3376 still lives and threatens. It established the “Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” The committee granted special “inalienable” rights only to Palestinian Arabs, that they alone had the right to “national independence and sovereignty.” Do the Kurds have that right? What about Yazidis? How about Nevadans? No one has the right to an independent state, only to self-determination.

The committee also enshrined “The exercise by Palestinians of their inalienable right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted.”

If the United Nations maintains the position that Palestinians have the “inalienable right” to move into homes that ancestors lived in during the 1940’s (even if they were just renting or the homes no longer exist), that same logic demands that Jews must be able to move into the homes that they own and lived in the Sheik Jarrah section of Jerusalem before being expelled by the invading Jordanian army. Either the UN must support the eviction of the Arab squatters in Sheik Jarrah today or nullify the right of return for all Palestinians.

The US may have prevailed at eliminating a single “Zionism is Racism” resolution in 1991, but the Biden administration is seemingly fine with the UN still treating the Jewish State with utter contempt and complete hypocrisy as it manufactures special rules uniquely for Palestinian Arabs.

Related First One Through articles:

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians”

The United Nations’ Adoption of Palestinians, Enables It to Only Find Fault With Israel

The UN’s Disinterest in Jewish Rights at Jewish Holy Places

A Tale of Three Palestinian Refugees, With and Without UNRWA

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The Humiliation of Palestinian Terrorists Standing in Line to Receive Martyr Payments

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The outrageous and illegal actions of the Palestinian Authority paying the families of convicted terrorists has taken a new turn.

Both Israel and the United States have told the PA that paying terrorists is a form of illegal and dangerous incitement. Nonplussed, PA President Mahmoud Abbas stated before the UN General Assembly that “I salute our glorious martyrs and our courageous prisoners in Israeli jails,” and that he would continue to pay “salaries” to those martyrs, even if he had only “one penny left.”

The US Congress was outraged by Abbas’s statements and actions and passed the Taylor Force Act which demanded the PA “stop payments for acts of terrorism.” Former President Trump cut funding to the PA and to the United Nations Palestinian funding conduit, UNRWA, to stop the provocation payments but President Biden has been looking for a way to turn on the money spigot to the PA even as his hands are tied by the Taylor Force Act.

So Abbas has been looking for a work-around.

In April, the PA announced that it would make payments to 12,000 “martyrs” through the Palestinian Postal System, which is not technically a bank and can therefore circumvent the US and Israeli laws. Additionally, PA’s Chairman of the Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs Qadri Abu Bakr stated that around 7,500 former prisoners would join various departments of the Authority and would thereby qualify for regular salaries like all government employees, whether they show up for work or not.

That work-around did not satisfy all martyrs.

According to Palestinian Media Watch which tracked Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, a UK Arab news website on April 6, 2021, one former prisoner, Arafat Barghouti, said “The prisoners, their relatives, and the released prisoners received the message that they are going to make them social cases, and this is as a result of the wait at the gates of the post office and the feeling of humiliation and degradation after years of struggling against and defying the occupation.

“Currently the prisoners are standing and pleading to receive salaries that will support them. The sentence I heard the most today from the released prisoners is that we are standing like beggars to receive these salaries. It is not fitting for the prisoners and their struggle that we stand like this in front of the post office.”

Pro-Palestinian politicians and the progressive press often stress the importance of Palestinian “dignity.” This is surely going to be their new cause: addressing the affront that Palestinian terrorists are now forced to stand in line at the post office to receive their killers’ compensation.

A post office in the city of al-Bireh, about 15 kilometres north of Jerusalem on February 7, 2021.
(Photo by ABBAS MOMANI / AFP)

Related First One Through articles:

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Paying to Murder Jews: From Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran to the Palestinian Authority

The UN Does Not Want Palestinian Terrorists to be Held Accountable

The Proud Fathers of Palestinian Terrorists

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The False Palestinian Refugee, Self-Determination Narrative

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U.S. President Joe Biden decided that he would start to donate American taxpayer money to the specialized United Nations agency solely devoted to Palestinians, despite the troubled agency making few reforms. UNRWA has been constantly criticized for promoting anti-Semitism, has harbored weapons for terrorist groups and has long been a thorn in the Arab-Israeli peace process.

UNRWA actively perpetuates a false narrative that Palestinian Arabs are refugees from their homeland – even though Palestinians view all of pre-1948 Palestine as a single entity, meaning that they still live in their perceived homeland if they reside in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank.

Moreover, UNRWA encourages a storyline that all Palestinian Arabs are refugees. This is patently false. Many are stateless, but not refugees.

As seen in the charts above, according to UNRWA’s own numbers, 73% of Gazans are refugees (or more accurately, descendants of refugees) while another 8% are given services by UNRWA even though they are not refugees by any definition. Roughly one-in-five Gazans are simply residents, who have had family ties in the strip for generations who never had children with a descendant of a refugee (who would otherwise then get hereditary refugee status according to UNRWA).

The numbers east of the Green Line (EGL) / the “West Bank” are quite different, where over half of the Arabs are residents who have descendants from the region. Roughly 40% of Arab West Bankers registered with UNRWA as refugees to get free housing, education and healthcare, with another 9% “grantees” also getting services from the agency.

Another piece of commonly-stated fiction is that the Arabs have no self-determination and live under Israeli control. As Biden would say, that is “malarkey.”

Israel completely pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and gave the local Arabs there complete self-determination. With that freedom, Arabs voted the terrorist group Hamas to 58% of the Palestinian parliament in 2006 and watched Hamas take over the Gaza Strip in 2007. Hamas has thus far launched three wars from the area in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014.

Regarding EGL, Israel handed control of Areas A and B to the Palestinian Authority as part of the Oslo accords in the 1990’s. Only 14% of West Bank Arabs live in Area C under Israeli-control.

No matter. The world still berates Israel despite handing the PA land and being rewarded with wars, and condemns the Jewish State again for defending itself. No one pauses to contemplate why Israel would consider repeating the abuse at the hands of Palestinians, the UN and the media.

The Arab and Muslim-dominated United Nations manufactured a false narrative that Palestinian Arabs are refugees under Israeli-control which the anti-Israel media parrots in their quest to see the creation of a Palestinian State. In reality, it is those very lies that hinder the chance of reaching an enduring peace.

Related First One Through articles:

UNRWA Artificially Extends Its Mandate

New Head of UNRWA is Another Hamas-Sympathizer Politician

Palestinian Arabs De-Registering from UNRWA

UNRWA Anoints New Palestinian Wards

The Gross OVER-Staffing of UNRWA Schools

Enduring Peace versus Peace Now

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NY Times Manufactures “Palestinian East Jerusalem” Narrative

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Over Jerusalem’s 4,000-year history, it has been attacked and ransacked dozens of times. In modern times, the city was divided for 19 years, from 1949 to 1967, after the Jordanian army invaded Israel, evicted all of the Jews from Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, annexed the region and granted Jordanian citizenship to all Arabs, specifically excluding Jews. After the Jordanians attacked Israel again in June 1967, Israel took the region that Jordan had illegally seized and removed the barbed wire and roadblocks which had split the city, unifying Jerusalem once again. The Jewish State officially annexed the city in 1980.

The United Nations, which had wanted Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem to be an international Holy Basin, neither part of a Jewish State nor an Arab one, still uses the term “East Jerusalem” even though the demarcation has long been erased. Pro-Arab publications like the New York Times have called it “Arab East Jerusalem,” adding a non-Jewish adjective, either to note that the eastern part of the city is 60% Arab and only 40% Jewish, or to distance the Jewish Temple Mount, the holiest place for Jews, from the public sphere. Or both.

As the number of Jews continues to grow throughout unified Jerusalem, the left-wing anti-Zionist publication took yet a new pro-Arab step on April 24, 2021, calling the eastern part of the city “Palestinian East Jerusalem,” in an article which inverted the Arab attacks on Jews and response of Jews to those attacks (but that’s standard reporting for the Times.)

April 24, 2021 article in The New York Times now calling “Palestinian East Jerusalem”

For clarity, Israel granted all Arabs living in Israel in 1948 citizenship and has allowed any Arab living in Jerusalem to apply for Israeli citizenship when it officially annexed the eastern part of the city. Thousands of Jerusalem Arabs have already taken Israeli citizenship and many more have applied and are in process. However, the New York Times has now opted to distance Arabs in Jerusalem from Israel by declaring that they are Palestinian and that the area is occupied Palestinian territory. This is a complete lie, as the area was never Palestinian, just illegally occupied Jordanian territory and the Arabs are either Israeli citizens or residents.

The article written by Isabel Kershner attempted to further the fabrication of a “Palestinian East Jerusalem” with statements like:

  • “Jews and Palestinians then split off into gangs and roamed the streets on their respective sides of the city…”
  • “… a main thoroughfare which that runs along the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem.“

These statements are ridiculous. There hasn’t been a dividing line in Jerusalem for 44 years as Jerusalem is a single unified city. Some of the largest Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem are in the so-called “Palestinian” side of the city.

For the Times, those facts need to be challenged as often as possible.

In the same article, the paper noted that “Israel annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East War,” failing to state that Israel didn’t capture it from “Palestine” which didn’t exist, nor that Israel took it from Jordan which had illegally annexed it, nor that Israel took it in a defensive battle. Instead, the Times added that “most of the world considers it occupied territory [by Israel].” An ill-informed reader is left with the false impression that Israel illegally seized Palestinian land.

Conversely, when speaking of the Palestinians claim for the eastern half of the city with quotes of “East Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine,” and that Fatah “praised the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem for defending the city and the Aqsa mosque, the revered Muslim holy site,” it again called the Arabs of Jerusalem as “Palestinians,” noted that Jerusalem was holy to Muslims (the article never said anything like that for Jews) and did not have any counter-narrative as it did in regards to Israel reunifying the city.

To further its jaundiced narrative, the Times wrote about “an extremist Jewish supremacy group,” and “young, Jewish supporters of the Jewish supremacist organization Lehava,” continuing its narrative that Israeli Jews are racists. This is in sharp contrast to Palestinian Arabs who are portrayed as innocents who were prevented from gathering at a “festive meeting place… during Ramadan” by police. The facts that Palestinians are the most anti-Semitic group in the world, voted a Holocaust denier to the presidency and a terrorist group with a charter which reads like a combination of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion to 58% of its parliament, never make it into the pages of the anti-Zionist Gray Lady.

The New York Times has taken yet another anti-Israel step in the Arab-Israeli conflict to fabricate a narrative that eastern Jerusalem is an actual Palestinian city, uniquely holy to Muslims, besieged by a racist Jewish State.

Related First One Through articles:

The Subtle Discoloration of History: Shuafat

Arabs in Jerusalem

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

Jizyah for Jews in Jerusalem

The Green Line Through Jerusalem

The Remarkable Tel Jerusalem

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

Ramat Shlomo, Jerusalem and Joe Biden

Trump’s “eastern Jerusalem” and Biden’s “East Jerusalem”

“Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”

The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ

Abbas’s Harmful East Jerusalem Fantasy

Ending Apartheid in Jerusalem

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Will a Jailed Terrorist or a Terrorist Group Run the Palestinian Authority?

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Mahmoud Abbas still remains the acting president of the Palestinian Authority, having started his four-year term back in 2005. He has refused to hold elections since then, fearing he would lose, and now, sixteen years on and 85 years old, the moment of truth is upon him.

In January 2021, Abbas said that he would hold presidential and parliamentary elections in 2021 even though he has always faired poorly in Palestinian polls. In a two-way race between Abbas (head of the Fatah party) and Ismail Haniyeh of the terrorist group Hamas, it is a toss-up as to who will win. According to the March 2021 PCPSR poll, Abbas would get 47% of the vote to 46% for Haniyeh but the December 2020 poll had Haniyeh with 50% and Abbas at 43%. Other questions in the poll indicated that Palestinians believed that there would be negative ramifications if Hamas was elected which may have helped Abbas’s numbers.

The majority of Palestinians think Abbas is corrupt and want him to step down. Their preferred candidate to replace him is a convicted terrorist named Marwan Barghouti who is serving five life terms in an Israeli jail for the murder of five people during several terrorist attacks. From his cell, Barghouti declared that he is considering a run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, and if Abbas doesn’t name him as his heir apparent of Fatah, he will run on his own ticket and put forward his own slate for legislative elections.

Seafood Market restaurant in which three Israelis were killed in March 2002 was one of several terrorist attacks attributed to convicted terrorist and one of the leaders of the Second “Intifada,” Marwan Barghouti

According to the same Palestinian poll, should Barghouti run on his own, he gather 48% of the vote, Haniyeh would net 29% and Abbas just 19%.

The polls leave Abbas with a choice: 1) he can run for president and hope that Barghouti doesn’t run and be in a neck-and-neck race with Hamas; 2) run for president and show up last in a three horse race with Barghouti and his slate being victorious; or 3) name Barghouti as his successor and retire.

It seems that Abbas will pick the fourth choice: delay the elections again. That’s an option likely to appeal to the Biden Administration which is trying to donate American taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians, which would likely get complicated if Abbas names a convicted terrorist as head of the Palestinian Authority. But Abbas is 85 years old and should he opt to name a wild card like Mohammad Shtayyeh (who refuses to recognize Israel and endorses the pay-to-slay program) he will likely both be retired and watch Fatah get ousted by Hamas.

The world must ponder what to make of a society that will soon be headed by either a convicted jailed terrorist or the leader of a terrorist organization. Regrettably, it is still unlikely to internalize the reason of why there has been no progress in “peace talks” with Israel.

Related First One Through articles:

NY Times Alternative Facts on Palestinian Elections

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

New York Times Grants Nobel Prize-in Waiting to Palestinian Arab Terrorist

“Mainstream” and Abbas’ Jihad

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

The Disappointing 4+6 Abbas Anniversary

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A Tale of Three Palestinian Refugees, With and Without UNRWA

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The Biden Administration announced that it is going to send $150 million of American tax dollars to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. This “temporary” agency was established after the Arab war to destroy Israel in 1948-9, to care for “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” It has continued to extend its mandate for decades, now caring for grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those “persons.”

Several parties voiced their disapproval with the United States’ UNRWA donation. Former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said “UNRWA, is among the most corrupt and counterproductive of all UN agencies. President Trump was right to abandon it.” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan added “We believe that this UN agency for so-called ‘refugees’ should not exist in its current format.“

UNRWA office in Jerusalem. (photo: First One Through)

To consider how the U.N. has handled “so-called ‘refugees'” in this “counterproductive” agency, imagine two Arabs leaving Palestine during the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. One had come to Palestine from Iraq in 1925 and the other from Syria in 1935, both settling in Jaffa. The Iraqi-Palestinian owned his home and his business and was reluctant to leave everything he had built but concluded that the war zone was too risky and returned to Iraq in 1949. The Syrian-Palestinian was renting his home and worked on a farm outside of town. He returned to Syria early in the war, assuming that the five invading Arab armies would finish the Zionists in short order and he could return to a Jew-free city, maybe even under the flag of Syria.

At war’s end, the Zionists were able to hold onto land – more than suggested under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan and less than allocated under the British Palestine Mandate – and had no interest in allowing the return of those Arabs which wanted to see Israel destroyed.

The Iraqi-Palestinian Arab decided to abandon his Jaffa home and business and started life anew among his cousins in Iraq. However, the Syrian-Palestinian opted to not start again in his old neighborhood where he lived fifteen years earlier, and instead decided to take the free housing, food, education and medical services offered by the United Nations as part of its UNRWA initiative. His grandchildren continue to live as wards of the world because of that decision.

Another person impacted by the Arab-Israeli War was not an Arab but a Jew. He came to Palestine from Yemen at the end of the 19th century and moved to Jerusalem. The Jordanian army routed him from his home during the war and he returned to Yemen. Not long after, the anti-Semitism in Yemen became intolerable and he and his family moved to Canada.

All three of these individuals were “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict,” but only one got services from UNRWA. The Palestinian Jew and Iraqi-Palestinian Arab each lost their homes and livelihood and were offered nothing from the United Nations. Only the Syrian-Palestinian Arab who chose to not move to his hometown in Syria, became a special grantee class. As long as he and his descendants remained a grantee, there was a U.N. promise that they would get property and/or money from the country which was transforming Jaffa and the surrounding region it controlled into an economic and technological miracle.

Today, the grandchildren of that Palestinian Jew and the Iraqi-Palestinian Arab are both successful businessmen and pay less attention to politics than they do to football. They think about the United Nations as much as they contemplate a hangnail from five years ago.

But the grandchildren of the Syrian-Palestinian have built their entire way of life around the largess of the United Nations and its promise that it will force Israel to hand them money or land as long as they continue to take UNRWA’s free education, medical services and housing. The U.N. is mother’s milk, a teat which has fed their entire family for generations with more gifts to come.

Watching these three “refugees” is an elderly fifth generation Palestinian Arab who had participated in the 1936-9 riots to keep the Jews out of Palestine and lobbied the British to halt their immigration as the Holocaust started in Europe. He headed to Gaza as the first tanks from five Arab armies invaded Israel. His roughly 60km trip from Jaffa to Gaza is about the same as from Manhattan to Stamford, CT. Had there never been a war and he had decided to relocate to Gaza (as several cousins did before the 1948-9 War), he would receive neither cries of empathy nor charity, but today he has over 100 descendants living for free in UNRWA housing around Gaza.

If the U.N. is attempting to resolve the lost property of people who fled the war zone, why should it matter whether they are registered as “refugees” and take services from UNRWA? Shouldn’t the Iraqi-Palestinian Arab and Palestinian Jew be entitled to consideration? Why should the Syrian-Palestinian get so much compensation when he never owned property?

The UNRWA policy leads one to conclude that its goal is not about money and property but to physically relocate a select sub-segment of the persons impacted by the war – only Arabs – into the Jewish State. Such UNRWA policy is in direct conflict with the stated U.N. goal of a two-state solution, one Arab and one Jewish, by injecting nearly 6 million Arabs into the Jewish State. One cannot be simultaneously in favor of two states and maintaining UNRWA.

There are significant issues to consider in the Arab-Israeli Conflict but the matter of Palestinian “refugees” has long been artificially manufactured. It is well past time to shut it down.

Related First One Through articles:

UNRWA Artificially Extends Its Mandate

New Head of UNRWA is Another Hamas-Sympathizer Politician

Palestinian Arabs De-Registering from UNRWA

UNRWA’s Fake Students, Curriculum and Shortfall

The Growth of UNRWA’s “Other” Wards

Stabbing the Palestinian “Right of Return”

The Gross OVER-Staffing of UNRWA Schools

UNRWA’s Munchausen Disease

UNRWA’s Ongoing War against Israel and Jews

Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR

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