New York Times Pushes the Lie of Israeli Apartheid

Posted on March 16, 2020 by First.One.Through

The New York Times’ jaundiced opinion in its news articles that Israel is an apartheid state treating Arabs as non-citizens without rights is advancing at an alarming pace. It is resorting to shoring up its screed with outright lies and glaring omissions with greater frequency.

Consider the article by David Halbfinger on page A16 of the March 13, 2020 paper called “Arabs’ Clout Forces Israel to Take New Look at Democracy and Identity.” For the Times, the debate about forming a new government between the two main rival political parties (Likud / Blue and White) “turns on a question at the heart of the country’s existence as a democratic and Jewish state: Are the votes of Arab citizens worth as much as those of Jews?”

That’s the crux of the Times’ view of Israel: that it considers Arabs as only partial citizens with few rights. It supports its thesis with quotes like “‘They are saying that our votes don’t count exactly because this time we are able to change the game,’ said Aida Touma-Suleiman, a lawmaker from the Joint Lists’ far-left Hadash party.”

It’s ridiculous.

Americans unfamiliar with a parliamentary system cannot appreciate that the various political parties always jockey for position as to how and whether to be part of the government or opposition. Halbfinger failed to note that it was the Arab parties that refused to join any government since 1995 when they backed Yitzhak Rabin. The Times inverted the issue making it an Israeli bias of refusing to include the Arab parties, not the Arab parties rejecting the government.

Glaringly, the Times did not mention that there are several Israeli Arabs who are members of the “Jewish” parties including Likud, Blue and White, and Yisrael Beiteinu. Obviously their votes count.

To advance its theory that Arabs are a weak minority that are systematically ignored in Israel, the Times minimized the prevailing power of Arabs in Knesset and their actual views throughout the article.

Ahmad Tibi

Ahmad Tibi has been a member of the Knesset for over twenty years and has held the title of Deputy Speaker of Knesset for the majority of them. While he has passed a dozen laws in Israel, all the Times would print about him was “Mr. Netanyahu has long used Arab lawmakers like Ahmad Tibi, a onetime adviser to Yasir Arafat, as political foils to stoke right-wing anger.” A reader would have no idea that Tibi has been a senior member of the Knesset for years with such passing reference, making Netanyahu’s dealings with him seem petty and vengeful.

The Times never mentions Tibi’s speeches in which he praised the Arabs who have died fighting Israel as “Shahids” who die for “Shahada” (Death for Allah). This is Tibi making clear that the battle against Israel is a RELIGIOUS WAR, not simply a civil war over land. As such, it should be fought by Muslims in Israel with the same intensity and purpose as by Palestinian Arabs and Muslims around the world.

Consider this sharp divide between reality and the #AlternativeFacts printed by the Times: an Arab who praised a religious war against the Jewish State while serving as Deputy Speaker of that same Knesset is simply referred to as “a onetime adviser to Yasser Arafat,” who is wrongfully used to “stoke right-wing anger.” That Netanyahu attacks Jews and non-Jews alike as part of politics was not the message the paper wanted to pass along, as it coupled “right-wing” with quotes of Netanyahu “appealing to racists” in the article.

What Israeli Arabs Desire

A complete Times piece on Israel must have #FakeNews in addition to #AlternativeFacts and inversions, so the outlet threw out this tidbit:

“And with Arab citizens eager to get back at Mr. Netanyahu over a host of matters – including the 2018 adoption of a law declaring that only Jews have a national right to self-determination in Israel – they really did come out in droves.”

This claim is completely false. A joint poll held right after the 2018 Nation-State law was enacted conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research (PCPR) and the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research concluded that Israeli Arabs OVERWHELMINGLY support the notion of Israel as a Jewish homeland (84.8% in question 8). It was one of the only questions that got nearly unanimous support.

That same poll highlighted that it is only Israeli Arabs who are in favor the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative (82.1% strongly approve or approve) while Palestinian Arabs (60.7%) and Israeli Jews (54.2%) oppose or strongly oppose that plan (question V8-10). The Israeli Arabs are leery of Netanyahu advancing the alternative U.S. Peace Plan which would transfer blocks of predominantly Arab towns to a new state of Palestine. That is the crux of Israeli Arab concern with Netanyahu, not the Nation-State Law of which they approve.

Many Israelis oppose the Arab Joint List because of its anti-Zionist views, not because it is Arab. But for today’s New York Times, Israel will forever be a racist colonial endeavor so it will print #FakeNews and #AlternativeFacts until everyone believes so as well.

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The UN’s Antisemitic Host

Posted on March 6, 2020 by First.One.Through

The United Nations held a two day conference on February 28 and 29, 2020 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia called the “International Conference on the Question of Palestine.” It was organized by the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, in partnership with the Government of Malaysia and the Perdana Global Peace Foundation.

The keynote remarks were given by Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad. The Prime Minister used the forum to talk of the Israeli government as the “Tel Aviv regime,” refusing to acknowledge Israel’s capital in any part of Jerusalem. He called the United States “dishonest” and its peace plan a “mockery.”

Malaysian prime minister, 94-year-old Mahathir Mohamad

He went on to discuss the Holocaust and the “Nakba.” As covered by the United Nations media:

“Recalling that Israel came into being in 1948 by seizing land from Palestinians, he pointed out that the Holocaust lasted six years and the Nakba has been going on for more than 70 years. The Holocaust was committed by others, he noted, asking why Palestinian have to pay the price. The pro-Israel nations were quick to hold a tribunal at Nuremberg to try Nazi war criminals, but no tribunal has been established for Palestinian victims. Malaysia’s foreign policy towards Palestine has remained unchanged, he said, recalling that when the State of Palestine was proclaimed in 1988, Malaysia promptly acknowledged it. Malaysia stands by its position that the creation of an independent State of Palestine through a two-State solution based on the pre-1967 borders, and with East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, is acceptable. He went on to express hope that the International Criminal Court will take note of that blatant case of injustice of the century and institute proceedings against Israel.”

Over and again, the host for the United Nations conference compared Israel to Nazi Germany. He said the Nakba is actually worse than the Holocaust, as the latter only went on for six years while the former is running over 70 years. Even more, the world made the Nazis pay for their actions and he is waiting for the world to similarly punish the Jewish State “war criminals.”

The revolting sentiment comparing the deliberate slaughter of millions of innocent civilians to a civil war over land is abhorrent. But the United Nations proudly posted about both days of the conference, entitling the coverage of the Prime Minister’s remarks as “Unilateral Peace Plan Is ‘Mockery’ of Global Efforts to End Israel-Palestine Conflict, Malaysia’s Prime Minister Tells International Conference.” The UN clearly believes that this is a man of “peace” seeking to end a “conflict” in a respected “international conference.”

The Prime Minister of Malaysia’s history of anti-Semitic remarks such as calling Jews “hooked nose” and that they “rule the world by proxy” – comments he defended in the name of free speech – was not the least bit troubling to the United Nations which let him host and have the keynote address at a UN-sponsored forum about the Israeli-Arab Conflict.

The UN is making clear every day that it is not just a forum for anti-Zionists but anti-Semites as well.

Related First One. Through articles:

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Ever-Elections, Never-Elections and Controlling Elections

Posted on March 3, 2020 by First.One.Through

On March 1, 2020, the Israeli public went to the voting polls – again. It was the third time in just a year in which the Jewish State sought to establish a government. While the final results are not in, it looks like Israeli Prime Minister’s Likud Party won 36 seats while the Blue and White Party won 32 seats. Overall, the Right-Religious block appears to have secured 59 seats, short of a 61 seat majority.

Israeli elections again?

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority continues to do nothing. The PA last held elections for Parliament in 2006, in which the Hamas, a U.S., a designated terrorist organization, won 58 percent of the seats, an over-whelming majority. In 2005, the Palestinians voted for president and elected Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah to a four-year term. That term expired in January 2009, over eleven years ago, but Abbas refuses to relinquish power or hold elections.

The Palestinians have divided their areas of control with Hamas ruling in Gaza and Fatah administering Palestinian territories in the West Bank. The two parties cannot reconcile between themselves to form a unity government and refuse to let the people hold new elections as a way out of the impasse, as each party fears losing the little control it does wield.

And in the United States, the presidential contest is set like clockwork, moving towards a November vote, as it does every four years. This year, the Democratic establishment is so fearful of the leading position of Socialist Bernie Sanders, that it effectively pushed two moderates – Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg – off of the Super Tuesday ballots and to endorse Vice President Joe Biden for president, in the hopes of giving the moderates of the party a chance to coalesce behind a single person to defeat the extremist Bernie Sanders. The leaders of the Democratic Party know that a brokered convention will tear their party apart – either in blocking Bernie Sanders and making the progressive wing of the party go to war, or by giving the ticket to Bernie and watching all of the Democratic candidates around the country go down to defeat.

Such is the state of elections today: Israel forever holding elections, Palestinians never having elections and the United States attempting to control the election outcome. It brings to mind a quote by Winston Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

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Background Checks, a Palestinian Military and Israeli “Military Occupation”

Posted on February 28, 2020 by First.One.Through

Senator Bernie Sanders, Democratic Socialist and candidate for United States president, has been vocally against the Israeli government which he has called “racist,” and against Israel’s “military occupation” of Palestinian land which denies the Palestinians “dignity.”

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the notions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu being a racist, or whether there is a “military occupation,” it requires a certain twisted logic for Sanders to condemn Israel and advocate for Palestinians, while simultaneously advocating for strong background checks in regard to gun safety.

Liberals may note that Sanders spent twenty years opposing any gun control including background checks as a senator from a rural state but he has taken to aggressive background checks now that he is running for president. His campaign specifically calls out:

“support [for] “red flag” laws and legislation to ensure we keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and stalkers”

Under current federal law, those convicted of domestic abuse can lose their guns if they are currently or formerly married to their victim, live with the victim, have a child together or are a victim’s parent or guardian. Sanders supported a 2019 amendment expanding the law to stalkers and current or former dating partners. His current campaign pledge of “red flag” laws would further extend those laws to enable law enforcement to seize guns from people who are accused of being a potential threat, even if they have not been convicted of anything.

So Sanders believes that the second amendment of the United States, “to keep and bear Arms,” is not really a right but a privilege, and one which can not only be taken away once convicted by a court, but even with a mere accusation.

Advocates like Sanders argue that such legislation is required to address gun violence – against women in particular – even if it may mean that some Americans are able to own guns while others are not.

Which brings us back to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict and Sanders objections to Israel.

For decades, the working assumption of a two-state solution included the proviso that a new Palestinian state would be demilitarized, meaning that it would have no standing army. The Trump peace plan advocates for the same, specifically calling for Israel to have full control of border crossings and control of the air. Objectors have stated that such ruling denies Palestinians their dignity and leaves them under Israeli military control. These objectors claim that a Palestinian state without an army is no country at all.

Curiously, many of these detractors in the United States are also progressives who support strict gun control to protect victims and curb violence. However, they excuse the wars, intifadas, stabbings, rockets and bombings of Palestinian Arabs against Israelis. They ignore the incitement to violence and the demonization of Jews from the Arab media and leadership. They discount the antisemitic laws which call for the death penalty for any Arab selling land to Jews. They scoff at polls which show that 93 per cent of Palestinian are antisemitic. For them, the Palestinian Arabs are the victims and any law or aggression they take are purely defensive in nature. It is a “resistance.”

Members of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip [File: Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters]

But the reality is clear: Jews are the most persecuted people in history. Arabs have attacked them since they began coming back to the land of Israel in the 1920’s. To this day, the Palestinian Arabs continue to pay people who kill Jews and voted Hamas to 58% of parliament with the most antisemitic charter in the history of the world.

So the future of a possible two-state solution will have Israel controlling Palestine militarily. It may not meet Bernie Sanders’ ideal of Palestinian “dignity,” but there has never been a group which failed a background test so fantastically.

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The Best Palestinian Response to the Trump Initiative is Welcoming Jews to Palestine

Posted on February 4, 2020 by First.One.Through

US President Donald Trump put forward a new Middle East Framework called “Peace to Prosperity” (P2P). It was the first Middle East framework offered since the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002 (API). The API was, not surprisingly, heavily biased towards the Palestinian Arabs’ demands and not Israeli security. It did not advance peace but rather ushered wars from Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014, a war from Lebanon in 2006 and a “stabbing intifada” from the West Bank in 2015.

Unlike the API, Trump’s P2P plan was focused on Israel’s security (and Palestinians’ prosperity), and the Palestinian Authority considered it a non-starter before they even saw it. The acting-President of the PA Mahmoud Abbas has refused to even entertain discussing it.

That is a mistake.

The underlying issue of Israel’s security manifests itself in the plan in a few ways, most notably, that all Palestinian border crossings must be managed by Israel and that a future State of Palestine must be demilitarized. If the PA were to refuse to accept those two principles, there is indeed nothing to discuss regarding any of the other key items for Palestinians such as land, refugees and Jerusalem.

However, if Abbas accedes to those two Israeli security points, he will likely be able to gain much on the other issues that matter to him and to the Palestinians.

Consider the land.

The P2P plan has Israel assuming sections of the West Bank including the entirety of the Jordan Valley. It leaves the Palestinian territory as a patchwork of parcels, with the towns in which Jews reside being annexed by Israel dotted, in between.

However, the Palestinians might be able to obtain almost the entirety of the West Bank if it grants Palestinian citizenship to all of the inhabitants of the Jewish towns. This action would be much like the Jewish State’s in 1948 when it granted Israeli citizenship to all of the Arabs. The Jews would make up a much smaller percentage of Palestine than Arabs’ in Israel today.

As the border would be controlled by Israel, only a sliver of land between Palestine and Jordan would be required to be Israeli instead of the whole Jordan Valley, much like the plan assumes Israel having a thin sliver of land buffering Palestinian territory in the Negev and Egypt. The net result would be the Palestinians gaining almost the entirety of the West Bank other than a sliver along the Jordan River.

The willingness to accept Jewish citizens into Palestine might also open a window for Israel to accept many Arab refugees into Israel, rather than just giving them compensation as mapped under the P2P plan. A new Arab spirit of coexistence might stimulate Israel to take as many as 50,000 Arab refugees per year for a number of years, with the balance receiving compensation and settling in a new Palestinian State.

The capital of a Palestinian State could also become more dynamic, with Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem becoming parts of a Palestinian capital.

In short, Palestinians can gain a lot on all of their key negotiating points by working off of the Trump peace initiative if they endorse coexistence and welcome Jews into a new state. In contrast, the current path of continued demonization of Israel and the denial of Jewish history and rights will only further cement the stagnation for Palestinians in regards to both peace and prosperity.

Palestinians should call the Israeli bluff, and see if hundreds of thousands of Jews are willing to live as a minority in Palestine. If the Israelis balk, then the BDS movement will likely advance globally. However, if the Israelis endorse the principle, Israel will be blocked from annexing any land (pro-Arab), while United Nations Resolution 2334 will be deemed moot and the global BDS movement will come to an end (pro-Israel).

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The Peace Proposal Monologues

Posted on January 29, 2020 by First.One.Through

The Trump administration put forward a new Middle East Peace Plan as the latest installment of a series of frameworks over the years to try to find an enduring peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. Like every proposal before it, it was declared dead on arrival.

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 28: U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House on January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. The news conference was held to announce the Trump administration’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images/AFP

The Israelis had made numerous direct overtures for peace through the years, from its founding in 1948, post the 1967 war and in 2008, when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented a plan that met nearly every desire of the Palestinian Authority. But in the end, the Arabs rejected every Israeli effort to find peace.

So third parties took a stab at putting forward their versions of a workable peace. The last serious attempt was advanced by the Arab League in 2002, known as the Arab Peace Initiative (API) which was advanced by Saudi Arabia. The API, not surprisingly, was heavily biased towards the Palestinian Arabs. The Obama Administration worked off of the API in trying to strike a peace agreement, and secured small adjustments from the Arab League to make it more palatable for Israel to accept, such as the notion of including “comparable and mutual agreed minor swap of the land” in 2013.

But the plan did not meet Israel’s basic security needs, and no peace agreement was advanced, particularly after Hamas’ 2014 war against Israel and the Palestinian Authority fomenting the “stabbing intifada” in 2015.

President Trump, in concert with his pro-Israel advisers including Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, realized that a new paradigm needed to be advanced.

Trump’s team spent years developing a new framework based on a long-term vision for the region, rather than simply trying to get Israel to accept the API which would have left it very vulnerable in a tumultuous region. This new initiative recognized several inherent flaws of the Obama-approved API, including lies which had become mainstreamed, or as US founding father Thomas Paine once said “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”

“East Jerusalem.” There is no place called East Jerusalem any more than there is a place called East Berlin. That name existed for only 18 years of the city’s 4,000 year history and was an artifice of war that ended in 1967.
“Occupied East Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was NEVER slated to be under Arab control in international agreements including the San Remo Agreement, the Mandate of Palestine or the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan. To call it “occupied Palestinian territory” is a complete lie.
Refugees. Refugees are people who left a COUNTRY, not a mandate territory or a specific town. To extend the farce of calling for a return of “refugees” when the mandate was later advocated to be split for two peoples is against the very nature of the goal. To continue the charade for several generations entrenches resentment and has long been an obstacle to peaceful coexistence.
“Inalienable rights.” The United Nations has pushed forward the notion that Palestinian Arabs have “inalienable rights” of sovereignty. That would make them the only people with such rights – do Hispanic people who lived in New York City in the 1970’s have inalienable rights to their own country? People only have inalienable rights to self-determination.

Beyond the outright lies which have permeated discourse in the Arab-Israel conflict, there has been a denial of facts:

Return of “territories.” Israel has already complied with UN resolutions to return territories won in the 1967 War: it returned the Sinai to Egypt and handed Gaza to the Palestinians, the first time Palestinians ever had self-rule of a territory.
War from Palestinian territories. Since the Palestinians have ruled Gaza, they launched thousands of rockets into Israeli civilian neighborhoods.
Inability to Compromise. The two Palestinians factions have not even been able to negotiate between themselves, so how realistic can it be that they will ever agree to peace with Israel.
Rights. Only under Israel has there been freedom of access and freedom to worship for all religions, as opposed to the Arabs from 1949 to 1967 which barred Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem and Hebron.
Growth. The Arab population in the West Bank has grown significantly more than the Arab populations in all of the neighboring countries from 1967 until now, demonstrating the positive and stable environment of Israel for all of its inhabitants.

The Trump peace plan takes reality into account as it seriously addresses the security risks of the region. It is a constructive document to counter-balance the flawed Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, and will hopefully enable the parties to chart a course towards an enduring peace.

Like Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” play which included a series of skits meant to address violence against women, the Middle East Peace Monologues now has a new installment to address the violence against and isolation of Israel. The question is whether this latest addition will break the impasse to become a dialogue.

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The Jewish Israeli Rosa Parks

Posted on December 2, 2019 by First.One.Through

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

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

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

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

It did not.

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

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

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

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

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

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Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions

Posted on November 19, 2019 by First.One.Through

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

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

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

Anti-Jewish Jerusalem Resolutions Under Carter

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anti-Jewish Judea and Samaria Resolution Under Obama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Palestinian Arabs De-Registering from UNRWA

Posted on November 14, 2019 by First.One.Through

The saga of the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) which have cast their lot with UNRWA for generations may finally be coming to an end.

Since 1949, the United Nations has promised Arabs who used to live and work in what became Israel, that they would be entitled to move back to their old houses. It didn’t matter if they had just moved those homes a few months before, 70 years ago. It didn’t matter if they were just renters and didn’t actually own any property. It didn’t matter that they rejected the very existence of Israel and wanted to see it destroyed. It didn’t even matter if they are the grandchild of someone who was just renting a house for a few months in what became Israel, and both they and their grandparents seek the end of the Jewish State. UNRWA crafted a special designation of “refugees” from Palestine:

“’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.’ The descendants of Palestine refugee males, including legally adopted children, are also eligible for registration.”

These “UNRWA Refugees” were given much more than free housing, education and healthcare from the United Nations. They were promised that, with the help of the UN, they would get to move to the thriving country of Israel.

With such benefits and promise, these SAPs opted to register themselves with UNRWA, despite being denied the ability to gain well-paying jobs by their host countries in Syria and Lebanon. While they had relatives who moved on with their lives and became citizens of various countries ranging from Chile to the United Kingdom, the UNRWA Refugees opted to remain stateless and to live on handouts.

But those days may be coming to an end.

The ongoing war in Syria has been devastating, not just on Syrian civilians but on the UNRWA Refugees living in Syria. The unrest in Lebanon has not been much better. Meanwhile, the UNRWA Refugees watch actual refugees from Syria and Lebanon who are treated by the UNHCR (UN High Commissioner for Refugees) getting much better aid and a pathway out of the humanitarian disaster. Not surprisingly, the UNRWA Refugees are looking for a better deal.

On November 11, 2019, the acting officer in charge of UNRWA (as the prior head was fired for improper activities), Christian Saunders, addressed the UN about the current activities in the region. He noted at the end of his remarks:

“Emphasizing that the community of Palestine refugees from Syria inside Lebanon live in extremely difficult conditions, he said they are actively exploring ways to leave, with some demanding deregistration from UNRWA in the belief that it would offer access to resettlement opportunities available to other refugees from Syria.”

UNRWA Refugees are demanding de-registration from UNRWA to become regular refugees under the UNHCR which cares for every other refugee in the world.

The disgrace of UNRWA has been apparent for years, with corruption at the top, over-staffing, hiring of militants, warehousing of weapons to be used against Israel, textbooks which vilify the basic notion of coexistence and more. But it has taken a full 70 years since the establishment of UNRWA on December 8, 1949, for the organization to begin to devolve from within, from the very wards it was meant to assist declaring that they have had enough.

UNRWA was established to be a temporary agency in which “constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief,” as noted in Article 5 in its founding declaration. World sympathy (with perhaps not an insignificant amount of anti-Israel animus) prevented those ‘constructive measures’ from being enacted and billions of dollars in aid were spent on the descendants of the Palestinian Arabs who had started the war to destroy Israel. But lifetimes of long-term promises may finally yield to the dreams of immediate normalcy.

Christian Saunders, new deputy commissioner general of UN agency for Palestinian refugees. UN

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Goodbye Mahmoud Abbas

Posted on September 26, 2019 by First.One.Through

September in New York means the United Nations General Assembly is in session and the maniacs of the world show their colors.

Acting-President of the Palestinian Authority, a man who has refused to hold elections and is a decade past his expiry date, took the to floor of the UN for his annual address. He effectively called for a religious war for the Old City of Jerusalem and said that he would never stop paying money to the families of terrorists, while peppering his remarks about non-violence and legitimate rights.

Proudly announcing the funding of terrorism and inciting terrorism at the floor of the United Nations is the answer to Abbas’s own question about why the PA cannot be allowed to become a country in its current orientation.

It is also an answer as to why he should never be allowed onto the floor of the United Nations again.

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