Nothing so inflames the passions of Muslims around the world as hearing that Jews are threatening the al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.
So the Palestinian Authority yells lies to incite people to jihad against Jews quietly visiting Judaism’s holiest location.
On May 4, 2023, just as it has done many times, Wafa, the official news agency of the PA posted the headline “Israeli settlers break into Jerusalem’s Aqsa mosque.” The inflammatory rhetoric and article had nothing to do with facts. The article said:
“Dozens of fanatic Israeli settlers Thursday morning broke into the compounds of al-Aqsa Mosque under heavy protection from the Israeli police.
“The Waqf said that settlers, divded into groups, raided the holy Islamic Mosque from al-Maghariba gate and took provocative tours in its compounds.
“It added that the extremist settlers performed Talmudic rituals in the eastern part of the Mosque.
This comes at a time as Israeli forces intensify measures against Palestinians coming from Jerusalem to enter the Mosque, inspecting their IDs and briefly detaining them.”
Jews quietly visiting the Temple Mount, which the PA called a “raid” of the al Aqsa Mosque
That the PA would label a few dozen Jews visiting during regular visiting hours – some with their sons for their bar mitzvahs – as an “extremist” and “provocative” “raid” and “break in” of the mosque (which they never entered) demonstrates the importance of having a police escort.
The Palestinian Authority repeatedly shows the world that it can never have control of Jerusalem, as it fosters extremism and violence and rejects peaceful coexistence.
In May 2016, after the deadly wave of Palestinian Arab stabbing attacks and deliberate vehicular manslaughter of Jewish civilians began to subside, the Israeli government sought to make life easier for Palestinians, hoping that good will gestures would allow for peaceful coexistence.
In response to complaints that it took hours for Palestinians to get processed through checkpoints, Yoav Mordechai, the Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) posted a note in Arabic that “It has been decided to renew and improve checkpoints in the West Bank, [to] increase the number of Palestinian workers allowed to pass through to their workplaces in Israel, improve waiting conditions and adopt advanced technology at all checkpoints.” He included an image of Palestinians crammed in line, waiting to enter Israel.
Palestinian Arabs waiting at a checkpoint to enter Israel
Israel estimated the improvements would cost 300 million shekels ($78 million), and would increase the amount of goods that pass through Israeli checkpoints by 30% and reduce wait times by 30% to 50%. The announcement was made right before Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, in an effort to lower tensions when thousands of Palestinian Muslims come to Jerusalem from the West Bank.
The Washington Post shared a video in 2019 about the new high tech facial recognition security cameras and turnstiles. It interviewed several Palestinians who were thankful that the crossings which used to take hours now only took minutes or seconds.
Israel uses almost the identical system at its airport for all passengers that enter the country, speeding up entry and reducing unnecessary manpower. People who use Global Entry to enter the United States use a similar system.
You wouldn’t know any of this by reading The New York Times or Amnesty International.
Cover of the NY Times Business Section on May 2, 2023
In an inflammatory piece of click bait called “Israel Tech Automates Apartheid, Critic Say,” the paper quoted a new absurd anti-Israel Amnesty International report. The jaundiced document said that Israel uses “technology against Palestinians” in “both Hebron and occupied East Jerusalem” as “part of a deliberate attempt by Israeli authorities to create a hostile and coercive environment for Palestinians.”
An absurd inversion of facts.
First, Palestinian Arabs created the hostile environment during their multi-year guerilla war against Israeli civilians from 2000 to 2004, which necessitated Israel building a security barrier.
Second, Israel put in place the high technology checkpoints to address the concerns of Palestinians that hated the long lines to enter Israel. Israel doesn’t have security cameras dotting Areas A or B in the West Bank to track Palestinians in their daily lives; it is focused on those areas near the security barrier.
Third, the technology focuses on everyone that goes before the cameras, not as portrayed by Amnesty or the Times which said “in Hebron and East Jerusalem, the technology focuses almost entirely on Palestinians.” For sinister measure, the anti-Zionist paper added “Government use of facial recognition technology to so explicitly target a single ethnic group is rare.”
But Israel doesn’t do that. It captures the images of everyone before the cameras, just as it captures the faces of everyone at the airport.
Israel was forced to spend $1.5 billion to build a security barrier to protect itself from Palestinian terrorists, and then opted to spend another $100 million to address Palestinian complaints regarding long wait times at checkpoints. No matter. Both the defensive action and the noble effort are varieties of a fictional “apartheid” for the anti-Zionist Amnesty International and New York Times.
In a highly partisan world, there should be moments when people of opposing sides bond and find common purpose. “Fight Cancer” or “Don’t Drown Cats” are examples of easy themes for all to embrace, especially if there are no specific requirements that accompany the chant, such as spending billions of dollars to effectuate the cause.
New York City attempted to pass such banal resolution, declaring April 29 as “End Jew Hatred Day.” The text of the resolution summarized the terrifying statistics of Jews being singled out for attacks. There was no mention of Israel or the Palestinian conflict. Nothing highlighted that most of the anti-Semitic attacks in NYC were coming from Blacks and Muslims. There was no request for money or any action.
The resolution was toothless, a simple vote to support the Jewish community.
Yet it failed to pass unanimously.
Of the 51 members on the New York City Council, two opposed the measure and four abstained. All six who rejected supporting Jews, are members of the Progressive Caucus and the Black, Latino and Asian Caucus. Five of the six are women and belong to the Women’s Caucus.
The two members who voted against the measure are:
Shahana Hanif explained her vote against Jews saying that “They [Jews] have not stood up for Muslims, they have not stood up for trans New Yorkers or anybody.”
Councilmember Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn) on April 28, 2022. (Photo John McCarten/NYC Council Media Unit)
Charles Barron said that there is “inconsistency of members of the Jewish community, particularly its leadership, in speaking out against hatred, like hatred of the Palestinian people, like the State of Israel murdering Palestinian women and children and stealing the land.”
Hanif and Barron – politicians elected to protect their constituents – essentially said that Jews do not deserve protection and have collectively earned the hatred and wrath of society.
Sponsors of the resolution to combat Jew Hatred in New York City
While all six of the councilmembers who rejected the resolution denouncing anti-Semitism were members of the Progressive Caucus, only one of the resolution’s fourteen sponsors (Kristin Richardson Jordan) was a progressive.
Progressive minority groups are not only excluding Jews – the most persecuted group in the country – from DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), they are turning a blind eye and enabling antisemitism to fester.
As Israel celebrates its 75th birthday, it is appalling to watch Palestinian Arabs and their supporters turn the remarkable and historic reestablishment of the Jewish state into some sort of offense against Arabs. The inversion of facts turning the Arabs into the victims is a modern day blood libel, attempting to whitewash the historic crimes committed by Palestinians.
Consider the leading anti-Israel voices in the U.S. Congress, Ms. Tlaib (D-MI), Ms. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ms. Omar (D-MN), Ms. McCollum (D-MN), Ms. Newman (D-IL), Mr. Bowman (D-NY), and Ms. Bush (D-MO) who put forward a resolution in congress to commemorate the “Nakba”, which called for 7 million descendants of refugees to be pushed into Israel, ending the two state solution. The anti-Zionist Congresspeople noted that “on November 29, 1947, [the United Nations voted] to partition Palestine into two states against the wishes of Palestine’s majority indigenous inhabitants,” but they simultaneously ignored that the majority of Israelis today are against allowing 7 million Arabs who never lived in Israel a so-called “right of return.” These same Congresspeople claim that the Nakba continues today, with the “ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land.”
The Palestinian Arabs committed massacres against the Jews in Palestine in the 1930s, and effectively got the British to stop Jewish immigration just as the European Holocaust was starting. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with leading Nazi Heinrich Himmler to encourage his genocide of the Jews. Himmler sent a telegram to the mufti on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, noting that both the Nazis and Palestinian Arabs were partners in a fight to eradicate the Jews.
After the slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Arabs in Palestine did not let up on the local Jews nor Holocaust survivors who had lost everything. The Arabs continued to reject a Jewish presence in the Jewish historic homeland. They voted against partitioning the land and giving a slice of the Jewish holy land for a new Jewish state. They opted to wage a war to annihilate the persecuted Jews. Thousands of Arabs left the field of battle as they encouraged five Arab armies to converge on the nascent Jewish state to annihilate the Jews completely.
This is the vile truth of the Arab war against Jews before, during, and in the shadow of the Holocaust. No amount of NakbaWashing will remove the indelible stain of Palestinian Jew hatred. The current pathetic attempts at Nakbawashing are a latest form of antisemitism, disgustingly turning the Jews into aggressors and Palestinian Arabs as peace-loving victims.
On April 25, 2023, Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said that his country needed to apologize for its role in the slave trade from the 15th to the 19th century. It is estimated that 6 million Africans were kidnapped and sold as slaves, transported by Portuguese ships. Portugal has said little about its role in enslaving Black people until now.
Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa
Rebelo de Sousa made his comments after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addressed the Portuguese parliament. Brazil – along with Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, East Timor and Goa (India) – were Portuguese colonies. The president said the colonization of Brazil also had positive factors, such as the spread of Portuguese language and culture, but “on the bad side, the exploitation of Indigenous people…slavery, the sacrifice of the interests of Brazil and Brazilians.”
Two years prior, in March 2021, Europe’s top human rights group said that Portugal needed to do more to confront its colonial past and role in the transatlantic slave trade in order to help fight racism and discrimination in the country today. The Council of Europe said that “further efforts are necessary for Portugal to come to terms with past human rights violations to tackle racist biases against people of African descent inherited from a colonial past and historical slave trade.”
At that same time, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, a native of Portugal, marked the “International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade” saying that “while the transatlantic slave trade ended over two centuries ago, the ideas that propelled it remain alive today. In Europe, the United States and elsewhere, White supremacists are organizing and recruiting across borders. We must counter all lies of racial supremacy. By tackling inequities and inequalities, by building inclusive communities and economies, and by educating about history, we truly honour the memory of the victims of slavery.”
Global organizations have correctly pointed out the evils of slavery and colonization, crimes against Blacks and indigenous people in the Americas which went on for centuries. The abuse of both groups has only become a focus in recent times.
But not for the crimes against Jews. There has been no discussion of the Inquisition which decimated the Jewish population in Portugal, Spain and their colonies, as well as much of Europe. No discussion about the ingrained hatred that continues to make Jews the most persecuted minority in the world.
The Inquisition
Textbooks and encyclopedias have the Inquisition running from 1478 to 1834 but the church’s persecution of “heretics” ran much longer, going back to the 12th century. In 1391 in Seville, Spain, a preacher by the name of Don Fernando Martinez lectured his congregants that Jews were evil and were infiltrating Spanish society. While the riots that broke out that March were put down, the mob gathered strength and plundered the Jewish Quarter of the city in June. Roughly 4,000 people were killed. The synagogues in the city were either destroyed or converted to churches and the Jewish community was decimated.
The Spanish forced their Jews to either leave the country or die in 1492. Many fled to Portugal, Morocco, the Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands or took ships to the New World. In 1497, Portugal followed suit in persecuting the Jews but also gave Jews the choice of converting. Those converts became known as New Christians or conversos. Not believing that the conversos really believed in their new religion, and looking for an alibi for a drought, the Christians of Lisbon, Portugal butchered over 2,000 conversos on April 19, 1506.
Marker in front of church of Sao Domingos de Lisboa
The Spanish and Portuguese took the Inquisition to the New World shortly thereafter, including to Brazil in 1536 and to what is now Mexico in 1571. Not satisfied with driving the Jews out of the Iberian Peninsula, they persecuted the New Christians in Central and South America. One example was the whipping and burning at the stake of the de Carvajal family – a mother with four of her children – in the middle of Mexico City on December 8, 1596.
António José da Silva (1705-1739), was a famous Brazilian-born playwright, nicknamed “the Jew.” As a young child, he was forced with his family to flee to Portugal because of the Inquisition. It did not provide him sanctuary. As an adult, he was accused of being a Jew and was garroted and burned at the stake in front of his wife.
By some estimates, as much as 10-20% of people living in Portugal today are actually descendants of Jews who were forced to convert to Christianity. The percentage is estimated to be much higher in Brazil and around Latin America as Jews fled from persecution but were still reluctant to publicize their Judaism.
The Portuguese president called out the terrible history of his country in its participation of the slave trade and colonization. The Portuguese head of the United Nations echoed the sentiment and drew a line from that history to the persecution of Blacks and indigenous people today. But no one even mumbles about the horrors inflicted on their own resident Jews during that same period as part of the Inquisition, and the antisemitism still prevalent today.
Quite the opposite. Even as he denounced Portugal’s history, President Rebelo de Sousa said that the “colonization of Brazil also had positive factors, such as the spread of Portuguese language and culture,” meaning a purely Christian society devoid of Jews.
The Jews remain outside the perimeter of Victims of Preference around the world then and today.
As the reestablished Jewish State celebrates its 75th birthday, it is worth pausing to consider its amazing accomplishments, in the middle of the illiberal Middle East.
Happiness. According to the World Happiness Report, Israel ranked as the 12th happiest country in the world, well ahead of its neighbors. According to Gallup Poll, Israel ranked as the 4th happiest country in 2023. It was the only country in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region to score in the top 20.
Wealth. Israel’s GDP per Capita of $44,178 is over 4.75 times the average of the eight surrounding countries. Only two other countries – Cyprus and Saudi Arabia – have GDP per capita in excess of $20,000.
Leading companies. Israel has 24 private companies with over $1 billion in valuation, ranking 6th globally. Turkey was the only other country in the region with a company with such valuation according to Hurun.
Nobel prizes. Not surprisingly, based on educational achievement and GDP, Israel leads the region in Nobel Prizes. It has won more than the entire region COMBINED.
Life Expectancy. Israel only trails Cyprus in life expectancy among neighboring countries.
Maternal Mortality. Israel’s health system is very strong, as can be seen by the very low number of women who die during child birth. While Cyprus has a slightly higher life expectancy than Israel, Israel leads the region in prenatal care.
Population growth. Despite the better healthcare system and higher life expectancy, Israel’s population growth over the past decade was lower than most in the region. This is typical of countries with higher GDP and education rates for women. Only Turkey had a lower growth rate.
Gender inequality. In general, Israel looks much more like western countries than those in the Arab and Muslim Middle East. It can be seen most clearly by looking at overall gender inequality (maternal mortality, adolescent birth rate, percentage participation in parliament, percent with secondary degrees, percent labor participation).
In its short history, Israel has proven itself to be a remarkable liberal democracy, thriving by almost every measure. To do so while neighboring countries are in a state of war and refuse to recognize the Jewish State’s existence makes it a modern miracle. Wishing it many years of success and peace ahead!
For thousands of years, people have sought to improve themselves. As human beings, we often make mistakes and thereafter attempt to rectify the wrong. Beyond avoiding the error, organized religion offers a path to redemption which includes confession.
In Religion and Secular Society
In Judaism, the pathway from sin is called tshuva. Rambam/ Maimonides (1138-1204) lays out the pathway to Repentance in several steps he described in the Mishneh Torah, the first of which is confession. The sin – whether with man or God – is first confessed to God: “I implore You, God, I sinned, I transgressed, I committed iniquity before You by doing the following. Behold, I regret and am embarrassed for my deeds. I promise never to repeat this act again.” The confession is critical to obtaining absolution, as Rambam further writes that even “those obligated to be executed or lashed by the court do not attain atonement through their death or lashing unless they repent and confess. Similarly, someone who injures a colleague or damages his property, does not attain atonement, even though he pays him what he owes until he confesses and makes a commitment never to do such a thing again.”
Christianity uses members of the church as a pathway to confession, rather than directly to God. Many Catholic churches have confessional booths, in which a priests sits on one side of the booth and listens to people confess their sins through a darkened partition to enable the person to open up more freely through the shroud of anonymity.
Catholic confessional booth
Secular society has its own views on sin and demands of confession.
When famous people do something perceived as bad, their public relations people send out composed apologies. Sometimes the star also appears on talk shows to help clear their name. The absolution comes from society that allows them to keep their job and income. If the evil act was perceived as too great to clear with an apology road tour or the apology was insufficient, the person becomes “canceled”, either permanently (like Matt Lauer and Anthony Weiner) or temporarily (like Louis C.K. and Whoopi Goldberg).
The average person can also get “canceled” via exclusion from his desired community. The confession may be viewed as insufficient to be afforded absolution. Perhaps God will accept the plea but people have a lower tolerance for perceived wrongdoings.
Secular Society’s Religion and Inquisition
There are parts of society that are attempting to create new socially accepted norms, crafting their Bible in real time. They have launched an inquisition to out and oust the new sinners.
While transgenderism has existed, it has recently become “mainstreamed”, in which schools which never had any such students suddenly have twenty. Laws are being drafted for and against these students using locker rooms and competing in sports based on their gender rather than their biology. People (and states) who take positions opposed to the new doctrines become ostracized.
Another tenet with drying ink is the gaslighting campaign against the Jewish State of Israel. It started at the 2001 Durban Conference, pushing the “Zionism is racism” credo into the mainstream, after it was ousted from the United Nations in 1991. The effort gathered significant momentum in 2014-5 after the Gaza War and killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, when intersectionality bound Muslim anti-Zionism with the Black Lives Matter movement. Israel was falsely labeled as a “police state” of “colonial imperialists” committing “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid” against “indigenous Arabs.” American Jews were no longer correctly viewed as the most persecuted people but were tarnished as an even more sinister part of the problem of “White supremacy” which included “Jewish supremacy.”
Woke Jews were at risk of losing membership in their community of leftists. Rather than fight the tide of falsehoods and slander, they publicly confessed that they hated Israel and agreed with the ridiculous portrayal of an illegal and racist state. Some were granted absolution and welcomed to pray once again at secular altars, while others were deemed to not go far enough, by not embracing the boycott, divestment and sanction (BDS) movement or the calls to “globalize the intifada” to cancel, harass and attack Jewish Zionists everywhere.
Fratricide in Religion and Secular Society
While the first sin in the Bible was Eve and Adam eating from the Tree of Knowledge, the first sin committed with the knowledge of good and evil was Cain’s killing of his brother Abel. When God approached Cain to find out what happened, Cain failed to confess his crime to God and was marked forever as a sinner.
Today, Jewish anti-Zionists are loudly vilifying their brothers and sisters in Israel as the worst sort of people, to be punished and left unprotected from the wolves that seek to destroy the “Zionist entity”. Their confession is not to God but left-wing extremists. In sharp contrast to Cain, their cries are not ignoring the murder of their brother but that they are different from their brothers, as proven by working to have the sinners annihilated.
New York City, home to the greatest number of Jews outside of Israel, has a rapidly growing antisemitic and anti-Zionist group gaining political power. The Democratic Socialists of New York City now stands at over 85,000 people, which demands that politicians not visit Israel, and supports Palestinian “resistance” (violence) against Israel’s “ethnic cleansing, and apartheid.” Left-wing extremist Jews vocally support this group and its candidates.
Summary
Christianity believes that Jesus died for the sins of mankind and the church is the gateway for absolution. Catholics enter church to privately and anonymously confess their sins to be granted that forgiveness.
Meanwhile, secular Jews find the Bride of Absolution in far left extremist groups. The anti-Zionist Jews take to public platforms to denounce their brethren as heathens, crucifying them in the fervent wish that their deaths will afford the enlightened the grace to live amongst the woke.
While Judaism tasks people with confessing their own sins, today’s anti-Zionist Jews declare the sins of their brothers. It is fratricide, the original sin of knowledge gone astray.
There are millions of religious Christians who look at the founding of the State of Israel as a matter of divine will. One of the points of evidence they use is that the year of the founding of the state was 1948 in the Gregorian Calendar, commonly referred to as the Common Era. It was in that year in the Jewish Calendar – 1948 – that Abraham was born according to the Old Testament. Remarkably, after two thousand years of persecution and wandering, that the Jews would reestablish their homeland in that common year is considered too much of a coincidence. It is a sign from G-d.
It is therefore important to note this moment in time, 2023CE. As Israel celebrates its 75th anniversary milestone, it was in that year of the Jewish calendar, that Abraham entered the land of Canaan and G-d promised him and his descendants blessings and the land.
“יהוה said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, And curse the one who curses you; And all the families of the earth; Shall bless themselves by you. Abram went forth as יהוה had commanded him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran.”
Seventy-five years since the rebirth of the Jewish State, the country thrives while it continues to have challenges. It has remained stable and economically sound despite the mayhem in the surrounding countries. It has defeated its foes in battles repeatedly, and has forged peace treaties with several former enemies. It has managed to ingather millions of Jewish exiles from around the world, as it rekindled Hebrew into a common spoken language. It granted citizenship to non-Jews living in the land, in a unique forum of coexistence in the Middle East.
Abram was 48 years old at the time of the Great Dispersion from the Tower of Babel. He witnessed firsthand the ill effects of unanimity, and was part of G-d’s global directive towards particularism – in both language and place. At 75 years old, he was told to relocate, to a place already inhabited by others, to become the source of blessing for the entire world.
In 2023 of the Jewish calendar, the father of monotheism was not directed to conquer or convert the slightly more “indigenous” people (by 27 years) in the holy land, even as the land was soon to be promised to him, his son Isaac and the generations after him. Abram was to be an inspiration and a talisman for everyone. In that generation which broke the embraced orthodoxy of universalism, he embodied G-d’s will of particularism.
Today, in 2023 of the Common Era we live in a very tense world. People are divided, in part, because of technology that has enabled microtargeting of people with customized news and advertisements, couple with social media algorithms which keep people hyper-engaged. While fifty years ago everyone was basically fed the same media and news, now billions of people can consume and transmit whatever they want. While more satisfied with being fed unique content whenever they want, the hyper-particularism has left many isolated, angry and distrustful.
In considering the year 2023 both in the Jewish calendar and the Gregorian one, it is time to reset our thoughts on universalism and tribalism.
We don’t all need to think, dress or worship the same way. We must break with the notion of unanimity of position, and embrace a society of tolerance. That mean stop canceling, firing and unfriending people if they don’t share your opinions on critical race theory and transgenderism, or dislike the people you follow on Instagram. Allow space for unique attitudes, as long as they are not harmful.
The Bible tells us that Abraham left his “native land” to a land where he would become a focus of not just the local inhabitants but “all the families of the earth.” In today’s world of billions of isolated people, Jews and the Jewish State continue to demand global attention. It is an opportunity for a universalistic approach towards the particular: for the world to bless the Jews and receive G-d’s blessing in return.
A pretty simple formula for a better and happier world.
The United Nations’ obsession for Israel does not include the Jewish State’s suffering from Palestinian Arab terrorism.
On March 22, 2023, Tor Wennesland, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (he is no such thing but the mouthpiece for Palestinian grievances), addressed the United Nations Security Council. His report gave a summary of actions between the parties from December 8, 2022 until March 13, 2023, and then offered his personal observations.
In recounting the violence, he noted that there was a “growing number of attacks by Israeli settlers” which harmed Palestinian Arab-owned property and individuals, including four people who were killed. He added that “13 Israeli civilians, including one woman and three children, and one foreign national were killed… by Palestinians in shooting and ramming attacks, clashes, and other incidents.” That means that Palestinian Arabs killed 3.5 times more civilians than Israeli “settlers” over this period according to Wennesland’s own count.
Yet in his summary remarks, Wennesland said “I remain deeply concerned by the increase in levels of settler-related violence in the occupied West Bank sometimes in proximity of Israeli security forces.” Why isn’t Wennesland outraged and calling out the more prevalent and deadly Arab terrorism?
Palestinian Arabs conducted more attacks than “settlers” in every month of 2022, and the number of murders is also rising after this report, including of the Dee family, a mother and two daughters, who were gunned down while driving in their car on holiday. According to Palestinian polls, the majority of Arabs favor killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel, so it should not be surprising that in the Israeli territory of Area C in the West Bank, Palestinians are regularly targeting Jews.
On April 8, Wennesland tweeted his objection to the killing of the Dee family, “I condemn yesterday’s terrorist attacks in the occupied West Bank and Tel Aviv. Heartfelt condolences to the victims’ families. There is no justification for acts of terrorism and they must be clearly condemned and rejected by all.” But once again, he did not specifically call out “Palestinians” in his tweets and UN reports. He solely calls out “settlers”.
Palestinians pay no price on the global stage for their terrorism, as the UN continues to ask for money for the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, and to only condemn Israelis.
United States President Joe Biden’s approach to religious freedom was laid out clearly in back-to-back pronouncements this week.
On April 16, 2023, US Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain and US Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr “reiterate[d] the U.S. commitment to the historical status quo in Jerusalem” which bans Jews from the basic human right of praying at their holiest site on The Jewish Temple Mount. The desire among Jews to pray at the site is almost exclusively held by the Orthodox.
The next day, Hussain tweeted “I reiterated US support for implementation of the 2016 Western Wall agreement to expand the egalitarian space at the Wall,” a move that would BREAK from the historical status quo which has limited prayer at the Kotel plaza to only be in the Orthodox style of separate sections for men and women.
There is no consistency in Biden’s approach for the status quo in Jerusalem, in one case embracing it and in another breaking from historic custom. The only commonality is his ignoring the sensitivities and wishes of Orthodox Jews and promoting those of Muslims and non-Orthodox Jews. Biden is seemingly limiting his concerns about religious freedom to those who stuff Democratic ballot boxes, as poll numbers show that 75% of Orthodox Jews vote Republican, while 80% of Reform Jews vote for Democrats.
Domestically, the Biden Administration took aim at rescinding protections for religious groups on American college campuses in February. The proposed rule read: “The U.S. Department of Education proposes to rescind regulations related to religious student organizations at certain public institutions of higher education that prescribe a novel role for the Department in enforcing grant conditions related to religious student organizations.”
Sam Brownback, a former U.S. senator and governor of Kansas and current co-chair of the bipartisan International Religious Freedom Summit, warned that the Biden administration’s proposal ignores the First Amendment rights of religious clubs, saying that the administration is not supportive of religious freedom. In response to the Biden proposal, many attorneys general sent letters to the president stating their opposition to rescinding protections for religious groups.
Biden’s domestic and international policies related to religion are dictated by his loyal base of historically Black Protestants, non-Orthodox Jews, Buddhists and Muslims who overwhelming vote for Democrats, according to Pew Research. In contrast, Mormons, Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews who vote Republican are feeling Biden’s animosity after he emerged unscathed in mid-term elections. Those groups may have much to fear if he wins a second term.
