Palestine declared itself as an independent state in 1988 to the joy of the Muslim and Arab world. Algeria, Libya, Iraq and dozens of other countries rushed to recognize the country. They believed that this was the fair thing to do, even as they refused to recognize the Jewish State of Israel.
Much of the western world refuses to recognize a Palestinian state as they wait for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to negotiate a peace agreement. However, the Palestinian Authority has aggressively pushed for broader recognition and effectively broke through to many South American countries in the 2009 to 2011 time frame.
After multiple wars and terrorist attacks launched from Gaza, it is time for those South American countries to rescind their recognition.
On May 17, 2021, the Organization of American States (OAS), stated unequivocally that Hamas is a terrorist group that targets civilians:
“Hamas’s terrorist aggression is unlimited and always seeks civilian victims, seeks to escalate conflict dynamics and armed actions, as well as sowing terror among innocent populations, be they Israeli or Palestinian.
“The immoral and unworthy use of children and women as human shields, as well as the militarization of residential areas, constitute in themselves acts that deserve the most absolute repudiation and condemnation.”
These are plain facts but the OAS has not reflected on its own statement.
Hamas is not an outlier terrorist group but the leading political party in Palestinian parliament, having won 58% of the seats the last time elections were held. It controls the entirety of the Gaza Strip. It is predicted to win the presidency according to Palestinian polls if elections are held again.
As such, recognizing a State of Palestine today is to legitimize terrorism. It is not only immoral to do so but stands against the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism, adopted by the OAS in 2002, which affirmed “the need to adopt effective steps in the inter-American system to prevent, punish, and eliminate terrorism through the broadest cooperation.“
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez pictured in 2009, when he abolished term limits, took over the banks, severed relations with Israel and recognized a State of Palestine.Things have only gotten worse.
It is time for the countries of Latin America to sever ties with “Palestine.”
There have been a slew of cases of sexual harassment in the news. The latest culprit is New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who joins a list from the entertainment and business worlds. The various incidents ranged from inappropriate behavior to outright crimes.
And all of the perpetrators were men.
While everyone was appalled at the most egregious behavior of these famous men, left-wing feminists took to vilifying all males with a bevy of hashtags including #BelieveWomen and #MeToo. Somehow, even though almost all men do not harass women, because almost all of the perpetrators were men, the essence of manliness was seemingly to blame.
It was sharp departure from the alt-left’s defense of terrorists, where the vast majority of terrorists are Muslim, even though those terrorists make up a small percentage of the global Muslim population. In those cases, liberals defend Islam as a religion of peace, but decry the abuse of the religion by some extremists.
Liberals adopted the opposite approach regarding men. They have vilified all men, and question how they can talk to their daughters about being friends with boys when they are inherently perverts. They do not attribute the bad behavior to outliers.
Consider how some liberal forums suggest that the pathway to raising a new generation of men to be more respectful of women, a basic idea, with foolish suggestions. They suggest encouraging boys to wear pink, do dress-up and play with dollhouses. I kid you not.
Newspapers published guides for how to raise boys to be feminists with ideas ranging for promoting non-stereotypical boy toys, and discouraging those traditionally associated with boys (no more trucks or erector sets). Here’s a selection from The New York Times:
“Even as adult gender roles have merged, children’s products have become more divided by gender than they were 50 years ago, research has found: pink princesses and blue trucks, not just in the toy aisle but on cups and toothbrushes. It’s no wonder that children’s interests end up aligning that way.”
“Offer open-ended activities, like playing with blocks or clay, and encourage boys to try activities likedress-up or art class, even if they don’t seek them out, social scientists say. Call out stereotypes. (“It’s too bad that toy box shows all girls because I know boys also like to play with dollhouses.”) It could also improve the status of women. Researchers say the reason parents encourage daughters to play soccer or become doctors, but not sons to take ballet or become nurses, is that “feminine” equals lower status.”
““Teach our sons to cook, clean and look after themselves — to be equally competent in the home as we would expect our daughters to be in the office,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, chief executive of New America, a think tank.”
This is ridiculous. The pathway to combatting sexual harassment according to these feminists, is to attack the entire notion of “manliness.” If they could get boys to take estrogen, I am sure that they would promote it. Would this cohort ever attack core Islamic teachings as an underlying reason why so many terrorists are Muslims? Never. They would focus on the nature of the violence, and the terrible break in otherwise normal behavior. The Koran inspires many Muslims to be kind and peaceful just as playing with blocks and trucks guides men to become productive members of society.
The problem of sexual harassment isn’t about men; it’s about violence. The solution is not neutering and de-programming boys. It is about teaching boundaries.
Here are two appropriate examples for society that could help curb the incidents of harassments:
Know and respect boundaries. Almost every incident of sexual harassment would have been okay if the actions were consensual. It was the nature of men not knowing appropriate boundaries and taking advantage of their situation that made the incidents wrong.
When kids are young, let them break up their toys into two groups: those that are personal – that they needn’t share with anyone if they do not want – and those that are public and available for general use. When they engage with siblings or friends, they must offer up the public toys, but have complete discretion on sharing those that they decided to keep private. They will learn the power of “no” – by saying it and hearing it.
Stop making women passive. Why do men ask women out on dates? Why do they pay for the activities? Society has put men in the position of taking the assertive role and women as stationary. As described in “The Misogyny of Treating Women like Victims,“ we are not helping women by treating them as passive. Protecting them at all times ultimately undermines and hurts them.
Sexual harassment is a subset of violence, not sex. Sex is a good thing if fully consensual and “manliness” is not a disease. Stop the attacks on testosterone as billions of men manage it without ever abusing women.
Men can be gun-totting, football watching, sarcastic CEOs, and never harass a woman. If Andrew Cuomo had worn pink he would still have taken advantage of women. If Matt Lauer had played with more dollhouses, he would still have sexually assaulted people. How stupid are these feminist writers, and how stupid do they think their readership is?
I am confident that if liberal rags wrote articles about verses in the Koran that encourage violence, there would be an uproar. If they would suggest that more Muslim boys should take ballet, there would be a lawsuit and people would be fired.
But for the feminist extremists, the “patriarchy” is the rightful target, and sexual harassment is just a tool to redistribute wealth and power.
Palestinian supporters who hate Israel use a variety of terms to whitewash the crimes and intentions of Palestinian Arabs. Below is a sampling with a review of the misdirection.
“Intifada”
The term “Intifada” means “Uprising.” It gives the sense that the movement is one of empowering the disenfranchised as a matter of protest rather than the reality of genocidal terrorism.
The “Second Intifada” which raged from roughly September 2000 to September 2004 witnessed Palestinian Arabs blowing up ice cream parlors full of children, school lunchrooms and buses. Over 1,000 innocent Israeli civilians were killed in the mayhem because the leadership of the Palestinians refused to accept anything less than 100% of their demands.
Intifada means war. It means terrorism. The call for an intifada is not a protest chant but an incitement to violence.
A pro-Palestinian rally in New York City on July 31 featured protestors chanting “globalize the Intifada” and other anti-Israel chants.
“Martyr”
The Palestinian murderers of Israeli civilians are described as “martyrs” by Palestinians. They are held up as idols for Palestinian children when schools, soccer tournaments and public squares are named for the terrorists. The mothers and fathers of the killers are showcased on television telling the Arab public how proud they are of the killer’s sacrifice. The Palestinian Authority pays the families of the terrorists monthly stipends for their “contribution” of killing the enemy.
For clarity, the term “martyr” actually means “a person who is killed because of their religious beliefs.” Using the term for Palestinian terrorists turns Israel into racist murderers rather than victims of jihadi genocidal maniacs.
“Slain attackers”
Much like the term “martyrs,” pro-Palestinian press prefers to call Palestinian terrorists killed while committing murder as “slain attackers.” The word “slain” is defined as “to kill violently, wantonly, or in great numbers.” In other words, according to anti-Zionist rags like The New York Times, it is Palestinian Arab “attackers” who are killed violently and wantonly by Israelis. Not only are Israelis racists (see “martyrs” above) but also mass murderers.
“Resistance”
The political-terrorist group Hamas calls itself a “resistance force.” It is a designated terrorist group by dozens of western countries because of the hundreds of attacks it has perpetrated on civilians around the world. Its foundational charter is an anti-Semitic screed which calls for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel. The people of Gaza continue to support killing Israeli civilians in every poll.
The Palestinian “resistance” is to the mere presence of Jews which they have made clear in 100 years of riots and wars, even though Palestinian supporters will portray the Arabs as only protesting “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.“
“Desperate”
Palestinian apologists claim that Palestinians are “desperate” which is why they take such vicious actions against Israeli civilians. That’s outrageous. Desperate people gladly take whatever they can; entitled people refuse to take anything less than full demands.
Palestinians have refused every offer for peace for generations. They demand a country without a single Jew living in it. They categorically refuse to acknowledge that Israel is a Jewish State as part of a final settlement. A desperate people clinging for a chance at self-determination would never deny such things, unless their actual goal is to deny Jews of their own homes and country.
“Resorting to violence”
Anti-Israel opinion rags like The New York Times sometimes go beyond painting Palestinians as “desperate” people “resisting” Israeli occupation. It states that the political-terrorist group Hamas (which it never calls a terrorist group) has “resorted to violence.” The feeble-minded gray lady writes this despite the Hamas making its genocidal intentions public for the whole world to see.
“Impatient”
Doubling-down on a twisted portrayal of Hamas, The Times excuses violent flare-ups from Gaza as “localized expression of Palestinian impatience,” as it wrote on the front page of its May 6, 2019 paper. According to the anti-Israel paper, Israelis get shot because Gazans are impatient, not because they are the most anti-Semitic people in the world who are in favor of killing Israelis.
“Free Palestine”
Chants of “Free Palestine,” “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” and “we don’t want two states, we want all of it” are spun as simply a desire for equality in the holy land for Jews and Arabs. It is nothing of the sort but a call for the destruction of the Jewish State of Israel.
Liberal media inverts the “from the river to the sea” as actually the chant of Jewish extremists who want to annex the West Bank, an area that was part-and-parcel of the British Mandate which called for the reestablishment of a Jewish homeland there.
“Arab Land”
Sorry, but Israel is not part of the Arabian Peninsula. It’s also not part of the League of Arab States. It’s also not European nor African. It’s a little swatch of land connecting many continents.
Are the people who use this expression arguing that land itself has the DNA of a particular people? Would the same people say that Europe is “White Land” or Africa is “Black Land?” If someone were to argue that some lands truly are part and parcel of a specialized group of people, they would have to admit that the Land of Israel is “Jewish Land,” as Judaism is the only religion with a tie to specific land.
The term “Arab Land” is deliberately designed to sever the thousands of years of history that Jews have in the land. It is an example of the fictitious narrative that “Jesus was a Palestinian” and not a Jew, in an attempt to not just evict the current Jewish presence in the land but to expunge the entirety of Jewish history.
“Dignity”
Politicians state over and again that Israel deserves “security” while Palestinians deserve “dignity.” It seems like such a simple ask of Israel, to afford the Palestinians some semblance of dignity.
But if the parameters of Palestinian dignity is that Jews cannot have sovereignty, cannot live in the West Bank, cannot pray on the Temple Mount, cannot buy land from an Arab and demands the denial of Jewish history, why should that sort of “dignity” be endorsed, let alone entertained?
“Refugees”
Palestinian supporters have used and abused the term “refugees” for Palestinian Arabs in ways that have no bearing on the word, and in doing so, harm over 30 million actual refugees fleeing war zones today.
The Palestinian Arabs cared for by UNRWA are not refugees but stateless. They deserve to become citizens of either a new country or an existing country but that doesn’t make a child whose grandparents left a town five miles away during a war a “refugee.” Yet, these Palestinian “refugees” are taking billions of dollars of support when such monies can be used for children actually fleeing for their lives to foreign lands where they don’t speak the language and have no family support or infrastructure.
A “Viable” State
Anti-Zionist supporters of the Palestinians argue that there are certain minimum standards that a new country of Palestine must have in order to be viable.
As discussed above, “viability” means that there can be no Jews. “Settlers” undermine the foundation of the country for some reason. While Arabs can live in Israel without destroying the state, seemingly a Jewish presence in Palestine undermines the very viability of the country.
Similarly, a Palestinian state would need to be much wider than Israel is today. If Israel were to annex land up to the town of Maale Adumim west of Jerusalem, critics warn that Palestine would be cut in two and non-viable with a country only 15km wide at one point. Meanwhile Israel is that wide along its main population centers without the cry to widen Israel.
“1967 Borders”
People use the term “1967 Borders” even though the 1949 armistice agreements struck between Israel and Jordan as well as between Israel and Egypt specifically stated that those lines have no meaning and do not function as borders.
“Palestinian Citizens of Israel“
Israel afforded all Arabs the opportunity to be citizens when it declared statehood in 1948 and affords all Arabs in Jerusalem to become Israeli citizens today. Over 20% of Israel’s population is Arab.
Pro-Palestinians don’t like the notion of “Israeli Arabs” as they think it somehow acknowledges the liberalism of Israel being an open society. Instead, they opt for the very wordy “Palestinian Citizens of Israel” to market the proposition that their tie to the land of Palestine is permanent as is their identity which are distinct from Israel. Should a new state of Palestine ever be created, there is no question that these same Palestinian propaganda promoters would call the Jews in the country “Palestinian Jews,” (G-d forbid, if they are allowed to live there), not “Israeli citizens of Palestine.”
“Palestinian East Jerusalem”
The anti-Zionist media will have you believe that “East Jerusalem” exists today even though it only existed as an artifice of war for 19 years that ceased to be over fifty years ago. To extend the fiction, they will promote that it is a Palestinian city, even though there is no recognized country of Palestine and no part of the city was ever conceived to be Arab in the 1947 UN Partition Plan.
The anti-Zionist lexicon is not only attacking the Jewish state but sanitizing Palestinian Arabs of their anti-Semitism and terrorism in an attempt to wish a State of Palestine into being. Everyone should readily recognize the abuse of language that has become mainstreamed by anti-Israel voices.
I had always been told that my paternal grandmother’s family came from Sighet, a decent sized town in Romania along the Ukrainian border. It was considered a small source of familial pride as it was the same home town for Eli Wiesel, the Nobel laureate who wrote about the Holocaust.
Some years ago, upon speaking to my grandmother’s brother about the place where the family grew up as my grandmother died before I was born, I learned that history takes a bit of time, both to happen and to explain.
My great uncle informed me that his family grew up in a small shtetl, a small Jewish village, some miles away from Sighet. One evening, when he was about eight years old, a fire broke out in a corner of the shtetl. All of the people in the town, including himself, rapidly lined up to pass buckets of water one to the other to help put out the flames. He recalled that while he was passing buckets he heard someone shouting that another fire had broken out on the other side of the village. The villagers started to shout how to break the line into two to deal with the second blaze, when they looked up to see a third blaze in another corner of the town. And then a fourth.
The local anti-Semites had come to incinerate their town.
He recalled how the following morning the family grabbed what belongings they could manage, and walked to Sighet as the smoke from his village filled the air. He told me the name of that former village, and as I quickly forgot the foreign sounding name, I internalized how history had forgotten it too.
So, yes, the family did live in Sighet, but it wasn’t really the town of his birth. Our family had already been routed by local anti-Semites a couple of decades before the Nazis came for the Jews of Sighet.
The alt-right relentlessly pursued the Jews of Europe and Russia for hundreds of years, sometimes as part of the ruling class and other times by the hands of a band of locals. In each circumstance, they knew how to rout the small collection of Jews.
The Four Corners of Anti-Semitism Today
In many parts of the world, the ruling class is being taken over by extremists. The alt-left made inroads in America’s Democratic Party with the Democratic Socialists of America getting seats in Congress with members including Bernie Sanders, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The DSA was following the playbook of the Labour Party of the United Kingdom, where Jeremy Corbyn pushed anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism and extremist ideas to take over the party.
The DSA invited disgraced anti-Semite and former leader of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn to address their annual convention.
The alt-right still exists around the world and in America but shunned and sidelined by civilized society. Not so the alt-left, which has bonded with Islamic extremists to gain power, and with the alt-right in the cause of setting fire to Jewish homes.
American Jews are surrounded on all sides by anti-Semitic extremists, and there are neither sufficient volunteers to pass buckets to extinguish the flames of hatred nor to expel the sinister arsonists.
Successful race baiters become famous and powerful. They first attract attention which brings in followers, and then money and ultimately true power.
Adolf Hitler produced his manifesto called ‘Mein Kampf” meaning ‘My Struggle” which sought to air his grievances about the state of German society and the struggles of the common man. He used the Jew as his scapegoat, at times attacking the Hebrew Pinata for being poor, dirty and smelly, and at other times for being a rich banker who profited off the work of others. He portrayed the Jews as leeches which sucked the blood and labor of poor workers and profited in a sneaky plan for world domination.
Some selections on his second “powerful parasite theme”:
Jewish parasites: “In the business world things were even worse. Here the Jewish people had really become ‘indispensable.’ The spider began slowly to suck the people’s blood out of its pores. By way of the war societies one had found the instrument with which to put an end, bit by bit, to a national and free economy.“
Jews stealing in secret: “they try to cheat the whole world with their tricks; they are lazy, but with their pretended ‘silent’ work they create the appearance of an enormous and equally laborious activity; in short, they are cheats, characters of political profiteering, who hate the honest work of others. Just as such a folkish moth always appeals to the darkness of the silence, one can bet a thousand to one that under its cover he does not produce, but only steals from the fruits of the labor of others.“
Jewish profiteers and desire for world domination: “Jews are the regents of the stock exchange power of the American Union. Every year they manage to become increasingly the controlling masters of the labor power of a people of 120,000,000 souls; one great man, Ford, to their exasperation still holds out independently there even now. With rapacious cleverness they knead public opinion and form from it the instrument of a struggle for their own future. Already the greatest heads of Jewry envisage the approach of the fulfillment of the hereditary slogan of the great devouring of the nations.“
Hitler was appalled that people would come to the defense of the Jews, knowing that they profit off of the toil and suffering of others:
Don’t defend Jews who profit off your misery:“If the Hungarian government hangs ten Jewish stock exchange profiteers, whose money is sticky with the blood and the sweat of hundreds of thousands of honest people, we protest, we cry about pogroms and we demand the boycott of an entire State.”
Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in July 1925 as a poor man in prison. Within eight years he was the chancellor of Germany.
The Alt-Left’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’
The National Socialist German Worker’s Party of the 1930’s and 1940’s was commonly called the Nazi Party. It is associated with the far right’s desire for racial purity, demonization of inferior races and elevation of proper Aryan Germans. It drew its inspiration from Hitler’s manifesto.
Today’s Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is a far-left group which shuns much of the ideology of the Nazi Party while embracing other key tenets.
It does not follow Hitler’s screed against the dirty, smelly Jew or other poor people as the party argues that it is fighting for the poor working class. Instead the alt-left goes all-in against the rich “ownership class” which robs from poor people of their work and dignity. Jews just happen to be the mascot of the evil profiteers, whether in Gaza or Detroit.
Randi Weingarten, longtime president of the American Federation of Teachers, a lobbying group with 1.7 million members which pumps millions of dollars into Democratic politicians’ pockets, declared that American Jews are “part of the ownership class…. now want to take that ladder of opportunity [education] away from those who do not have it.” (Weingarten is married to Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, who sits on the Rabbinical Committee of the left-wing group J Street, and was just appointed by President Biden to join the US religious freedom commission. An interesting spectacle of Jews eating their own).
Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a proud member of the DSA made her own declaration about Jews:
“As I think about my family in Palestine, that continue to live under military occupation and how that really interacts with this beautiful Black city I grew up in … you know I always tell people that cutting people off from water is violence, and they do it from Gaza to Detroit, and it’s a way to control people, to oppress people. And it’s those structures that we continue to fight against. I know you all understand the structure we’ve been living under right now is designed by those who exploit the rest of us, for their own profit. I always say to people ‘I don’t care if it’s around the issue of global human rights, and our fight to free Palestine, or to pushing back against those who don’t believe in a minimum wage or those who believe we don’t have a right to healthcare and so much more.’ And I tell those same people, that if you open the curtain andlook behind the curtain, it’s the same people who make money and—yes they do—off of racism, off of these broken policies. There is someone there making money and you saw it, it was so exposed during the pandemic…. They made record profit.”
It’s a wonderful summation of Hitler’s thesis, that Jews operate in the shadows to profit off the suffering of others.
Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) speaking at a DSA event under tagline “From the Ashes of the Old: Socialism for a new tomorrow”
The DSA is remarketing key talking points of the Nazi Party under the banner “From the ashes of the old: socialism for a new tomorrow.” Who would imagine that the heirs to Hitler’s ideology that Jews are puppet masters exploiting the labor and suffering of the masses, would be Jewish and Muslim women?
Hamas is a very popular political-terrorist group among Palestinian Arabs. According to recent polls, Palestinians support attacking Jewish civilians inside of Israel and were thrilled by Hamas’s rocket attacks against Israel a couple of months ago. Should Palestinian elections ever be held again, Hamas is expected to win both the presidency and the majority of parliament.
But beyond the blood lust desire to kill Jews and destroy Israel, what drives Hamas to abuse the dead?
On August 1, 2014, Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul, officers in the Israeli Defense Forces, were abducted and killed during a US-sponsored ceasefire between Hamasand Israel. Seven years later, Hamas continues to hold their bodies and refuses to return them to their families in Israel. It is a flagrant violation of human rights and decency and the United Nations does nothing.
Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin
Hamas’s mutilation of dead bodies is also a crime. They kill suspected collaborators and drag their bodies through the streets in an effort to intimidate the public, much like ISIS burning people alive.
Members of Hamas drag man through the streets of Gaza in November, 2012
This kind of barbarism is not confined to Hamas in Gaza. At the beginning of the Second Intifada, a mob broke into a police station and dragged two Israeli soldiers into a room where they killed them and then threw the bodies to the street where the Palestinian mob trampled them beyond recognition.
Lynching of Israeli soldiers in Ramallah at start of Second Intifada
Today, people celebrate these atrocities and barbarians. In Amsterdam people chant “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the Gas,” while in the streets of Brooklyn marchers call for the destruction of Israel.
And in the halls of Congress, Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) says that the people of Gaza “just want to live” and have “dignity,” to shield their vile actions and intentions.
If Tlaib wants to put a pretty face on Hamas, the minimum she should do is to get the political-terrorist group to release the bodies of the two Jewish men who have been withheld from their families for last seven years.
Haters of Israel have a growing list of terms which they throw about frequently in attempts to demonize the Jewish State. The ugly list bears no resemblance to the truth but this kind of hatred is morbidly stupid, not just blind and deaf.
Here’s a review of some of the choice expressions with some basic facts about the slander.
“Genocide”
This is a particularly disgusting one, as it goes to the core of anti-Semitic hatred against Israel. Jews just went through a genocide of one-third of its population in Nazi Germany less than 100 years ago in a crime in which Palestinians were complicit (meeting repeatedly with Hitler and other Nazi leaders as well as convincing the British to not comply with the mission of the Mandate to limit the entry of Jews fleeing the Holocaust). Stating that Israel is committing genocide is a vicious attempt to belittle the Holocaust and argue that Jews are worthy of the anti-Semitism hurled at them.
The application of the term itself is insane, as the Arab population growth in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank has surpassed the growth rates of Arabs in all the surrounding countries.
“Ethnic Cleansing”
Like “genocide,” this is an attempt to invert the charge from the Arab and Muslim nations that ethnically-cleansed around one million Jews from their lands since the founding of Israel. As noted above, the population in the area under the 1922 Palestine Mandate has skyrocketed. Even in Jerusalem, the population growth rate of Arabs surpasses that of Jews since Israel reunified the city.
“Apartheid”
Israel gave citizenship to every non-Jew when the state was founded. It has non-Jewish supreme court judges, members of parliament and generals in the army. It allows Muslims to pray at Judaism’s holiest site of the Jewish Temple Mount and to build mosques and minarets around the country, as well as to wear hijabs and eat halal meat. The term makes absolutely no sense in the most liberal country in the region for one thousand miles.
“Colonialist”
Jews lived in Israel for over 3,000 years. Judaism is the only religion that is tied to a specific land, the land of Israel. It is not possible to colonize a place which ancestors lived in for centuries and which is the center of daily religious focus.
Further, when international law split the Ottoman Empire into different French and British mandates including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, they did not send their own French and British citizens to live in the land. The Jews who moved to Palestine from the 1922 mandate until the founding of the country in 1948 came from dozens of countries, with the Jews of England and France making up a paltry sum. Today, the majority of the Jews in Israel came from the Muslim countries which expelled their Jews including Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Syria and Iraq, alongside a sizable group from Russia and Ukraine.
“Europeans”
This is a code to say that Jews are “White” and part of the oppressor class in today’s woke terminology. Most of the Jews in Israel are actually Black and Brown from Africa as listed above, including over 100,000 Ethiopian Jews.
“Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Many anti-Zionists consider the entirety of the State of Israel to be “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” The more moderate part of the Israel-haters consider the West Bank and Gaza to be “OPT.”
Perhaps there will one day be an independent State of Palestine like there is currently a Jewish State of Israel. But that day is not today, as the Palestinian Arabs have refused to agree to the various peace offers Israel put before them. Until that time, the only Palestinian territories are the ones that Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and Areas A and B in the West Bank which cover 86% of West Bank Arabs. By definition, those aren’t “occupied” and are run by Palestinians.
“Threaten Al Aqsa”
This is a term that extremists use to rile up riots against Jews around the world. Israel has not made any moves against the al Aqsa Mosque, and welcomes Muslims to pray peacefully in their holy site. Still, there are many Jews which are appalled by the anti-Semitic edict which prohibits Jews from also praying on the Temple Mount. Just as the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron has space and time for people of both religions to pray, Jews seek a similar accommodation. In no manner shape of form do they want any harm to befall the Islamic holy site. Stating that Jews are threatening the site has generated multiple riots and killed hundreds over the years and is dangerous and inflammatory.
“Expulsions”
As reviewed in “ethnic cleansing,” Israelis have not and are not seeking to get rid of the Arab population. There have been “evictions” of people who live in a house illegally and “expulsions” of a select number of terrorists over the decades. But the general usage of the term has no bearing to reality.
“Crimes against Humanity”
The term “crimes against humanity” has a particular definition covering genocide, slavery, apartheid and torture. As reviewed above, these do not apply to Israel. The country does its utmost to have a peaceful society for all of its citizens with a wide range of freedoms not found elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.
“War Crimes”
Israel is in an asymmetric war against a terrorist group that fights from schools and hospitals and has a network of tunnels beneath houses and mosques. It attempts to use a targeted approach to fight against Arab terrorists who deliberately attack Israeli civilians. It is an approach that will most likely be adopted by other parts of the world that seek to manage wars against terrorist groups embedded with civilians (who support them).
“Open air prison,” “Apartheid Wall” and “Collective Punishment”
When the Palestinian Arabs rejected Israel’s peace proposal in 2000 that gave them almost everything that they wanted, they launched the Two Percent War which is generously marketed as the “Second Intifada,” in which they went on a terrorism campaign against ice cream stores, buses, restaurants and any soft targets populated with Jews. To stop the barbaric wave of hundreds of murders, Israel constructed a security barrier roughly along the 1949 Armistice Lines which anti-Zionists call an “apartheid wall.” The barrier is 90% fence and only 10% wall and built specifically because of Palestinian terrorism.
When Israel abandoned the Gaza Strip in 2005 it did not place a blockade on the area. Only after Palestinians voted the political-terrorist group Hamas to 58% of parliament in 2006 with the most anti-Semitic charter ever written, followed by Hamas’s take-over of Gaza in June 2007, and the attempted import of missiles and attack against Israel in 2008, did Israel resort to a full blockade of the terrorist enclave. Even though anti-Zionists call Gaza the world’s largest “open air prison” and a form of “collective punishment,” the actions were deemed legal by the United Nations (no friend of Israel) which commissioned the Palmer Report. That report stated that it “concludes that Israel’s naval blockade was legal… Israel faces a real threat to its security from militant groups in Gaza. The naval blockade was imposed as a legitimate security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea and its implementation complied with the requirements of international law.”
Weapons on the Turkish vessel Mavi Marmara which sought to bust the Gaza blockade, used to attack Israeli soldiers
“Settler” and “Settlement”
The term “settler” has morphed into something anti-Semitic.
Once upon a time, an Israeli who developed a new outpost east of the Green Line (EGL) was called a “settler” because he and she established a new settlement. But people who wanted to see a new Arab state of Palestine without the presence of a single Jew changed and weaponized the meaning of “settler.” A Jew buying an apartment in an existing building in an existing town – even Jerusalem – somehow became a “settler.” The media has now gotten to the point where Jews who are just visiting EGL including the Western Wall, are called “settlers.” The president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas calls the entirety of Israel a “painful settlement.“
“Zionist” and “Zionism”
Zionism was and is a two-part movement: a deliberate action against the scourge of pervasive anti-Semitism through the encouragement and support of 1) Jews moving back to their ancestral land and 2) to reestablish sovereignty in the Jewish holy land.
In 1975, with dozens of Arab and Muslim lands holding oil barrels over the world economy, the United Nations passed the “Zionism is Racism” resolution. While cancelled in 1991 due to the efforts of the US, it was revived in the August 2001 Durban Conference Against Racism. It has since been picked up broadly by Israel haters ranging from the far right to the alt left.
The extremist media empires like The New York Times have adopted the smear, and state openly that “Zionism was never the gentlest of ideologies.” Zionism is rapidly becoming a curse word, where left-wing schools are preaching that in order to be an anti-Racist one needs to be an anti-Zionist. This gaslighting campaign has corralled Jews to join the anti-Israel crusade, forgetting that the entire purpose of Zionism was to fight anti-Semitism and to have the same self-governing status that they seek for the stateless Arabs of Palestine.
The anti-Zionist lexicon is changing the very meaning of words in an aggravated assault against the Jewish State and Jews around the world. Everyone should readily recognize the mendacious slander and call out the perpetrators for their libel.
A new U.S. government report noted that the birth rate continues to fall, now with a fertility rate of just 1.6 children per woman. That rate is considered “below replacement rate” meaning that the next generation will be smaller than the current one and that the overall population will grow older on average.
According to the World Bank, the overall percentage of the global population under 14 years old in 2019 was just 25.6%. It was just 18.5% for the United States, down significantly from 30.8% in 1961 in the post-World War II boom years.
There is a meaningful divide between the western world and the rest in terms of the number of children and how it relates to household wealth which will be reviewed here.
Children and Household Wealth around the World
There are three parts of the world which have a very young population, with over 35% of the population being 14 years old or younger: sub-Saharan Africa, several Muslim countries, and the islands of the Pacific.
Roughly 42% of sub-Saharan Africa is under 14 years old. Most of the countries are very poor, with a GDP per capital under $2,000. Outliers like Seychelles (with a relatively low 24% of the population under 14 y.o.) and Mauritius (17%) have much higher GDP per capita (GDP/C) of $17,448 and $11,099, respectively.
The other regions have a more scattered correlation between GDP per capita and high percentage of children as seen in the chart below.
Countries with over 35% of the population under 14 years old fall into three buckets: sub-Saharan Africa (not shown), Muslim countries (yellow) and Pacific islands(blue)
The blue dots represent Pacific island countries and the yellow dots correspond to Muslim countries. Pakistan, Tajikistan, Yemen and Afghanistan have GDP/C of around $1,000 or less. The two subsidized Muslim economies of Iraq ($5,955) and the Palestinian Authority ($3,562) are outliers in their relatively higher income levels and young population. Only Tonga and Samoa have similar around $4,000 GDP/C outside of Africa.
The United States
The GDP per Capita in the United States crossed $65,000 in 2019 while the fertility rate plummeted. The country has a diverse population so a deeper review of the drivers of the fertility drop as well as the dynamics of household wealth are worth exploring to appreciate the underlying causes.
As seen in the US Fertility Rate table above, the fertility rate for women of all races declined significantly between 2008 and 2016. The drop was greatest for Hispanic women (-26%) and Native Americans (-24%), followed by Whites and Blacks (-12% each).
The census data on average household income by race and status adds further color.
Characteristic
All races
White alone, not Hispanic
Black alone
Asian alone
Hispanic (any race)
No Children
89,315
96,081
60,794
113,354
70,604
With children <18
119,506
138,970
79,151
165,793
80,592
Married no kids
127,016
132,340
99,595
141,350
96,487
Married with kids
146,238
161,392
123,121
178,510
94,336
Unmarried, no kids
103,795
107,342
78,588
156,377
91,062
Unmarried with kids
87,865
95,925
71,381
(B)
78,031
Male, no kids
92,133
99,118
74,695
123,492
82,112
Male with kids
83,983
94,733
63,693
88,764
73,777
Female, no kids
74,953
79,148
69,543
92,755
64,067
Female with kids
57,274
65,248
46,900
90,476
52,923
Household income for various US groups in 2019 according to the U.S. census. Too small a data set for unmarried Asian households with children at home.
There’s a lot of data here, so some observations:
Households headed by married couples with children at home make more money. Households (HH) with children under 18 at home make more money than those without, but that is purely driven by married HH. Asian married HH that have kids at home make an average of 26% more than married Asian HH without children. For Blacks the difference was 24%. Meanwhile, Hispanic married HH – and only Hispanics – without children make slightly more money than those with kids.
“Non-traditional” HH with no kids make more money. Unmarried HH and those headed by either a single father or mother have greater wealth if there are no children. The difference is the greatest for Black HH headed by a woman, where average HH income is 48% higher if there are no kids at home, and for HH headed by Asian men, who make 39% more money on average if no kids are at home. Only HH headed by Asian women have virtually no difference whether there are kids at home or not.
Asian and Blacks have dramatically different household wealth. Not only do Asians make significantly more money than Black HH (86% more in HH with no kids at home and 109% more in HH with kids at home), the biggest drivers were in unmarried HH without kids and woman-headed HH with kids.
The change in household income adds additional color, with the table below showing the change from 2012 to 2019.
Characteristic
All races
White alone, not Hispanic
Black alone
Asian alone
Hispanic (any race)
Married no kids
38%
38%
40%
39%
35%
Married with kids
44%
42%
51%
49%
50%
Unmarried, no kids
35%
34%
37%
62%
20%
Unmarried with kids
48%
45%
41%
NA
55%
Male, no kids
38%
41%
42%
37%
32%
Male with kids
41%
41%
35%
34%
44%
Female, no kids
32%
31%
33%
24%
38%
Female with kids
40%
33%
47%
60%
50%
Change in household income between 2012 and 2019 for various groups in the United States according to US Census
Households with kids have income growing faster. Income grew faster for households with children relative to those without kids between 2012 and 2019 for every type of household. Income grew fastest for those households headed by unmarried couples. Minorities faired better than Whites for female-headed homes with kids and married homes.
Hispanic households seeing the biggest gaps to an increase in income between having kids and not having kids. While Whites, Blacks and Asians mostly followed the averages or had mixed results, the Hispanic community saw big advances among those families which had children at home relative to the more modest gains among those with no children at homes.
In summary, the Hispanic community which accounts for 16.7% of the US population is having a steep decline in the number of children which is driving the overall low US fertility rates. While this is happening, the wealth for Hispanic households without kids is growing at a much slower pace than those HH with children. This is creating a gap in the Hispanic community between the wealthier HHs with children and the poorer ones which are having no kids.
Possible Reasons for Fertility Rates and Changes
There is clearly a correlation around the world that poorer countries have more children than richer countries.
The Guttmacher Institute estimates that 93 out of 1,000 pregnancies are unintended in poor countries compared to 66 in middle income and 34 in wealthy countries. Abortions are also more prevalent in wealthier countries with 40%, 66% and 43% of such unwanted pregnancies ending with an abortion in poor, middle and wealth countries, respectively. The net result is a higher fertility rate in poorer countries.
Religion should also be considered as a factor as many devout Muslim countries do not promote contraception and abhor abortions.
The low fertility rates in the United States goes beyond income and abortions.
Minority groups have the highest rates of abortion in the US. In 2016, 28% of abortions were by Black women even though they account for just 13% of the population. Hispanics accounted for 25% of abortions while they make up 17% of the population. This is in contrast to the global trend where poorer segments had fewer abortions.
In the US, Hispanics and Blacks still have higher fertility rates (2.1 and 1.9, respectively) than Whites (1.7) but the trends are much steeper for Hispanics as they are quickly adopting the more prevalent fertility rates found throughout America.
The lower fertility rates may seem strange relative to Pew Research which shows that women in America are having MORE children, albeit later in life as they prefer to pursue advanced degrees and build their careers. Pew notes that their work looks at the lifetime fertility rates of women whereas the standard definition of fertility is based solely on that one year’s accounting of births.
The Pew report also noted that one of the biggest changes in fertility is among women who were never married having children, where 55% of women aged 40-44 have had a child in 2014, up from just 31% in 1994. Incorporating the data above, this suggests that unmarried women are having children despite the fact that they are likely to be poorer for doing so, but the income level for this segment (unmarried moms) is growing the fastest.
Outlier
One country seems to be defying the trends in fertility, with a higher fertility rate and a high level of wealth: Israel.
From 2000 to 2019, Israel’s fertility rate stayed relatively constant, growing from 2.95 to 3.01. With a GDP/C of $43,600, this is a remarkable achievement.
The country’s ultra-Orthodox and Bedouin communities continue to have large numbers of children and the number of abortions in the country continues to hit new lows every year.
A quick read of the low and declining fertility rates in the US is certainly reason for concern, but a deeper dive into the numbers reveals some important facts. 1) Women are extending the period of time in which they have children to later in life so the total number of children they have is actually rising. 2) The drop off in fertility in the US is mostly due to the Hispanic community moving quickly towards the societal average. 3) The average income for the growing “non-traditional” households (unmarried, single parent) with children is growing faster than the rest of society.
Due to the pro-Israel backlash about Ben & Jerry’s announced decision to stop selling ice cream in the West Bank/area east of the Green Line (EGL), the two founders penned an opinion piece in the liberal opinion paper, The New York Times on July 29, 2021. Here is a review.
Ben & Jerry comment: “We are the founders of Ben & Jerry’s. We are also proud Jews. It’s part of who we are and how we’ve identified ourselves for our whole lives. As our company began to expand internationally, Israel was one of our first overseas markets. We were then, and remain today, supporters of the State of Israel.“
FirstOneThrough review: Sounds reasonable. The duo is asserting that they are proud to be both Jewish and supporters of Israel so everything that follows must be read in that light. Meaning, this is what they want readers to believe are opinions of pro-Israel Jews.
B&J: “But it’s possible to support Israel and oppose some of its policies, just as we’ve opposed policies of the U.S. government. As such, we unequivocally support the decision of the company to end business in the occupied territories, which a majority of the international community, including the United Nations, has deemed an illegal occupation.“
FOT: B&J say they oppose lots of U.S. policies BUT THEY STILL SELLS ICE CREAM IN THE US. Double-standards, anyone? Further, while it is true that “a majority of the international community” views Israeli Jews living in EGL as “Illegal,” it’s also a fact that most of the world considers homosexuality to be illegal. Are B&J really going to use international standards to decide what is a progressive value?
B&J: “While we no longer have any operational control of the company we founded in 1978, we’re proud of its action and believe it is on the right side of history. In our view, ending the sales of ice cream in the occupied territories is one of the most important decisions the company has made in its 43-year history. It was especially brave of the company. Even though it undoubtedly knew that the response would be swift and powerful, Ben & Jerry’s took the step to align its business and operations with its progressive values.“
FOT: Progressives say that climate change is the most important issue of our lifetimes and B&J proudly supports environmental issues. Yet these two men proclaimed that boycotting the West Bank because Israel has held off annexing it, in the hope of trading some of it for an enduring peace with local Arabs is “one of the most important decisions the company has made.” I guess B&J’s long list of progressive issues really aren’t that important.
B&J: “That we support the company’s decision is not a contradiction nor is it anti-Semitic. In fact, we believe this act can and should be seen as advancing the concepts of justice and human rights, core tenets of Judaism.“
FOT: In what orbit is objecting to Jews living and praying somewhere – let alone in their holy land – advancing human rights, and not anti-Semitic? B&J should re-read the bible to understand that the land of Israel is a core tenet of Judaism.
B&J: “Ben & Jerry’s is a company that advocates peace. It has long called on Congress to reduce the U.S. military budget. Ben & Jerry’s opposed the Persian Gulf war of 1991. But it wasn’t just talk. One of our very first social-mission initiatives, in 1988, was to introduce the Peace Pop. It was part of an effort to promote the idea of redirecting 1 percent of national defense budgets around the world to fund peace-promoting activities. We see the company’s recent action as part of a similar trajectory — not as anti-Israel, but as part of a long history of being pro-peace.“
FOT: The company opposed US wars but still sells ice cream throughout the United States, but uniquely decided to boycott the West Bank. This is not consistent at all. A parallel move would be to sell a new ice cream flavor – maybe with halavah and dates called “Abraham’s Twins” – and to donate part of the proceeds to schools and organizations that promote peace and coexistence.
B&J: “In its statement, the company drew a contrast between the democratic territory of Israel and the territories Israel occupies. The decision to halt sales outside Israel’s democratic borders is not a boycott of Israel. The Ben & Jerry’s statement did not endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.“
FOT: As the two surely know, the issued statement was not approved by its independent board, which did not include the statement about Israel. The last sentence was inserted by Unilever as the board actually wanted a boycott of all of Israel.
B&J: “The company’s stated decision to more fully align its operations with its values is not a rejection of Israel. It is a rejection of Israeli policy, which perpetuates an illegal occupation that is a barrier to peace and violates the basic human rights of the Palestinian people who live under the occupation. As Jewish supporters of the State of Israel, we fundamentally reject the notion that it is anti-Semitic to question the policies of the State of Israel.“
FOT: It is not “anti-Semitic to question the policies of the State of Israel,” but it is anti-Semitic to boycott the State of Israel in a complete double standard. The company does not boycott the US where it objects to many policies nor does it boycott China, Turkey, Morocco, India, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan or many other countries which have disputed territory. The “perpetuation” of the Arab-Israeli dispute is because the Palestinians have rejected Israeli offers time and again, not because Israel never made any offers to make peace.
B&J: “When we left the helm of the company, we signed a unique governance structure in the acquisition agreement with Unilever back in 2000. That structure is the magic behind both Ben & Jerry’s continued independence and its success. As part of the agreement, the company retained an independent board of directors with a responsibility to protect the company’s essential brand integrity and to pursue its social mission.“
FOT: Anti-Semitism is not a “social mission” and the boycott of Israel is illegal in many jurisdictions so the board acted outside of its authority. Will this board that advocates for “defunding the police” stop selling ice cream in cities that don’t slash police budgets? The board is in favor of expanding voting rights so will it get engaged in vote harvesting which is considered illegal in many states? Being in favor of peace means promoting peace through legal activities. The board is not advancing peace and taking illegal actions.
B&J: “We believe business is among the most powerful entities in society. We believe that companies have a responsibility to use their power and influence to advance the wider common good. Over the years, we’ve also come to believe that there is a spiritual aspect to business, just as there is to the lives of individuals. As you give, you receive. We hope that for Ben & Jerry’s, that is at the heart of the business. To us, that’s what this decision represents, and that is why we are proud that 43 years after starting an ice cream shop in a dilapidated gas station in Burlington, Vt., our names are still on the package.“
FOT: The piece ends as it began with innocuous statements that have nothing to do with the insidious actions taken by the board.
A Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream delivery truck is seen at their factory in Be’er Tuvia, Israel July 20, 2021. (Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun)
Progressive Jews like Ben & Jerry have endorsed Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism which calls for the destruction of Israel, to have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons, and wants that Islamic State to be able to freely ship such weaponry to Hamas in an un-blockaded Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. It should therefore not surprise anyone that the far-left would stop selling ice cream to Israelis in bomb shelters.
Ben & Jerry are boycotting the Old City of Jerusalem, the holiest location for Jews, while they preach that they are both proud Jews and supporters of Israel who are taking action to advance a core tenet of Judaism. The two may not only be guilty of double standards, but lack a basic understanding of Judaism, as they encourage the whole world to engage in the BDS movement to rid the holy city of Jewish presence once more.
The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities are extremely upset about their depiction in the Netflix show “My Unorthodox Life.” People have accused the show’s star, Julia Haart, of maliciously slandering the lifestyle of thousands of women as outrageously “fundamentalist” in nature. One woman said in a local newspaper that “Monsey is home to thousands of women who are thriving religiously, professionally and personally. We are wise, we are proud and opportunities abound. We come in all different flavors. While some of us have chosen to be stay-at-home wives and mothers, many of us have pursued careers as CEOs, doctors, lawyers, nurses, authors, artists, business owners, computer techs, professors, therapists, accountants — and pretty much anything else out there.“
While undoubtedly true, Haart’s story has its own message and it has so much less to do with Judaism than it does about the brand she is building and the money she hopes to make.
Julia Haart in Netflix’s “My Unorthodox Life”
Haart is the CEO of a modeling agency called Elite World Group and a clothing line named “e1972.” In the competitive world of modeling and apparel, brand message is everything and critical to success.
Haart elected to build her brands around the central theme of “giving women a voice,” and the entire “Unorthodox” show was developed to burnish that image.
The thrust of the “voice of women” message is found throughout. Haart specifically states that she is focused on helping models build their own personal brands as influencers on social media and elsewhere to extend their careers. In one episode, Julia spends time with a model helping her to launch her own line of sauces with flavors from her hometown and an image of herself on the label. One of Haart’s daughters builds her own social media presence, which she then tries to use on behalf of other models.
The underwriter of Julia’s modeling empire is her husband who built and sold a communications company years earlier. He is virtually invisible throughout the show, as his presence would undermine the message that this is a woman’s company showcasing women’s voices. The husband represents the “creepy old men from the fashion industry,” which Julia has promised to purge.
While marketed as a reality TV show, it is heavily crafted. That the women wake up in bed with an hour’s work of makeup on their faces and two-inch eyelashes in place, is but one tell-tale sign.
The storylines are all orchestrated with “the voice of women” message. Women – and Julia in particular – come off as assertive and powerful, while the men are feckless and timid. The women have successful or budding careers, while the men are faltering (there is deliberately no discussion of what Julia’s successful husband does). The women have active dating lives while the men cannot even talk to women without assistance of a female family member. There are repeated scenes of women keeping men waiting at restaurants or not showing up for appointments because the women are too busy, in a poor attempt to show the women as more important than those kept waiting, when it just made the women look rude and exposed the scriptwriters’ choreography too blatantly.
Of course, everyone comes to Julia for advice and she’s always the one with the right answers to solve each problem. She is the mascot of the brand and her voice and message must be the strongest.
It is through that lens that one has to consider the depiction of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism in the show.
Religion is just a tool in the script. To be a true inspiration to others, Julia must have broken away from a terrible past that had suppressed her. The darker and more fundamentalist her background, the greater her star shines in her new brand. In the past she was just a baby machine and unable to wear what she wanted; now she stops her children from having kids and walks around showing as much cleavage as she can while keeping the show PG. She had been limited to kosher and now enjoys shrimp and non-kosher restaurants. She had lived in her husband’s shadow in a male-dominated cloistered society, while now she is the star and bread-winner in the world, supporting the entire family.
The Orthodox community watches the Haart show from their particular vantage point, rightly insulted by the commentary on their lifestyle but cannot fathom that despite the show’s title, it has nothing to do with Judaism. “Unorthodox” is just a multi-hour long EWG “voice of women” infomercial, and the various over-the-top portrayals are simply gimmicks to keep everyone talking to burnish the brand.
First One Through 