How an organization markets itself says a lot about who they are targeting for customers. A business or organization which has a product for seniors will feature older people in their advertisements to attract them as buyers. One that wants to portray its products as flexible might cast athletic actors in various positions to showcase their wares.
The media industry is no different. A conservative media company might show an ad with a leading conservative politician, say Sen, Ted Cruz (R-TX) and a liberal one would showcase a liberal one, say Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). The product for them are the opinions which the viewer likes to hear.
So what does it tell you about a program that opts to feature a controversial politician who has repeatedly used anti-Semitic tropes?
MSNBC’s Morning Joe plugs its own show during commercials. While it did feature leading liberal politicians like Rep. Nancy Peolsi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), it led the ad with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN).
Omar is not simply a far-left extremist in the Democratic Party. She has repeatedly been rebuked by both Republicans and Democrats for attacking Jews and the Jewish State. Her appearances on the program were not forceful interviews of her positions but a series of softball questions for her to spout her extreme views to millions of people while putting her into the mainstream.
Liberal media has become an open mic for left-wing Jew-haters, and it is currently proud to advertise as much.
The people of Gaza have been scorching the earth for the past several years.
Over a five month period in 2018, the Israeli government counted 1,364 fires that were deliberately set by Palestinian Arabs putting flammable devices onto balloons and kites. The government report stated that “Over 7,400 acres have been damaged or destroyed, about 23% of the land in the region…. the entire eco-system of the western Negev has been affected. Trees that have stood for generations – preventing soil erosion, improving the carbon footprint and providing a habitat for birds and animals – have been destroyed. Wildlife – birds, turtles, snakes and lizards, jackals, foxes and wolves, wild boars, hedgehogs, bees and other insects – have been killed or lost their homes and their food sources. Experts estimate that it will take decades for the area to recover.“
Fires in Israel near Gaza fence, set deliberately by Palestinian Arabs
The United Nations has been vocal about the problems of the increase in temperature which leads to drier land which in turns leads to more fires which destroys animal habitats and plants which would otherwise cool temperatures. But the UN has said nothing about the deliberate scorched earth actions of Palestinian arsonists.
The Carmia Nature Reserve after Palestinian arson
The destructive fires set by Palestinian Arabs continue unabated until today. The Israeli government released a video of firefighters working to extinguish the fires in the Negev on June 15, 2021.
In addition to burning Israeli fields and nature, Palestinians have been poisoning the air, setting tires on fire. Environmental groups have long warned that “fumes that are being released from tire burning have been shown to be extremely toxic to human health and harmful to the environment.“
A Palestinian Arab setting tire on fire in “protest” against Israel (photo credit: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)
But again, world governments and environmental groups remain silent on Palestinians’ malicious attacks on our planet.
The United Nations declared that “Climate Change is the defining issue of our time and we are at a defining moment.” Therefore, it is well past time to demand that the UN and concerned citizens of our planet, loudly condemn the ongoing Palestinian environmental terrorism.
Thousands of ordinary and extraordinary people were going about their day in London, England on July 7, 2005. People at work, tourists on vacation and kids at school had no idea that there were people who hated them so much that they wished them dead.
On that day, Islamic radicals would kill and maim many of them.
Four Muslim British men bombed London’s transportation system, three in the Underground and one bus. They killed 52 people, ranging in age from 20 to 64. All of the victims were UK residents who came from a variety of backgrounds.
The jihadists left behind statements that they did not view anyone from the UK as innocent as “Your democratically-elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people all over the world. And your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters.” It continued that the bomber loved “the prophets, the messengers, the martyrs and today’s heroes like our beloved Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,” a collection of terrorists who killed and maimed thousands of people with western principles.
Another one of the suicide bombers said that non-Muslims deserved to die because they elected a government which “continues to oppress our mothers, children, brothers and sisters in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya.”
Islamic extremists would continue to attack the people of the United Kingdom.
On May 22, 2013, two Muslim men killed and hacked to death two British soldiers stating that they did so “because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers. And this British soldier is one…. By Allah, we swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone.“
On the anniversary of that attack, May 22, 2017, 23 people were killed and 800 wounded when a Muslim man bombed an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. The youngest victim was only 8 years old. That attack was preceded by a March 22 attack by a Muslim extremist who drove his car on Westminster Bridge injuring 50 and killing four. It was followed by an attack on June 3 when three Muslim men ran a car over people on London Bridge and then began stabbing people, killing eight and wounding nearly 50 people.
The people of England felt the effects of Islamic extremism which had been considered a localized US and Israel problem. Over time, as the Islamic State burned even fellow Muslims alive in their quest to establish a new caliphate, it became clear that the Islamic world had begun a “global intifada” which sought to promote the global supremacy of Islam and instill fear in the hearts of infidels.
The global intifada began in 2001 in two parts: the Durban Conference which launched the propaganda war; and the September 11 attacks on the United States which killed thousands while attacking the western world’s financial and military centers. However, it was only on July 7, 2005 that the world began to comprehend that the Islamist war went beyond the “big Satan” and “little Satan” of the United States and Israel, and incorporated all non-Muslim “infidels” who were perceived to challenge Islam.
There was a time when people understood what genocide meant.
They saw the brutality of Nazi Germany’s largely successful effort to exterminate the Jews in Europe. They read about China, the USSR and Turkey killing millions of their own citizens during the 20th century, and recall Rwanda’s civil war with 800,000 people wiped out in just 100 days. Genocide was the brutal slaughter of an entire unwanted ethnic group.
There was a time when people recognized the evil of unjustly accusing people of “genocide.”
In December 2013, United Nations’ Special Rapporteur Richard Falk called Israel “genocidal,” whereupon Canada immediately called for Falk to be fired. In 2017, when Falk tried to push through a report at the UN calling Israel an “apartheid” regime, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley got the report withdrawn. Horrific lies and smears were met with outrage and action.
No longer. The steady drip of anti-Israel propaganda has taken root and decent people are now running for cover from the hate-filled tsunami.
Shrill voices on college campuses are claiming that Israel is committing a “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs, coming from the mouths of both professors and students at institutions like Rutgers and Yale. The charge is “ethnic cleansing” of Muslim Arabs at UCLA and CUNY.
Students of Yale accusing Israel of “genocide and ethnic cleansing”
The accusations are outrageous.
Lies. At the most basic level, the statements are outright lies, as the Arab population in Israel and Jerusalem have not only grown faster than Jews in the country and capital city, but have grown at a faster rate than Arabs in the neighboring countries as well.
Inversions of Perpetrator and Victim. Worse than the fabrication is the attempted inversion of the fanatic Muslim anti-Semitic attackers into victims. Palestinian leadership conspired with Nazi Germany to kill Jews and worked with the British to keep Jews fleeing for the lives from entering Palestine. After the brutal slaughter of 6 million Jews, the Muslim Arabs went to war to wipe out the paltry number of Jews who made it to safety in Palestine. Losing that 1948-9 Arab-Israeli war, the Muslim world expunged nearly a million local Jews in a massive ethnic cleansing. They attempted to annihilate the Jews gain in 1967, only to lose the war – and land – once again. Since 2000, localized terrorism has been the preferred vehicle to express their disgust with Jewish neighbors. When Jews defend themselves from attacks, anti-Semites attempt to portray them as offensive, such as labeling the security barrier Israel built in response to Palestinian Arab terrorism as an “apartheid wall.”
Anti-Semitic Propaganda. Even more dangerous than the lies and offensive inversion of victim and attacker is the motivation for the smears. Like the Nazis who put forth a propaganda machine to label the Jews as degenerates and conspirators to enlist the masses in the purge of the Jews, today’s calls against the Jewish State are designed to weaken and isolate it, while enemies in Muslim countries like Iran and Syria along with their terrorist clients including Hamas and Hezbillah prepare to attack again. The chants of “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea” are the stated goals of destroying Israel accompanying the foundational slurs of Jewish “colonialists” committing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” They are attempting to educate the world that Jews never had rights to land or sovereignty in the holy land, and are evil invaders unworthy of a state and support.
In 2001, just before nineteen Muslim hijackers took civilian airplanes to kill thousands of people on American soil, anti-Semites cloaked as “anti-racists” hijacked the 2001 Durban Conference. The United States withdrew from the horrific spectacle at that time, and now, twenty years later, continues to distances itself from the anniversary commemoration. Alas, the insidious “Zionism is Racism” Redux propaganda has already infected the West.
The noxious “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” smears against Israel which used to only emanate from the mouths of jihadists are now being echoed on college campuses, the liberal mainstream media and the halls of Congress. This vilification of Israel is designed to set the stage for the eradication of the reestablished Jewish State, much as Nazi propaganda facilitated the genocide of European Jewry. While the slanderers self-identify as “pro-Palestinian protestors,” history will refer to them as Hamas’ Willing Executioners.
Progressive and conservative people around the world have different interpretations of justice.
For progressives, justice is achieved by enabling people who have been marginalized to succeed. It seeks to even the playing field by affording those at the edges some advantages to address systemic roadblocks which kept them down for so long. Justice demands reform in various areas beyond economy and law, to include healthcare and the environment.
Conservatives view justice through a narrower lens of tradition and law. They appreciate order and security, and upholding historic truths. Justice demands a system which rewards or punishes risk and investment. It requires uneven outcomes in order to spur overall growth.
Zionism speaks justice to both.
Liberals rallied to Zionism after the Holocaust of the Jews in Europe. They saw systemic anti-Semitism commit a genocide of millions of European Jews in the 1940’s and then watched the Muslim world expunge its Jewry from 1948 through the 1970’s. A home where Jews could be safe and self-governing was clearly needed in the creation and building up of the Jewish State.
Conservatives were some of the earliest Zionists – even pre-dating the first Zionist Congress in 1897 – and continue to be strong supporters. They appreciate Jews’ 3,300 year-history in the land of Israel, and understand that “the promised land” is a religious term uniquely meant for Jews about that Jewish holy land.
Progressives are amazed that a small new country was able to absorb immigrants fleeing persecution from dozens of diverse countries including: Morocco, Russia, Argentina, Uruguay, France, Tunisia, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Ethiopia, Ukraine and Yemen. There is no country in the world that has such a high percentage of immigrants coming into the country – virtually penniless – from so many lands. None.
Conservatives are amazed at the stability and application of the law in Israel. While other countries in the region have killed hundreds of thousands in wars, the strong Israeli army has kept its wars very short, minimizing death tolls. While the authoritarian leaders of neighboring countries stay in power for decades, Israel holds genuine elections and prosecutes its leaders, sometimes sending former prime ministers to prison.
People from across the political spectrum may not know some statistics about Israel but aren’t surprised to hear them. For example, Israel is the only religious country which has more tourists each year from a different religion (the Jewish State has more Christian tourists than any other religious group; other religious countries like Denmark have mostly Christian visitors; Iran, mostly Muslim visitors). Some facts may surprise them, such as the fact that the Arab population in Jerusalem has gone up by 3.4 times since 1980 when Israel declared the city as its eternal capital, compared to a rise of only 1.9 times for the Jewish population.
Both progressives and conservatives marvel at the religious freedoms in the only Jewish State. Muslims may wear hijabs (banned in France), build minarets near mosques (banned in Switzerland) and have halal meat (banned in the Scandinavian countries). Anyone of any faith can become prime minister in Israel (only Christians can lead Greece, only Muslims in Syria). Israel even helped the Mormons build a church in Jerusalem! and the Baha’i have a major temple in Haifa (the faith is banned in Qatar).
Liberals love that Israel is a green country, leading the world in recycling plastic. It was the first country in the Middle East to have wind farms and a bike sharing program. It also has a universal healthcare system for every citizen and permanent resident. Meanwhile, conservatives love that the Jewish State has a thriving free market built on capitalism. It has more companies listed on Nasdaq than any other country except for China (a country with a population 155 times as large).
Israel has strived to build a country that incorporates freedom, justice and fairness in an open, secure and vibrant multi-cultural society, in the heart of a turbulent and extremist neighborhood.
When Israel declared itself an independent state in 1948, it called for justice instinctively understood by both progressives and conservatives:
“THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
David Ben Gurion signing the Declaration of Independence with Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen in Tel Aviv, May 14, 1948 (photo: Hans Pinn/GPO)
Israel was designed as a particular Jewish State, focused on Jewish immigration and a vision of peace based on the Jewish bible, but also with “complete equality of social and political rights to all inhabitants irrespective of religion.” The country’s foundational principles stressed both the particular and universal in a unique and bold ambition for justice for all: a space for the most persecuted minority in the world, and a philosophy of justice based on history, tradition, truth and fairness.
Progressive and conservative people around the world have different interpretations of justice, yet both see their visions realized in Israel.
A young Jewish yeshiva student was shot and killed while waiting at a bus stop in the Israeli territory of Area C, along with several friends who were shot and wounded. BBC News wouldn’t mention his name until a Palestinian Arab teenager was killed in the vicinity weeks later, amid a confrontation with Israeli police.
On June 11, 2021, BBC News published an article called “Palestinian teenager shot dead in clash at protest.” The name of the teenager was featured – three times – as were pictures of a Palestinian ambulance and mourning women. There were no pictures of the Jewish student, Yehuda Geutta, whose name was mentioned only once in the article.
The BBC storyline was that the Palestinian teenager was protesting “against the building of an illegal Jewish settlement near the city of Nablus.” The article would repeat several times that the settlement is “illegal” and is “occupied” by “settlers.” It would never mention that the land is in Area C, Israeli administered land as agreed to by the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo Accords.
So a more complete picture of the story is warranted for people who want an accurate picture and not one told by jaundiced mainstream media.
In early May 2021, several students from a yeshiva in Itamar in Area C were shot at while waiting at an established hitchhiking post at the nearby Tapauch Junction. Yehuda Guetta, 19, was hit in the head and died from his injuries on May 5. A Palestinian man, Muntasser Shalaby, 44, was arrested and charged with the shootings and murder.
Israeli medics and police inspect the scene of shooting attack in Tapuah Junction, near the city of Ariel in Area C, on May 2, 2021. (Photo by Sraya Diamant/Flash90)
In response to the terrorist attack, several Jews moved to reestablish the outpost of Evyatar not far away. The outpost had been established in 2013 after a similar incident when a Palestinian Arab terrorist stabbed Evyatar Borovsky to death at the same intersection. The outpost was dismantled by Israel as it was built without approvals and permits.
The reestablished outpost quickly grew to around 50 people and Palestinian Arabs came frequently to protest their presence, often setting hundreds of tires on fire as a form of chemical arson to poison the new Jewish residents. One of the Palestinian Arabs participating in the assault said “we come at night, we light up the mountain, to send them a message that they can’t have even an inch of this land.” During one such protest which included pelting soldiers with stones, a 15 year old Palestinian Arab named Mohammed Hamayel, was killed.
Palestinian Arabs brandishing torches protesting against Israeli Jews moving to Evyatar in Area C, June 22, 2021 (photo credit: Mohamad Torokman/ Reuters)
The new Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett just reached an agreement with the Nahala movement and the Samaria Regional Council that Evyatar would not be razed again, after it concluded that the land was not owned by anyone privately. The agreement stated that the civilians would evacuate the outpost which would be turned into an army post and yeshiva seminary.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian terrorist who killed Guetta, Muntasser Shalaby, is being put on trial. The Israeli courts have approved the demolition of Shalaby’s home, which set off a new round of Palestinian protests. Adding an interesting twist to the general arguments about the demolition of terrorists’ homes, is the fact that Shalaby is separated from his wife in the West Bank and normally resides with his three other wives in Tucson, Arizona. It is unclear whether Shalaby wanted to punish his estranged West Bank wife, knowing that her house would be razed after the Israeli police captured him for the terrorist attack.
None of those facts and background were found in the BBC article.
The BBC deliberately opted to craft a story to make the Israeli army out to be thugs who maliciously shoot young Palestinians for simply protesting illegal Israeli activities, an industrial-grade blood libel. It not only marks the BBC as not a credible source for information but one that incites hatred and violence against Jews and the Jewish State.
Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, still acting as president in 2021 even though his term expired in 2009, said on June 29 that the entirety of Israel is a “foreign body” implanted in the Middle East as “a product of colonialism.” It is a world view he has been exporting and believes is being accepted, noting the “shifts in the world’s public opinion and at the level of parliaments towards reconsidering the Palestinian narrative,” and rejection of “the Zionist narrative that falsifies the truth and history.“
Abbas wrote his doctoral thesis on a particular form of Holocaust denial which asserted that Jews have no history in the land so no Jews had any interest in moving to Palestine. Consequently, Zionists conspired with the Nazis to make life unbearable in Europe so European Jewry would be forced to flee and settle in Palestine.
Abbas added that all of Israel is a fictional creation meant to “fragment [the Arab world] and keep it weak.” Still, the Palestinian Authority has shown a willingness to accept a portion of the Israeli colonialist settlement activity:
“Despite our acceptance of a painful historic settlement recognizing the State of Israel on the 1967 borders in accordance with United Nations resolutions 242 and 338 and the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel has violated these agreements and continued to steal the land, establish settlements, and create an apartheid regime and ethnic cleansing by military force.” (Note that the Oslo Accords specifically stated that Israel controls Area C of the West Bank).
Abbas added some charges about “Israeli occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing” to keep the anti-Zionist lexicon fresh.
He concluded his remarks at the Al-Quds Open University in the Gaza Strip conference, which was meeting to create new distortions to foist on the world:
“The world has begun to see Israel as it is: an occupying and apartheid state. I am confident that the contributions of the researchers participating in this conference will have an important impact on clarifying and explaining the truth about the myths and false narratives of this Zionist project created by the Western countries for purely colonial purposes.“
Palestinians are spending considerable energy to reeducate the world on manufactured “facts” rather than acknowledging the basic history, dignity and rights of Jews. Sadly, universities like Yale and the City University of New York are using the Palestinian al-Quds University for source sheets in echoing calls to attack the Jewish State.
Protest from students at Yale, seemingly taking the talking points from the Palestinian Authority verbatim.
The spike in anti-Semitism right after the latest skirmish between the Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas and Israel seemingly caught many people off guard even though the same thing happened in 2014. The surprise is rooted in the delusion that the conflict is between two ethnic groups (Arabs and Jews), when in fact it is a religious war between Muslims and Jews, much like the crusader wars between Christians and Muslims centuries ago. The religious battles in the holy land quickly ignite anti-Semitism globally, especially when holy sites are involved.
Sovereignty: Islamic Ottomans versus Zionist Jews
Various peoples have ventured through the holy land over thousands of years, as the small strip of land is the only corridor connecting Africa on one hand, and Europe and Asia on the other. Different races, religions and ethnicities came and went with sovereignty falling under different regimes.
From 1517 to 1917, the Ottoman Turks ruled the region as part of its vast empire. The Ottomans were Islamic and gave preference to members of its faith. Early in its rule, Ottomans kicked Jews off of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest location, and relegated them to a small part of the western supporting wall of the Temple Mount. That area, the Kotel, has since become the stand-in for Jews for their sacred spot. Similarly, the Islamists forbade Jews from entering the Cave of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron.
When the British and French defeated the Ottomans in World War I, they divided the empire into distinct mandates which would ultimately become various countries including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Israel. Upon announcing that the Jews would get to reestablish their homeland in the Balfour Declaration which became codified in international law in the 1920 San Remo Agreement and 1922 Mandate of Palestine, the Muslim Arab world went berserk. It was one thing for the far-away, non-Arab Ottoman regime to rule Palestine, but at least they were Muslims. It was an insult to Islamic pride to have the land ruled by Jews.
GoodbyeJewish Neighbors
Once the notion of Jewish sovereignty was introduced, the basic presence of Jews became a problem.
Muslim Arabs slaughtered Hebron’s Jews in 1929, making the British feel that the removal of Jews from the city was the right course of action rather than punishing the murderers. The British would fold to Muslim Arab anti-Semitism again after their multi-year riots from 1936 to 1939, and instituted the White Paper which forbade the Jews fleeing Nazi Europe to enter Palestine, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews.
During World War II, the Mufti of Jerusalem met frequently with Hitler and other Nazi leaders to conspire against the Jews, making sure they were killed and could not flee to Palestine.
Telegram from Nazi Heinrich Himmler to Islamic Mufti of Jerusalem on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration talking about “the battle against world Jewry.”
After the war, in the shadow of the Holocaust, Muslim nations routed Jews from their lands, with roughly one million Jews fleeing Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. These were not Zionists but Jewish neighbors who had lived for hundreds of years in Muslim lands. They were attacked simply for sharing the faith with Jews in Israel.
Whether in Europe, the Middle East or North Africa, Christians and Muslims trounced the local Jewish communities.
Toxic Islamic Anti-Semitism
While the Christian world rethought systemic anti-Semitism in the Second Vatican Council of 1965, the anti-Semitic toxicity level continued to spread among Muslims, especially after their defeat in 1967 when they went from smug warriors about to finish off the Jews a mere generation after the Holocaust, to embarrassed losers in just a week.
The 1988 Hamas Charter remains the most anti-Semitic foundational document of any political party ever written. It combines the vileness of Hitler’s Mein Kampf with the Russian forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It blames Jews for starting all wars for profit, controlling the media and global resources as well as “uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” The document calls upon Muslims around the world to fight the Jews and kill them in a messianic jihad. “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” The conflict is anchored through the lens of a religious war against Jews and Judaism.
The charter makes clear that the issue is not 1967 borders or even 1948 borders, but that “struggle against the Zionist invaders… goes back to 1939,” the beginning of the Holocaust. For Hamas, the core of the issue is that Jews survived the Holocaust and came to Palestine. The root of the current hastags #Hitlerwasright has nothing to do with a property dispute in Sheikh Jarrah in eastern Jerusalem, but that the Jews continue to exist.
Regular Islamic Anti-Semitism
Not all Muslims believe that all Jews are sinister and must be punished for re-assuming sovereignty of the holy land as they had thousands of years ago. Many are garden-variety anti-Semites.
In 2005, the Palestinians voted a man who wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial, Mahmoud Abbas, as their new president. The following year they voted the political-terrorist group Hamas to 58% of the parliament. In 2014, the ADL conducted a poll which found that 93% of Palestinian Arabs – almost every single person polled – held anti-Semitic views.
Beyond the holy land, a 2015 ADL poll found that Muslims around the world were two to five times more likely to be anti-Semites than Christians in the same country.
When Palestinians poll themselves they continue to favor Hamas. A June 2021 poll found that 59% would vote for Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas for president. They are overwhelmingly in favor of attacking Jewish Israeli civilians inside Israel.
As further proof that the dispute is between religions and not ethnic groups, Hamas’s biggest sponsors are not Arab countries but non-Arab Islamic countries of Turkey and Iran (which has threatened to wipe Israel off the map). Religion, not ethnicity, drives the conflict.
The Sensitivity of Religious Sites
While Muslim Arabs object to Jews living anywhere in what they perceive as an Islamic waqf, the sensitivity is heightened around religious sites. The Muslim world calls for “days of rage” when anything happens around Jerusalem and especially the al Aqsa Mosque. Even during peaceful times, Muslim Mourabitoun harass Jewish visitors to the Jewish Temple Mount, while they simultaneously leave Christian visitors alone.
The Indignity of the “Jewish State”
Underscoring the religious dimension of the conflict is the refusal of Palestinian Authority President to accept Israel as the “Jewish State,” even though doing so costs nothing in terms of the main desires of Palestinian Arabs which seek sovereignty and to move into neighborhoods where ancestors once lived. Abbas would be willing to forgo an independent Muslim Arab state if he has to simultaneously acknowledge Jewish sovereignty in Israel.
The Broader World’s Embrace of Muslim Anti-Semitism
The non-Muslim world has accepted many of the Muslim charges, seemingly re-connecting with its own historic toxic anti-Semitism.
Only Jewish Israelis moving east of the 1949 Armistice Lines are labeled with the unique term “settlers,” while Muslim Israeli Arabs moving to eastern Jerusalem or other parts of the West Bank are simply called “Palestinians.” Airbnb has one policy for Jews renting homes in the West Bank and another for non-Jewish neighbors renting out their homes. Europe seeks to have distinct labels for products coming from Jewish businesses in the West Bank and a different one for Muslim businesses. The dividing line is not whether the owner is Israeli or Palestinian but whether the Israeli is Jewish or Muslim.
The examples go on.
The two-state solution has been long been marketed as creating sovereign entities for two ethnic groups – Jews and Arabs – but that has always been a myth. The Arabs already have dozens of countries and Palestinian Arabs were content being part of Muslim Arab Jordan from 1949 to 1967 and the Muslim non-Arab Ottoman Empire from 1517 to 1917. The conflict stems from the massive Muslim world’s distaste for the single small Jewish state. The Islamists proposed solution is ideally to wipe the Jewish State off the map. Failing that, making the country exceptionally small, without control of any religious sites, and converted into a bi-national (non-Jewish) state is the most they could accept.
The “Palestinian-Israeli” or “Arab-Israeli” Conflict is actually the “Muslim-Jewish Conflict over the Holy Land.” It is therefore no surprise that flare-ups in Israel rooted in noxious Palestinian Muslim anti-Semitism should ignite the same vile reactions against local Jews around the world, led by regional Muslim fanatics and abetted by other willing anti-Semites.
In 1935, German composer Carl Orff set 24 Medieval Latin poems to music, in a collection known as Carmina Burana. The first and most famous song, O Fortuna, has been used in several movies including John Boorman’s Excalibur. It describes fate both like a moon and a wheel, ever waxing and waning, and having ups and downs. Change is constant. Sometimes you’re high and sometimes low. In the end, life is like a landscape painting where the best moments are captured by the mountain peaks and the lowest points disappear in the valleys.
The peaks and valleys seen from Tzfat, Israel (photo: First One Through)
Judaism has a different perspective. Rather than considering highs and lows, it sees blessings and curses. The contrast can best be seen in a biblical story of the Israelites in the desert.
In Numbers 22, the kings of Moab and Midian call upon a famous non-Jewish prophet named Balaam to curse the Israelites, as the kings were nervous that the Jewish people would take over their land. Balak, the king of Midian, said to Balaam “Come then, put a curse upon this people for me, since they are too numerous for me; perhaps I can thus defeat them and drive them out of the land.” (Numbers 22:6) When Balaam prepared to do so, God asked Balaam the nature of the request, and he said that Balak had said “Here is a people that came out from Egypt and hides the earth from view. Come now and curse them for me; perhaps I can engage them in battle and drive them off.” (22:11)
Rashi, the medieval commentator, looked at the difference in how Balaam referred to Balak’s request and said that Balaam actually wanted to drive the Jews from the world, not just the land of Moab, since he hated them more than Balak. While Rashi focused on the word “וְגֵרַשְׁתִּֽיו” to arrive at his opinion, one can also consider the highlighted text above “hides the earth from view,” (וַיְכַ֖ס אֶת־עֵ֣ין הָאָ֑רֶץ). The hidden parts are the valleys where people cannot be seen. It is typically when a person or people are most vulnerable – the lowest part of the wheel, to use the metaphor in O Fortuna. That a lowly people could be so powerful to defeat the Amorites and Og, the king of Habashan (Numbers 21) perplexed the prophet. It unnerved his worldview, so he hated them.
God forbade Balaam from carrying out the task, “Do not go with them. You must not curse that people, for they are blessed.” (22:12) But eventually Balaam does go to to see the Jewish nation per Balak’s request, and arrives at a place where “he could see a portion of the people,” (22:41) as he was in the heights and Jews were spread out in the valleys.
Balaam told Balak that he could not curse those who God would not curse. These people have an inner strength beyond the ups and downs of life, “As I see them from the mountain tops, Gaze on them from the heights, There is a people that dwells apart, Not reckoned among the nations.” (23:9)
Balak was angry with Balaam’s non-curses and considered that a better position and angle might elicit a more satisfying curse. Balak brought him to a few other mountaintops where he could see the entirety of the Jewish nation (23:13-14, 23:28) but it made no difference. God had blessed these people, even as they sat motionless in the valleys “How fair are your tents, O Jacob, Your dwellings, O Israel!” (24:5). Balaam had internalized that blessings and curses could happen at any station. He had broken the wheel.
Judaism has a different view of life beyond the motions of up and down; it considers states of blessings and curses. As a characteristic, they can exist in different situations and can even coexist at the same time. It is a dynamic which has incensed anti-Semites for millennia but also brought joy to those who bless the Jewish people in good times and bad.
The United Nations began its week-long program of combatting terrorism on June 16, 2021, in Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of the terrorist group, Hamas. Even worse, the UN didn’t simply convene a counter-terrorism conference in Qatar, it actually opened an office dedicated to that cause in the country.
The program’s opening remarks discussed the UN’s opening of the counter-terrorism office in Doha, Qatar “in recognition of the United Nations and the international community of Qatar’s outstanding role in the fight against terrorism, under the leadership and guidance of His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of the State of Qatar, “May Allah protect him” and for his well-established policy in the fight against terrorism, in all its forms and manifestations, whatever its source and in the elimination of its causes.“
The UN “recognition” seemingly comes in the face of one its own priorities of stopping the funding of terrorism, an important element of defeating the global scourge, in which the UN “Security Council expressed concern at the flow of funds to terrorists and the need to suppress all forms of terrorist financing.” One must therefore conclude that the UN cannot recognize Qatar’s funding of Hamas and/or that Hamas is a terrorist group.
Qatar Funds Hamas’ Terrorism
The United States has long noted Qatar’s funding of the terrorist group Hamas. After the 2014 War from Gaza, the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote about “Hamas’ Benefactors: A Network of Terror.” The report noted that “Qatar funds Hamas’ strikes in Gaza, as well as its project, building terror tunnels from which to attack Israel,” and that the US “cannot continue to allow Qatari funds to go to terrorist groups, Hamas or any other, unabated and unaddressed.”
Despite the dirty open secret, just last week, the UN’s Special Coordinator for Middle East Peace, Tor Wennesland, met with the leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar. Sinwar was looking for the UN to press Israel allow the flow of $30 million from Qatar, as the first part of a $500 million transfer directly to Hamas “to solve the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.” Israel had supposedly said it would work with the UN to allow such money transfers, making Sinwar excited about the meeting.
Sinwar was disappointed.
Wennesland passed along a message from the new Israeli government that the Jewish State had no intention of allowing the funding of terror. Naftali Bennett, the new Israeli Prime Minister, is likely looking to obtain the release of the bodies of Israeli soldiers held by Hamas for the past seven years in exchange for a Qatari-led funding program which would be fully managed by the United Nations instead of Hamas.
UN Special Coordinator of the Middle East Peace Process, Tor Wennesland of Norway
The UN Won’t Comment on Hamas’ Terrorism
Meanwhile in New York, the UN Secretary General’s spokesperson answered a few questions about the nature of the meeting between Wennesland and Sinwar.
When asked about Hamas’s military summer camp which has a promotional video with children as young as 9 years old being trained to infiltrate Israel with guns, the UN spokesperson meekly offered “I have not seen that particular video.” That summer camp is called “Talayiea Al Tahrir” or “Vanguards of Liberation,” with a stated program goal to “ignite the flame of jihad in the generation of liberation, sow Islamic values and prepare the expected victory army for the liberation of Palestine, Allah willing.“
The UN has more personnel on its payroll devoted to Palestinians than any other group in the world but they just couldn’t find or know about military camps for kids which have been going on for years. And years. And years. And years. And years.
Turning a blind eye to the terrorism of Hamas is an integral part of the UN strategy.
In May, UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres thanked Qatar for its role in helping broker a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel and added that “no effort should be spared to bring about real national reconciliation that ends the division,” between Hamas and Fatah. Gutteres consequently cannot simultaneously call Hamas a terrorist group and endorse its integration into the Palestinian Authority. So the UN grants Hamas a free pass on terrorism.
While the United Nations meets to stop terrorism, it turns a blind eye to Hamas and its sponsors as it reveals its steel heart to the only Jewish State.
First One Through 