Letter to Sen. Chris Murphy about Israel and ‘Palestine’

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Dear Senator Chris Murphy,

As Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, I appreciate your involvement in foreign policy and engagement on matters in the Middle East. However, your approach to the region is seemingly a departure from official U.S. foreign policy, at odds with the idea of bipartisanship, belittles the danger of Palestinian terrorist groups and undermines the relationship with Israel.

I note the opening paragraph of the letter your office distributed to people who have written to you about the Arab-Israeli Conflict, about your recent trip to the region, copied here:

email from the office of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)

“Because you have written to us concerning Israel and Palestine, I wanted to share this important update. Senator Murphy, Chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, returned from foreign travel this month which included visits to Israel and the West Bank. He led a congressional delegation of his Senate colleagues to discuss regional security and democracy in the region. He was joined by Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Senator Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.).”

To start, the United States does not recognize any country called “Palestine.” As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, it is imperative that you not unilaterally begin to upgrade the status of the Palestinian Authority.

Please share the reason that you only traveled to the region with fellow Democrats, especially as President Biden repeatedly stated his desire to keep support of Israel a bipartisan matter between Democrats and Republicans. Was Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) or any of the Republicans on the Foreign Affairs committee unwilling to join the delegation?

I have additional questions as it relates to the second paragraph of your letter:

“The delegation’s visit to Israel came after the formation of a new government under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in June, and was the first to travel to the country after President Biden met with Prime Minister Bennett at the White House. The senators also met with President Isaac Herzog, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, and Ra’am Party leader Mansour Abbas to discuss the priorities of the new government and the path forward to ensure that both Israelis and Palestinians can live safely and securely and equally enjoy freedom, prosperity and democracy. The senators also met with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh and young Palestinian leaders in the West Bank. In addition,  the senators also engaged with USAID partners who are implementing programs on the ground.“

I understand why members of the US Foreign Relations committee would meet with Israel’s prime minister, president and foreign affairs minister. But why would the U.S. delegation meet the head of a small Arab party in the coalition government who is not a member of Israel’s own foreign affairs committee? Do you believe that Israeli Arabs are actually ‘Palestinians’ and wanted to be sure that Israel’s Arab citizens “enjoy freedom”? Or do you think that only an Israeli Arab perspective can shed light on what Palestinian Arabs feel, even though the delegation also met with leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank? If you wanted a perspective of minority groups, did you also visit Israeli Jews living in the West Bank?

I note that you referred to Palestine as a country again when you called Mohammad Shtayyeh the Prime Minister of “Palestine” instead of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Does the subcommittee you head have its own foreign policy apart from the United States?

In your letter’s final paragraph, you decided to gratuitously and falsely accuse the former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netayahu:

“Upon his return from travel, Senator Murphy joined CNN International’s Amanpour with Christiane Amanpour to discuss the United States’ role in the world following the withdrawal from Afghanistan. In recounting his visit to Israel and the West Bank, Senator Murphy said: “[I]t is important to note that this government has taken some really important steps: one, to do outreach with the Palestinians, the first government-to-government meetings at the highest levels in over a decade. And they have begun to open up humanitarian pathways into Gaza. They’re trying to relieve the suffering there in a way that the Netanyahu government would have never contemplated. This is obviously a very unique coalition government… but I left pretty impressed with the seriousness of the government, and some of the early steps that they have taken to lower the temperature, both inside Israel and in the relationship with Palestinians.”

I am baffled how your recollection of a visit to America’s strongest ally in the Middle East begins with the “outreach with the Palestinians.” You falsely stated that the meetings were the first held in “over a decade” between the US and the PA, seemingly forgetting the debacle of a flawed 2014 peace process shepherded by the Obama Administration’s Secretary of State John Kerry.

You stated that the goal of the mission was regarding “regional security and democracy,” yet offered nothing on the remarkable Abraham Accords that the Netanyahu government cemented with several Arab nations over the prior year. Instead, you implied that Netanyahu helped create the suffering in Gaza, rather than note that a US-designated foreign terrorist organization launched several wars against Israel, and the Netanyahu government responded in a restrained manner. Further, Netanyahu enabled Gaza exports to hit record levels in the beginning of 2021 and allowed monies from Qatar to flow into the terrorist-run enclave, much more than the current Israeli Prime Minister Bennett.

Senator, as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia and Counterterrorism, Americans expect you to call out the evil of the US-designated terrorist group Hamas, to not upgrade the PA to a state, to acknowledge the expanding circle of diplomatic relations Israel recently forged in the region, and to follow protocol in regards to visiting Israel, America’s strongest ally in the region, without gratuitously bad-mouthing the prior government. Your approach simply leads Americans to believe that the Democratic Party is pulling away from Israel.

Senator Murphy can be reached at (202) 224-4041 and (860) 549-8463 or via a note at https://www.murphy.senate.gov/contact.

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Westchester County, NY Should Adopt the IHRA Definition of Anti-Semitism

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​The spike in antisemitic incidents in the United States over the past few years is alarming. Jews are being physically attacked, killed and verbally assaulted, while their properties are being vandalized.

The New York / New Jersey / Connecticut tri-state region has been hit particularly hard. Murders in Jersey City and Monsey; bricks and punches thrown in people’s faces in Brooklyn and synagogues in Riverdale; swastikas painted in schools in Columbia University, New Rochelle High School and Westchester parks. The list is long.

Three swastikas were painted in Pelham’s Middle School in October 2019

With the onset of the coronavirus and fighting in the Middle East, things have gotten even worse.

As the first known patient with COVID-19 came from the Orthodox Jewish community of New Rochelle, antisemitic slurs have become more common for Jews walking the streets and shopping in stores. When fighting broke out among Arabs and Jews in Israel, a mob brutally beat a Jew walking the streets of Manhattan.

Westchester County, sitting in the intersection of the tri-state region and home to one of the largest concentrations of Jews in the United States, must take action.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) developed a working definiton of antisemitism in 2016 to help countries and municipalities develop policies to help fight the scourge. The IHRA definition of antisemitism is endorsed by major Jewish organizations including the ADL and the AJC. Major counties and cities in New York have begun endorsing the definition including Nassau County and the Village of Great Neck. 

Westchester County should endorse it as well. ​​

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    Trends in Anti-Muslim and Anti-Semitic Attacks Post-9/11

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    As the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the United States approaches, various news outlets are discussing the animosity towards Muslims that became a reality in America after the terrorist attacks by nineteen Muslim men, directly killed nearly 3,000 people and many times that number indirectly in the years that followed. Other than giving a platform for American Muslims to talk about their experiences with prejudice, little analysis into the hate crime statistics has been shared.

    So here it is.

    Before the September 11th attacks, almost every religious-based hate crime reported by the FBI was against Jews. From 1998 to 2000, a total of 89 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported, or about 30 per year. In comparison, over that time period, over 3,500 anti-Jewish attacks were reported by the FBI, or 39 times as many. That dynamic changed with the jihadist terrorism against the USA in 2001.

    The spike was immediate and significant.

    In 2001, a total of 546 anti-Muslim hate crimes were reported, a 16.5 times jump from the prior year. White people committed 200 of those offenses, a high number relative to the 29 attacks committed by Black people. The numbers declined rapidly in 2002, but the number of anti-Muslim attacks has remained significantly above the pre-9/11 days.

    Anti-Muslim attacks increased again with the influx of Muslim refugees from Syria and elsewhere in 2015 and 2016, reaching a high of 381 in 2016. The number of incidents declined significantly since then, with 219 attacks reported in 2019, a 43 percent decline in three years.

    In regards to the perpetrators of the offenses, from 2000 to 2009, Whites committed an average of 69.9 attacks per year, compared to 16.8 for Blacks. The numbers increased for both groups in the 2010-2019 decade, with Whites and Blacks committing an average of 97.3 and 25.2 attacks, respectively, representing a jump of 39% for Whites and 50% for Blacks.

    By way of comparison, Jews suffer many more hate crimes than Muslims but the trend line is quite different.

    Attacks against Jews was consistently above 1,100 attacks per year through the year 2001. It was only in 2002 that anti-Semitic attacks began to decline, reaching a low of 635 attacks in 2014. This was a period marked by the War on Terror around the world, and in Israel, it included the Second Intifada/Two Percent War (2000-2005), the election of a Holocaust denier to the Palestinian presidency and a jihadist terrorist group to a majority of the Palestinian parliament (2005 and 2006) and wars from Gaza after the Hamas takeover of the Strip (2008, 2012 and 2014). Perhaps Americans sympathized with Jews and the Jewish State in the global war on Islamic extremism, as attacks on Jews declined significantly over those thirteen years.

    But the trend reversed as anti-Semitism began to spike at the same time as anti-Muslim attacks picked up in 2015. Most recently, crimes against Muslims have been declining while anti-Semitism has been rising.

    A review of the offenders perhaps reveals some clues.

    From 2000 to 2009, Whites committed an average of 181.0 attacks against Jews while Blacks committed an average of 17.8 attacks per year. But from 2010 to 2019, Whites committed an annual average of 137.3 attacks while Blacks committed 28.5. So while anti-Semitic attacks among Whites declined by 24% over the past decade, it increased 60% among Blacks.

    The past decade witnessed a spike in religious-based hate crimes committed by Black people at a greater rate than White people, and against Jews in particular, as the average anti-Semitic hate crimes committed by Whites has declined by 24%. (source: FBI Hate Crime Statistics)

    The sharp increase in Black anti-Semitism came most recently in 2018 and 2019, with all-time record levels of attacks by Blacks on Jews. This coincides with the election of the “Squad” to Congress – and two Muslim women, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, in particular – who pushed anti-Semitic tropes that Jews control the military, the press, the government and do it all as a means to profit from the poor. The ridiculous shouts of “from Ferguson to Palestine” shouted by the likes of CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill and “from Detroit to Gaza” shirts sold on Rashida Tlaib’s website, were malicious attempts to portray Jews as militant exploiters of Blacks and Muslims all around the world. Shockingly, Democratic leaders protected their anti-Semitic minority members and advanced anti-Islamophobia measures rather than protecting Jews.

    Not surprisingly, attacks against Jews increased and those against Muslims decreased.

    In 2019, an average American Jew was roughly three times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an average Muslim (1,032 Jewish victims in a population of 5.7 million versus 227 Muslim victims in a population of 3.3 million). Jews always suffered more than Muslims and the gap is growing.

    In summary, there were almost no anti-Muslim attacks in the United States until the Islamic extremist attacks of September 11, 2001. The spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes went on for a year, and the situation then dramatically improved. That turnaround enabled American Muslims to assume positions of power in the United States, which they have used to further protect Muslims and fuel minority attacks against Jews.

    Twenty years ago, foreign jihadists hijacked a small part of the U.S. transportation system to viciously attack America’s financial, military and political centers. Today’s jihadists are aggressively weaponizing the U.S. educational system, the government and the media, to attack Jews around the world.

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    Evicting 70,000 Dead Settlers From Jerusalem

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    The Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem is the oldest and largest Jewish cemetery in the world. Existing east of the Green Line (EGL) in eastern Jerusalem, it is considered “Arab land” by the New York Times, illegal by the United Nations, and against the desires of the acting President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, who craves a country with eastern Jerusalem as his capital, devoid of any Jews.

    Ultra-Orthodox Jews visit graves at the cemetery on the Mount of Olives facing the Old City of Jerusalem. (Photo: Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

    There are somewhere between 70,000 and 150,000 Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives and include famous people such as Rabbi Obadiah of Bertinoro (Bartenura 1445-1515), Rabbi Yehuda Hehasid (1660-1700), Holy Land scholar Rabbi Yehosef Schwartz (1804-1865), leading Zionist Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai (1798-1878), the champion of revitalizing the Hebrew language Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (1858-1922), Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), and poet SY Agnon (1887-1970). The vast majority of the graves date from the 15th and 16th century, when the Ottoman Turks rebuilt the city walls of Jerusalem. While some older graves dating back 3,000 years are also found there, many of the older tombs are found east and west of the City of David which stretches south of today’s Old City walls, in and around Siloam/Silwan. Thousands of years ago, Jews placed their dead in the chalky caves in the area, and gathered the bones a year later to place them in ossuaries.

    View of Mount of Olives cemetery from the Old City including ancient tombs; archeologist Gabriel Barkay before ancient burial caves around Jerusalem (photos: First One Through)

    When the Jordanian army invaded Israel in 1948 and seized the eastern portion of Jerusalem the following year and illegally annexed it in 1950, they desecrated and damaged the cemetery. Some tombstones were used to construct the Arab Legion camp as far away as Jericho.

    The cemetery is frequently vandalized. In 1990, Arabs broke over ten tombstones, including that of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s grandfather. In 2015, during the Palestinian Arab stabbing rampages, vandals smashed numerous tombstones at the site.

    The caretaker of the Afghan section of the Mount of Olives Cemetery inspecting vandalism. (photo: Marc Israel Sellem/ The Jerusalem Post)

    The Palestinian Authority has not clearly articulated whether its demands for “East Jerusalem” requires uprooting over 70,000 dead Jews on the Mount of Olives, but it is likely that Hamas does not mind coexisting with dead Jews, as the political-terrorist group continues to hold the bodies of two Israeli soldiers killed over seven years ago in Gaza.

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    The Old City of Jerusalem’s “Settlers’ Quarter”

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    Anti-Semitism wears many masks, the most prominent these days is anti-Zionism. The malicious malady has related hats, including denying Jewish history, distorting Judaism and opposing the rights of Jews to live in certain places.

    The British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, has locked arms with alt-left Jews in some of these sinister proclamations, especially concerning Jews living over the 1949 Armistice Lines struck between Jordan and Israel. That “Green Line” was specifically defined as never to be regarded as a border, and the 1950 Jordanian annexation of the “West Bank” was deemed illegal by the international community, marking that invisible line as a footnote in history penned in disappearing ink. No matter, anti-Semites have a long history of dictating where Jews can and cannot live, whether the Pale of Settlement in Russia or ghettoes throughout Europe.

    Consider the recent BBC coverage of the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem.

    The BBC using a map produced by B’Tselem, a group which markets itself as an “information center for human rights in the occupied territories.”

    The dotted lines (at least they are dotted!) represent the 1949 Armistice Lines between Israel and Jordan, which disappeared in 1967 when Jordan attacked Israel again and lost the entirety of eastern Jerusalem and the “West Bank.” Note that the map’s legend refers to the dotted line as “pre-1967 ceasefire line,” which implies that there was a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine, as Jordan is not mentioned (this is deliberately misleading). The map’s purple areas are marked as “Israeli settlements.” Are they?

    In the lower portion of the map is the Old City of Jerusalem. Marked in purple is the Jewish Quarter, a place with over 750 years of continuous Jewish presence except for the window of Arab rule when the Jordanians ethnically-cleansed all of the Jews from 1949 to 1967. According to this map, any JEW – not Israeli – living east of the Green Line (EGL) is a “settler.”

    There are thousands of Israeli Arabs living in EGL including the eastern part of Jerusalem. Israel gave all the Arabs in the city permanent resident status in 1967 and has afforded them the right to apply for Israeli citizenship. Thousands have already taken such citizenship and thousands more have applied. Yet the B’Tselem/ BBC map doesn’t mark the homes of Israeli Arabs in purple but only the locations where Israeli Jews live.

    Jewish men, women and children living in the Jewish Quarter of their holiest city
    are marked with the term “settler”

    Adolf Hitler accused the Jews of being sly manipulators who steal, as he roused Germany to rout the Jews. He painted their stores with the word “Jude” and made them wear yellow Jewish stars with the word in the center, so they could be easily identifiable for insult and attack by passers-by, and interrogated and ultimately expelled for annihilation by government officials.

    So it is today with the term “settler,” even in the Jewish people’s holiest city.

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    Israeli Athletes (and Dogs) at the Paralympics

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    Israel sent 25 athletes to the 2020 Paralympics held in Tokyo from August 24 to September 5, 2021. Some of the athletes were accompanied by their guide dogs.

    Israeli athletes enter the Tokyo paralympics with seeing guide dogs during the parade of nations.

    One of the athletes is Roni Ohayon, who is competing in a sport that is unique to the Paralympics called Goalball. It is similar to soccer, specifically designed for players with visual blindness by playing with a ball with bells inside. All players wear blindfolds as part of the game.

    Israeli athletes competing in goalball. Roni Ohayon with her guide dog, Rudy.

    Team Israel won the silver medal in goalball at the European Championship held in Germany in 2019. The schedule for the team in Tokyo can be found here.

    Roni’s dog Rudy was trained at the Israel Guide Dog Center for the Blind. It is the only accredited guide dog center in the entire Middle East. Each year, the center provides roughly 35 Guide dogs for the visually-impaired and 35 Companion dogs for Israelis suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD.

    Many of the athletes trained for competition at the Israel Sports Center for the Disabled. Founded in 1960, the ISCD is a home away from home to around 2,500 Israelis of all ages, where the unique merits of sports are utilized to strengthen body, spirit and mind.

    Paralympian Nadav Levi, born with cerebral palsy competing in boccia. Caroline Tabib, playing wheelchair table tennis at the Olympics for the second time, training with Baruch Hagai, the head coach of the ISCD.

    The Paralympics were founded by Dr. Ludwig Guttmann (1899-1980), a Jewish doctor who escaped Nazi Germany to England. He revolutionized the research and treatment of spinal cord injuries including rehabilitation. “It occurred to me that it would have been a serious omission not to include sport in the rehabilitation of handicapped people,” he said, as his efforts began small alongside the Olympics that were held in London in 1948. In 1960, the games went international, and since the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul and 1992 Winter games in France, the Paralympics have been held in the same city as the Olympics.

    The 2020/1 Tokyo Olympics gathered the worst television ratings ever but hopefully people around the world will tune in to watch the incredible athletes (and dogs) of the Paralympics.

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    New York Times Buries Stories of Slaughtered Jews in Temple Mount Account

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    On August 24, 1929, Palestinian Arabs incited a riot throughout the Jewish holy land with rumors that Jews were attempting to seize and destroy the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In Hebron, sixty-nine Jews were brutally slaughtered and hundreds were maimed and injured. The catastrophe was so horrific, that the British who were ruling the land under international mandate, felt compelled to evacuate all of the Jews from the city as they did not feel it would be safe for any Jew to remain among the majority Arab population, ethnically-cleansing the Jewish victims from their holy city.

    On the 92nd anniversary of the Arab massacre of Jews, The New York Times wrote an article about Jews praying on the Temple Mount. It characterized the Jews as having a history of aggressively pushing onto a Muslim holy site inciting riots.

    New York Times article on page A4 of August 24, 2021 edition, about how quiet Jewish prayer provokes angry Muslim reaction and death.

    The article began with stating that Israel forbids Jews from praying on the Temple Mount, which is true, but it did not state that Israel was maintaining the anti-Semitic policy instituted by Jordan of banning Jewish prayer when it illegally ruled the city. The omission was minor in comparison to the paper’s recap of history.

    The paper noted that Israel is in charge of security and the Jordanian waqf is responsible for administrative matters on the Temple Mount, but “when the balance of power has teetered,” bad events happen. The Times listed the visit of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2000 setting off the “Second Intifada“; Israel installing metal detectors in 2017 that led to riots; and Israeli police “raid[ing] the compound several times last spring” provoking an 11-day war with Hamas. In each situation, Israeli actions were attributed as the provocation which led to deaths and destruction.

    Misleading its readership, the Times did not write that the “Second Intifada” which began in 2000 was the result of Yasser Arafat, the head of the Palestinian Authority, rejecting the Israeli peace offer capping the Oslo Accords, which would have given Palestinians roughly 98% of their demands, and instead opting for a multi-year war. The Times did not describe Arabs shooting police officers on the Temple Mount in 2017 which led to the decision to install metal detectors. The paper omitted the Arab riots over the evictions of squatters in homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood next to the Old City and the Palestinian Authority cancelling elections which made HAMAS launch hundreds of missiles at Israeli towns.

    The Times inverted every story, and recast the Arab attackers as victims.

    Obviously, the paper left out the massacre of 69 Jews in Hebron as it revealed that Arabs murder Jews for perceived threats, not actual force.

    The New York Times is attempting to rewrite history that Jews are responsible for war, a smear promoted in the infamous forgery ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ and in the HAMAS Charter. It is a vile tactic which anti-Semites have used for a long time. That the Times would specifically do it on the anniversary of the 1929 Hebron Massacre marks its editors as cruel sadists as well.

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    NY Times Recognizes Palestinian State

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    The Palestinian Liberation Organization declared an independent State of Palestine in 1988. Only Arab and Muslim countries recognized it, while about a decade ago, countries in Latin America also chose to recognize it. The United States and much of the western world has refused to recognize such entity, in the hopes that the contours of such state will be negotiated between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

    But The New York Times is not waiting for the U.S. government, and has now recognized the entity as a state throughout the paper.

    On August 23, 2021, Will Shortz, long-time editor of the crossword puzzle, added a clue which specifically called Palestine an actual country.

    August 23, 2021 New York Times crossword puzzle claiming there is a “Palestinian State.”

    This is part of an ongoing initiative of the paper. On April 24, 2021, the Times wrote about “Palestinian East Jerusalem,” which compounded multiple layers of fiction: there hasn’t been an entity called “East Jerusalem” since 1967 and it certainly isn’t part of a State of Palestine.

    The New York Times deliberately does not call HAMAS, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization, with such designation as it tries to sanitize the genocidal anti-Semitism of the group. The paper is now further breaking with official U.S. foreign policy in recognizing a Palestinian State as it attempts to mainstream the Palestinian narrative to its far-left readership.

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    Enduring Peace Requires Unity AND Tolerance

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    The United Nations has many subcommittees. Most are designed to handle global or regional issues. Some are unique and deal with a specific issue, such as UNRWA, which is a UN agency dedicated for descendants of Palestinian refugees from wars in 1948 and 1967 who remain stateless, while every other refugee in the world has one under-staffed agency called UNHCR.

    One of the organizations/people specifically tasked (theoretically) with helping to solve a regional issue is UNSCO, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. One would imagine that such individual was there to actually help and facilitate “the Middle East Peace Process” as the title conveys.

    A review of the comments made in 2018 by the special coordinator, Nickolay Mladenov, reveals a different story.

    The UNSCO website lists 29 statements made by Mladenov over 2018. Most of them were addresses to the UN Security Council, in which he provided an update of the situation on the ground. Sometimes there were recommended actions to be taken to advance the Peace Process.

    Oftentimes, there was finger-pointing.

    Consider the statement made on January 25, 2018. Mladenov said that there was a clear and unambiguous end result for the peace process: two states. “We must also reaffirm the international consensus that the two-State solution remains the only viable option for a just and sustainable end to the conflict. We must be unwavering in this position.” Absent such solution, the Palestinians would suffer a “worsening reality of occupation and humiliation.” Little concern was noted for Israeli security. No mention that Hamas is a terrorist organization and that its existence and governance undermines the basic principles of a Peace Process. Instead, he offered an appeal for UNRWA to subsidize Palestinians and declared that Jewish houses living in Area C in Judea and Samaria are threats to peace. The message was clear: terrorism is not a threat to the Peace Process; Jewish homes are the obstacle.

    A few weeks later, on February 20, 2018, Mladenov made the following comment:

    “For a decade two million people have lived under the full control of Hamas with crippling Israeli closures and movement and access restrictions. Throughout this period the international community has provided aid and humanitarian assistance to alleviate the suffering and to rebuild what was destroyed in three devastating conflicts.

    “It is time to break this cycle. It is time to return Gaza back to the control of the legitimate Palestinian Authority, for there can be no Palestinian state without Palestinian unity.

    “Those who stand in the way of reconciliation hurt the Palestinian national cause and the price will be paid by generations of ordinary people.”

    Mladenov could not have been clearer: he wants to have the terrorist group Hamas to be part of the ruling Palestinian Authority and chastised anyone opposed. The coordinator for a peaceful settlement between the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (“SAPs“) with the Jewish State called for a vehemently noxious anti-Semitic organization to be part of a governing coalition which would somehow make peace with its Jewish neighbor. That’s akin to a judge recommending that a couple conclude a divorce on peaceful terms by having the gun-toting spousal abuser live next door to his ex.

    The comments on March 26 to the UN Security Council finally had more balance and called out Palestinian incitement to terror, including:

    “Fatah’s official social media pages continued to feature posts glorifying perpetrators of past violence against Israeli civilians, including terror attacks that killed civilians and children. In addition, Palestinian officials continued to make statements denying the historical and religious connection of Jews to Jerusalem and its holy sites. One senior religious leader falsely claimed Jews had lived in historical Jerusalem for only 70 or 80 years. Others continue to describe Israel as “a colonial project.”

    “I urge the Palestinian leadership to continue to speak against violence in general, and to condemn specific attacks against civilians.”

    Regrettably, Mladenov once again failed to call out Hamas explicitly. Instead, he called for reconciliation between the two parties and demanded that Hamas civil servants start getting their salaries paid by the PA.

    The following month, on April 26, Mladenov spoke to the Security Council again. His primary focus continued to be on Gaza, while speaking gently about Hamas:

    “People should not be destined to spend their lives surrounded by borders they are forbidden to cross, or waters they are forbidden to navigate. They should not be destined to live under the control of Hamas, which invests in military activities at the expense of the population.”

    Somehow, Mladenov ignored every Palestinian poll in which the Palestinians PREFER Hamas over the more moderate Fatah party. Almost no Palestinian places the blame for the dire situation in Gaza on Hamas itself.

    A few days later on April 30, Mladenov was back to celebrating the efforts at Palestinian unity:

    “Unity is essential to furthering the Palestinian national aspirations for statehood and sovereignty. That is why the Government of National Consensus should be enabled to take up its responsibilities in Gaza and bring immediate relief and change to the population. No one should stand in their way.”

    It would seem that Mladenov finally understood the meaning of Palestinian unity a few days later: Hamas and Fatah would agree on anti-Semitism as Abbas leaned in to his hatred. Mladenov chastised Abbas on May 2nd after the PA president launched a long anti-Semitic tirade:

    “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas chose to use his speech at the opening of the Palestinian National Council to repeat some of the most contemptuous anti-Semitic slurs, including the suggestion that the social behavior of Jews was the cause for the Holocaust.

    Such statements are unacceptable, deeply disturbing and do not serve the interests of the Palestinian people or peace in the Middle East.

    Denying the historic and religious connection of the Jewish people to the land and their holy sites in Jerusalem stands in contrast to reality.

    The Holocaust did not occur in a vacuum, it was the result of thousands of years of persecution. This is why attempts to rewrite, downplay or deny it are dangerous.

    Leaders have an obligation to confront anti-Semitism everywhere and always, not perpetuate the conspiracy theories that fuel it.”

    Mladenov was right to chastise Abbas for his anti-Semitic speech but it must have caught Abbas off guard as he never heard Mladenov lambast Hamas for their anti-Semitic genocidal charter. Further, Abbas sees a world community beginning to embrace his call for a boycott of Israel, referring to Israel by his preferred terms of a “colonial settler project” that engages in “apartheid.” Abbas thinks he’s winning the “Zionism is Racism” branding campaign and considers it only a matter of time when countries stop criticizing him for paying salaries to the murderers of Israeli Jews.

    It is true that Israel must have a single negotiating party who has control of all Palestinian territories that can deliver upon a peace agreement. But Arab unity is being forged on the basis of Jew-hatred, which will never be able to accept the Jewish State. So the UN is pivoting to a different peace model as advocated by Palestinian Arabs: a purely Arab anti-Semitic Palestinian State and a bi-national Israel, as it is the only model which can meet the parameters of Muslim “dignity” and unify the Palestinian factions.

    Related First One Through articles:

    The Left-Wing’s Two State Solution: 1.5 States for Arabs, 0.5 for Jews

    The United Nations Must Take Its Own Medicine Re the Palestinian Authority

    A Proper UN Security Council Resolution on Israel and HAMAS

    The Israeli Peace Process versus the Palestinian Divorce Proceedings

    “Peace” According to Palestinian “Moderates”

    Encourage the 7% and 44% of Palestinians

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    Elul and the UN’s Durban Conference

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    The Hebrew month of Elul is the last month of the year and traditionally marks the beginning period of repentance in the Jewish calendar. It is on the first day of the month that the prophet Moses ascended Mount Sinai 3,300 years ago, and forty days later, on Yom Kippur, when he descended and broke the tablets when he saw the Children of Israel worshipping beside a statue of a golden calf.

    To mark the period of repentance, rabbis instituted a tradition of reciting Psalm 27 at the end of morning and evening prayers. It is a call for God to protect Jews from their enemies.

    As we approach the twentieth anniversary of UN Durban Conference and the attacks of 9/11 which both occurred during Elul, and how governments and people choose to commemorate those events, two sentences in the psalm deserve deeper exploration. Sentences 11 & 12:

    ה֤וֹרֵ֥נִי יְהֹוָ֗ה דַּ֫רְכֶּ֥ךָ וּ֭נְחֵנִי בְּאֹ֣רַח מִישׁ֑וֹר לְ֝מַ֗עַן שֽׁוֹרְרָֽי׃ Show me Your way, O LORD, and lead me on a level path because of my watchful foes.

    אַֽל־תִּ֭תְּנֵנִי בְּנֶ֣פֶשׁ צָרָ֑י כִּ֥י קָמוּ־בִ֥י עֵדֵי־שֶׁ֝֗קֶר וִיפֵ֥חַ חָמָֽס׃ Do not subject me to the will of my foes, for false witnesses and unjust accusers have appeared against me.

    While the Psalm is set up to seek God’s protection from armies (verse 3), the lines above highlight that enemies include those who wish to undermine Jews with slander. The “watchful foes” scrutinize every action and then bear “false witness” with accusations that seek to seriously harm Jews as they enter the high holidays.

    The United Nations, a body conceived of to promote peace and reduce bloodshed, has become a platform for “false witnesses and unjust accusers” which lambast Israel. UN Watch noted that in 2020, the UN General Assembly passed 17 resolutions condemning Israel, while passing a total of six against the rest of the world.

    Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said that the “farce at the General Assembly underscores a simple fact: the UN’s automatic majority has no interest in truly helping Palestinians, nor in protecting anyone’s human rights; the goal of these ritual, one-sided condemnations is to scapegoat Israel.“

    United States Secretary of State Colin Powell said much the same as he withdrew from the World Conference Against Racism held in Durban, South Africa on September 3, 2001:

    “Today I have instructed our representatives at the World Conference Against Racism to return home. I have taken this decision with regret, because of the importance of the international fight against racism and the contribution that the Conference could have made to it. But, following discussions today by our team in Durban and others who are working for a successful conference, I am convinced that will not be possible. I know that you do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of “Zionism equals racism;” or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust; or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel; or that singles out only one country in the world–Israel–for censure and abuse.“

    Flyer at 2001 World Conference Against Racism with a picture of Adolf Hitler with caption “What if I had won?” and continued that there would be no Israel nor bloodshed of Palestinians (source UN Watch)

    The United Nations has promoted and given legitimacy to the “watchful foes” of Jews – both around the world and in the United States, at governmental levels, among lay leaders and ordinary citizens – to promote vicious slander against Israel and the Jewish people. As those lies are becoming mainstreamed, it is time to stop reciting Psalm 27 quietly but “with shouts of joy, singing and chanting,” (verse 6), for God to cause these evil people and organizations to “stumble and fall” (verse 2).

    Related First One Through articles:

    Rep. Ilhan Omar and The 2001 Durban Racism Conference

    The Anti-Zionist Lexicon – Vilifying Israel

    B.D.S. Is Not A Social Mission Action

    The Global Intifada

    Hamas’s Willing Executioners

    The Veil of Hatred

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