It is a sad state of affairs when the media ignores the slaughter of innocents and brands such events in the nomenclature of the killers.
Consider the “Second Intifada” which Palestinian Arabs started in September 2000 when they refused to accept 98% of their desires in a peace deal with Israel. Palestinians went on multi-year rampages blowing up buses and pizza parlors full of kids and women. Over 1,000 Israelis were killed until Israel constructed a security barrier to stem the tide of murderers. Rather than call the event a “war” or a “pogrom,” the media calls it by the term Palestinians chose, “Intifada,” which means “uprising.” It’s shameful. It should be called the “2 Percent War.”
On December 11, 2020, The New York Times didn’t just adopt an Arab name to mask Arab sensibilities, it adopted an entire Arab narrative in rewriting history.
In an article about Morocco normalizing relations with Israel, the paper wrote the following:
“Today, Morocco has a Jewish population of about 4,000, said to Samuel L. Kaplan, the U.S. Ambassador to Rabat from 2009 to 2013. That is down from more than 200,000 Jews who lived in Morocco when Israel was established in 1948 but who then began responding to calls to immigrate to Israel.”
There were certainly some Jews who felt the Zionist urge to move to Israel but the vast majority fled their homes due to rampant anti-Semitism that overcame the Muslim world when Jews took control of what they deemed to be Muslim land.
After Israel’s declaration of independence in May 1948, two pogroms broke out in Morocco, in the towns of Oujda and Djerrada. The attacks killed 47 people, wounded hundreds and lefts hundreds homeless. Not surprisingly, 10% of the country’s Jews quickly fled the country.
After Morocco declared independence in 1956, an Arabization of the country commenced, cutting Jews off from parts of society. At the same time, the government prohibited emigration to Israel, which lasted until 1963. In 1961, roughly 90,000 Moroccan Jews had to be ransomed in Operation Yakhnin, bringing Jews to Israel. In the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War, another 40,000 Jews fled to Israel.
Headline in NY Times in 1956, seemingly forgotten by the paper today
The number of Jews that fled persecution from homes they lived in for centuries in Muslim-majority countries was between 850,000 and 1 million people.
Algeria 140,000
Egypt 75,000
Iraq 135,000
Lebanon 5,000
Libya 38,000
Morocco 265,000
Syria 30,000
Tunisia 105,000
Yemen 55,000
This total of 850,000 Jews does not include the Jews who fled Iran and Afghanistan. It far surpasses the Palestinian Arabs who left Israel in 1948 when they waited for their Arab neighbors to destroy the nascent Jewish State.
The New York Times rewriting history that Arab Muslims are never anti-Semites coincides with its depiction that White Americans are always racist. It is no wonder that White Jews are dropping the paper.
Not long after Donald Trump assumed the presidency of the United States, he made overtures to the Palestinians in the hopes of brokering a peace deal. He invited the acting-President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to the White House on May 3, 2017. They discussed tackling terrorism and building economic prosperity for Palestinian Arabs and the promise of working together to build a better future for the region.
Shortly thereafter, on May 23rd, President Trump visited Abbas in Bethlehem and reiterated the need to confront terrorism, “Peace can never take root in an environment where violence is tolerated, funded and even rewarded…. The terrorists and extremists, and those who give them aid and comfort, must be driven out from our society forever. This wicked ideology must be obliterated — and I mean completely obliterated — and innocent life must be protected.”
Just a week later, Trump handed a peculiar gift to Abbas: on June 1 he removed the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.
ANO was part of the October 1997 initial class of FTO’s along with HAMAS and Hizbullah. ANO carried out roughly 90 hijackings, assassinations and kidnappings of diplomats, and attacks on synagogues during the period 1974-1992 killing about 300 people to earn the FTO designation. The group targeted people viewed as moderates – including Palestinians – who contemplated the ongoing existence of the Jewish State. When Abu Nidal died in 2002, the group went inactive.
Which begs the question of why Trump took a 15-year defunct group off of the FTO list, right after meeting with Abbas.
Terrorist Sabri al-Banna, better known by his nom de guerre, Abu Nidal
Abbas was (and remains) a very unpopular leader among Palestinian Arabs who have wanted him to resign according to each poll taken over the last many years, with 64% holding such opinion at the time of the Abbas-Trump meeting. Abbas polled to come in third in a theoretical three-candidate presidential race at that time!
So Trump threw Abbas a bone to boost his standing among Palestinians, to demonstrate that he could deliver results with the new U.S. President. It was arguably a meaningless gesture as the group was inactive, but it was symbolic in clearing the name of one of the most radical and notorious Palestinian terrorist groups.
In exchange for the Trump pardon of the ANO, Abbas advanced the idea of stopping the pay-to-slay program in which the PA paid the families of terrorists in Israeli jails. The proposal landed with a thud among the Palestinians, with a nearly unanimous 91% of Palestinians standing opposed to messing with the martyr-moolah.
Things then soured at the United Nations.
Abbas met with Trump on September 20, 2017 and voiced optimism regarding the efforts Trump’s team had made with over 20 meetings with Palestinian officials in the first months in office, but he then launched his habitual screed before the United Nations General Assembly with comments about Israeli Jews living in “East Jerusalem” which will “stir religious animosity and may lead to a violent religious conflict,… playing with fire … drag[ing] us into a religious war. This is dangerous, extremely dangerous for you and us,” in a not so subtle threat of a global jihad against Jews.
Abbas further threatened Jews and insulted Trump by declaring at the end of his speech “I salute our glorious martyrs and our courageous prisoners in Israeli jails,” to appease his Arab base. This embrace of terrorism and public challenge of Trump’s demand to stop rewarding terrorism was too much. Less than three months later, Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.
Abbas squandered Trump’s gift of removing an evil jihadist group from the U.S. list of terrorist organizations to gain Palestinian support. Instead, he elected to boost his own jihadi bona fides and stood before the world glorifying Palestinian terrorists who killed Israelis and threatening a global jihad if Jews continued to live in their holiest city of Jerusalem. Trump’s reaction was swift in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Abbas’s political self-immolation continues to burn to this day.
For people looking to get a quick understanding of terrorist attacks, many turn to the global media companies like CNN’s ”Fast Facts” section. It is there that much of the world gets an alternative view of terrorism, sanitized of the evils of Palestinian anti-Semitism.
CNN has a section called “Terrorist Attacks by Vehicle Fast Facts” devoted to global car ramming attacks. The site leads with a story of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch calling for the use of cars as death machines in 2010 and ISIS doing much the same in September 2014. The website then pivots to a “Timeline” section which recounts 15 terrorist attacks using vehicles since 2006. There is only a single incident in Israel listed and there, CNN quotes the Palestinian terrorist’s family as denying the killer had any involvement with Hamas.
The untold reality is that, like airplane hijackings, Palestinian Arabs are at the forefront of this form of terrorism too.
The paucity of Palestinian terrorism on the site is particularly shocking because there were dozens of Palestinians using cars as weapons against Jews during the media company’s timeframe, along with the active incitement and encouragement of Palestinian leadership.
Fatah, the party of the acting-president of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas, posted on its Facebook page several cartoons encouraging Arabs to run over Israeli Jews in November 2014, shortly after a Palestinian Arab ran over and killed a few people at a bus stop.
Fatah website promoting running over Jews
The cartoon’s language of “Run over, friend, run over the foreign settler!” and “hit the gas at 199 [km/h] for al-Aqsa,” made the murderous motives abundantly clear.
The Palestinians loved the cartoons so much they began to make their own videos calling for car ramming attacks the following week. The song, “Runaway oh Zionist” is described by ADL:
“The song, preformed in Hebrew with Arabic and Hebrew subtitles, says, “Runaway oh you Zionist, Runaway…Minutes, and a car will run over you” and depicts a Jewish man singing about running away from cars. In the part of the video where the Jewish man gets hit by a car at a bus station and thrown into a cemetery, the lyrics are, “A car will attack you from each direction to give you a ride to the grave.” The song closes with “Runaway Zionists because you will be killed by all means.“
Screenshot of Palestinian video “Runaway oh Zionist.”
Another song circulated online at this time titled “Run-over this settler” was performed by a Palestinian duo with lyrics: “Ran-over a Jewish settler…did it, with his limited resources, for his country.” The song called upon Palestinians to “wait for them at the intersection, let the settler sink in the red blood. Terrify them don’t be merciful.” Jordan-based Al Yarmuk satellite TV station aired the song on its channel as well.
Fatah officials joined the chorus for vehicular homicide with statements like “We will pursue you [Zionists] with car rammings and kill you with rocks.” None of this was covered by CNN.
A thorough review of vehicular terrorism was conducted by the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose University in November 2019 in a study called “Smashing Into Crowds” — An Analysis of Vehicle Ramming Attacks.” It’s an important work designed to review how transportation officials should prepare for acts of terrorism.
According to the report, 22% of global vehicular terrorist attacks on civilians since 2010 were committed by Palestinian Arabs. That figure EXCLUDED attacks on police and military personnel which approached 1,000 incidents according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It included all attacks by a broad range of individuals such as those suffering from mental health issues (the 22% Palestinian figure would be over 50% if just focused on jihadists). But, again, CNN could only mention a single occurrence by Palestinians and fail to describe any of their incitement.
The Mineta report captures the essence of car-ramming attacks by jihadists, especially for Palestinians:
“The emergence of groups inspired by religion-based ideologies contributed to the escalation of violence. The substitution of God’s will for political constituency eroded self-imposed constraints, such as killing large numbers of innocent civilians, including children. Religious fanatics count only on heavenly approval for their actions. Condemnation by those regarded as unbelievers or infidels matters little, and undiluted commitment guarantees paradise. Among religiously inspired terrorists, suicide attacks became common….
“The change in recruiting methods [using social media and online postings] produced changes in the local terrorist population and also affected tactics. The Internet attracted individuals—it did not create local groups. Terrorist campaigns were replaced by one-off attacks; there was no institutional learning, no improvement in operational skills over time. Instead, jihadists remained mostly unconnected individuals operating alone with limited resources. When they did reach out to join others, they risked being taken in by police undercover operations. Isolated jihadists could not sustain terrorist campaigns or inspire sufficient numbers to create a high volume of violence.
“The use of vehicles as weapons is an ideal tactic for today’s circumstances. Vehicles are a readily available “weapon.” Limited skill is required, and the ability to drive is widespread. Little preparation is required for an attack. Cities filled with people and vehicles provide ample targets which cannot easily be protected, and high body counts are potentially achievable. It is not surprising, then, that the number of car-ramming attacks has increased….
“Ramming attacks did not become a terrorist tactic until the 1990s when Palestinians started carrying out vehicular assaults in Israel. Many of the attacks targeted off-duty soldiers waiting at bus stops—a ubiquitous sight in Israel—but some of the attacks were directed against both soldiers and groups of civilians.
“Car ramming did not become a major feature of the Palestinian terrorist campaign until a decade later. The 2001 bus attack was the only vehicle ramming attack to occur during the Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada from 2000 to 2005, during which there were hundreds of bombings, armed assaults, and rocket and mortar attacks. Occasional vehicle ramming attacks occurred during subsequent years, especially in the summer of 2008, but the sharp increase in Palestinian vehicle attacks did not begin until after 2014. Still, HAMAS and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad were the only Palestinian groups to call for such attacks. By 2016, vehicle ramming attacks had evolved from a statistically rare event to reportedly become the second most common form of attack in Israel and the second deadliest form of attack carried out by Palestinians, behind only stabbing.
“The increasing difficulty of smuggling explosives into the West Bank after the construction of the West Bank Barrier built in response to the Second Intifada and increased border barriers and controls between Gaza and Egypt is offered as at least a partial explanation for the subsequent increase in car rammings by Palestinians. Car rammings increased as preferred modes of attack became more difficult. Palestinians may also have found inspiration in exhortations from global Jihadist groups like al Qaeda and ISIS.”
The report – which was not about Palestinian terrorism – had no difficulty clearly pointing out that the origin of car ramming terrorism came from Palestinians, that Palestinian leadership specifically calls on people to use vehicles to kill Israeli Jews who are treated as less than human, and that Palestinians are the leading users of such terrorist tactics – even more than all other jihadists around the world combined.
Yet CNN would have its readers believe otherwise.
Most people will not look up an 18-page report compiled by transportation experts at an American university to learn what actually happened around the world from jihadist terrorism and rely on readily-available media like CNN which, unbeknownst to viewers, attempts to sanitize the crimes against humanity executed routinely by Palestinian Arabs. Not only does truth die in the hands of mainstream media but innocent victims suffer a second-time from the failures of memory and justice.
Peter Beinart writes for the New York Times, is a contributor to CNN and serves as the Jewish mouthpiece to mask anti-Semitism as something less than anti-Semitism to the world.
In attempting to defend Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) of the accusation that she promotes the destruction of Israel when she says “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” Beinart offered the following:
“I get why many Jews find slogan “Palestine from River to Sea” frightening. Some have used it to disregard Jewish rights (1st Hamas charter, for instance). But @RashidaTlaib has been clear that Jews + Palestinians deserve equality. Suggesting otherwise is a smear“
Peter Beinart defends Hamas and Rashida Tlaib
The founding Hamas Charter in 1988 did not simply “disregard Jewish rights” as Beinart claims. It is a screed against Jews as evil creatures who have taken over Muslim land.
Opening: The text makes clear the problem is Jews: “they who have received the scriptures [Jews]… the greater part of them are transgressors… smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found.” The solution to the problem of Palestine is found in a religious war: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.“
Preamble: The preamble lays out the enemy and charge: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. [Hamas] is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realised.”
Articles 1 & 2: Makes clear that the fight is a religious one: “The Movement’s programme is Islam… one of the wings of Moslem Brotherhood.”
Articles 3 & 4: Is a call to “raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” A call to expel all non-Muslims.
Articles 5 & 6: Hamas seeks to “raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine… in the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.”
Articles 7 & 8: States that the “struggle against the Zionist invaders… goes back to 1939,” well before the Six Day War in 1967, and should be fought by killing Jews: “Moslems fight the Jews(killing the Jews).”
Articles 9 & 10: Declared that evil arises wherever Islam is not in charge
Articles 11 & 12: Declare that “the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations,” and “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” making non-Jews a national and religious offense and threat
Articles 13 & 14: Call for a religious war as there “is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad,” because diplomacy and “conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems.”
Articles 15 & 16: Declare that this is a religious war: “In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.”
Articles 17 & 18: Call for every Muslim man, woman and child to fight to “liberate” the land from Zionists who are “hostile to humanity and Islam“
Articles 19 & 20: Actually calls Jews by the names of the people who had slaughtered them: Jews are a “vicious enemy which acts in a way similar to Nazism… In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money,” repeating an antisemitic canard.
Articles 21 & 22: Tout conspiracy theories which combine Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the forgery ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’- “With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein…. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.“
Articles 25, 26 & 27: Call for Arab and Muslim unity in the “the liberation of Palestine… our fate is one and the enemy is a joint enemy to all of us... Islamic Resistance Movement is a fighting movement.”
Article 28: Continues to label Zionists as contemptible: “The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.“
Articles 29 & 30: Call for the Islamic world to fight “the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control.”
Article 31: Calls for the supremacy of Islam, “Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam… It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region… The Zionist Nazi activities against our people will not last for long.“
Article 32: Continues to build on the conspiracy theories found in Articles 21 & 22: “The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… here is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one’s country, the dispersion ofcitizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values… fight with the warmongering Jews.”
Article 33: A call to global jihad against the Jews, “everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty while loudly proclaiming: Hail to Jihad. Their cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished.”
Articles 34 & 35: Are calls for a religious war, “Moslems were able to retrieve the land only when they stood under the wing of their religious banner… This is the only way to liberate Palestine… Nothing can overcome iron except iron.… confront the Zionist invasion and defeat it… rid themselves of the effects of ideological invasion.”
Article 36: Hamas are the “soldiers… against the Zionist enemy and its lackeys.”
That is the Hamas Charter which Beinart said simply “disregards Jewish rights.”
The United Nations disregards Jewish rights when it opposes Jews – and only Jews – praying in their holiest location. It disregards Jewish rights when it declares that Jews – and only Jews – cannot live in parts of their holy land.
Hamas doesn’t “disregard Jewish rights” as Beinart states; it denies the basic humanity and dignity of Jews and Judaism with vast conspiracy theories and calls to kill Jews and destroy Israel. To voluntarily and publicly defend the Hamas Charter in such way is outrageous and appalling. Beinart is as likely to defend the Nazi regime with such heinous sentiments, and underscores why he is so comfortable defending Tlaib.
Hamas is the rabidly anti-Semitic terrorist group which runs Gaza and touts itself as simply a “resistant group” while pro-Palestinian media calls it a “militant group.” The group actively tries to recast itself as a legitimate political party and voice of Palestinians as it won 58% of the parliament in elections held in 2007. Its supporters go so far to call it a “social justice” movement, so as to allow more funds to flow into its coffers, such as former head of the UK’s Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn who said:
“The idea that an organisation that is dedicated towards the good of the Palestinian people and bringing about long-term peace and social justice and political justice in the whole region should be labelled as a terrorist organisation by the British government is really a big, big historical mistake and I would invite the government to reconsider their position on this matter and start talking directly to Hamas and Hezbollah…”
The main governmental sponsors of Hamas are Iran, Qatar and Turkey. Iran makes no secret of its desire to destroy Israel, making its support understandable. Biden has made clear that he intends to reengage with Iran and end the crippling financial sanctions imposed by President Trump.
Saudi Arabia just previewed that it is going to resolve the blockade it imposed on Qatar as a “gift for Biden,” as described by an advisor in the region. Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt had all cut diplomatic ties with Qatar due to its support for terrorism. That is seemingly coming to a close.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden meets with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, March 9, 2016. (Flash90)
Ismail Haniyeh, leader of the Hamas celebrated Biden’s win and said “We call on President-elect Joe Biden to make a historic correction to the discriminatory American policy toward the Palestinian people that has caused instability in the region and the world.” It would appear that Hamas is not just looking for direct aid from a Biden government but is very hopeful that indirect funds will flow via the terrorist group’s sponsors in Iran, Qatar and Turkey, and possibly even from the European Union which curtailed sponsoring Palestinian terrorism during President Trump’s term.
Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam recognized the “altar of the Synagogue of Satan” where Jews conceive of the “filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out: turning men into women, and women into men.“
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the obelisk is used by “filthy Zionist agents” to turn Muslims against Muslims.
Based on such insights, one can imagine seeing these objects showing up everywhere sometime soon. If they do not, it will just be a sign of how powerful this object truly is.
Jewish Voice for Peace is an infamous anti-Zionist organization among Israel supporters. The fact that it labels itself as “Jewish” only makes the dynamic worse. As “Catch the Jew!” author Tuvia Tenenbom wrote, such self-haters are more noxious than Arab terrorists who at least have a selfish motivation for wanting to see dead Jews. In writing about lar-left Jewish groups like Rabbis for Human Rights, Tenenbom noted, “if logic is any guide, Israel will not survive. Besieged by hate from without and from within, no land can survive for very long.“
Consider the weekend of May 4-5, 2019 when the terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched over 600 rockets into civilian areas of Israel. Four Israelis were killed in the attacks: Moshe Agadi, Ziad Alhamada, Moshe Feder and Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman. When JVP wrote about the attacks, it did not lead with the four dead Israelis. Instead, it started its press release with the Palestinians who were killed:
“In the last 24 hours, Israeli airstrikes have killed eleven Palestinians, including a 14-month-old baby and her pregnant aunt. Seven of the eleven were identified as Saba Abu Arar, Falastin Abu Arar, Balal Muhammad al-Bana, Abdullah Abu al-Atta, Mahmoud Subhi Issa, Fawzi Abed Wadi, and Khaled Muhammad Abu Qleiq.”
JVP did not mention that Israel’s attacks were retaliatory for the Palestinian rocket barrage. Conversely, its press release took the time to mention seven of the dead Palestinian by name.
When JVP next turned its attention to Israelis, it wrote the following:
“Three people have been killed in Israel from rockets launched by Hamas — including Bedouin citizen of Israel, Zaed al-Hammamda, 50, and two more Israelis killed in a separate rocket strike later Sunday, at a factory.“
In ordering the story with dead Palestinians first and adding the clause “later Sunday” regarding the murdered Jews, JVP inverted cause-and-effect and made the Palestinians appear to be responding to an Israeli attack. Further, JVP would only mention the Israeli Bedouin by name but not the murdered Israeli Jews.
Member of Jewish Voice for Peace
JVP’s invective about Israel is so commonplace that it is not news-worthy, but its dismissiveness about murdered Jews should make even anti-Zionists pause.
Hamas ended its foundational charter by clearly identifying its enemy.
The Islamic Resistance Movement is Composed of Soldiers:
Article Thirty-Six:
While paving its way, the Islamic Resistance Movement, emphasizes time and again to all the sons of our people, to the Arab and Islamic nations, that it does not seek personal fame, material gain, or social prominence. It does not aim to compete against any one from among our people, or take his place. Nothing of the sort at all. It will not act against any of the sons of Moslems or those who are peaceful towards it from among non-Moslems, be they here or anywhere else. It will only serve as a support for all groupings and organizations operating against the Zionist enemy and its lackeys.
The Islamic Resistance Movement adopts Islam as its way of life. Islam is its creed and religion. Whoever takes Islam as his way of life, be it an organization, a grouping, a country or any other body, the Islamic Resistance Movement considers itself as their soldiers and nothing more.
We ask Allah to show us the right course, to make us an example to others and to judge between us and our people with truth. “O Lord, do thou judge between us and our nation with truth; for thou art the best judge.” (Al Araf – Verse 89).
The last of our prayers will be praise to Allah, the Master of the Universe.
Hamas’s raison d’etre, its reason for being, is to fight the Jewish State. It states that it is operating as “soldiers… against the Zionist enemy and its lackeys.” It has no greater call to lead or create a peaceful society, and is happy to be the foot soldiers of other “groupings and organizations” similarly operating against Jews living in Israel and those whom support such endeavor. In particular, the fuel to light this jihad against the Jews stems from religion: “Islam as its way of life.“
Palestinian members of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, during a patrol in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on April 27, 2020. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)
And the Palestinian Arabs elected Hamas to 58% of the parliament with this charter while the media talks of “Islamic resistance” as a peaceful and natural endeavor.
Jim Wolfensohn, former head of the World Bank, died this week. The New York Times wrote about his life’s work in a long obituary. As is commonplace for the legacy paper, it retold his final acts of generosity to conceal the behavior of its Victims of Preference, Palestinian Arabs.
In the concluding sentences of a 2000-word article, the Times wrote the following:
“His last major undertaking was in the mid-2000s as a special envoy for a diplomatic group known as the Quartet — made up of the United Nations, the United States, the Russian Federation and the European Union — which was seeking an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in which Israel would disengage from the Gaza Strip. If the deal were struck, he was to help coordinate revitalization efforts once the Palestinian authorities had taken over the area, the U.N. said at the time.
However, the negotiations failed.
“The Middle East,” Mr. Wolfensohn grimly observed, ”turned out to be my mission impossible.”
A casual reader would assume that Wolfensohn was simply one more person who tried to help the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The peace deal described above would have had Israel “disengage from the Gaza Strip” and then his work of coordinating “revitalization efforts” would commence. As “negotiations failed,” Wolfensohn did not actually coordinate any efforts to help the Palestinians.
Not so.
Israel did “disengage from the Gaza Strip” and Wolfensohn coordinated an effort which had Jewish donors around the world buy the Israeli greenhouses and equipment left in Gaza to hand to the Palestinians to jump start their economy. Wolfensohn donated $500,000 of his own money to the purchases.
A Palestinian carries a plastic roll he took Tuesday from a greenhouse, background, at the evacuated Jewish settlement of Neve Dekalim in the Gaza Strip.Emilio Morenatti / AP
Amid al-Masri, head of the Palestine Economic Development Company’s (PEDC) greenhouse project said the looting “will undermine our efforts to privatise the project as we hoped and also it could frighten investors aiming at other projects.” Indeed, the project designed to restart the Gaza economy once again proved the failure to launch at the start.
James Wolfensohn’s generosity towards the Arabs of Gaza went unmentioned by The New York Times, as to have done so would have required showing the theft and ineptitude of the local population and Palestinian Authority. For the pro-Palestinian legacy media, better to whitewash Arabs shooting themselves in the foot with some generic language about the intractable conflict.
Democratic Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Elizabeth Warren (MA) proposed that a new Joe Biden administration immediately cancel student debt upon taking office. They proposed cancelling $50,000 for all borrowers of federal student loans while Senator Bernie Sanders (VT) proposed cancelling all student debt.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren and House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn in July 2019, well before the pandemic. Photo: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
This initiative has great appeal to progressives whose economic mission is to transfer wealth to lower income people. It also goes directly to big Democratic donors.
The Education Industry is Democrats Big Money Donor
Democrat Joe Biden out-raised Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by 48% ($1.38 billion to $864 million). While the legacy liberal media lies that small donors made up Biden’s base, according to the non-partisan OpenSecrets.org calculations, Biden was all about big money. Libertarian Jo Jorgenson had 68.6% of her donations come in small amounts followed by Trump with 45.0%. Biden was third with only 39.3% coming from small donors.
The big money to the Biden campaign came from the usual Democratic loyalists like lawyers and lobbyists ($83 million in total, almost all to Democrats). The Education sector was even bigger, with over $110 million being contributed to the presidential campaign, of which 94.2% went to Democrats. To give a sense of scale, the hedge funds and private equity industry gave a total of $55 million – HALF as much as the education sector. The oil and gas industry gave $16 million.
Why would the education industry pour so much money into a presidential campaign? Isn’t it struggling to keep up? Don’t they always ask for more money as though cash strapped? If money is so tight, how do schools “donate” more money to an election campaign than the hedge fund, oil and gas, casino and gambling industries combined?
The education industry gave more money to the 2020 presidential campaign than the hedge fund/private equity, oil and gas, and the casino/ gambling industries COMBINED.
source: opensecrets.org
Public SchoolsK-12
The giant and powerful teacher unions are the big contributors. According to Open Secrets, “two organizations account for practically all of the contributions made by teachers unions: The National Education Association (about $20 million in 2016) and the American Federation of Teachers (almost $12 million). Both groups — which compete for members, but also collaborate with each other through the NEA-AFT Partnership — are consistently among the organizations that contribute the most money to candidates and political groups.” The NEA is seemingly transparent about their partisan spending, showing on its website that 96% of its funds go to Democrats. AFT is a 1.7 million member organization headed by Randi Weingarten who makes no bones about trying to use her influence to enact liberal priorities on matters like climate change and universal healthcare.
The payoff scheme is pretty straightforward: Democrats work to empower unions whether in committing to only hire union labor or the ability to collect fees from members. In turn, the union leaders give money to Democrats and push their members to vote for their candidates. These paid-for local Democratic politicians now negotiate the contracts of the people who just helped give them their jobs, a much more loyal base than exists among taxpayers. The Democratic politicians give the unions favorable pay increases and the best healthcare and pension benefits found in the country, far superior than non-unionized citizens.
The cost for K-12 public education has ballooned under this corrupt money transfer scheme where Democratic politicians pour taxpayer money into unions who in turn pour money back into their election campaigns.
According to the US Census Bureau, the per pupil cost to educate public school students consistently rises more than inflation. In 2016, the average cost for a pubic school student was $11,763 while in 2013 it was $10,724, a 10% increase in just three years. That’s OVER THREE TIMES the 3.0% inflation of the consumer price index in that time period.
The ramp in expenses is due to a variety of items including building state-of-the-art facilities and professional-quality ball fields as well as a range of inclusion and enrichment programs for students who need more help. But the biggest costs are the teacher salaries and benefits. In 2016, 88% of the $665 billion of U.S. public school costs were in “Current Spending” of which 65% was for salaries and 35% for benefits.
Teachers’ unions focus on their core constituents – the teachers – not the students. The unions protect even the weakest non-performing teachers, making it almost impossible to fire anyone. Employees of the public education system have health and retirement plans which are the envy of CEOs of large corporations. Teachers and administrators get to retire in their 50’s with amazing benefits throughout retirement while fellow citizens must work into their 70’s. Of course, there are summers off and the occasional sabbatical, unique to the education industry. It is estimated that between 2001 and 2018 the proportion of the educational budget that went to retired teachers grew from 7.5% to 14.4%. Those fixed liabilities keep growing and are crowding out funds for children. The teacher unions prioritize their own early retirees over children and the future.
Teacher unions prioritize their own early retirees over children and the future.
Free K-12 public school is not so free to taxpayers. It is one of the major wealth transfer schemes in America where the wealthier people who own homes shoulder 65% of the costs of public school via property taxes. The wealthy and religious, who are much more likely to send their children to private school, are effectively taxed twice by paying for the services for a second time.
Public and Private Colleges
The inflated costs for education do not stop at high school and Democrats’ fingerprints are here as well.
From 1998 to 2018, the inflation for a vast range of items was 56%. The items with the highest inflation were hospital services (+211%) and colleges (+184%). A year of college today costs an average of $26,820 for in-state public college, $43,280 for out-of-state, and $54,880 for private colleges.
The cost for these degrees is beyond the budget of most people, so they apply for grants, scholarships and student loans. If it were not for the loans, many could not attend school or be forced to attend a lower cost community or in-state school.
The student loan market now stands at $1.6 Trillion. Roughly 66% of borrowers who attended public college have an average loan balance of $25,550. Graduates of private non-profit colleges have more debt, with 75% owing student loans averaging $32,300. The biggest borrowers are for private for-profit colleges where 88% of graduates have debt averaging $39,950.
Note the trend lines. The facts continue to paint an interesting story.
According to a Pew study, the number of poor and non-White people attending college increased significantly between 1996 and 2016, with the share of college students from poor households going from 12 percent to 20 percent over those 20 years, and non-White students jumping from 29 percent to 47 percent. The greatest growth occurred in private for-profit colleges, where 58 per cent of undergraduates were non-White in 2016.
The private for-profit colleges run a very different program than local colleges. As described in The Best Schools, “For-profit colleges often have higher acceptance rates than their non-profit counterparts. Many for-profit schools have an open admissions policy, meaning that they admit all who apply and meet specific, noncompetitive criteria, regardless of grades, test scores, etc. Typically schools with open enrollment only require that applicants have a high school diploma or GED certificate. For students who might struggle to gain admission to schools with competitive admissions requirements, a for-profit college might provide an open door that leads to further academic and career success.” As students with poor grades want to be able to get good jobs that often come with a college degree, they buy their college degrees at these for-profit institutions.
More poor and non-White students attending these schools are increasingly defaulting on the loans they take out for tuition. According to a report by the U.S. Department of Education, “Looney and Yannelis (2015) found that, between 2000 and 2014, the substantial increase in borrowers and the doubling of loan default rates were associated with attending for-profit, and to a lesser extent, 2-year and other nonselective institutions. Among students attending 2-year institutions who borrowed, for-profit students borrowed four times the amount borrowed by their peers who attended public colleges (Belfield 2013).”
The higher default rates are not only associated with the more expensive tuition costs at the for-profit colleges. The same report noted “on average, employment and earnings are higher for students who attend public or nonprofit institutions (Liu and Belfield 2014; Deming, Goldin, and Katz 2012). Six years after beginning their programs, students who ever attended for-profit institutions were more likely than students who attended only public and nonprofit institutions to be unemployed or out of the labor market, and they earned less than students with similar student characteristics and school completion rates did (Liu and Belfield 2014).”
The private for-profit college industry is seemingly taking advantage of everyone: the poor and non-White communities by awarding degrees at a high cost with seemingly lower ultimate earnings, and the American taxpayers who fund the loans to these students which are not being paid back.
Enter Democrats.
Rather than fight to remove the accreditation of these private for-profit colleges which fail everyone or refuse to give student loans to students with poor grades (or cap the loan amounts at a minimum as the poor grades are the underlying reason many apply to the schools), Democratic politicians are making the grand generous offer – WITH YOUR MONEY – to bail out people with high student debt because most of them are non-White. Far-left Rep. Ayana Pressley (MA) was clear in that point when she argued that cancelling student loan debt will “close the racial wealth gap.” The scheme also keeps these for-profit colleges afloat as they need the students and tax-payer funded student loans to pay their shareholders. Democrats need these institutions around to keep churning out degrees for people with poor grades who cannot get accepted to other colleges.
Knowing that the student demand is there and the loans are available, colleges have little incentive to cut costs including terminating the system of professor tenure and sabbaticals as well as renegotiating teachers’ pension largess. There is also no reason to turn away applicants with poor grades as the American tax-payers fund the farce. Democrats join the joke as they hand-out money and college degrees to loyal constituents – the education industry, the poor and non-White communities.
The education industry is a runaway freight train and Democratic politicians are gleefully throwing away the brakes.
First One Through 