Mahmoud Abbas still remains the acting president of the Palestinian Authority, having started his four-year term back in 2005. He has refused to hold elections since then, fearing he would lose, and now, sixteen years on and 85 years old, the moment of truth is upon him.
In January 2021, Abbas said that he would hold presidential and parliamentary elections in 2021 even though he has always faired poorly in Palestinian polls. In a two-way race between Abbas (head of the Fatah party) and Ismail Haniyeh of the terrorist group Hamas, it is a toss-up as to who will win. According to the March 2021 PCPSR poll, Abbas would get 47% of the vote to 46% for Haniyeh but the December 2020 poll had Haniyeh with 50% and Abbas at 43%. Other questions in the poll indicated that Palestinians believed that there would be negative ramifications if Hamas was elected which may have helped Abbas’s numbers.
The majority of Palestinians think Abbas is corrupt and want him to step down. Their preferred candidate to replace him is a convicted terrorist named Marwan Barghouti who is serving five life terms in an Israeli jail for the murder of five people during several terrorist attacks. From his cell, Barghouti declared that he is considering a run for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority, and if Abbas doesn’t name him as his heir apparent of Fatah, he will run on his own ticket and put forward his own slate for legislative elections.
Seafood Market restaurant in which three Israelis were killed in March 2002 was one of several terrorist attacks attributed to convicted terrorist and one of the leaders of the Second “Intifada,” Marwan Barghouti
According to the same Palestinian poll, should Barghouti run on his own, he gather 48% of the vote, Haniyeh would net 29% and Abbas just 19%.
The polls leave Abbas with a choice: 1) he can run for president and hope that Barghouti doesn’t run and be in a neck-and-neck race with Hamas; 2) run for president and show up last in a three horse race with Barghouti and his slate being victorious; or 3) name Barghouti as his successor and retire.
It seems that Abbas will pick the fourth choice: delay the elections again. That’s an option likely to appeal to the Biden Administration which is trying to donate American taxpayer dollars to the Palestinians, which would likely get complicated if Abbas names a convicted terrorist as head of the Palestinian Authority. But Abbas is 85 years old and should he opt to name a wild card like Mohammad Shtayyeh (who refuses to recognize Israel and endorses the pay-to-slay program) he will likely both be retired and watch Fatah get ousted by Hamas.
The world must ponder what to make of a society that will soon be headed by either a convicted jailed terrorist or the leader of a terrorist organization. Regrettably, it is still unlikely to internalize the reason of why there has been no progress in “peace talks” with Israel.
Democrats and Republicans are taking aim at each other about voting rights. Each has portrayed the other as racist, naive or dishonest. In truth, each makes fair points and the best policy is to incorporate suggestions from each.
Issue
Suggestion
Comment
Automatic registration
Democrats
Get all citizens registered easily
Accessible ballots
Democrats
Allow for big fonts, multiple languages
Picture ID
Republicans
Prevent fraud and insure integrity of vote
Early voting
Democrats
Make it easier for people to cast vote
No Mail-in vote
Republicans
Prevent fraud and insure vote integrity
Suggestions to overhaul current voting system incorporating suggestions of both parties
Many of the above recommendations complement each other. Allowing early voting minimizes the need for mail-in votes. Requiring a picture ID to prevent fraud is logical and also dovetails with eliminating mail-in voting.
The most important thing regarding voting is for it to accurately reflect the desire of legal voters. Fraud and the legitimate fear of fraud undermine our democracy, the government and unity of the republic. For the sake of that unity, incorporate the logical proposals of both Democrats and Republicans.
When Israel declared its new state on May 14, 1948, U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI) supported Democratic President Truman’s quick recognition of the Jewish State. In his capacity as the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said:
“The prompt recognition of the provisional government as the de facto authority in the new State of Israel is the logical and proper step following the termination of the British mandate…. It responds to a basic decision taken at the United Nations at our instance. It is a positive actions after many months of critical and unhappy indecision.“
The New York Times, May 15, 1948
The State of Michigan has changed a lot in its attitudes towards Israel since 1948.
In 2019, the state had the second highest total Arab population, just behind California, counting 221,631 persons, or about 2.2% of the state which perhaps changed the tone regarding policies towards Israel. In November 2018, the state elected Rashida Tlaib to Congress and re-elected her two years later. Born in Detroit, MI, she is the descendant of Palestinian Arabs and the most anti-Israel voice in Congress today. In January 2021 she said:
“I think it’s important to understand that Israel is a racist state… they don’t believe that [Palestinian Arabs] are equal human beings that deserve to live.“
On March 12, 2021, Tlaib penned a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that incorrectly called “Palestine” an actual entity and falsely claimed that Israel had an obligation to provide COVID-19 vaccines to people in Gaza, the neighboring strip administered by a U.S.-designated terrorist group committed to Israel’s destruction.
The letter continued with lies denouncing “Israel’s ongoing colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” as if East Jerusalem was an actual place rather than a footnote related to a city once divided by war for the years 1949-1967. Further, the “Palestinian West Bank” is Area A which Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo Accords. There was never a “Palestinian West Bank” before then, and it is not “colonized” by Israel.
Tlaib wrote the letter with Mark Pocan (D-WI) and secured signatures from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Marie Newman (D-IL), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Andre Carson (D-IN), Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Hank Johnson (D-GA). All Democrats.
At the time of Israel’s founding, a leading Republican senator from the state of Michigan worked with a Democratic administration to support the Jewish State. Unfortunately, 73 years later, we see far-left Democrats following a shrill Congresswoman from Michigan in aggressively trying to pull this Democratic administration from supporting Israel. As it relates to Israel, mainstream Republicans and Democrats have more in common than either party has with the Socialist fringe inside the Democratic party.
The Biden Administration announced that it is going to send $150 million of American tax dollars to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. This “temporary” agency was established after the Arab war to destroy Israel in 1948-9, to care for “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict.” It has continued to extend its mandate for decades, now caring for grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those “persons.”
Several parties voiced their disapproval with the United States’ UNRWA donation. Former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said “UNRWA, is among the most corrupt and counterproductive of all UN agencies. President Trump was right to abandon it.” Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan added “We believe that this UN agency for so-called ‘refugees’ should not exist in its current format.“
UNRWA office in Jerusalem. (photo: First One Through)
To consider how the U.N. has handled “so-called ‘refugees'” in this “counterproductive” agency, imagine two Arabs leaving Palestine during the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. One had come to Palestine from Iraq in 1925 and the other from Syria in 1935, both settling in Jaffa. The Iraqi-Palestinian owned his home and his business and was reluctant to leave everything he had built but concluded that the war zone was too risky and returned to Iraq in 1949. The Syrian-Palestinian was renting his home and worked on a farm outside of town. He returned to Syria early in the war, assuming that the five invading Arab armies would finish the Zionists in short order and he could return to a Jew-free city, maybe even under the flag of Syria.
At war’s end, the Zionists were able to hold onto land – more than suggested under the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan and less than allocated under the British Palestine Mandate – and had no interest in allowing the return of those Arabs which wanted to see Israel destroyed.
The Iraqi-Palestinian Arab decided to abandon his Jaffa home and business and started life anew among his cousins in Iraq. However, the Syrian-Palestinian opted to not start again in his old neighborhood where he lived fifteen years earlier, and instead decided to take the free housing, food, education and medical services offered by the United Nations as part of its UNRWA initiative. His grandchildren continue to live as wards of the world because of that decision.
Another person impacted by the Arab-Israeli War was not an Arab but a Jew. He came to Palestine from Yemen at the end of the 19th century and moved to Jerusalem. The Jordanian army routed him from his home during the war and he returned to Yemen. Not long after, the anti-Semitism in Yemen became intolerable and he and his family moved to Canada.
All three of these individuals were “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict,” but only one got services from UNRWA. The Palestinian Jew and Iraqi-Palestinian Arab each lost their homes and livelihood and were offered nothing from the United Nations. Only the Syrian-Palestinian Arab who chose to not move to his hometown in Syria, became a special grantee class. As long as he and his descendants remained a grantee, there was a U.N. promise that they would get property and/or money from the country which was transforming Jaffa and the surrounding region it controlled into an economic and technological miracle.
Today, the grandchildren of that Palestinian Jew and the Iraqi-Palestinian Arab are both successful businessmen and pay less attention to politics than they do to football. They think about the United Nations as much as they contemplate a hangnail from five years ago.
But the grandchildren of the Syrian-Palestinian have built their entire way of life around the largess of the United Nations and its promise that it will force Israel to hand them money or land as long as they continue to take UNRWA’s free education, medical services and housing. The U.N. is mother’s milk, a teat which has fed their entire family for generations with more gifts to come.
Watching these three “refugees” is an elderly fifth generation Palestinian Arab who had participated in the 1936-9 riots to keep the Jews out of Palestine and lobbied the British to halt their immigration as the Holocaust started in Europe. He headed to Gaza as the first tanks from five Arab armies invaded Israel. His roughly 60km trip from Jaffa to Gaza is about the same as from Manhattan to Stamford, CT. Had there never been a war and he had decided to relocate to Gaza (as several cousins did before the 1948-9 War), he would receive neither cries of empathy nor charity, but today he has over 100 descendants living for free in UNRWA housing around Gaza.
If the U.N. is attempting to resolve the lost property of people who fled the war zone, why should it matter whether they are registered as “refugees” and take services from UNRWA? Shouldn’t the Iraqi-Palestinian Arab and Palestinian Jew be entitled to consideration? Why should the Syrian-Palestinian get so much compensation when he never owned property?
The UNRWA policy leads one to conclude that its goal is not about money and property but to physically relocate a select sub-segment of the persons impacted by the war – only Arabs – into the Jewish State. Such UNRWA policy is in direct conflict with the stated U.N. goal of a two-state solution, one Arab and one Jewish, by injecting nearly 6 million Arabs into the Jewish State. One cannot be simultaneously in favor of two states and maintaining UNRWA.
There are significant issues to consider in the Arab-Israeli Conflict but the matter of Palestinian “refugees” has long been artificially manufactured. It is well past time to shut it down.
The evil of the Holocaust has no comparison. An elected government systematically targeted and killed a defenseless minority in its midst and enlisted its citizens and allies to participate in the atrocity.
The Jews were vilified by the Nazis and deemed guilty, guilty of an ever-evolving list of charges ranging from being dirty and lazy to infecting Aryan purity and stealing precious resources. The verdict was degradation, dehumanization and destruction. The Germans constructed an enormous infrastructure to annihilate the Jews under their sphere of influence, even importing Jews for slaughter.
While Nazi Germany was ultimately defeated in the battlefield, they were largely successful in the genocide of European Jewry. Six million souls were extinguished. World Jewry has still not replenished that number, and the world will never realize the value of their contributions, including those from their unborn descendants.
After the war, the United Nations established the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to address the depravity. It took roughly sixty additional years for the global body to take a stand against Holocaust denial as a critical component to “prevent genocide from occurring again.“
But shortly after the UN General Assembly’s adoption of that November 1, 2005 resolution, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a “myth” and a “fairy tale.” In March 2006 he said
“They have fabricated a legend under the name Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves. If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream.“
In December 2006, Iran hosted a Holocaust denial conference. Speakers included American Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and Australian denier Frederick Toben. Coupled with Ahmadinejad’s statements that Israel should be “wiped off the face of the earth,” the tether connecting the denial of genocide and the call for genocide was abundantly clear.
In response to the Iranian screed, in January 2007 the United States advanced a resolution before the UN General Assembly to confirm the November 2005 resolution on Holocaust denial. It called for all countries to “reject any denials of the Holocaust as a historical event, either in full or in part, or any related activities” because “humankind must remember to ensure that such events were never repeated.“
Iran used the opportunity at the global platform to continue to attack the Jewish State, stating that “the Israeli regime, [leverages the Holocaust] to exploit past crimes as a pretext to commit new genocide and crimes.” It added that “the Israeli regime had manipulated the sufferings of the Jewish people as a cover for crimes committed against the Palestinians, including ethnic cleansing and State terrorism. The international community should take strong action against such atrocious crimes,” attempting to turn the victims of genocide into the perpetrators – yet another form of Holocaust denial.
The speaker from Venezuela supported the Iranian position adding that the Holocaust was not unique and the resolution should “cover the deaths of those killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the Palestinian people, who were the victims of excesses perpetrated under the pretext of self-defence and security, as had occurred in November 2006 at Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip,” belittling the Holocaust and attempting to keep Israel from protecting itself from terrorism.
The United States condemned the statements and sentiments of Iran and Venezuela at that time. But lately, the US is warming up to both.
The United States had concluded that Iran was developing a secret nuclear weapons program in October 2003 and the Bush Administration initiated an effort to halt it in 2006. The Obama Administration continued those efforts and ultimately reached a deal in 2015 (known as the JCPOA) which simply paused the Iranian nuclear program for a decade, after which time, Iran would have the legal path to nuclear weapons. The Trump Administration pulled out of the JCPOA noting that the leading state sponsor of terrorism and country which called for the destruction of an ally should not have the capabilities to cause nuclear mayhem. Ever.
The Biden Administration disagrees.
In February 2021, the Biden team said it wanted to rejoin the JCPOA and would join the European Union in talks with Iran. It also moved to curtail the sanctions imposed by the Trump Administration.
Several Democratic politicians are also coming to reverse Trump era sanctions imposed on other Holocaust deniers like Venezuela. In March 2021, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), a member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Biden to change course on the socialist country. Perhaps not surprisingly, Murphy is also leading the charge (along with Senator Tim Kaine) to pressure Biden to engage with Iran and reenter the JCPOA.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT)
On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, call the offices of Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy at (202) 224-4041 and (860) 549-8463 and demand that he stop supporting countries which actively deny and belittle the Holocaust which also seek to promote another genocide of Jews today.
On certain days, it seems like the hate never ends.
Shootings, sucker punches, vandalism. The hate inspired attacks keep happening around the United States and around the world.
Trend in hate crimes in the United States. Source: FBI Hate Crimes Reports
The FBI has been tracking hate crimes for years and principally, the hatred falls into three main categories: race/ ethnicity; religion and gender. As to the victims, Blacks, Jews and the LGBT community are attacked the most frequently, respectively.
The overall trend in hate crimes was declining but began to uptick in 2015 due to a 23% spike in anti-religion attacks. The numbers spiked again in 2017 with year-on-year increases of 18%, 23% and 23% for race, ethnicity and religion-based hate crimes, respectively. It is the only year when three different categories had double-digit increases in attacks.
The news reported the headline numbers and sometimes did an iota of work in discussing the frequency of attacks. For example, with Blacks making up 13.4% of the U.S. population and Whites constituting 76.3%, the fact that the gross number of attacks on Blacks is the highest than any racial group is magnified when factoring that there are 5.7 times fewer Black people than Whites.
There is almost no coverage regarding the attackers but the FBI tracks such information too, albeit the data is rough as in many cases, the ethnicity of the attacker is unknown.
Percent of hate crimes committed by White people. Source: FBI Hate Crimes Reports
White people are much more likely to attack Jews than the Black or the LGBT communities. In every year since 2004, White people accounted for more than 76% of the anti-Semitic crimes, the rate one would expect if every race and ethnicity was just as likely to commit a hate crime. The disproportionate share of anti-Semitic attacks peaked in 2005 and has run at roughly the expected rate since 2015.
White people accounted for roughly half of the racist attacks in 2019, quite a bit below the expected 76.3% level. Their share of the racist attacks – mostly against Black and Hispanic people – has been rising up since 2016. This coincides with the Trump presidency as the media reported.
White attacks against the LGBT+ community has been on a steady decline since 2008. While White bias attacks by race and sexual orientation used to track closely from 2004 to 2009, the gap has opened up considerably.
Percent of hate crimes committed by Black people. Source: FBI Hate Crimes Reports
The chart for Black offenders is the inverse of that for Whites.
Black people are committing a disproportionately high level of the hate crimes against the LGBT community, and the trend line is getting worse. Rather than committing 13.4% of the hate crimes in line with their overall population, Blacks committed 27.2% of the hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation.
When it comes to bias attacks stemming from hatred of religion and race, the Black community is roughly in line with the expected distribution, however the trends are on a fairly steady upward climb. Consider that Black people accounted for over three times the percentage of anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2019 as they did in 2005.
Percent of hate crimes committed by Hispanic people. Source: FBI Hate Crimes Reports
The FBI has only tracked the Hispanic community as a distinct Offender category since 2013, with little data in that year and 2014. Presumably, they were included in the category of Black offenders, so the combined data would make the Black and Hispanic numbers look quite bad.
Using the FBI data as compiled, the Hispanic community commits far fewer hate crimes than the size of its population (16.7%) would suggest. However, the trend lines are going up for every category.
Asian Americans account for 5.6% of the U.S. population, and commit an insignificant percentage of all hate crimes.
Comparing the the three main ethnic groups shows a difference in the focus of hate crimes.
Offender
Whites
Blacks
Hispanics
#1 Target
Jews (flat)
LGBT (climbing)
LGBT (climbing)
#2 Target
Race (climbing)
Jews (erratic)
Race (climbing)
#3 Target
LGBT (declining)
Race (climbing)
Jews (climbing)
Ranked Targets of Hate Crimes, by Offender Groups
When looking at hate crimes by victim, race-related attacks are the most frequent and gather the most attention. Yet when viewing hate crimes by offenders, race-related hate crimes are not the leading motivation for Whites, Blacks or Hispanics, where anti-Semitism and anti-LGBT sentiments dominate. Perhaps it is time to look at hate crimes through the other side of the prism.
(note: in 2019, there were 2,314 attacks against Black people while there were 995 against Jews and 867 against gay men. There was another 752 against others in the LGBT+ community. An average Jew and LGBT person is much more likely to be attacked in a hate crime than an average Black person.)
The New York Times has an aggressive re-education effort about the world. It distorts history and facts in its enterprise, particularly when it comes to Israel.
A March 21, 2021 article was designed to elicit empathy for Palestinian Arabs, which is the anti-Israel’s paper common practice and right. What is unfortunate is not simply the bias but distortion of truth.
March 21, 2021 New York Times article about Palestinian sheep hearders suffering under Israeli “occupation”
The paper’s background to the area commonly known as the “West Bank” was as follows:
“The Israeli government’s explanation for the demolitions dates back to the 1990s Oslo Accords with the Palestinians. The agreement gave Israel administrative control over more than 60 percent of the West Bank, including most of the Jordan Valley, pending further negotiations which were meant to be completed within five years.
“But over two decades of talks, the two sides have failed to agree on a deal, so Israel retains control of the lands – known as Area C – and has the right to demolish homes built there without planning permission.”
The 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords did not “give Israel administrative control” over area C; the Accords gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) control over Areas A and B. Israel has had administrative control of the West Bank for over fifty years. The Israelis gave the Palestinians the opportunity to control an area for the first time in history.
The Israelis were willing to give the PA more lands, including the vast majority of Area C in 2000. Not getting 100% of their stated desires, the Palestinians launched what is gently described as the “Second Intifada,” a murderous guerilla war waged for four years until Israel was able to halt the Palestinian killers by constructing a security barrier.
Israel handed additional lands to the Palestinians in 2005, as it withdrew from the Gaza Strip. That action led to wars from Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014 followed by West Bank car ramming and stabbing attacks in 2015 and 2016. The Palestinian actions destroyed any notion of Israel ceding control of more land to an entity hell-bent on murder. This reality is a far cry from the Times narrative that “the two sides failed to agree on a deal.”
Lastly, the Times, which forever likes to use harsh terms like “occupation” and “illegal” for Israel, is loathe to point out Palestinian terrorism and illegal activities. Like “illegal aliens” in the United States being called “undocumented immigrants,” the Times sanitized the illegally built Arab structures by claiming they were simply completed “without planning permission.”
The New York Times is deliberately posting ahistorical information to sway its readership to take a positive view of Palestinian Arabs and a negative view of Israel. It is part of the left-wing mantra to engage globally by distancing America from allies like Israel and warming relationships with state sponsors of terrorism like Iran.
Henry Ford Sr., the founder of the Ford Motor Corporation was a well known vile anti-Semite. He published a four-volume work called “The International Jew” in the early 1920’s which encapsulated much of the bile from the Russian forgery “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion“. Both publications assert that Jews seek to control the world, as summed up in a line from Ford’s work: “If there is one quality that attracts Jews, it is power. Wherever the seat of power may be, thither they swarm obsequiously.“
This smear has been uttered from the lips of the world’s worst genocidal anti-Semites, from Nazi Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s, to the Palestinian political / terrorist group Hamas in the present day.
It is catching on in liberal circles today as well.
Consider the March 13, 2021 New York Times article about “nearly $3 billion earmarked for private schools… which came after Mr. Schumer was lobbied by the powerful Orthodox Jewish community in New York City, riled other Democratic leaders and public school advocates.” The “powerful” Jews got a U.S. senator to funnel money to their schools “even after House Democrats expressly sought to curtail such funding by effectively capping coronavirus relief for private education in the bill at about $200 million. Mr. Schumer, in the 11th hour, struck the House provision and inserted $2.75 billion — about 12 times more funding than the House had allowed.”
New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo agrees with the Times about Orthodox Jews. In October 2020 he berated the community about their actions during the pandemic and added “these ultra-Orthodox communities, who are also very politically powerful, don’t kid yourself.“
In January 2019, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour said that the pro-Israel community controls Congress saying “that is generally sort of a right of passage for politicians in the United States and that is sort of to profess sort of fealty, or at least pay homage, to AIPAC, the pro-Israel PAC that is very, very prominent.” Newly-minted Democratic member of Congress Ilhan Omar of “it’s all about the Benjamins“-fame enthusiastically agreed. The former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan David Duke was so impressed, that he sent Omar a heart emoji.
David Duke Tweets to Ilhan Omar about the “Zionist Occupation Government”
MSNBC wrote articles about how Republican “candidates for president are trumping out to Las Vegas to go kiss the ring of a billionaire casino owner,” Sheldon Adelson. However, when MSNBC wrote about Michael Bloomberg spending $400 million on the 2020 presidential race it wrote “Bloomberg’s ambitions serve as a reminder of the limits of money.” It also wrote in a positive tone that “Mayor Bloomberg and his team are making good on their commitment to beating Donald Trump.” For the liberal MSM, it would seem that Jewish billionaires are manipulative schemers when they back Republicans but noble fighters who sometimes lose when supporting Democrats.
The media’s education about Jewish control is not limited to politicians. The New York Times bemoaned how the Metropolitan Opera House “bow[ed] to the wishes… of Jewish critics” of the ‘Death of Klinghoffer’ opera and cancelled its global telecast.
When the largest newspaper and the governor of the state with the largest number of Jews comfortably smear the Jewish community in the manner of Henry Ford, decent people must assess the state of anti-Semitism everywhere in the United States, and most definitely, the rest of the world.
March brings a global focus on women’s rights and issues. The media, United Nations and business community consider important issues like “women empowerment” and ways of putting women in leadership positions. Not only would women have an immediate positive impact by imparting new perspectives on issues but would further act as role models for young women.
It is therefore worth reviewing one of the United Nations and liberals favorite locales, the Palestinian Authority (PA) territories and their choices for female role models.
The Palestinian Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) is based in Ramallah, down the road from the headquarters of the PA. Its stated mission and goals are to empower women, to develop their skills and competencies and erase stereotypes about women’s roles in society. On the surface, these seem like noble goals, until one applies the “competencies” to the murder of children.
On May 15, 2017, the WATC helped open a new women’s center in the Samarian town of Burqa, near Nablus. They opted to name the center the Dalal al-Mugrahbi Women’s Center, named for a terrorist who killed 37 Israeli civilians, a niece of a U.S. senator, and included 13 children in the infamous Coastal Road Massacre in 1978.
Palestinians inaugurate a square to commemorate Dalal Mughrabi, a Palestinian terrorist who killed dozens of Israeli civilians in a 1978 bus hijacking in Israel, seen in portrait, in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on March 13, 2011. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed)
It was reported that at the center’s inauguration ceremony, Rim Haja, a member of the Burqa village council, said the center would focus on the history of the struggle of the shaheed (martyr) Dalal al-Mughrabi and on presenting her “heritage” to youth groups. She added that naming the center for Dalal al-Mughrabi led the way for other “enrichment activities” dealing with the history of the Palestinian “struggle.”
When news of naming the square after a terrorist got out, various sponsors began to withdraw their support, including the government of Norway and the United Nations which said it “disassociated itself from the Center once it learned the offensive name chosen for it and will take measures to ensure that such incidents do not take place in the future.”
The head of the official PA-owned news outlet Wafa, Sami Daghlas said that “the center has no intention of caving in to the pressure and changing its name,” and will continue on its mission “to serve and empower young women in the village and to help them develop them to become active members in society.” The question is of course, “active” in what way?
Over the following months, additional agencies and governments withdrew their funding support. When the European Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Secretariat, a joint donor program sponsored by Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, pulled support from the WATC for its support in the center, Samia Bamya, the chairperson of WATC issued a statement:
“Despite the damage resulting from the cessation of funding, we will never make concessions as far as our principles and national and community role are concerned for the sake of receiving conditional funding.”
Amira Haroun, the undersecretary of the Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs added her own thoughts to the defunding of the WATC stating:
“All of the women institutions working in the Palestinian territories are acting in accordance with Palestinian national strategies that support the Palestinian cause and preserve the history of our struggling people. Therefore, any foreign funding that does not go in tandem with these objectives is refused… Claims whereby reviving the names of our fighters by naming Palestinian centers, squares and streets after them fall under the category of incitement to violence. They are false claims and a distortion of the truth. Israel is the one inciting countries against us and killing our people continuously.”
The Palestinians continued to dig in and celebrate the murder of a dozen children riding on a bus.
In March 2019, the PA arranged the Dalal Mugrahbi Sports Festival. The District Governor of Ramallah and El-Bireh Dr. Laila Ghannam spoke at the event, stating that Palestinian children “are determined to continue on the path.” Ghannam also praised Palestinian women for having “brought children into the world, fought, and built glory that will not be erased.”
Facebook page of the Beitunia Upper Elementary School for Girls, March 13, 2019 with girls wearing shirts featuring the murderer of a dozen Jewish children, Dalal Mugrahbi
In March 2020 the PA daily wrote “Dalal decided to join the ranks of the Palestinian revolution and to act in the ranks of the self-sacrificing fighters in the Fatah Movement while still a student…. she became known for her daring, her courage, her well-developed national sentiment, and for her devotion to Palestine and Fatah.“
This year, the Fatah (political party of PA President Mahmoud Abbas) website wrote on the anniversary of her death, “The martyr Dalal al-Maghribi is one of the most famous Palestinian activists… Dalal and her band succeeded in reaching Tel Aviv and seized the bus with all of its soldiers…. this operation resulted resulted in hundreds dead and wounded on the Israeli side… lots of schools and squares in Palestine were named for this heroin[e].”
While the PA was extolling the virtues of this female terrorist, the UN was convening a Commission on the Status of Women where the “priority theme is women’s full and effective participation and decision‑making in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.” The UN has said nothing about the Palestinian continued incitement to violence marketed to young girls.
It is part of an ongoing travesty that Palestinians name schools and camps after the killers of children (the PA is actually changing history and stating that she only killed soldiers) and teach the youth to emulate murderers. Using terrorists as role models is a crime against humanity.
While much of the world seeks to empower young women to achieve equality in education, career opportunities and freedom, the Palestinians seek to empower their young women to become murderers of Israeli children.
The Pew Research Center completed a survey in 2016 comparing world religions in regards to their levels of education. To the surprise of very few, Jews were the most educated group with an average of 13.4 years of education. What was also notable, was that Jews were the only religious group in which the level of education for men and women was the same.
Religion
Men
Women
Difference
Jews
13.4
13.4
0.0
Christians
9.5
9.1
0.4
Buddhists
8.5
7.4
0.9
Muslims
6.4
4.9
1.5
Hindus
6.9
4.2
2.7
Pew Research Center review of average number of years of education, by religion
The educational level for all ages in each religion has been rising, with Hindus and Muslims making the strongest gains (people over age 55 in those religions have only about 3.5 years of education). Unfortunately, as younger Hindus and Muslims get educated, the gender gap remains significant. Due to a rigid patriarchal society in many poor countries, 33% of young Muslim women and 38% of young Hindu women receive no formal education.
The exact opposite trend is happening among Jews. For older Jews, men (66%) outpace women (59%) in post-secondary degrees, while for younger Jews, women (69%) outpace men (57%).
At Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women, students have been accepted to dental schools at the rate of 100 percent for three years running.
Jews have a higher level of education in every country they live in. In Brazil, Jews average 12.5 years of schooling while non-Jews average 6.8 years. In South Africa, Jews average 12.0 years in school and non-Jews average 7.2 years.
Latin America is a curious anomaly regarding educational gender gaps for Jews and non-Jews. Jewish men average 12.1 years of education and Jewish women 11.6 years, a 0.5 year gap. Meanwhile, non-Jewish men and non-Jewish women have 7.4 and 7.3 years of schooling, respectively, almost no gap at all. So while Jews in Latin America are more highly educated than non-Jews as they are in every continent, the gender gap is uniquely more pronounced in that community than in society.
Overall, Jews are the most highly educated and have achieved gender parity unlike any other group.
As the United Nations meets in March 2021 to discuss the role of women around the world, perhaps it is time for it to promote Jewish women into leadership positions at the troubled agency.
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