The Palestinian-American You Never Heard Of: Issam Akel

Posted on May 24, 2019 by First.One.Through

The mainstream media often reports on a handful of Palestinian-Americans. The most dominant two are women who live in America: freshman member of Congress Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Linda Sarsour, a co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March. The outspoken women often attack the the State of Israel and Zionists who support the Jewish State and they get to enjoy the press coverage which magnifies their prominence.

The press also highlights certain Palestinian Americans who live in the Middle East to portray a particular narrative of events between Israel and the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs).

Consider Tariq Abu Kheidar, a 15-year old who was beaten by Israeli police for taking part in riots. The New York Times featured a picture of the Palestinian American teenager in a huge color photo on its front page on July 7, 2014. For the paper, it symbolized the conflict of an aggressive Israeli force beating up on Arab teenagers.

Tariq Abu Khdeir, a Palestinian-American teenager who was beaten up by an Israeli border police officer in 2014. Oded Balilty/Associated Press

The Times would cover the story again in November 2015 in a follow up article “Israeli Officer Sentenced to Community Service in Beating of Palestinian American.” The Times not only got to rehash the story, but highlight that Israeli courts did not aggressively prosecute zealous law enforcement officials who beat up Arabs, in an attempt to make a parallel to police officers in the United States attacking minorities.

However, the Times never reported on another Palestinian American who was the focus of international diplomacy, a man sentenced to a life in prison with hard labor by the Palestinian Authority for the “crime” of selling land to a Jew.

Issam Akel, a 55-year old man with American citizenship who lived in the eastern part of Jerusalem, was arrested by the Palestinian Authority in October 2018. His crime of selling his house to a Jew could have carried a death sentence, but he “only” received a life sentence, possibly because he was an American. The Trump administration secured his release to American authorities in January 2019. The Times would neither report on his arrest nor his release.

(Screenshot/Wattan News Agency)

The Times will not write about the vile antisemitism and suffering of Palestinian Americans under the Palestinian Authority as doing so undermines the narrative that the PA is moderate. The Times will only write stories where Palestinian Americans are victims of right-wing Americans and Israelis.

Related First.One.Through articles:

For The NY Times, Antisemitism Exists Because the Alt-Right is Racist and Israel is Racist

A Review of the The New York Times Anti-Israel Bias

The New York Times Knows It’s Israeli Right from It’s Palestinian Moderates

NY Times Disgraceful Journeys

The New York Times Whitewashes Motivation of Palestinian Assassin of Robert Kennedy

Thomas Friedman is a Peddler of Racist Fiction and Adolescent Fantasy

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Seeing the Holocaust Through Nakba Eyes

Posted on May 22, 2019 by First.One.Through

People have accused U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) of getting her facts wrong about her version of history as it related to the Holocaust in stating that Palestinian Arabs helped European Jewry when they did the exact opposite. Her defenders explained that her words were misconstrued and taken out of context and that she merely suggested that it was the Palestinian Arabs who were the principle party who were left to deal with the “Jewish Problem” after Europe murdered its Jews.

U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

The direct connection of the “Nakba” of Palestinian Arabs to the Holocaust of European Jewry is not simply a falsification of history by a lone congressman. The connection is widely promoted in progressive circles.

The New York Times suggested that both Jews and Palestinians have endured suffering, and the key to the parties living with each other is for the Palestinians to understand the Holocaust and for Jews to understand the Nakba.

Putting aside the fact that comparing the Holocaust and the Nakba is akin to a ten-car fatal accident relative to a parking ticket, the two parties comprehend each other’s narrative completely differently.

Jews understand the Nakba. They are a people consumed with guilt for anything and everything they may or may not have done. What other people could produce comedians plagued with anxiety like Woody Allen and Richard Lewis or psychologists like Sigmund Freud? This is a group of neurotic people who, upon accusation of doing something intentionally or not, real or imagined, will immediately ask for forgiveness before they even know the topic of discussion. While the Bible asked Jews to feel empathy, Jews contorted that message into always feeling guilty.

Israelis appreciate the Nakba from an ARAB POINT OF VIEW. They understand the Arabs’ grievance and position about Jews coming into Palestine and changing the demographics of the land. The Arabs were a majority and now they’re not; they were under Muslim control (Ottomans) and now they’re not; grandparents used to live in Israel and now they don’t. Further, the ongoing situation of many Arabs being stateless is understood as a fact. While Jews might use different language – for example, not saying that they are “colonizers” since they are indigenous to the land – and have a wide variety of opinions regarding the methods of paving a path towards an enduring peace, the Palestinian Arab perspective is not distorted by Jewish claims.

For Jews of all political leanings, the Palestinian narrative has been heard and internalized.

However, the situation is not remotely the same for the Arabs regarding the Holocaust. Palestinians have been taught that they cannot accept the Holocaust from a Jewish perspective, as IT MUST BE TIED TO AND SEEN THROUGH THE NAKBA.

The Holocaust showed off the worst side of humanity: To acknowledge Palestinian Arab participation would be to admit that your ancestors were evil anti-Semites. Maybe it would imply that current Arabs are as well, and their desire for a Jew-free country has nothing to do with ancestral claims, but naked antisemitism.
The Holocaust was a uniquely European affair and it was the western world’s guilt that made them vote at the United Nations to create a Jewish State: Convincing the West that it made the Palestinians pay the price for European crimes might change their behavior to favor Palestinians in the Arab-Israel conflict today.

For Palestinian Arabs, the Holocaust is used as a vehicle to undermine Israel today.

Just as over 3,000 years of Jewish history in the Jewish holy land is ignored because it undermines Arab claims that only they are indigenous to Palestine, rewriting the history of the Holocaust can burnish the Palestinian position.

Mahmoud Abbas wrote his doctoral dissertation on a particularly noxious form of Holocaust denial in which he claimed that Jews around the world had no interest in moving to Palestine in the 1920’s and the 1930’s. Therefore, to encourage immigration to Palestine, a number of leading Zionists conspired with the Nazi regime to make life unbearable for Jews so that they would flee to Palestine to create a viable Jewish State.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s recent comments are complements to the theme, claiming that not only did the Palestinians not conspire with the Nazis, it was the Palestinians who gave the Jews a state.

When Palestinians view the Holocaust, they think Jewish suffering literally CAUSED Arab suffering in losing the land, while they see Palestinian suffering of the Nakba as causing Jewish joy in creating Israel. This clouded vision leads Palestinians to believe that misery can yield a global reward, so they will continue to distort the actual history of the Holocaust and Nakba to get the outcome they desire today.

It is a sick by-product of ignoring the history of Jews, denying the rights of Jews, and refusing to accept Jews.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

The Ultimate Chutzpah: A New Form of Holocaust Denial

The Palestinian’s Three Denials

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

The Termination Shock of Survivors

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

Abbas’ European Audience for His Rantings

Failing to Mention the British White Paper of 1939 when Discussing Refugees

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The Calming Feeling of Palestinian Refugees: Rashida Tlaib in Her Own Words

Posted on May 15, 2019 by First.One.Through

Curiously, but not surprisingly, the alt-left has run to the defense of U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) over the bizarre comments the Muslim woman of Palestinian decent made about the Palestinian Arabs helping European Jews survive the Holocaust. In order to help shed light on why many Jews were offended by her statements, below is the essence of Tlaib’s comments, but applied to Palestinians, in remarks which perhaps Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) should give:

U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
(photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

“There’s a kind of comforting feeling I get when I think about the terrible situation of Palestinian refugees from the event they call the ‘Nakba,’ and the fact that it was my ancestors, Jews in Israel, who gave up half of their homeland, many people their lives, their livelihood and their basic human dignity – their Jewish souls in many ways were wiped out – to make space for these refugees.

I mean, to think that these Jews gave up so much of their homeland as determined by international law in the 1920’s, first giving Arabs the land east of the Jordan River in what became the country of Jordan, and then giving additional Arabs half of the remaining land to be their own. Then, as if that were not enough, my ancestors welcomed over 100,000 Arabs into their own remaining sliver of the Jewish holy land when it became a state in 1948. These Jews gave up the opportunity to have a purely Jewish State – like the pure Arab regions they gave to the Arabs in Jordan as well as in Judea and Samaria and Gaza – and awarded these Israeli Arabs full rights even while Jews were not even allowed to live in the Arab territories in return. The division of the land may have been forced on my ancestors, but they accepted it and I am humbled by the grace they exhibited towards the Arab refugees by giving them so much to realize their dreams.

My Jewish ancestors continued to bestow on the Arabs so many benefits over the following decades. In 1967 they extended their hands in the goal of peace and coexistence in Judea and Samaria (which the Arabs had renamed the “West Bank”) and Gaza, and tried to help build a thriving economy as they had done with Arabs in Israel. In 2005, seeing how the Arab refugees still suffered, Jews handed the local Palestinian Arabs their own complete independence for the very first time in Arab history, by removing every Jew from Gaza without an ask of anything in return.

To this day, Jews continue to work with every Palestinian man, woman and child – both refugee and non-refugee – to have a better life, providing electricity, food and supplies into Gaza and to try to give them a kinder and gentler leadership. In the West Bank, Israel helps ensure the peace by working with the Palestinian Authority, in a region beset by wars that have killed millions in surrounding Muslim countries since 1967, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen. Even though these Arabs do not recognize the Jewish State, my Jewish cousins cover them in an umbrella of safety from the wars of the Middle East.

It was both my ancestors and my cousins of today that gave up their homes and dignity for the Palestinian Arabs, even after the deep Jewish longing for a return to their homeland after two thousand years, so that the Arabs would know peace and calm after the trauma of the Nakba.

However, while the Palestinians in Gaza have complete independence they still unfortunately suffer, and I think about whether there could have been a better way. Perhaps removing all of the Jews as the Arabs wanted was a mistake. Perhaps asking the Arabs for nothing in return was a poor decision. If so, the promotion of more coexistence in the West Bank may be a better course to alleviate any remaining Arab suffering.

Perhaps there should be two Jewish States: the one with the boundaries of Israel today and a distinct second one in Judea and Samaria. Maybe Israel and the world will create a fund to expand investment in the economy and Jewish homes and businesses throughout Judea and Samaria so another Start-Up democracy can spring up between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

I am awed by how much the Jews have done for Palestinian Arabs over the past 100 years and how much more they continue to be willing to do together, even at the cost of their own dreams and dignity. While there is much that needs to be done for the Arabs impacted by the Nakba, I am comforted knowing that Israeli Jews made, and continue to make, so many accommodations to help settle the Palestinians peacefully.”

Tlaib may be right: it does make you feel better to complement yourself.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Ultimate Chutzpah: A New Form of Holocaust Denial

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

The Holocaust and the Nakba

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

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The Ultimate Chutzpah: A New Form of Holocaust Denial

Posted on May 14, 2019 by First.One.Through

A curious thing is unfolding in the world of intersectionality and Muslim antisemitism: the migration from the status of victims to saviors.

For the last several years Palestinians sought to gain global succor for their situation through outrageous lies. The Palestinians sought to revise ancient history with claims that Jesus was a Palestinian Arab and not a Jew, and that the Jewish Temple never stood on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. They also claimed that Palestinians were descendants of Canaanites, all in an attempt to make their historic claims to Israel and Jerusalem as much greater than the Jews. That the Arab invasion of the Jewish holy land happened thousands of years after the Jews had been living there was viewed an inconvenience to be dismissed.

Regarding modern history, the Arabs sought to invert cause-and-effect and claim the mantle of victimhood to appeal to the alt-left contingent in the western world. Jews were labeled as colonialist invaders who ethnically cleansed the indigenous Arabs, rather than a people who returned to their homeland and uniquely sacred land. The Arabs claim ongoing apartheid-like conditions, rather than acknowledge their own overt racism in demanding a state free of Jews, even to the extent of having a law sentencing an Arab to death for selling land to a Jew.

But in May 2019, the outright lies and inversion of facts took a curious turn. Instead of only manufacturing a narrative that Palestinian Arabs are victims of Jewish aggression and racism, a new voice directed the message that Palestinians were the saviors of Jews.

U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)
(photo: Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

The new Palestinian-American Congresswomen from Michigan, Rashida Tlaib made the following public comment:

“There’s kind of a calming feeling I always tell folks when I think of the Holocaust, and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways, h⁷ave been wiped out, and some people’s passports.

“I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time, and I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that, right, in many ways. But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right, and it was forced on them. And so when I think about a one-state, I think about the fact that, why couldn’t we do it in a better way?”

It’s not just that she lied about the gross antisemitism that pervaded her “ancestors” who actively lobbied the British government to STOP Jews from coming to Palestine and she ignored the role of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who supported the Nazis and Adolph Hitler. We get that: the Palestinians have perfected #FakeHistory like no people on the planet.

But at least people understood WHY the Palestinians lied. They wanted to look like victims to get support from the world. They sought to appear as indigenous so their claims should be validated. Complete lies, but understandable.

But Tlaib went in a new direction. She created a whole new lie for the purpose of trying to make Jews appreciate what Palestinians did for Jews! Palestinians gave up their homes, livelihood and dignity for you Jews, so be thankful! It gives Tlaib “comfort” that her ancestors “saved” Jews from the Holocaust, and you Jews should look at Palestinians as your benefactors.

Outrageous.

Let me make this clear: Tlaib, you can continue to manufacture lies to make yourself comfortable all you want. Your orientation of talking “Truth to Power” works only in Pathological Liarland. That’s your business and we all understand your sickness to make yourself feel better.

But to now go beyond inverting cause-and-effect and aggressor-and-victim, and to state that Palestinian Arabs were the saviors of European Jews is a whole new form of Holocaust denial. It is beyond chutzpah and beyond disgraceful.

It is vile and inexcusable. And to continue to stand behind such sentiments does not simply make the statement vile. It makes you evil.

Related First.One.through articles:

Palestinians of Today and the Holocaust

Mahmoud Abbas’s Particular Anti-Zionist Holocaust Denial

The Holocaust and the Nakba

Examining Ilhan Omar’s Point About Muslim Antisemitism

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The New York Times Excuses Palestinian “Localized Expressions of Impatience.” I Mean Rockets.

Posted on May 9, 2019 by First.One.Through

The horrible anti-Israel bias of the NY Times has been going on for roughly a decade and is covered in detail in the article “A Review of The New York Times Anti-Israel Bias,” so the May 6, 2019 article covering the 600 rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists into Israel was certainly going to be much of the same. However, one cannot help but marvel at the entirely new expressions concocted at the paper to excuse the Palestinian war crimes.

Consider this paragraph from the paper’s front page:

“The outbreak of violence appears to have begun on Friday, when a sniper wounded two Israelis, a violent but localized expression of Palestinian impatience with Israel’s failure to alleviate dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.”

The paragraph is so rich in its toxicity, that it’s not surprising that it took both David Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner to write it.

“a violent but localized expression” What a phrase! It was violent – but localized! The mass murderer who walked into a mosque in New Zealand was also “violent but localized.” How did they come up with such nonsense? Such poetry!
“expression of Palestinian impatience” It’s important for readers of The Tiimes to understand that Palestinian Arabs are not evil terrorists; they’re simply impatient. Don’t you also sometimes get impatient? These Arab snipers are really very much like you. Minus the the attempted murder.
“Palestinian impatience with Israel’s failure” This is even more to the point: while Palestinians might be a bit hasty, the actual failure here is really by Israel. Israel is to blame for Israelis getting shot.
“Israel’s failure to alleviate dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.” And Israel’s failure is colossal. Israel is responsible for the dire humanitarian condition in Gaza.

Just like that, Israel is the evil reprehensible party and the Palestinians are merely frustrated by Israeli action. The war crimes here are by Israel, not Palestinians according to The Times. A brilliant inversion of narrative in one sentence.

So sublime, you swallowed it whole and didn’t choke on it.

Cover page of The New York Times on May 6, 2019 with a lead article titled
“Israel and Gaza in Worst Combat Since 2014”

The article continued on page A7. The expressions were not as precious as the one above, but the excuses for the Palestinian violence would multiply.

“Hamas uses its defiance of Israel to portray itself as the true voice of the Palestinian resistance, and Israel’s right-wing government exploits Gaza’s unruliness to argue that it lacks a partner for peace talks.”

Are you catching onto the games of the Times?

“Hamas uses its defiance” No longer violence, just defiance. Hamas stands up for the little guy. It’s the Middle East’s version of talking Truth to Power, or some other favorite alt-left nonsense to wash away vile Muslim antisemitism.
“true voice of the Palestinian resistance,” Resistance is not only non-violent, it’s not even a force in itself; it only exists in opposition to a force, namely Israel.
“Israel’s right-wing government” Nothing gets the hair up of a Times’ reader more than the expression “right-wing.” The expression includes a skull and crossbones and warning that it’s poison. The reader has abundant clarity of who is the good guy and the bad guy in the conflict.
“Israel’s right-wing government exploits Gaza” Not surprising that a right wing government would exploit people. That’s what bad people do.
“Gaza’s unruliness” In case you missed it, the Times will repeat it over-and-again that Gaza is not violent and that Hamas is not recognized as a terrorist organization by many countries including the U.S.. Gaza is just a tad unruly as part of its resistance – maybe a bit like some anti-Trump Times readers.
“lacks a partner for peace talks.” Peace talks? Seriously? Hamas Charter clearly states that it wants the destruction of the Jewish State and that it will never enter into peace talks with Israel. Israel isn’t looking to find or manufacture excuses for not advancing peace talks; Hamas states so openly and repeatedly themselves.

The topsy turvy world of #AlternativeFacts would continue.

“The fury of the weekend’s fighting reflected pent-up Palestinian frustration over Israel’s slow pace in easing restrictions that have sent the densely populated and impoverished territory into economic free fall, said Tareq Baconi, an analyst with the International Crisis Group.”

At least the Times came back to the violence – but without squarely placing it on Palestinians. It used generic language about the fighting from both sides. Additionally:

“pent-up Palestinian frustration” The Times makes the point over-and-again that the Palestinians are just frustrated and impatient. Do they demand the destruction of Israel? You won’t read that in the Times.
“Israel’s slow pace in easing restrictions” To be clear once more, Israel’s the party that set this all in motion. An inversion of cause-and-effect.
“the densely populated and impoverished territory” Root for the underdog! Pick Palestinians!
“Israel’s slow pace… have sent the… territory into economic free fall.” Israel’s the cause of the economic free fall. Not the kleptocracy of the Palestinian leadership. Not the failure of using the foreign aid for rockets, terror tunnels and martyr payments instead of building an economy. Israel’s fault. World, please help!

New York Times page A7 of May 6, 2019

Palestinian Arab terrorists launched 600 rockets into Israeli civilian population centers, and The New York Times sought to educate its morally-stunted readership that the true villain in the episode was Israel. Worse, it normalized the violence with soft words of “resistance,” “defiance” and “frustration,” the same words it uses for its cherished progressives in the U.S.A. fighting Trump. It’s a dog whistle to join the B.D.S. movement against Israel and the anti-Zionist cause. Or worse, to use violence against Israel and its supporters during the horrific spike of antisemitism globally.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Cause and Effect: Making Gaza

The Crime, Hatred and Motivation. Antisemitism All The Same

The New York Times Knows It’s Israeli Right from It’s Palestinian Moderates

The New York Times Inverts the History of Jerusalem

The New York Times will Keep on Telling You: Jews are not Native to Israel

In Inversion, New York Times Admits “The Truth is Hard to Find”

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Quantifying the Values of Gazans

Posted on May 7, 2019 by First.One.Through

People typically use the term “values” to describe things that are important to them and what drives their behavior, in an expression like “core values.” It is strange to use the word “value” for something that is almost impossibe to quantify. How do you put a number on freedom? Time with family? What about honesty, transparency or kindness?

What is important to people may be better explained by quantifying how they spend their finite resources like time, money or space. Core values can be extrapolated by examining what people say is important to them (say time with family) and then quantifying how they utilize such time (comparing time spent with family to time in the gym or watching TV).

Consider the 600 rockets fired by the Palestinian Arab terrorists in Gaza into the civilian areas of Israel over the weekend of May 5, 2019 and want can be learned.

More rockets than bullets. The roughly 600 rockets launched from Gaza is more than the total rounds of bullets used to shoot Muslim worshipers in a New Zealand mosque, the Jewish congregants in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA and at the Jewish worshipers at a Chabad House in Poway, California.

Bullets are cheap relative to rockets. Bullets are purchased by the caseload. They are one of the cheapest armaments used to kill people. While the media often portrays the “protesters” in Gaza as throwing rocks because of their “impoverished” and “desperate” situation, the people of Gaza obviously prioritized much more lethal and sophisticated weaponry.

Rockets take up much more space than bullets. Thousands of bullets can be stored on a bookshelf. Not so rockets. Each rocket takes the physical space of 1,000 bullets. Many warehouses must have been used to store the hundreds of rockets. So while the news describes the cramped quarters of the “coastal enclave” of Gaza, the militants have to qualms in using the finite space to store large weapons of destruction.

Elected terrorist army versus lone gunmen. There were a few racist murderers that burst into the mosque and synagogues in New Zealand and the U.S.A. They were fanatical “lone gunmen” who operated without support. However, the terrorists of Gaza number thousands of people who build, buy, transport, store and launch rockets. The terrorist group Hamas was democratically elected by the Palestinian people to 58% of parliament. This is not a lone lunatic, but the mainstream desire of Palestinians.

Nearly a million targets versus a thousand people. The Muslim and Jewish houses of worship which were attacked held around a thousand people in total. But nearly a million people live within 25 miles of Gaza including the city of Ashdod with 225,000 people, Be’er Sheva with 186,000 and Ashkelon with over 100,000. These men, women and children in Israel were bombarded by the Palestinian Arab terrorists.

Antisemitic charter and mission compared to momentary lapse of reason / consumption of hatred. The racist killers in the New Zealand and American houses of worship were definitely consumed with hatred for Jews and Muslims well before they took violent action, but it is unclear what made these individuals act at that particular moment in time. Perhaps the hatred was “triggered” by a news item or something read online. Maybe it was an accumulation of things. It is possible that it was simply a moment of rage which might have passed without actually harming anyone. But not so for the Palestinian Arabs firing into Israel. Their charters calling for the death of Jews and destruction of Israel took months to write. The wars they fought against Israel have been going on for years. The 600 rockets fired into Israeli cities and towns went on all weekend. There was no momentary “snap” for the terrorists of Gaza.

We are told that Gaza is impoverished and cramped and that Gazans just want jobs, yet the Palestinian Arabs spend their finite resources on thousands of rockets. We are led to believe that there are just a few radical “militants” in Gaza, instead of acknowledging that there is an established military. We are told that the people of Gaza just want peace, even though they elected and continue to support the antisemitic jihadists of Hamas.

The Palestinian Arabs in Gaza demonstrate over and again that one of their core values is the destruction of the Jewish State.

If the madmen who killed worshipers in New Zealand, Pittsburgh and California had an army it would look like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. If they ruled a country, it would look like Gaza.

The “humanitarian crisis” of Gaza is not in the lack of jobs, food and infrastructure; it is that the people of Gaza continue to deny the humanity and rights of the Jewish people and Jewish State.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The Shrapnel of Intent

Pray for a Lack of “Proportionately” in Numbers. There will never be an Equivalence of Intent.

Looking at Gaza Through Swedish Glasses

Extreme and Mainstream. Germany 1933; West Bank & Gaza Today

The Palestinian State I Oppose

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Hateful and Violent Platforms: Comparing Facebook and the Golan Heights

Posted on May 6, 2019 by First.One.Through

Social media companies have been urged by U.S. government officials to do more to curb the spread of hateful ideology on their platforms. While the major platforms like YouTube and Facebook had long ago removed content which promoted violence, last week those companies took measures to remove not only specific hateful speech, but banned the individuals and hate groups themselves.

Initially Facebook had touted itself as a town hall/ public square of sorts. If an individual or group had the legal right to say something in public – even objectionable – they would permit such expression online. However, in the wake of fake news and the spread of terrorism, Facebook opted to ban “dangerous individuals” including Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones and Laura Loomer.

The reaction has been mixed.

While many people believe that the opinions of some individuals raise a level of hatred in society and welcome a new world order where such opinions would be deprived air, others are worried that the powerful global platforms would become the arbiters of what is considered permissible speech. Why should pointing out noxious radical Muslim Antisemitism be an action worthy of being banned while Holocaust denial is acceptable? Why should a crazy conspiracy theory that Jews were behind the terrorism of 9/11 be free to publish, while pointing to studies linking vaccinations and autism land someone in social media purgatory?

Others contend that YouTube and Facebook are private companies and are free to set the standards of their choosing. But is that so clear? Can the platforms, for example, more actively ban conservative content like PragerU than hate groups like Students for Justice in Palestine? If all private companies are permitted to decide for themselves what can be served on their platform, why the big fuss of the Colorado baker making a gay wedding cake? He didn’t ban gay people from buying items in his store, he just wouldn’t sell certain items at his store, nor create such items.

Governments also deny certain individuals particular rights if they feel such people are threats of its society.

Many countries – including leading democracies such as the United Kingdom, the United States and Israel – deny entry and citizenship to individuals “not conducive to the public good.” Some countries do more than just turn people away; they strip individuals of certain rights if they are viewed as threats, condemning them to “civil death.” These people lose the rights to use the country’s legal system, making it impossible to work in certain fields or even to own property.

The application of such principle is used in international contexts in the Middle East.

After decades of Syria shelling Israeli citizens in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and listening to Syrian taunts and threats of destroying Israel, Israel took the Golan Heights in the June 1967 Six Day War. That elevated platform was the launching pad Syrians used to attack the Israeli north. Israel effectively annexed the region in 1981 and the United States officially recognized Israeli rights to the area in March 2019, as the Syrian civil war wound down leaving the murderous dictator Basha al-Assad in place.

The Israeli Golan Heights
(photo: First.One.Through)

Societies around the world are making difficult decisions whether violent and hateful people, groups and governments maintain rights afforded to the public at large. How standards are applied and who protests such application, will say a lot about the organizations doing the banning and the protesters. But nothing will say more than the hypocrisies which will undoubtedly abound.

Related First.One.Through articles:

Uncomfortable vs. Dangerous Free Speech

Stopping the Purveyors of Hateful Propaganda

Selective Speech

The Press Are Not Guardians of the Galaxy

The Noose and the Nipple

New York Times Confusion on Free Speech

Alternatives for Punishing Dead Terrorists

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The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live.

Posted on May 2, 2019 by First.One.Through

The grainy black and white images of 75 years ago can trick the mind that the cruelty of mankind was from a different time.

When Holocaust educators make movies like Schindler’s List, they beautify the tragedy with haunting music and visuals.

When we light a candle in memory of one of the 6 million Jews who were slaughtered because they were Jews, our attention lasts for the length of the flame. We toss the candle into the garbage once its light has burned out.

When we enter a synagogue and look at a sculpture with the words “Yizkor,” meaning “remember” in Hebrew, we appreciate the effort to make the work of art, more than connecting to the horror.

*Sculpture at the Mathausen Concentration Camp*
*(photo: First.One.Through)*

But the Holocaust was not edited nor pretty nor momentary. It was raw and brutal. It lasted for years.

And the evil lasts still.

The hatred for Jews brews in the shouts of the alt-right, the “protests” of the alt-left and the killings by Islamic radicals.

The Jew hatred is blessed in the halls of a United Nations which cannot pause to question passing laws making it illegal for Jews to live in certain areas. No, not certain areas, illegal for them to live in their holiest city.

The Holocaust inches closer when anti-Semites are elected to governmental positions, anti-Zionists take over college campuses and murderers burst into synagogues. To silent echoes.

*Rabbi axed to death in a synagogue in Jerusalem, Israel by Palestinian Arabs*

The Holocaust has been remembered in that it was put in the past. Recalling the genocide of a defenseless people by their own government and fellow citizens was given a short window of time among the few who deliberately chose to remember the reality that evil left unchecked overwhelms a decent society.

The marches of the alt-right are becoming more frequent. The vitriol on college campuses is now at your child’s school. And the excuses made for murders has even penetrated the Jewish community.

Gil Scott-Heron wrote “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” in 1970, a decade which saw the United Nations headed by Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi; a decade in which the U.N. manufactured laws that “Zionism is Racism” and only Palestinian Arabs have rights to the holy land; a decade which witnessed Palestinian terrorists murder Israeli athletes and hijack planes while the world only paused for a moment.

Gil Scott-Heron knew that enormous change in the social order did not happen with people sitting in front of a television, passively taking in a snippet of news interspersed with entertainment. A revolution happens when it knocks on everyone’s door and every man, woman and child is forced to take a stand on where they are in the fight for rights.

Jews around the world are slowly and reluctantly reaching that conclusion, that a momentary glance at a Holocaust sculpture does not prepare a person for the war against Jews today. The United Kingdom’s Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is as much of a wake-up as the leader of Iran. The hatred is much nearer in both time and space and you have no luxury of putting it behind you.

This Holocaust Remembrance Day, don’t throw out the candle of a child murdered 75 years ago after the candle is out. Bury it in your front yard.

The United Nations Tackles Fake News Instead of Fake Rights

Posted on May 1, 2019 by First.One.Through

On April 30, 2019, several speakers took the floor at the United Nations to discuss the “Special Information Programme on the Question of Palestine.” Various countries including Israel, the United States, Iran, Russia and Trinidad and Tobago discussed whether there was too much fake news being disseminated and whether the U.N. was promoting a false narrative in its news reports.

Panel at the United Nations regarding “Palestine”
(photo: First.One.Through)

Regrettably, the discussion solely focused on the technology and languages related to the “Question of Palestine” without addressing the fundamental flaw of the U.N. initiative which is the fake rights awarded to the Stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs) which have not been afforded to any other people on the planet or contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

As detailed in the article “Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the Inalienable Rights of Palestinians,” people only have a right to self-determination which should be a goal for the U.N. as it relates to the SAPs. However, no people have a right to sovereignty, regardless of UN Resolution 3376 of November 10, 1975. Do the Kurds have a right to their own country? Why is there no UN resolution for them when they are an actual distinct group of people as opposed to the SAPs who were just a collection of various people (different religions including Sunni, Shia, Druze, Christian, and born in different countries including Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, etc.) living in the same region at a particular moment in time (1946 to May 1948)? One could just as easily argue that New Yorkers from the 1970’s deserve sovereignty.

Similarly, the November 1975 UN resolution on behalf of the SAPs declared that they had “inalienable rights” in which descendants of people who worked and lived in a particular town could return to such ancestor’s house. That’s an absurdity. Why should the U.N. promote the rights of SAPs whose grandparents rented a house in Jaffa in the 1940’s over a Palestinian who now has citizenship in Chile whose grandparents actually owned a house back then?

On the very same day that the U.N. passed the illegitimate Resolution 3376, it passed UN Resolution 3379 which determined “zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” It took until December 1991 and constant urging by the United States and Israel for the U.N. to repeal Res. 3379. Regrettably, no similar initiative has been launched to repeal Resolution 3376, so the theater of the absurd plays out today with various ambassadors arguing about how best to spread the propaganda that Palestinians have rights to sovereignty and to move into a house which a grandparent rented 75 years ago.

If it weren’t for the 1991 repeal of the other antisemitic resolution, would the U.N. be hosting panels on how to best smear Zionism on the world stage? Yes, I’m sure it would.

Related First.One.Through articles:

The United Nations Bias Between Jews and Palestinians Regarding Property Rights

Marking November 29 as The International Day of Solidarity with Jews Living East of the Green Line

When the Democrats Opposed the Palestinian “Right of Return”

The Palestinian State I Oppose

The Many Lies of Jimmy Carter

A Response to Rashid Khalidi’s Distortions on the Balfour Declaration

Heritage, Property and Sovereignty in the Holy Land

Israel’s Colonial Neighbors from Arabia

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The Press Are Not Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted on April 30, 2019 by First.One.Through

There are many freedoms which are cherished in the United States, as outlined in the Bill of Rights. These freedoms were specifically enumerated to curtail the power of the government. Key provisions reserved for individuals can be found in the very first of the ten amendments made to the U.S. Constitution:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Individuals were given the right to speak their minds, to associate with people of their own choosing and to publicly write and disseminate materials without government interference. The government was specifically limited in forcing upon people a particular narrative.

That was in 1791.

Several items have changed the way Americans and (much of the world) view these key principles of freedom:

The Internet and social media have enabled people to have platforms which can reach every corner of the world, making each person potentially more influential than the mainstream media
The mainstream media’s business model has been collapsing as money from classifieds and advertising abandoned the press for those new media platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter with greater reach, driving the remaining corporate media titans to become more partisan and inflammatory in their content to retain and attract viewership
Social media is not simply a soap box nor bulletin board, but includes a range of sophisticated algorithms which direct viewers towards a prioritized list of media to consume, making the platforms themselves powerful disseminaters of information

These first three points are critical to understanding the tension between the democratization of the press: how large media companies backed by large corporate advertising dollars are dissolving in the face of smaller and more niche sources of media. Those smaller media sources can survive as hobbies of individuals and can attract micro-audiences and some actually become larger than the historic media agencies.

Against this democratization of the press which has unfolded over the past two decades is the growth of global terrorism:

History has shown (the Holocaust) how propaganda can quickly descend into a genocide of innocent people prompting the introductions of hate speech laws which inherently limit free speech
World leaders and the press have presented their case that leading global terrorist organizations like the Islamic State and al Qaeda effectively recruited individuals online, and have pushed the social media platforms to remove the content of those organizations
Governments have similarly asked the social media platforms to alter their algorithms to intersperse a range of ideas to people who may be searching for niche extremist ideas

Lastly, in addition to the democratization of the press and growth of terrorism prompting governments to intervene in the business of social media, is the more general backdrop of society and how social media is currently used:

Foreign governments (Russia) used social media to influence the 2016 U.S. elections
Fake news stories online prompted people to take violent action (Clinton’s “Pizzagate“)
And in the realm of free speech, progressives and global organizations like the United Nations have insisted on a range protective speech laws, such as banning the use of religion connected to extremism (cannot say “Islamic terrorists“) or that people must address individuals by the pronoun of their choice or risk being fired and/or fined as an expanded form of hate speech (NYC law: “refusal to use a transgender employee’s name, pronouns, or title may constitute unlawful gender-based harassment“)

Taken together, governments and global organizations are infringing on many freedoms in the stated desired hope of promoting a more peaceful and inclusive society.

It sounds noble as a goal and problematic in practice. Limiting speech that incites violence is logical and lawful, but calling non-violent speech a form of illegal “microaggression” is an assault on the First Amendment. Perhaps a person could get over a very limited number of restrictions if the world would indeed become more peaceful. Perhaps, but that is beside the point here.

The issue is that the limitations on individual speech and associations online are being advanced while the mainstream media is becoming ever more inflammatory and biased. The dynamic that governments were held in check by a free press in a balance of power with the press acting as a guardian of the people is a principle which may have had a shelf life from 1791 to 2000, but no longer applies in a world where the people’s voices are just as loud.

Consider two statements made by the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres over the last few days:

On social media contributing to hatred and violence: “Around the world, we are seeing a disturbing groundswell of intolerance and hate-based violence targeting worshipers of many faiths. In recent days alone, a synagogue in the United States and a church in Burkina Faso have come under attack….

Parts of the Internet are becoming hothouses of hate, as like-minded bigots find each other online, and platforms serve to inflame and enable hate to go viral. As crime feeds on crime, and as vile views move from the fringes to the mainstream, I am profoundly concerned that we are nearing a pivotal moment in battling hatred and extremism.

That is why I have set in motion two urgent initiatives: devising a plan of action to fully mobilize the United Nations system’s response to tackling hate speech, led by my Special Representative on Genocide Prevention; and exploring how the United Nations can contribute in ensuring the safety of religious sanctuaries, an effort being led by my High Representative for the Alliance of Civilizations.”

On Freedom of the Press: “A free press is essential for peace, justice, sustainable development and human rights. No democracy is complete without access to transparent and reliable information. It is the cornerstone for building fair and impartial institutions, holding leaders accountable and speaking truth to power….

When media workers are targeted, societies as a whole pay a price. On World Press Freedom Day, I call on all to defend the rights of journalists, whose efforts help us to build a better world for all.“

The concepts that the head of the U.N. put forward taken together are ancient: the press is no longer the vehicle for “transparent and reliable information.” It is as jaundiced and bigoted as social media. Protecting the press while quashing social media would be the opposite of speaking truth to power; it would be empowering the press at the expense of the people, not in favor of the people.

Consider the leading mainstream media organization The New York Times. It’s portrayal of the Israeli-Arab Conflict is beyond biased. It posts articles and cartoons vilifying Jews and the Jewish State over and again while it whitewashes the antisemitism of Palestinians. Should the bigots of The NY Times control the narrative while individuals on social media explaining Muslim antisemitism be silenced? Who gets to decide if liberal or conservative ideas have a right to be shared or censored?

Journalists are no longer limited to the large press organizations but can be found throughout social media. Their rights must be defended as vigorously as any.

A free press without free speech for all would be a tyranny of the worst sort.