The single largest issue in the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict is the belief among those Arabs that they have a right to move into towns and houses where grandparents lived many decades ago. They call it a “right of return” and state that it is an individual right laid out in international law.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.
As it relates to the first point, Palestine either was or was not a country before Israel declared itself a state in May 1948. If it was not a country, the UDHR right is irrelevant as it specifically relates only to countries. If it was a state, than the Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank are already part of such state and have no right to move based on the first clause. Their right to move to Israel under the second clause of moving “within the borders of each state” would mean negating the very existence of Israel, a member state of the United Nations, which would undermine the institution upon which the clause exists (rendering such notion impossible).
If Palestine were considered a state pre-Israel, then the descendants of refugees (DORs) in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan could relocate to Gaza or the West Bank (Palestine), but not to Israel.
So under broad international law, there is no right of return for Palestinian Arabs to Israel regardless of whether one thinks Palestine was a country in 1947.
Palestinian Arabs and their supporters therefore try to use a specific clause within a particular UN General Assembly resolution. UNGA Resolution 194, Article 11 states “Resolves that refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible.”
This resolution has multiple legal issues regarding applicability.
UN General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding, but advisory at the most fundamental. Second, Resolution 194 includes many items including Articles 7 and 8 which places holy places – including those in Nazareth and Jerusalem – under UN control, which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority desire. One cannot cherry-pick specific items which one side prefers to make a case; the entirety of that resolution is passed its expiration date.
Significantly, the clause itself demands that those refugees desiring to return to “homes” – which may or may not exist anymore – must live in peace with their neighbors. The many wars and pogroms by Palestinian Arabs, including their overwhelming support for Hamas and the October 7 massacre, show them to reject basic coexistence with Jewish neighbors.
Yet UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres makes a mockery of reality and destroys a pathway to peace when he says the opposite. He often states “the need for tangible progress towards a two-State solution based on 1967 lines, with Jerusalem as the capital of both States, in line with UN resolutions and international law.” That clause makes Palestinian Arabs think that millions of Arabs will get to move to Tel Aviv and Haifa. Their frustration of not moving there leads to frustration and causes massacres as seen on October 7.
The United Nations must make clear that there is no “right of return” for any Palestinian Arab to Israel, full stop. The failure to do so causes bloodshed and suffering.
The most expensive primary race in America concluded this week in New York’s 16th Congressional District with Westchester County Executive George Latimer defeating incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman. The narrative found in mainstream and social media would have one believe that Republican billionaires funded a random White racist to defeat a popular Black politician who had the nerve to combat the Democratic establishment’s backing of Israel in its war against Hamas.
That is a complete fiction. The reality is that:
Bowman was a very flawed extremist politician
Bowman cared little for the vast majority of his district and he was quite unpopular amongst his constituents
Latimer is a very well-known and liked progressive politician in the majority of the district
Latimer likely would have won with a fraction of the spending
Mainstream and social media picked up far-left talking points tainted with antisemitic dog whistles, rather than focus on the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates
The race is unpacked here, as some of the lessons relate to other races featuring members of the squad as well as the deeply flawed Vice President Kamala Harris.
NY’s 16th Congressional District
Bowman won his NY16 seat in 2020 when the district’s boundaries covered northern Bronx and some of southern Westchester County. When congressional district lines were redrawn in 2022 after the 2020 Census, NY16 was almost completely lower Westchester with a small nub of the Bronx.
In 2020, a good potion of lower Westchester was located in NY17, which voted for another Black progressive politician, Mondaire Jones. However, when the lines were redrawn in 2022, Jones opted to run for congress in Manhattan and left Bowman to run in NY16 with the expanded lower Westchester in the district.
Many people in the 16th district wanted to oust Bowman in 2022 for a range of actions and statements including voting against the bipartisan infrastructure bill, calling for defunding the police, his stated aims for destroying capitalism and abolishing the immigration center. At that time, some Jews in the district asked AIPAC to get involved in the primary but the pro-Israel group refused because two contenders were already facing Bowman, Catherine Parker and Vedat Gashi. As predicated, those two ended up dividing the anti-Bowman votes, and Bowman sailed to an easy primary victory with only 20,000 votes. After the primary, in September 2022, AIPAC suggested to people in NY16 that it find a single popular candidate early who would clear the field of other Democratic politicians in the next election, which they did as described below in early 2023.
In 2024, the district lines were redrawn slightly, with Co-op City swapped in for the Wakefield section of the Bronx. With the adjustment, there were roughly 252,600 voters in the district of which 41.7% were White, 26.9% Hispanic, 21.3% Black and 6.6% Asian. Jewish groups estimated that the Jewish voting age population in the district was about 25,800, or about 10.2% of the total voter universe.
Tally from the 2024 Latimer-Bowman democratic primary
Latimer won the primary with about a 17 point spread, or 13,300 votes, on the strength of his turnout in Westchester where he secured 64% of the votes. Bowman did well in Co-op City, but with a relatively small number of voters.
Jewish voters made a difference.
The Jewish Vote
Westchester Unites, a division of the Orthodox Union assembled to get out the vote effort under a tagline “Antisemitism is on the ballot.” The group stated that it brought 14,871 Jewish voters to the polls (as of 7:30pm on election night), presumably almost all of which voted for Latimer, a sum which exceeded the margin of victory. Remarkably, that figure is 57.7% of the eligible Jewish voters in the district, an incredible figure for a primary. The number also doesn’t include many of the non-Orthodox and non-affiliated Jews in the district which did not want to be part of the WU effort.
With more mail-in votes being collected in the days post-election, it is fair to estimate that Jews made up as much as one-third of Latimer’s votes.
The incredibly high rate of Jewish voters participating in a primary could not have been achieved solely with WU or AIPAC backing. Jews inside the district had been preparing for this primary battle for over two years.
The Orthodox community was particularly strong in rallying for Latimer. Estimates are that roughly 2,000 people in NY16 changed their party affiliation from Independent or Republican to Democrat to vote in the 2024 primary. Additionally, WU estimates that over 80% of the Orthodox eligible voters participated in the election, a much higher figure than for non-Orthodox.
The question is why Jews in Westchester, which had voted for Mondaire Jones, a Black progressive politician in 2020, turned on another Black progressive in Bowman a short time later, and why Jones himself opted to endorse Latimer over Bowman.
Bowman, Prioritized Blacks And Absent On Antisemitism
The press will say that Jews were offended by Bowman’s pro-Palestinian positions but while true, it misses the mark. Bowman was absent on antisemitism while he served only his preferred base of constituents in his district, the Black and Brown communities.
Instead, Bowman came to White Plains on the day he condemned antisemitic vandalism at Goldman’s office, and told a crowd that Israelis are lying that Palestinian Arabs raped and sexually abused women as a matter of “propaganda.” For some reason, Bowman believes it’s progressive to “believe women” as long as they aren’t Jewish, and to decry antisemitism against colleagues but not constituents.
Beyond ignoring Jews and Jew-hatred, Bowman stressed the Black and Brown communities.
When Bowman discussed student debt, he didn’t discuss it for all his constituents but focused on the Black and Brown communities. Repeatedly.
Similarly when Bowman discussed poor young people in his district, he focused on “Black and Brown kids,” downplaying poor Whites and Asians.
Bowman believes that “his” community is the Black community, which is not a problematic position for an individual, but deeply troubling for a politician when they ignore everyone else.
Bowman established a reputation for not serving all of his constituents during his two terms. He was noticeably absent in Westchester while his challenger, George Latimer, had decades of serving every community in the county.
Latimer secured a complete sweep of Democratic endorsements in Westchester with the sole exception of New Rochelle. Bowman had endorsed that city’s new mayor Yarida Ramos-Herbert when she ran for office, but she did not return the favor as she saw the writing on the walls that Bowman was a flailing politician. New Rochelle opted to not endorse anyone.
Bowman was so unaware of and unfamiliar with his constituents, that the day before the June 25 election, he held a rally in the South Bronx, miles away from his district, with politicians from outside the district like Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont. How asinine and emblematic of a failed candidate, unless Bowman had already conceded the race and was setting a stage to run in against Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY15) in two years.
It begs the question of how the narrative became so skewed. Jews in the district tried to get rid of Bowman well before the October 7th Hamas massacre. Latimer is a well-known progressive who was endorsed by Mondaire Jones, not some “random white dude.” All the Democratic committees in Westchester endorsed Latimer, not “far-right Republicans.” He got his money from inside the district while Bowman funded his campaign from outside.
Israel, AIPAC and October 7
Bowman was a poor politician who cared little for his non-minority constituents. His shenanigans of pulling fire alarms in congress made him the butt of jokes and censure in congress. His extremist rhetoric and craving of drama made him more like a 16-year old looking for likes on Tik Tok than a serious politician.
He was an easy target for any challenger.
While Latimer was initially approached to run for congress in April 2023, he didn’t formally announce until December as he canvassed the political landscape of the district measuring support. His timing of joining the race after a visit to Israel in November made it appear that he was coming after Bowman because of the congressman’s anti-Israel positions after October 7.
Bowman’s backers in the extreme far-left group Justice Democrats saw the antisemitic protests on American streets and leaned in. It launched a “Reject AIPAC” campaign, making the group appear nefarious, trying to serve as a red herring so people would forget Bowman’s ineptitude and make the primary race about the Israel-Hamas war.
Bowman loved the narrative, and used antisemitic language that AIPAC was “dark money” and were a bunch of “baby killers” in lines lifted from medieval blood libels (see concession speech 3:00 as an example).
AIPAC became Bowman’s boogeyman. In Bowman’s concession speech (9:28) he said “We should be outraged when a super-PAC of dark money can spend $20 million to brainwash people about things about me that aren’t true. You should be outraged when unfortunately, some so-called Democrats are aligning themselves with radical racist right-wing Republicans.” It was an echo of fellow squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar’s comments that “Israel has hypnotized the world – may Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel.”
Of course, every one of AIPAC’s comments about Bowman was true; he had long proven himself to be unfit for office. In facing a well-known popular progressive politician in Latimer, Bowman knew he was doomed and decided to reframe the discussion away from his incompetence to declare himself a martyr for minorities.
Bowman’s left-wing allies under the Justice Democrats umbrella took to the airwaves and declared AIPAC to be enemy number one for coming after Bowman. They slandered the group repeatedly at rallies, in interviews and on social media, in a fictitious narrative that rich racist Jews were coming after a poor Black man.
And the press bought the bait-and-switch.
The Press Ignored Bowman’s Incompetence
The press went out of its way to absolve Bowman for his years of incompetence.
The Associated Press said that Bowman had “stumbles” portraying his actions as accidental, such as pulling the fire alarm, even though videos show that he did it on purpose.
The New York Times referred to Bowman’s “clumsy and sometimes inflammatory comments about Oct. 7,” making it sound that Bowman’s intentions were noble but poorly phrased, when in fact, his comments were deliberate and abhorrent.
A Times opinion piece discussed Bowman’s vicious actions as mere “unforced errors.”
So when the polls closed on June 25, and the obvious became public, The New York Times didn’t talk about the censured eak politician who never got to know his constituents, and instead blamed Bowman’s demise on a “flood of pro-Israel money.”
As did the BBC and other outlets.
The Jewish Vote Broadly
American Jews generally do not vote in a block. Orthodox Jews tend to vote more conservatively while non-Orthodox denominations are typically liberal. Some are pro-Israel and some are anti-Zionist.
But there are moments in time and there are politicians who can galvanize this minority-minority into a voting force.
As the bad news kept coming, many woke liberals needed to turn away to protect themselves and their families. Repeated appalling comments by Jamaal Bowman made J Street rescind its endorsement in January 2024, an action it had never previously done.
And NY’s 16th district was J Street country. Non-Orthodox rabbis in the community were on the rabbinic board as well as other left-wing groups like the New Israel Fund. If Bowman could offend people who spent a lifetime looking away from anti-Zionist comments, he had lost the whole community.
Bowman was so far in the extreme, that only radical fringe anti-Zionist groups like Bend the Arc and If Not Now continued to support him through the primary season.
Ramifications For Other Members of the Squad, Kamala Harris
Bowman was deeply unpopular – not only among Jews – and he would likely have lost an online poll of the 252,000 potential voters in the district by a wide margin. All that AIPAC’s money did – much sourced from inside the district – was help get out the vote; it likely changed few opinions.
The far-left’s vilification of AIPAC is both a red herring to distract from unpopular policies like a broad redistribution of wealth and power, as well as an antisemitic dog whistle to cement the jihadi-socialist alliance.
Bowman suffered from three critical matters: 1) he was broadly unpopular in the district; 2) he was up against a single well-known and liked challenger; and 3) there were enough Jews in the district to make a difference in the vote.
As people consider Cori Bush (D-MO1), a voting clone to Bowman, in her fight with Wesley Bell, those are critical factors to evaluate, even more than the amount of money spent by AIPAC to get out the vote. Similarly, as Democrats ponder a possible replacement for President Biden, they must consider the far left extremist policies of VP Kamala Harris when she was a senator, and her terrible polling numbers.
Jews know that extremism, whether from the left or right, is dangerous for their very beings. They see it has found a home in the diaspora and the media is loathe to call it out, instead choosing the lazy approach of parroting the antisemitic propaganda.
While AIPAC did spend millions of dollars on the Latimer-Bowman race, those who frame the primary as powerful Jewish billionaires trying to silence a poor Black man – which is the precise language of Justice Democrats – are engaging in vile antisemitism, in an attempt to dress up their policies as just and popular. Their use of Jew-hatred as a political tool should make clear that they are deeply anti-American, and should be shunned in society.
ACTION ITEM
In MO-1, extremist Rep. Cori Bush is being challenged by public defender Wesley Bell. Donate to Bell here.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman has long ignored the Jewish residents in his district and vilified the Jewish State. As the Democratic primary neared on June 25, he opted to raise the temperature on a hot day, riling up a crowd in the South Bronx to go to war with Westchester County, and for the Black and Brown communities to go to war with the Jews.
Bowman went to a park in the Bronx and started cursing and slamming chairs on stage. Calling himself the “hip hop congressman,” he got the crowd to chant about the south Bronx. He then said “We are gonna show f*cking AIPAC the power of the mother-f*cking South Bronx.”
He continued “People ax me why I’ve got a foul mouth. What am I supposed to do? You comin’ after me! You comin’ after my family. You comin’ after my children. I’m not supposed to fight back? I’m not supposed to fight back? We gonna show them who the f*ck we are!” He then started to jump up and down and throw his arms around in circles.
“We gonna show them who the f*ck we are! Bowman! Bowman!“
And it’s all a lying and dangerous circus. No one ever said anything about Bowman’s family and children. It was Bowman who repeatedly over many years came after Jews and the Jewish State, yet he inverted the entire cause-and-effect of the primary battle.
The unhinged rant from the deeply unpopular congressman continued his embarrassing and appalling tenure in congress. Despite being the incumbent, his challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer received almost all of the endorsements of the Democratic Party, including from:
Hillary Clinton (former Secretary of State and Senator from New York)
Mondaire Jones (former Congressman for lower Westchester County 2021-2)
Nita Lowy (former Congresswoman for lower Westchester County)
Eliot Engel (former Congressman for the Bronx)
David Paterson (former Governor of New Jersey)
and a very long list of state and county legislators
The sick rantings of Bowman are even starting to bring current members of Congress to endorse George Latimer, including Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ). More may follow as we enter election day on June 25.
But Bowman wasn’t alone in his antics.
Alexandria “Big Money” Ocasio-Cortez joined Bowman’s rants with her own fist pumping as she yelled “I am ready to fight!”
She asked the crowd “Are we ready to take on AIPAC? Are we ready to kick some Wall Street ass?! Good!“
Not satisfied with slamming a bipartisan group which backs many Black and Latin progressives, AOC went on to continue to lie about Latimer. “He [Bowman] is being primaried by racism. He is being primaried by greed. He is being primaried by corruption of our politics. And we cannot let them win.”
The statement is beyond preposterous. Latimer is a long-time civil servant who works closely with people of all races and religions. Many Black and gay leaders in Westchester have decades of experience working with him and have endorsed him.
AOC added “The Bronx is built different. We are built different…. There’s a reason this borough [the Bronx] sent Jamaal Bowman to congress.”
But it didn’t. With redistricting, NY’s 16th district consists of 87% lower Westchester County and 13% of the Bronx. Bowman won in 2020 with very different lines that had much more of the Bronx.
AOC’s and Bowman’s claims that Latimer is being funded by outside money is another inversion of facts. The vast majority of Latimer money is coming from inside district 16 while only 10% of Bowman’s contributions are local.
The alt-left is angry that it cannot do a quick massive redistribution of wealth and power from the Westchester towns which are predominantly White with a significant Jewish population, to the predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods in the Bronx. So they are inciting riots.
Jamaal Bowman and AOC have declared a war between the South Bronx and Westchester, as well as between the Black/Brown Majority-Minorities and the beleaguered Jewish Minority-Minority. How is this progressive? Why are these alt-left extremists in office?
Rep. Jamaal Bowman has no idea how to build an economy or how to address the needs of all of the members of his district. He believes that the role of government is to take wealth and power from those he feels have too much, and redistribute it to those he believes deserve it more.
In his address to a crowd for Martin Luther King Day in January he said (1:01) “We need a radical redistribution of political and economic power.” His messaging continues to be to achieve that goal.
Bowman wants to cancel all student debt to Black people, hand $14 trillion in “reparations” to Black descendants of slaves, tax wealth (not only income), defund the police, abolish immigration controls, halt funding wars in foreign countries which he perceives as “white” or wealthy, and push DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) into every facet of the American economy and power structures to strip non-minorities of their wealth and jobs.
Rather than focus on programs and policies which can CREATE wealth for everyone, Bowman calls for seizing it from non-minorities and handing it to the only constituents he wants to serve.
Black people in his district do not believe in Bowman’s antics. Darius Jones, co-founder of the National Black Empowerment Action Fund, mocked Bowman for not doing his job as a legislator to create jobs and enable the economy, voting against Biden’s Infrastructure Bill. Jones chided Bowman for holding back Black people by nixing charter schools and standing with the broken public schools system of which he is an integral part.
Not coincidentally, Bowman is one of the powerful teachers’ unions biggest donor recipients.
Bowman’s crusade is to enact former New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio’s words: “Brothers and sisters, there’s plenty of money in the world. There’s plenty of money in this city. It’s just in the wrong hands,” with a radical redistribution of wealth and power from White people to Black and Brown people in the U.S. and to the Global South.
While the media ponders whether Bowman is deeply anti-Zionists or anti-Jews, they miss the bigger picture: Bowman is anti-White and anti-capitalism, and views Israel and Jews as the nexus of White power and wealth he is targeting. A good deal of them are his own constituents in Westchester County.
In a shocking display of partisanship for a terrorist organization over a member state, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres posted publicly that he is concerned about Hezbollah but not Israel.
On June 21, 2024, Guterres posted on X that “the people of the region & the world cannot afford Lebanon to become another Gaza.” In other words, the world cannot allow a member state of the United Nations defend itself from Islamic radicals who are launching attacks. Specifically, the Jewish State must not be allowed to prosecute defensive wars that it never wanted, against foes dedicated to its destruction.
Guterres has shown himself to be completely unfit for the office he holds. The global agency should immediately fire him from office and put in place a person who prioritizes humanity over barbarism, and liberal nation states over jihadi terrorist groups.
In an environment of politicians and political organizations endorsing people running for office, it is noteworthy to see a grassroots-led initiative push for an organization to rescind an existing endorsement.
In one of the most-watched primaries in the country, residents of New York State’s 16th Congressional District have been writing to Planned Parenthood to rescind its endorsement of Rep. Jamaal Bowman. The impetus for people in the liberal district to call the women’s rights organization was the recently surfaced video of Bowman yelling at a crowd on the streets of White Plains that the October 7 rape of Jewish women in Israel was a “lie” and “propaganda.”
“I have been giving to Planned Parenthood for forty years. I send them money monthly, and I cannot believe that they would endorse a rape denier,” said Jackie Laub, a retired medical technician who lives in White Plains. “Do the leaders of the organization hate Jews and Israel so much that they would still endorse him?”
Rabbi Scott Weiner of New Rochelle used to be a board member of Planned Parenthood. He submitted the petition to the organization’s CEO and Chair last week, signed by six hundred people in just one week, the vast majority of whom are residents of the district. “I am deeply shocked,” Rabbi Weiner said. “I care deeply about the organization, and for it to have its brand tarnished by endorsing Bowman will likely cost them important donors.”
The video of Bowman denying the sexual assault of women in Israel came out in late March, even though it was filmed at a pro-Palestinian rally in November. When people began to question and criticize Bowman about his rape comments, he refused to discuss it, according to Politico.
Eventually, Bowman got around to condemning the sexual violence committed by Hamas but many of his constituents remain deeply troubled by his initial instinct to not believe women who are raped if they are Jewish.
Diane Katz, who raised her four children in the district said “I wrote to Planned Parenthood as soon as I learned that they had endorsed Bowman. The organization’s response was abysmal. How can they endorse someone who clearly denied the extremely well-documented evidence and testimony of Israeli women who were raped and sexually mutilated? Jewish women around the United States have been leaders in the pro-choice and reproductive rights movement for decades and this is a slap in the face to our community.” She added her name to the petition to not feel so alone and abused by the organization’s tepid response to her letter.
“They are endorsing a rape denier. Can you imagine that?” Katz asked. “A woman’s rights organization is endorsing a rape denier.”
Others had a similar road to signing the petition.
Dr. Rebecca Amaru of White Plains shared her initial email with Planned Parenthood. It led with “I write as a resident of NY-16, a woman, an Obstetrician/Gynecologist, an abortion provider, a proud activist on behalf of abortion access and rights, and a Jew.” She added “Jamaal Bowman does NOT stand for the values that Planned Parenthood represents. Mr. Bowman’s statements after October 7, 2023, included denials of the sexual violence propagated by Hamas terrorists against countless women in Israel. The denials by some progressive politicians of the well-documented crimes against women on October 7 are a stain on the Democratic Party. No matter what Planned Parenthood believes about the war in Gaza, you MUST come down on the side of women victimized by rape as weapon of war.”
After not getting a response from Planned Parenthood, she began to forward the petition to friends.
“It is not as though [Westchester County Executive] George Latimer is not pro-women. He is every bit as pro-choice as Bowman. Minus the rape denial,” added Amaru.
Dr. Sandra Weinstein of New Rochelle, a mother of three girls, was glad that the petition was being circulated. “Candidly, I wasn’t going to vote for Bowman anyway, so this has nothing to do with the race. This is about the normalization of rape denial if the victims are Jewish.”
The petition does not discuss the primary race and acknowledges Bowman’s stance on abortions. Specifically, the petition states that it is “deeply distressing to see Planned Parenthood continue to endorse Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16). While he has been a supporter of female reproductive rights, he has vocally denied the mass rape of Israeli women before a chanting crowd on the streets of his district. Women’s bodily autonomy is not limited to a right to abortion. It must include protections from sexual abuse and assault. Rep. Bowman’s disgraceful ridicule of raped women is beyond the pale and cannot be normalized as acceptable, which Planned Parenthood’s endorsement does.”
One Email sent by someone in District 16 to Planned Parenthood, and a QR Code which was used to get people to sign the petition
Dr. Tali Lando of White Plains was very direct, saying “I’m disgusted. How can my congressperson’s initial reaction not only be to mock the rape of Jewish women, but to incite a crowd that Jewish rape victims are liars? What kind of country are we in?” She continued that the entire premise of Planned Parenthood endorsing Bowman is a contradiction of being for abortion rights. “Planned Parenthood should be ashamed of itself. It cannot claim to be the leading advocate of women’s bodily autonomy while simultaneously aligning itself with a rape denier.”
Rabbi Weiner added that “this is not just a Jewish issue. When a leading national woman’s rights organization like Planned Parenthood affixes its name to person who denigrates the victims of sexual assault to a cheering crowd, every person is at risk.”
The group’s action is already costing them one donor. “After forty years, I am no longer giving to them. They’ve lost me,” said Laub.
Planned Parenthood has still not responded to the petition other than acknowledging that it was received on June 10.
A raucous crowd of Jew-haters descended on Wall Street in New York City to protest an exhibit about the slaughter of people at the Nova Dance Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023. Some politicians were quick to condemn the vile and vocal antisemitism.
Not so, for members of the alt-left “squad.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (NY-17) had previously attended the exhibit which showed evidence of peaceful music lovers being brutally slaughtered by Palestinian Arab terrorists. At 8:43PM on June 10, the evening of the NYC antisemitic riot, Lawler wrote on X that he was appalled that Jewish Americans were trapped inside the exhibit while an antisemitic mob screamed outside.
A short while later at 10:35PM, Rep. Ritchie Torres (NY-15), joined Lawler in condemning the heinous antisemites who revealed themselves to be “barbaric.”
It took until the following afternoon, on June 11 at 2:41PM, for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14) to condemn the antisemitic rioters.
Only after seeing fellow “squad” member AOC condemn the disgusting antisemitism, did Rep. Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), decide to post something about the vile protestors, at 3:27PM.
Both AOC and Bowman pretended that the “protestors” were really about “peace” and “human dignity” even though the rioters called for another murderous “intifada” and to repeat the atrocities of October 7.
Jihadists in New York City on June 10 with a banner “long live October 7th”
New York City and its suburbs have the greatest number of Jews outside of Israel, in the Jewish diaspora. There are members of Congress in New York who take leadership roles in defending their Jewish constituents, like Reps. Lawler and Torres, and those who protect their attackers, like Reps. AOC and Bowman. The latter practice a jihadi-socialist game called “condemn antisemitism while protecting antisemites,” a dog-whistle to go for the Jews more discreetly.
In yet another bit of lying to its readership to convey an entirely fictitious narrative, The New York Times wrote an article on its front page that claimed that Gazans hate the ruling government of Hamas, a U.S. designated foreign terrorist organization.
It’s completely untrue as shown over and again in polls, including one released this week.
New York Times front page on June 16, 2024 print edition
The article in the print version was titled “Gazans Voice Their Distress Under Hamas.” The article claimed that “support among Gazans [for Hamas] has been low for some time.” It added that “the group and its leaders have remained broadly unpopular in the enclave. More Gazans have even been willing to speak out against Hamas,” and that the people “held Hamas responsible” for their miserable condition.
The Times ran this tale in a front page Sunday paper interviewing about ten people.
Out of a territory of 2.2 million.
The reality is that there is a credible Palestinian organization which polls the local population every three months and has done so for decades. It interviewed roughly 750 people in both Gaza and the West Bank at the end of May. It is called the Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research (PCPSR) and it released its latest findings on June 12, just days before the Times piece.
The Times referenced the article but ignored its findings in favor of presenting its fake narrative.
The PCPSR poll clearly shows that a MAJORITY of 64% of Gazans supporting Hamas. This is a STEADY RISE from December 2023 when a small majority of 52% supported the government launching and carrying out a war against Israel.
The poll also showed increasing support among Gazans for Iran since the Islamic Republic launched missiles against Israel.
This isn’t news. Gazans have always supported killing Jewish civilians in Israel according to polls going back to 2000.
Decades of PCPSR polls consistently show Gazans supporting terrorist attacks inside of Israel against Jewish civilians
Which begs why The Times reported this fake news. Some things come to mind:
It knows / believes that its readership does not check any of its sources
It wanted to convey that its reporters went into Gaza for a handful of interviews
It wanted to tell a specific narrative that the people of Gaza are distinct from its leaders and army, painting them as twice-over victims of Hamas and the Israeli army
The Times concluded the cover story with precisely that last point: “While Hamas and even the Israeli hostages were in the underground tunnels, he said, Gazans were above ground with no protection from Israeli and U.S.-made bombs dropped over their heads every day. That is an oft-heard complaint by Hamas’s critics in Gaza.“There is uncontrolled anger against Hamas,” he said. “It threw the Palestinian people into the bottom of the well.”
Notice how The Times inserted “U.S.-made bombs” into the talk-track, a deliberate manipulation to add the United States to the cause of misery of every-day Gazans.
The Times portrayal is #FakeNews. The majority of Gazans support the October 7 massacre, support Hamas, support Iran, support the goal of destroying the Jewish State and support killing Israeli civilians.
Alas, we live in a world where facts are gaining irrelevancy. Social media has allowed societies to be overwhelmed by feelings and narratives. A single emotional interview – especially one doctored – carries more weight than reams of data and analysis.
The Israeli war against Gaza is a just war by any measure of analysis, yet is deeply vulnerable to ongoing support in a culture in which emotions and systemic antisemitism prevail.
The Times is giving red meat to that highly-charged, angry anti-Zionist mob as a near-term business matter and to influence American policy, even as it sacrifices the long-term credibility of its institution and the physical well being of American Jewry.
While Judaism is described as one of the three great monotheistic religions in the western world, it is a fraction of the size of Christianity and Islam. While Christianity and Islam are universalistic religions which forced or coerced conversions over centuries, Judaism is a particular religion with no such tenet. Consequently, Christians and Muslims number roughly 2.4 billion and 1.9 billion, respectively, spread around the world, while Jews number only about 15 million, found principally in Israel and the United States.
The scale differential is enormous. Consider that if only 10% of Muslims are radical antisemites willing to kill Jews, the 190 million Islamists would be 12 times the entire Jewish population.
There are about 50 Muslim-majority countries in the world, and only a single Jewish-majority country. Even in countries without a Muslim majority, the number of Muslims are growing quickly and dwarf Jews.
The result is that Muslims can voice antisemitic things without fear of reprisals. In Muslim-majority countries, the Quran and Islamic teachings are beyond reproach under blasphemy laws but not non-Islamic faiths. Jews and Judaism can be mocked without any repercussions.
Deborah Samuel was killed and burned by mob after she was accused of blasphemy at Shehu Shagari school in Sokoto, Nigeria
That is becoming more true in Western non-Muslim majority countries as well. People are terrified about drawing a picture of the Islamic prophet Muhammed out of fear of being killed, but will comfortably mock the small minority Jewish population and Judaism aloud publicly.
The sheer size of the Christian and Muslim population and number of Muslim-majority countries, coupled with fear of crossing radical extremists produces a disproportionate volume of hate speech. Whether at the U.N., social media or on college campuses, Islamic privilege insulates the large religions in a way that does not exist for Jews and Judaism.
Some resolutions have been put forward at global bodies which try to afford religious protections.
Many of the sponsors of the resolutions have been Islamic countries. Their desire to protect the sanctity of Islamic holy texts and prophets globally is part of the reason there have been almost no incidents of radical Islamists burning Jewish holy books. Islamists also don’t insult Jewish prophets such as Moses, as Islamists also view them as prophets.
Instead, Islamists come for Jews and the Jewish State. They mock the Holocaust as a fair target of Jewish history, not of Judaism. They state that Jews have no history in the land of Israel, which, while undermining the basic text of the Bible, is viewed as only insulting Jews as people and not the religion itself.
This divide is another element in the disproportionality of hate speech: an intrinsic part of modern antisemitism is to divorce Jews from Judaism. It allows Judaism to be placed among the three great monotheistic religions, even while there are a paltry number of Jews compared to Christians and Muslims. The gap between the understanding of religion and people inflates the fictitious “power” of the handful of Jews, a source of significant hate speech.
On April 11, 2016, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said “One of the key warning signs of genocide is the spread of hate speech in public discourse and the media…. And every day, the seeds of future massacres and genocides are being planted… It is essential that Governments, the judiciary and civil society stand firm against hate speech and those who incite division and violence.”
The U.N., social media platforms and antisemitic politicians are themselves enabling and spreading antisemitic hate speech. Everyone can feel the temperature rising for Jews but few are willing to condemn the vile slander.
Jews are a small minority-minority facing a disproportionate number of hate crimes in the United States every year. They also face a disproportionate amount of hate speech, protected by free speech laws in the West, and indifference in the East and global South.
In yet another disgraceful attack on Jews, Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York’s 16th Congressional District, denied Jewish history, specifically that Jews come from the land of Israel.
During an interview, Bowman said that “Israel is a settler colonial project,” an oft-used phrase by radical antisemitic Arabs to falsely tarnish Jews as foreign invaders. It is an attempt to mainstream a lie that Jews do not have thousands of years of history in the holy land with sovereignty and self-determination.
Jamaal Bowman calls Israel a “settler colonial project” in June 2024
Imagine an elected official stating that Blacks are not from Africa or were never slaves in the United States. They would either be known as a lunatic or a racist. Or both.
Bowman did not simply lie about Jewish history without a calculated reason: he did it as a pretext to defend attacks on the Jewish State as well as to appeal to Jew-haters as he runs for reelection on June 25th.
The reestablishment of a sovereign Jewish State is the first successful decolonization project in the world, yet is framed by Jew-haters as the essence of colonization. They do this, thinking that a majority of Israelis are “White” Jews, when in fact, Ashkenazi Jews account for only one-third of Israeli citizens.
And simply forget that the Old Testament is the most widely read book in the world.
Bowman again struts his antisemitic bona fides in an effort to rally the Black, Brown and White KKK to come for Jews in his district and around the world.
ACTION ITEM
Get out the vote for Westchester County Executive George Latimer and oust antisemitic extremist Jamaal Bowman. Polls are open now through June 25th.
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