The war between Israel and Iran’s proxies is taking place in the media as much as the battlefield. Just review how Israel and Hezbollah published reports of the battle on August 25, 2024.
Israel claims to have thwarted Hezbollah’s attack with preemptive strikes at missile launching sites in Southern Lebanon.
Jerusalem Post headline on August 25, 2024
The Jerusalem Post called Hezbollah’s attack a “failure” and that Israel foiled the attack.
Readers in Lebanon got a very different message from Al-Manar, the Hezbollah media outlet.
Al-Manar online, August 25, 2024
Hezbollah claimed that it’s “military operation has been completed successfully” and that Israel’s claims about a preemptive attack are false [Hezbollah doesn’t recognize Israel and calls it “Zionist”].
It added that Hezbollah’s “offensive drones… crossed the Lebanese-Palestinian border towards intended targets” was successful. [Note again that Hezbollah considers Israel to be occupied Palestine.]
Al-Manar website
The US-designated terrorist group listed various military targets in Israel, which were the focus of the operation.
Al-Manar website lists solely military targets in Israel, in the hope of minimizing Israeli attacks on civilian locations
People in the radical Islamic and anti-Zionist world were told of Hezbollah striking at the Zionist entity in revenge of the assassination of a jihadi leader, complete with a narrative that dismissed any legitimacy of the Jewish State. Zionists were told of the tremendous intelligence of its military, which foiled a potential deadly attack.
Both Hezbollah and Israel had experienced terrible failures of their defensive forces, and each is now fighting a war of propaganda as much as missiles to reclaim the trust of their respective populaces.
Many Jews have found it difficult to be at work since October 7. Some have been alarmed by the lack of empathy for the Jewish community after the Hamas massacre. Others are distraught over comments that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. Sometimes the comments come from peers and other times from people who are senior or clients.
The workplace is not like other forums. A person’s livelihood is at stake, and the office is where people work together for long stretches of time. It is a very different dynamic than passing a masked protestor on the street.
How does a person handle anti-Israel vitriol from a colleague on social media like LinkedIn? Is it different if they post something on X or Facebook?
Here are some suggested guidelines:
It is always safe to stick with facts
Opinions are best shared in reaction to something at work; in personal settings, proactive is fine
Emotions are fine to share, as appropriate for that work environment, with an emphasis on humility
Do not troll people on social media. Use your own platform to make your feelings known
Use professional work media like LinkedIn for work related matters unless you are so senior that you believe your Israel advocacy can influence people
You can share your pro-Israel positions in a permanent passive manner by posting your role on Zionist groups like StandWithUs or post pictures of you in Israel
If you feel close enough to a colleague at work and their views are within the framework of honest disagreement, ask if they are open to discussing the topic
Should someone in your office cross the line into intimidation, harassment or discrimination, bring it up with human resources immediately, whether the person is junior or senior to you
If a client crosses the line, bring the matter up internally, asking the firm to terminate the engagement or reassign the client to a different colleague
Crossing the line into intimidation, harassment or discrimination should always be called out regardless of a person’s seniority, and whether internal or external to an organization. It must never be allowed to be normalized.
Honest ignorance is still ignorance. Consider whether the person stating lies is open to learning facts and try to engage respectfully. If the person is irate and will not be swayed, there is no point in engaging directly; you could talk to others who may have witnessed the spectacle.
If you are unfamiliar with facts as you hear arguments, admit as much that you need to do more research. It’s an opportunity to learn more from respected sources and not take someone’s emotional outburst as gospel.
People often react to difficult situations with a desire to either fight or flee. In a business environment, take a breath and be more tactical.
He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say: It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you at liberty to neglect it; If you have studied much Torah, you shall be given much reward. Faithful is your employer to pay you the reward of your labor; And know that the grant of reward unto the righteous is in the age to come.
We have obligations at work, and we have obligations as Jews at work. It includes providing for our families and workers, as well as infusing the environment with Jewish values, but neither should fully supplant the other. Should that happen, it is not really a place of business where a Jew should be present.
The parents of one of the hostages stolen to Gaza on October 7, 2023 spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last night. The parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, hailed from Chicago and spoke in anguished voices in their hometown. They made clear that the return of their music-loving son was not an issue of politics but of humanity.
The parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin mentioned the 22 nationalities of the hostages and their multiple religions. They made an appeal to bring all the hostages home and end the suffering of innocent people in Gaza. It was an apolitical speech.
Yet it made the anti-Israel socialist-jihadi alliance apoplectic. Why wasn’t a Palestinian invited to speak they asked?
Rep. Jamaal Bowman wanted Palestinians to speak at DNC
Members of the socialist-jihadi “squad” said that the DNC was “erasing ” and “dehumanizing” Palestinians by not giving equal time to Palestinians impacted by the war [that Palestinians launched and support].
Arab and Muslim influencers like Mehdi Hasan and James Zogby pushed for much the same.
Perhaps the DNC may have been able to find a Palestinian-American somewhere who wants to live peacefully alongside the Jewish State. Perhaps the Democrats could have given a platform to a Palestinian who would show empathy for both Israelis who were hunted and tortured, as well as Palestinians who suffer because their leaders hide like cowards in tunnels and refuse to surrender.
To what end? The speech by the Israeli-Americans was not political so didn’t require a “balanced” counterpoint.
As it relates to politics, the DNC released its 2024 platform which reiterated “America’s ironclad commitment to the security of Israel and our unrivaled ability to leverage growing regional integration among U.S. partners to counter Iranian aggression.” The Polin-Goldberg parents speech went directly to that important point of providing the Jewish State with the means to defend itself so such atrocities would not be repeated by Iranian-backed sponsors of terror.
Israel has killed roughly 17,000 terrorists so far in the defensive war it never wanted. It has managed to do this with the support of the Democratic administration in power.
While it is deeply tragic that roughly a similar number of civilians have died according to Hamas sources, how does giving a voice to the innocent Arab victims advance the current DNC platform of peace and security? The Israeli-American parents spoke of the suffering of Palestinians, which is also part of the Democratic platform, which specifically calls out “the worth of every innocent life, whether Israeli or Palestinian.”
But the socialist-jihadi cabal wants to undermine Israel’s security. It seeks to strip the Democratic Party of its policy of supporting the Jewish State. The goal of showcasing the unfortunate suffering of Palestinians is not an attempt at balance but whitewashing the genocidal intent of Hamas.
The socialist-jihadi alliance wants to veil the wolf in sheep’s clothing. The true socialist-jihadi spokesperson is Yahya Sinwar himself, a man committed to destroying Israel and the United States regardless of cost.
Yahya Sinwar, Palestinian leader of Gaza, Hamas and orchestrator of the barbaric October 7 massacre takes the podium
Alternatively, if Palestinian voices will not be heard, the socialist-jihadi alliance demands that Zionists be silenced. They want relationships with Zionists to be “denormalized”, as showcased with greater frequency in liberal cities.
Protestors shut down Brooklyn event because liberal Jewish speaker is also a Zionist, August 2024
It is a deeply abnormal situation that parents must plead for the release of their innocent child held in captivity for nearly a year. It is also horribly tragic that Americans are attempting to normalize the deplatforming of Zionists.
Democrats have been trying to make a case that Republicans are attempting to make Israel a wedge issue in American politics. Pro-Israel Democrats say that it is harmful to the Jewish State to destroy the broad bipartisan support of the only liberal democracy in the Middle East enjoys. Republicans agree and lament that Democrats are addressing the wrong audience.
The charge by centrist Democrats’ about Republicans is designed to be a red herring to cover the infiltration of the anti-Zionist alt-left into the Democratic Party.
Justice Democrats has been growing its influence in Democratic circles, supporting anti-Zionist non-White people in Congress like Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) does the same.
In an attempt to distinguish between their rabid anti-Zionism and antisemitism, the far-left argues that there are good Jews and bad Jews. They embrace the anti-Israel “good Jews” like those from Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow, as if doing so proves they don’t hate Jews. Only those “bad Jews” who support Jews living in the Jewish holy land are targeted for vitriol and harassment.
CAIR, the Council for American-Islamic Relations makes a similar argument. Zahra Billoo made a speech which specifically called out “polite Zionists… which are not your friends” because she argued that any Jew who supports Israel is inherently anti-Muslim. To be an ally in the Islamic world requires that Jews denounce Zionism.
These and similar organizations and countries have been attempting to brand Zionism a form of racism, as so declared in 1975 at the United Nations. They have pushed a narrative in schools and society that everyone actively needs to be anti-racist and consequently anti-Zionist.
Branding Israel as an “apartheid” and “genocidal” country started well before the October 7 massacre by Palestinians. The effort was to not only make Israel a pariah nation devoid of allies, but to convince Jews to abandon their brethren and heritage.
The jihadi-socialist alliance is not only looking to destroy the Jewish State, but to pit Jew against Jew regarding Israel. It is yet another vile form of antisemitism.
Since 1993, the United States has provided more than $7.6 billion in assistance to Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza—primarily through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The Trump administration suspended the program in January 2019 due to the Palestinians continued support of terrorism but it was restarted under the Biden administration in April 2021. According to the U.S. Governmental Accounting Office report in December 2023, American taxpayer dollars are currently not going to terrorism via that program.
The same cannot be said of the money the U.S. sends to Palestinians via the United Nations.
Since 1950, the U.S. has donated $7.3 billion to UNRWA, the temporary agency to deal uniquely with Palestinians who left Israel in 1948, together with their millions of descendants. The Biden administration suspended payments to UNRWA in January 2024 when it was revealed that several staffers participated in the brutal mass slaughter of people in Israel on October 7.
All that money hasn’t bought America any love.
The supposedly “moderate” Holocaust-denier President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority addressed the Turkish government on August 15, 2024. He promised “sharia law: victory or martyrdom” in the war against the Jewish State, and cursed the United States, “America is the plague and the plague is America.”
Pro-Palestinian protesters in the United States hate America too.
The negative sentiments about the U.S.A. is more prevalent among Democrats than Republicans. According to a June 2023 Pew poll, Republicans were more likely to view America as tolerant (54% to 35%) and democratic (51% to 36%) compared to Democrats. Meanwhile Democrats were more likely to find the U.S. to be dangerous (43% to 21%) and religious (35% to 26%) than Republicans. Note that these statistics were taken before the Palestinians launched the October 7, 2023 war against Israel.
Meanwhile, Israelis have a very positive view of the United States, with 77% having a positive view according to a June 2024 Pew poll. By way of comparison, Canada, the United Kingdom and France have 54%, 54% and 46% positive scores for the United States, respectively.
According to Palestinian sources, there are over 40,000 Gazans killed in the current war against Israel. Israel claims that 17,000 of the dead were terrorists. That means that the Palestinian Authority expects millions of additional dollars to support their “Martyrs Fund” / pay-to-slay program, on top of appeals to rebuild Gaza in the war they deliberately initiated.
When the leader of the Palestinian Authority declares “America is the plague” and his supporters threaten to burn America to the ground, it begs the question why America gives a single penny to people who despise the country, and whose leaders promise to give their last penny to people who slaughter Jews.
May 2021 saw a relatively short war between Hamas in Gaza and Israel. As the battle was coming to a close, Yahya Sinwar, head of Hamas’s military, met with Tor Wennesland, the UN Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.
It did not go well.
Yahya Sinwar, leader of the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, gestures during a rally in Beit Lahiya on May 30, 2021. (Atia Mohammed/ Flash90)
“It was a bad meeting. It was not positive at all, and we clarified to the [United Nations] delegation that we would hold a meeting of Islamic and national factions in Gaza to decide our next steps,” Sinwar told reporters following the meeting. “It seems that the occupation [Israel] did not get our people’s message,” essentially threatening the Jewish State again.
Hamas demanded that Israel lift tightened restrictions on the Gaza Strip in exchange for continued calm, as well as permit Gaza to rebuild after the 11-day battle between Israel and the terror group. But Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said that Israel would not permit a full reconstruction of Gaza — with the resulting influx of materials — without the return of two Israeli civilian captives and the bodies of two Israeli soldiers held by Hamas.
Sinwar rejected the proposal and said Israel is “trying to extort us, the Palestinian people, the Palestinian resistance, when it comes to lifting [the restrictions] on our people.”
A spokesperson for the UN Secretary General was interviewed in June 2021 after Wennesland’s meeting with Sinwar, especially on the topic of Hamas’s use of children in armed conflict. The UN offered generic messaging and would not specifically condemn Hamas.
Hamas leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar sits and smiles in his bombed Gaza office when it was above ground, May 27, 2021 (Courtesy)
Two years later, Sinwar launched a massive war against Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. It seemed that Hamas wanted both the UN and Israel to get the “message” that they will be unbowed by any rules of war, and magnify his violence by a hundred times.
Israel learned Sinwar’s 2021 and 2023 messages and is replying to sender: the Jewish State will defend itself aggressively when attacked in such barbaric fashion, and it will always insist on reclaiming its citizens. Any reconstruction of Gaza will depend on Sinwar’s death or capture this time, in addition to the release of the Israeli hostages whether dead or alive.
For its part, the UN continues to pretend that it does not understand anyone’s messages, offering worthless bobbleheads with microphones attached. If it weren’t so horribly tragic, it would be comical.
Many political experts have offered that there is no way to defeat Hamas’ ideology though military means. Israel’s war effort will only be successful in defeating the military capabilities of the political-terrorist group, much like allied forces defeated Nazi Germany in World War II, and US and other allies defeated al-Qaeda and ISIS in the 21st century. The ultimate driver of Hamas, to destroy the Jewish State, will continue to fuel another generation of Palestinian radicals.
What goes unmentioned is that this “ideology” is rooted in religious fanaticism, much like al Qaeda and ISIS, among others. This potentially makes the ideology eternal, so any notion of defeating the ideology would be nonsensical.
Consider that there are only 900 Christian Arabs in Gaza out of a population of roughly 2.2 million, a paltry 0.04% of the region, with the rest being Muslim. The strip is deeply religious under a strictly Islamic religious regime enforcing sharia law. Hamas is attempting to use its Gaza foothold as the launching pad for a caliphate with the help of other Islamic regimes including Iran and Qatar, to consume Israel next door.
Last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas came clean about his fanatical Islamic and antisemitic and anti-US beliefs in front of the Turkish parliament as he declared “we implement sharia law: victory or martyrdom!” and “America is the plague and the plague is America.”
The Israel-Arab war is a religious war for Palestinian Arabs and the Islamic Republic of Iran, not a territorial war. It is therefore not surprising that Jews in the diaspora are being attacked by antisemites who berate Jews as murderers, racists and robbers who are “colonizers,” not indigenous to the land of Israel. It is an unhinged rant of fanatics who celebrate the slaughter of unbelievers unmoored in reality, not a reasoned opinion capable of being addressed.
The United Nations’ role in the Middle East is a dangerous farce. It pretends to be an impartial party attempting to bring peace to the volatile region, when in fact it takes only sides with Palestinian Arabs.
The UN has a person appointed to be the “Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process,” Tor Wennesland. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Wennesland to that role in December 2020 and simultaneously to act as Guterres’ “Personal Representative to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority.” How could Israel possibly take the position of such a biased representative seriously? Guterres shot the messenger by cementing him with Palestinian cement shoes from the outset.
Not surprisingly, the “peace process” floundered under Guterres and Wennesland, with the Palestinian Arabs together with backers in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen all coming for the Jewish State in a regional assault.
The biased and tarnished Wennesland continues to address the UN Security Council and the world via social media. Various biases can be found throughout his comments.
On August 16, 2024, Wennesland tweeted that he condemned settler violence and wanted “to ensure full accountability for all involved,” and further called “on the Israeli government to stop settler violence.”
August 16, 2024 tweet calling out Israelis for violence and demanding full accountability
But Wennesland did the opposite regarding Hamas and other terrorist groups attacking Israel, where he did not call out “Hezbollah” and demanded that Israel use “maximum restraint” in responding to terror.
July 27, 2024 tweet not naming Hezbollah terrorists and urging Israel respond with “maximum restraint”
The hypocrisy is a designed feature of the UN. When Wennesland addressed the UN Security Council on May 29, 2024, he acknowledged the “breakdown of law and order” in Gaza as well as the “well-organized looting of the UNRWA Rafah log base,” but deliberately omitted saying that the looting was done by Hamas. In fact, he implied the opposite, that because Hamas was no longer in charge, there was a breakdown of order.
Comments to UNSC on May 29, 2024
Wennesland treats Hamas as a trusted partner and uses the political-terrorist group’s talking points. On August 10, 2024, Wennesland condemned on the “devastating strike on a school sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinian, with dozens of fatalities.” The UN itself admitted that those “dozens of fatalities” were terrorists, yet the UN’s “Coordinator for Peace” parroted jihadi terrorist propaganda.
Official statement condemning the killing of terrorists on August 10, 2024
Wennesland views his role as protecting and promoting Palestinian Arabs, not securing peace. It means advancing their narrative, excusing their terrorism, and preventing Israel from eliminating jihadi terrorists.
Wennesland knows that there are numerous allies of Palestinians all attacking Israel; he names Hizbullah, Iran and the Houthis, even while treading gingerly around Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It’s because he sees his goal as supporting the creation of a Palestinian state first and foremost, and that means calling for international support for a Palestinian government, even knowing it to be deeply corrupt and antisemitic.
May 29 comments to UNSC
The UN’s idea of a “peace process” is deeply and fundamentally flawed. The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Coordinator for Middle East Peace Tor Wennesland should both be fired for abetting terrorism, and all UN agencies in the region should be shuttered.
For decades, Palestinians put on a dance that they had two personas: one peaceful and secular, the other militant and Islamist. In August 2024, they shed the former and fully embraced the latter.
Palestinian Arabs had two principal parties in their government: the more secular Fatah and the Islamist Hamas. The Palestinian Authority has been ruled by President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who the west presents as a moderate voice of reason, despite being a Holocaust denier and being deeply unpopular amongst local Palestinians. Abbas has ruled E49, the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, commonly called the “West Bank” by Palestinians and “Judea and Samaria” by Israelis.
Hamas is the more popular political party amongst local Palestinian Arabs and has ruled Gaza since 2007. It is a designated terrorist organization according to the United States, European Union, Israel and many other countries. It nominally divided the organization between its political wing and its military wing, much like Nazi Germany had different divisions of the SS, Gestapo, Waffen, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle and Wehrmacht.
On July 31, 2024, Israel killed Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, while he was in Iran. In response to the vacated position, on August 6, Hamas announced that Yahya Sinwar who is the group’s military leader, will also assume the role of diplomatic leader. The move consolidated the diplomatic and terrorist faces of the organization.
Just over a week later on August 15, President Abbas spoke to the government of Turkey in a large address. In his remarks, he made clear that the Palestinian Authority is not a secular party but a religious one, intent on “implement[ing] Islamic sharia law: victory or martyrdom.”
PA President Mahmoud Abbas addressing government of Turkey on August 15, 2024
He called for Islamic prayers to mourn for the slain leader of Hamas with reciting prayers from the Quran to wide applause.
And then called the United States a “plague,” something nefarious and detrimental to humankind which must be destroyed.
Palestinian leadership has shed the polite diplomatic facade and embraced the genocidal jihadi mantra of the foundational Hamas Charter, in line with the desires of the Palestinian Arab public and radical jihadists around the world. It remains to be seen if this will expand the war against the Jewish State or initiates a global recognition that an antisemitic genocidal regime next to the only Jewish State is untenable in the extreme.
The United Nations Secretary General released the biannual report on the threat posed by ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and Levant) on August 8, 2024. Vladimir Voronkov, Under-Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism noted that the threat of terrorism has spread throughout the world, and in Africa in particular, noting “a vast territory stretching from Mali to northern Nigeria could fall under their effective control.”
Various countries commented on the report and the threat of terrorism by Islamic radical groups including Boko Haram, Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, and ISIL-Khorasan. The representative of Sierra Leone, Council President for August, spoke in his national capacity, noting that “this new epicentre of terrorism [in Central Sahel and West Africa] accounts for almost 50 per cent of all deaths from terror acts globally.” Roughly 2,000 people in Burkina Faso were killed in 258 incidents in 2023, accounting for nearly a quarter of all terrorist deaths globally.
Many discussed the issue of border control as an essential tool in combating terrorism. Sierra Leone’s representative said that “terrorist groups often exploit porous borders, weak border controls and security vulnerabilities for cross-border illegal trafficking of weapons, drugs and people.” The Republic of Korea’s delegate warned that “terrorists can exploit a lack of governance in border areas, which exacerbates various security problems beyond those areas.” Natalia Gherman, Executive Director of the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate opined that there needs to be “an integrated approach to border security.”
Some members referenced the Accra Initiative which is designed to combat the spread of terrorism in Africa. One of the primary focuses was border security, where efforts led to the arrest of 700 people in 2018 and 2019. Albert Kan-Dapaah, Ghana’s national security chief said that unemployment was a factor in terrorism [a statement not proven by research] and his country would focus on job creation. “We don’t want to have a situation beyond our control, so we will also make it difficult for the jihadists to radicalise youth in border communities.”
Not one country mentioned Hamas, the jihadi Palestinian Arab terrorist group that killed over 1,200 people, until the United States was disgusted by an accusation by the Russian representative and rose to criticize Russia and “its growing influence with terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hizbullah and the Houthis, as well as with Iran — the leading State sponsor of terrorism — to end their terrorist attacks.”
While the U.S. was able to remember the threat of genocidal jihadi extremists when vilified by Russia, the Biden-Harris Administration has seemingly not been worried about terrorists streaming across U.S. borders.
The number of illegal border crossings from December 2020 (under the Trump Administration) to December 2023 went up an astounding 744% according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Center for Border Protection (CBP).
According to the March 2024 Global Terrorism Index (GTI), the United States accounted for 70% of the terrorist attacks among western countries in 2023, with only the U.S. and Belgium having fatalities from terrorism.
GTI noted that Hamas, a “designated as a terrorist organisation by several countries, including the United States, Israel, and the European Union” had been “relatively inactive as a terrorist organisation in the five years before the October 7th attacks, with only 14 attacks and one fatality recorded between 2015 and 2022.” But the political-terrorist group used that time to carefully prepare for an enormous attack which killed 1,200 and brought the region to an all-out war.
Israel is intent on maintaining a presence in the Philadelphi Corrider between Gaza and Egypt, which has long been used to bring in weapons, trained terrorists and tunnel building materials into the terrorism enclave. Doing so is blocking the restocking of Hamas in the current war and will impede its rearming in the future.
Global communities are focusing intently on their border security and immigration policy as well.
The United States is on edge with rampant antisemitism on streets and campuses with a jihadi-socialist alliance growing ever more bold. How much of it is from foreign students legally permitted into the country? How much from people entering illegally? What are they planning for the new semester? How soon until the vitriol and harassment becomes terror?
First One Through 