New York’s 16th Congressional district has been reshaped by the latest census, and now includes more of Westchester than it had earlier, and drops sections of the Bronx which are now in NY-15 held by Rep. Ritchie Torres. The current congressman for NY-16 is Rep. Jamaal Bowman, who is facing a number of challengers in the Democratic primaries to be held on August 23rd (early voting begins August 13).
According to the non-partisan website fivethirtyeight, the newly redrawn NY-16 leans heavily towards the Democratic Party, voting for Joe Biden over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election by a margin of +40. That means that the Democratic primary is truly the election for this congressional seat.
One of the Democratic contenders, Vedat Gashi, spoke with me about issues of particular concern to the Jewish community.
General Background
Gashi describes himself as a “common sense” Democrat who has nothing in common with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) which has backed Bowman. Gashi grew up in Kosovo and came to the United States at age four. He later returned to Kosovo as an adult to work for the United Nations as the country gained its independence in the dissolution of Yugoslavia. His memories of Israel’s involvement with Kosovo – even before it became independent – left a positive mark on him.
Gashi is appreciative of the Jewish community as well. As a secular Muslim, he said he was appalled at President Trump’s so-called “Muslim ban” which would have restricted people like him from coming to the US (writer’s note: Trump did not ban all Muslims, but people from seven Muslim-majority countries, which did not include Kosovo). When Gashi went to JFK Airport to protest the ban, the first people he saw protesting were Jewish groups. These incidents gave Gashi a sense of warmth toward the Jewish community.
A full background of Gashi’s background can be found on his website. Unfortunately, there is little else on the site, such as his positions on important issues.
Vedat Gashi, running for congress in 2022 to represent NY-16
On Israel
Gashi is instinctively pro-Israel but not very well versed on specific topics.
As it relates to Bowman’s vote against supporting the Abraham Accords in April 2021, Gashi said he was “disappointed” in Bowman’s vote because the Accords clearly advanced US’s foreign policy interests. He assumed that Bowman did so because of pressure from the DSA, and Gashi used that point to highlight that he would not abide by any party orthodoxy but consider each issue as it impacted the people in his district. He added that the DSA’s comments which blamed American and NATO policies for causing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as indicative of the far-left group’s “tenuous grasp of reality.”
Gashi said that the people behind the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) of Israel are anti-Semitic. He believes that people who call Israel an “apartheid state”, such as Bowman’s senior policy advisor Rajiv Sicora, “don’t want Israel to even exist”. In contrast, Gashi believes that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and is a strong American ally.
Bowman is tied to other DSA-backed politicians like Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN), as he votes alongside them 98% of the time. Gashi thinks that Tlaib and Omar have made many anti-Semitic comments, such as Tlaib’s screed that Jews and Zionists profit from racism “from Gaza to Detroit,” and Omar’s comments about Jews buying control of Congress and hypnotizing the world. He finds their comments “deeply racist” and offensive.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), three members of the ‘Squad’ of Democratic Socialists on November 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Regarding Bowman co-sponsoring the May 2022 Tlaib-led legislation that called the founding of Israel a ‘Nakba’ (catastrophe), Gashi said that sponsors of such legislation do not believe Israel has the right to exist. He said he arrived at such a conclusion from being informed about how Serbs treated Kosovo. Serbs believed Kosovo to be “nothing more than a parking lot,” an empty vessel without meaning or ownership, much the way some anti-Israel people continue to look at the Jewish State today. He noted that the founding of many countries included wars and displacements but that doesn’t mean the new country shouldn’t exist.
Gashi did not have a strong opinion about “settlements.” He noted that he saw some when he visited friends in Israel several years ago, with many being fully established towns which are a far cry from what the name implies, which is a couple of shacks. He offered no opinion about whether they are legal or whether UN Resolution 2334 was appropriate.
As it relates to a number of other regional issues such as the Taylor Force Act and the Palestinian Authority’s desire for a consulate in Jerusalem, Gashi knew little about the topics.
United Nations / Iran
Gashi worked for the United Nations in Kosovo for a number of years and believes that the organization is an “unwieldy animal” with many difficult actors like Russia, however, Gashi believes that there is opportunity for the United Nations to be a positive force. During our interview, Gashi noted he was not familiar with the many resolutions and committees within the United Nations that attack the Jewish State but seemed interested to learn more.
Regarding the Iranian nuclear deal, Gashi said that “Iran achieving nuclear capacity would be a terrible outcome and needs to be opposed every which way we can, if not diplomatically, then by other means”. He added that “it is an existential problem”.
Anti-Semitism / Religion
Gashi was not familiar with the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism but stressed that “words are important.” Drawing on his experience in Kosovo, he shared that politicians were reluctant to use the term “genocide” because it would compel certain actions, even though avoiding its usage “led to more ethnic cleansing” in his home country. He did not know why President Biden agreed to the IHRA definition and then refused to enact it for Title VI to protect Jewish and Zionist students on campuses, until December 2022, which is after mid-term elections.
Gashi was also unfamiliar with Senator Diane Feinstein grilling of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett saying “the dogma lives loudly within you and that’s of concern,” as it related to ACB’s Catholic beliefs, suggesting it would possibly disqualify her for office. He said that “all manners of good and bad deeds have been attributed to religiosity. Religiosity in and of itself, is neither good nor bad. Faith, in general, is a good thing.” He did say that Feinstein’s comment was inappropriate.
Schools / Police
Gashi would not engage in a discussion about charter schools or monies for parochial schools. He seemed more concerned about upsetting teacher unions and keeping funding inside of the public school system. Whether he would tackle the issue of prioritizing educating children rather than winning support of powerful unions remains to be seen, as he would not voice an opinion going into a Democratic primary where he is competing against a radical socialist who was formerly a teacher.
Gashi did come after Bowman about his stance to “Defund the Police.” He felt that Bowman’s endorsement of the socialist platform was dangerous for the district and country. He added that Bowman continues to lie about his comments and vote on the manner, much as Bowman clearly lied to his constituents about supporting the infrastructure bill when he voted against it.
Summary
Gashi presents as a left-leaning politician, yet far to the right and much more honest than Bowman. He is not well-versed in various issues of concern to the Jewish people in his district but seems eager to learn and approach the issues thoughtfully.
On June 1, 2022, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken issued a press release “Commemorating Pride Month.” In his comments he said that “the U.S. Department of State recommits to protecting and promoting the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world.“
Does it really?
The US Embassy in Israel put the Blinken press release on its website. It even added a rainbow logo with “Pride 2022” beneath “U.S. Embassy Jerusalem” in the article.
US embassy in Israel reprints entire message about “LGBTQI+ communities”, including producing a rainbow logo
Yet there wasn’t a single other US embassy anywhere in the entire Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) that reposted the pride press release. Not in Egypt. Not in Jordan. Not in Iraq. Not in Saudi Arabia.
According to the Williams Institute that did a country ranking of LGBT acceptance, Israel ranked as the 44th most accepting country. Egypt ranked 159. Jordan was 167. Iraq was 94.
“Palestine” was ranked at 130 and was called out as one of five lands that had “very little change in acceptance between 2010 and 2020.“
It would seem that the United States will only work at “protecting and promoting the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons” in countries that already protect and promote human rights.
The Islamic spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, addressed the Muslim world on May 7, 2021 to inspire them to reject any peaceful relations with the Jewish State and its supporters. He said that “Israel is not a state, but a terrorist camp against the Palestinian people and other Muslim peoples” and that “Muslim and Christian scholars must declare that normalization is forbidden by Sharia.” He encouraged Palestinian youth to battle the “usurping entity” and urged the 14 million Palestinians around the world to return to “the Holy Land” to decide “the fate of the [Jewish] foreign settlers.“
The focus of this [Muslim] unity should be internal jihad and distrust of enemies. And Palestinian politics should not depend on the main enemy of the Palestinians, namely America, the British and the vile Zionists.
Islamic spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, May 7, 2021
Khamenei concluded his remarks calling for waging war: “The Palestinian Mujahideen [militant jihadists] must ably continue their legitimate and moral struggle against the usurping entity [Israel] until this entity acquiesced [surrenders].“
Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei
These sentiments were echoed in California by the San Francisco Executive Director of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Zahra Billoo, six months later. While addressing the American Muslims for Palestine conference, she made clear that all Zionists are enemies. “Know your enemies, and I’m not going to sugar-coat that. They are your enemies. There are organizations and infrastructure out there who are working to harm you. Make no mistake of it. They would sell you down the line if they could, and they very often do behind your back. I mean the Zionist organizations, I mean the foreign policy organizations that say they’re not Zionists but want a two-state solution. I’m not a Palestinian myself but it’s my understanding that that is laughable. So know your enemies.” Billoo listed some of them: “We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. Because just because they’re your friend today, doesn’t mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights. So oppose the vehement fascists but oppose the polite Zionists too. They are not your friends.“
Billoo continued that “We have to connect the dots between the organizations that promote Zionist agendas, materials, marketing and legislation are the same ones that want to ban Muslims, are the same ones that want to pass anti-sharia legislation.“
CAIR came out strongly to support Billoo’s remarks, stating it “continue[s] to proudly stand by Zahra and all American Muslim leaders who face smears and threats because they dare to express an opinion about Palestinian human rights.”
CAIR Executive Director Zahra Billoo addressing American Muslims for Palestine, November 27, 2021
A Massachusetts-based socialist extremist group that stands against “the colonization of Palestine, US imperialism, policing, displacement, and other interlocking systems of oppression” produced an anti-Semitic “Mapping Project,” which embraced the anti-normalization of any Zionist – person or organization. The group falsely claimed that “institutional support for the colonization of Palestine is structurally tied to policing and systemic white supremacy.” It listed names and addresses of organizations like Yachad New England which helps individuals with disabilities. The site called out this aid organization as “complicit in propaganda/normalization of Zionism.” It included Yachad’s address so extremists can easily track down and target disabled Jews.
Amalek would blush.
Socialists have bonded with Islamic extremists in Iran and the United States in calling for a jihad against anyone who supports the rights of Jews to live in the Jewish holy land and to have self-determination. These jihadists are branding Zionists and their supporters as enemies not just to Palestinians, but to the entire world.
Anti-normalization is now enshrined in Sharia and Progressive law, and is coming to a community near you.
There is perhaps nothing as shocking and horrible as the murder of young children at school.
The United States has seen and mourned the tragedy too often, most recently at Uvalde, TX where an 18-year old killed 19 students and two teachers. Ten people were killed and 13 wounded in 2018 when a 17-year old shot people in a high school in Santa Fe, TX. In February of that year, a 19-year old killed 17 and injured the same number at a high school in Parkland, FL, and a month earlier, a 15-year old killed two students and injured 18 others in Marshall County, KY.
Not all of the shooters in the school attacks are teenagers. Almost all are male and every attack was committed by “lone wolves” acting out of hatred or mental distress.
Society has uniformly mourned the innocent victims, even while debating how to deal with the terrible violence. The loss of young lives is a shocking amputation for the families, a scar on society.
Flowers at Robb Elementary School, Uvalde, TX on May 28, 2022 (photo: AP/ Jae C. Hong)
Civil society is appalled at the senseless violence. It ponders how to treat mental sickness and retard the hatred of killers and would-be murderers, methods to keep armaments out of those hands, and ways to better protect vulnerable schools. The media and public officials even consider not mentioning killers’ names or publishing any ‘manifestos’, in the hopes that it will dissuade other killers.
At least in the United States. That’s not the tactic the world applies to slaughtered children in Israel.
Palestinian Arab terrorists have long targeted Jewish children for murder. Palestinian society celebrates the slaughter and the world excuses those murderers.
Consider the May 1974 attack in Ma’alot, in northern Israel. Several Palestinian men coordinated an attack (not a lone person with mental illness) which took 115 people, including 105 children, hostage at the Netiv Meir Elementary School. The two-day rampage left 31 Israelis dead (including 22 children) and 70 injured.
The three armed Palestinian terrorists were members of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). The leader of the DFLP, Nayef Hawatmeh, was awarded the “Star of Honor” for his contribution to Palestinian society by Mahmoud Abbas, the acting president of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
“By the authority vested in us, and for the public good, we have decreed the following: ‘Brother Nayef Hawatmeh is decorated with the highest order of the Star of Honor in recognition of his important national role in service of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian people, and in recognition of his efforts to raise the flag of Palestine since the launch of the Palestinian revolution, through the stages of the ongoing struggle. [Signed by] Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine.“
PA President Abbas awarding terrorist Hawatmeh the ‘Star of Honor’ on May 28, 2013
Another Palestinian terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) also attacked a school in northern Israel in April 1974. The Kiryat Shmona massacre killed 18 Israelis, including 8 children. The three Palestinian Arab murderers were killed at that time.
Marking the 42nd anniversary of the massacre, the official PA newspaper celebrated the attack and called out the terrorists heroes: “The heroes [of the operation] were the Martyrs Munir Mughrabi ‘Abu Shaker’, a Palestinian born in 1954, Ahmad Mahmoud ‘Abu Shaker’, a Syrian born in Halab in 1954, and Yassin Al-Hourani ‘Abu Hadi’, who was born in southern Iraq in 1954.“
Palestinian Arabs have also targeted school buses carrying Jewish children. In May 1970, Arabs fired rocket-propelled grenades at a bus which killed twelve people, including nine schoolchildren. In April 2011, the political-terrorist group Hamas fired a laser-guided anti-tank missile at a school bus, killing a young child.
Avivim school bus massacre 1970Shaar Hanegev school bus attack, 2011
Hamas has killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, including bombing the Hebrew University cafeteria in 2002, killing nine people, including 5 Americans. The attack was celebrated with hundreds of Palestinians pouring into the streets of Gaza City, vowing more attacks. The Palestinians love and support Hamas, with over half supporting the terrorist group and likely to elect the Hamas leader president of the PA, should elections ever be held.
Cafeteria of Hebrew University bombed by Hamas July 2002 (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
In 2015, a United States court found the PA liable for supporting the terrorist attacks and ordered to pay $218 million to the victims, which was tripled due to its being related to terrorism. The courts ultimately threw out the ruling because Americans weren’t specifically targeted and the attacks did not happen on US soil.
While the fines were deemed inappropriate to enforce, the judgment which concluded that the PA was behind attacks on schools and civilians remains valid. Yet President Biden plans on meeting with PA President Abbas next month in any event. A representative of the European Union said yesterday that Israelis are to blame for Palestinian terrorism, as young Palestinians see homes being demolished, as he ignored the glorification of murderers at Palestinian schools.
How can the world mourn the killing of young American children at school by lone gunmen, while simultaneously excusing the slaughter of Jewish children by organized Palestinian political and terrorist groups?
The current smear against Israel being popularized by anti-Zionist organizations and people is that the country practices a form of apartheid. Specifically, they consider that Israel discriminates against and segregates its non-Jewish population.
Not only is the charge absurd, but it is a deliberate attempt to deflect the anti-Semitism and xenophobia of the Palestinian Arab population.
Ban on citizenship
At inception, Israel granted all of the people who lived in the land citizenship, and as the country annexed additional territory such as the eastern section of Jerusalem, it afforded all residents there to apply for citizenship as well, regardless of religion. Today, roughly 74% of the country is Jewish, with over one quarter belonging to other faiths. It stands as a uniquely diverse country in the entire Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
This is in sharp contrast to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, declared that “we will not see the presence of a single Israeli (read Jew) – civilian or soldier -on our land.” Indeed, in the lands administered by the PA – Gaza and Areas A and B – the demographics is 100% Arab. Not a single Jew can be found, per the PA’s anti-Semitic stated mission.
Ban minorities buying land
Israel allows everyone to purchase homes or apartments. In Jerusalem, the Israeli government greatly expanded the number of homes for non-Jews which resulted in a +188% growth in units for Arabs between 1990 and 2019, compared to only +64% for Jews.
This is in sharp contrast to the PA which has kept in place a Jordanian law which bans the sale of land to non-Jews. The penalty for doing so can be hard labor or even death. It has produced a terrible scheme where Arabs who want to sell land to Jews are forced to use middlemen and shell companies to avoid being killed by either the government of fellow Arabs’ vigilante anti-Semitic violence.
Ban minorities voting and being in parliament
All Israeli citizens can vote and run for the parliament. There are a few Israeli Arab parties in the country’s multi-party system. In 2022, an Arab party sits in the governing coalition and can collapse the government should it decide to do so.
As the Palestinian Authority has no Jews, it is not surprising that there are no Jews in parliament.
Ban minorities being prime minister
Israel has no religion litmus test as to who can become prime minister. That is compared to surrounding Arab countries like Syria where the PM must be a Muslim.
Ban minorities being judges
Israel allows all of its citizens to be part of the legal system including being lawyers, judges and using the courts. The Jewish State has an Arab sitting on its Supreme Court.
The PA has no place for Jews. Anywhere.
Ban minorities being in army
Israel has a draft system which calls on its citizens to serve in the army at age 18. However, the country does not enforce the law for Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox Jews, but it welcomes them joining.
The PA has no place for Jews.
Ban on religious houses of worship
Israel allows all of the various religions to practice their faiths openly. There is no ban on minarets on mosques (as exists in Switzerland), no ban on halal meat (as exists in Iceland), no ban on burkas or hijabs (as exists in Turkey). The Bahai faith has major houses of worship and the Israeli government actually helped Mormons build their church in Jerusalem.
The PA is only oriented around Arab Muslims and Christians. In Jordan – which is majority Palestinian – the Bahai faith is outlawed and Jews carrying religious articles are turned away at the border.
Ban minorities visiting holy places
Israel allows people of all religions to access their holy places. The Israeli government reversed the Muslim ban on Jews visiting the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, as well as the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs in Hebron when it took the city back from Jordanian Arabs in 1967.
Palestinian Arabs (who were Jordanians from 1954 to 1967) had banned Jews from their holy sites. The PA and Jordan continue to try to limit Jews from visiting Judaism’s holiest site to this day. Palestinian Arabs have also ransacked Jewish holy sites under their control, such as the Tomb of Joseph in Nablus.
Ban minorities praying at holy places
When Israel reunified Jerusalem in 1967 after Jordan attacked it, it nevertheless allowed the Jordanian waqf to administer the Jewish Temple Mount. That decision has caused Jews to continue to be banned from praying at its site while hundreds of thousands of Muslims are able to do so multiple times a day.
When Jews visit their holy sites in or adjacent to PA-ruled territories, they must have security details or be lynched by Arabs.
Ban minorities from universities
Israel’s leading universities such as Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University have large populations of non-Jews. In sharp contrast, no Jews attend Palestinian universities, and some have a history of banning Jews – even anti-Zionist ones – from even stepping foot on campus.
Ban or limit free speech and assembly for minorities
All Israeli citizens have freedom of speech, assembly and press. Israeli Arabs often launch demonstrations against the government, as do other minorities. In Gaza, only one opinion is allowed to be expressed – that sanctioned by the Islamist regime of Hamas.
Denial of minority history and culture
The Israeli government acknowledges the backgrounds, cultures and history of its diverse citizens. It teaches various histories in its schools and posts official signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Meanwhile the PA only uses Arabic in all official communications and actively denies the history of Jews in their holy land, including that their holy temples were in Jerusalem.
Government inciting violence against minorities
Israel is a pluralistic society with Jews and non-Jews participating in each part of society. However, the PA is effectively at war with Jews and the Jewish State and calls on Arabs to attack Jews.
Government reward murderers of minorities
Israel prosecutes criminals that commit crimes – past presidents and prime ministers have gone to jail.
The PA actually rewards criminal activity, especially violence committed against Jews. It calls the terrorists “martyrs” and names schools and squares after them, while paying their families thousands of dollars.
Major political parties’ xenophobia
The Israeli declaration of independence welcomed all people and to this day. The major Israeli political parties including Likud, Yesh Atid, and Blue and White all have charters and position papers that advance a just society for all citizens.
The Palestinian constitution is written for Arabs, with Islam as the official religion. Hamas, a designated terrorist organization by many countries, has a charter full of anti-Semitic smears and conspiracy theories. It calls for a war between Jews and Muslims.
Xenophobia and racism of population
Palestinian Arabs voted the anti-Semitic Hamas political-terrorist party to 58% of the parliament the last time elections were held, and polls show that Hamas would win presidential elections, if held today. The Anti-Defamation League did a poll in 2014 that showed that Palestinian Arabs were the most anti-Semitic in the world, with 93% holding anti-Semitic beliefs.
Israel has created a liberal democracy in the heart of the xenophobic and anti-Semitic Middle East. Those calling the country an apartheid state are not merely engaging in anti-Semitic lies, but doing so in the hope of drawing attention away from the deeply anti-Semitic and xenophobic beliefs of Palestinian Arabs.
Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) submitted a bill to congress to commemorate the ‘Nakba’, or ‘catastrophe’ of the reestablishment of the Jewish State shortly after the Holocaust, in which Palestinian Arabs who waited for the destruction of Israel were refused reentry into the country. Below is a review of H.Res.1123 Recognizing the Nakba and Palestinian refugees’ rights, submitted on May 16, 2022.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) talking at the Democratic Socialists of America event in 2021 where she said Jews control people and profit off of racism
“Ms. Tlaib (for herself, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, Ms. Omar, Ms. McCollum, Ms. Newman, Mr. Bowman, and Ms. Bush) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs“
It should be noted that two of the co-sponsors of the resolution, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Jamaal Bowman, represent the tri-state New York area, home to the largest concentration of Jews outside of Israel. That these two members of congress continue to have seats says much about the Jewish community prioritizing Israel or bothering to pressure their representatives about Israel.
“Whereas the United Nations General Assembly recommended on November 29, 1947, to partition Palestine into two states against the wishes of Palestine’s majority indigenous inhabitants;“
At the time of the UNGA resolution, Palestine was less than 60% Arab and it would have been closer to 50% had the British not instituted the 1939 White Paper at the behest of local Arabs, preventing 100,000 Jews from fleeing the Holocaust in Europe, resulting in their deaths.
“Whereas this partition plan nevertheless provided for the “Full protection for the rights and interests of minorities, including the protection of the linguistic, religious and ethnic rights of the peoples and respect for their cultures, and full equality of all citizens with regard to political, civil and religious matters”;”
After rejecting the partition plan, Tlaib nevertheless embraces some positions, even while misunderstanding them completely. Israel did protect the rights of all, granting citizenship to everyone. This is in sharp contrast to the Arab nations of Transjordan and Egypt who illegally seized the ‘West Bank’ and Gaza, respectively, and ethnically-cleansed all Jews from those lands. Transjordan renamed itself Jordan with its newest illegal land, and then granted citizenships ONLY to Arabs in 1954, specifically excluding Jews. [1954 Jordanian Citizenship Law, article 3]
“Whereas before the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14, 1948, there were already between 250,000 to 300,000 Palestinian refugees who were expelled or fled from their homes often after attacks by Zionist militias on major Palestinian cities and villages;”
The Civil War for the land of Palestine was not about “attacks by Zionist militias” against unarmed civilians as portrayed by Tlaib but between warring parties of which the Arabs were much better armed and had initiated the fighting. In terms of people fleeing, there were Jews who fled the battle scenes too. The figure of “250,000 to 300,000” is preposterous as well. That many people fled the land to places like London and Canada or Jordan and Syria? If they stayed inside of the British Mandate boundaries, they cannot be considered refugees going from one town to another.
Palestinian Arabs mark Nakba Day 2013 with calls for violence in Bethlehem, a city Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority in 1995 as part of the Oslo Accords (photo: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)
“Whereas by the time the war ended with the signing of armistice agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab countries in 1949, establishing Israel’s sovereignty over 78 percent of Palestine, and, in the process, conquering an additional 23 percent of Palestine beyond those areas allocated to the Jewish state under the partition plan, there were at least 750,000 Palestinian refugees (roughly 75 percent of the indigenous population that had lived in areas that became Israel);”
Israel was established on 22 percent LESS of Palestine than afforded it under the international mandate. The Arabs rejected the partition plan and it was never implemented so why does Tlaib reference it here at all, other than to make it sound that Israelis got more when indeed they got less.
In terms of the total number of refugees, the figure thrown about includes people who moved a few miles away to Gaza and what later became known as the ‘West Bank.’ If those areas were part of ‘Palestine’, then those people are called ‘internally-displaced’, not refugees. To be clear, there were about 770,000 Arab Muslims in the Mandate in 1931, a figure which jumped to 1.056 million in 1945, a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 2.3%. Extrapolating that number would suggest a total Arab Muslim population of 1.182 million in 1950. However, the actual figure for Arab Muslims in 1950 in Israel, Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ was 1.015 million, or 167,000 fewer than anticipated. Using the same approach for Christians who grew at a 3.0% CAGR from 1931 to 1945 would have produced 164,000 Christians in 1950, instead of the 65,000 actually in the region in that year, or 99,000 fewer people. That means that the total number of actual refugees that left Mandate Palestine was 267,000 of which 37% were Christians, many fleeing a religious war between Muslims and Jews (not because of the creation of Israel).
“Whereas, by 1949, Israel had depopulated more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, often demolishing all structures, planting forests over them, or repopulating them with Jewish Israelis;”
Tlaib’s anti-Semitism is made clear: she makes all Arabs appear as indigenous and true ‘Palestinians’ when hundreds of thousands of Jews lived in the land as Palestinian Jews. She ignored the fact that the government of Israel gave citizenship to all Arabs who remained with full rights. She ignored the fact that the Arabs started the war against the small and weak Jews in their midst. She ignored the Arab ransacking of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. Instead, she calls out “Jewish Israelis” who took Palestinian villages.
“Whereas Palestinians refer to this experience of uprooting, dispossession, and refugeedom as the Nakba (meaning “catastrophe” in English);”
The Palestinians rejected coexistence proposed in the partition plan, then launched and lost a war because they wanted to live in a Jew-free land. It’s Arab attitude that is a Nakba.
Palestinian Arabs rip down and burn Israeli flags on Nakba Day (photo: Menahem Kahana / AFP / Getty Images)
“Whereas the Nakba refers not only to a historical event but to an ongoing process of Israel’s expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day through the establishment and expansion of approximately 300 illegal settlements and outposts in the occupied Palestinian West Bank in which approximately 674,000 Israelis reside as of 2020;”
The Nakba-attitude of rejecting coexistence is definitely an “ongoing process.” Jordan attacked Israel in 1967 and Israel re-took the land in a defensive battle. Arab armies launched a war in 1973 on Judaism’s holiest day of Yom Kippur. Palestinian terrorists hijacked airplanes and killed Jews all over the world. And not only Jews – consider Palestinian assassination of US Senator Robert Kennedy. Arabs launched multi-year pogroms killing thousands of Jewish civilians in the 1980’s, 1990’s and 2000’s.
And of course, Palestinians reject Jews moving back to their holiest city of Jerusalem, and pretend there is a “Palestinian West Bank”. In truth, there are lands that Israel gave to the Palestinian Authority – Gaza, and Areas A and B – where Palestinian Arabs have self-determination, of course, as is their desire, in land devoid of a single Jew.
“Whereas the United States knew of the scale and magnitude of the Palestine refugee crisis as it unfolded, as is documented in an October 1948 telegram to the President and Secretary of State from the Embassy of the United States to Israel, warning that the “Arab Refugee tragedy is rapidly reaching catastrophic proportions and should be treated as a disaster”;”
The United States State Department stated clearly that Arabs started the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War: “Fighting began with attacks by irregular bands of Palestinian Arabs attached to local units of the Arab Liberation Army composed of volunteers from Palestine and neighboring Arab countries. These groups launched their attacks against Jewish cities, settlements, and armed forces… On the eve of May 14, the Arabs launched an air attack on Tel Aviv, which the Israelis resisted. This action was followed by the invasion of the former Palestinian mandate by Arab armies from Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Egypt. Saudi Arabia sent a formation that fought under the Egyptian command.” Israel was engaged in a defensive war for its survival against Arabs from Palestine and neighboring countries.
“Whereas the United States voted in favor of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948, which states that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors 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 in equity, should be made good by the governments or authorities responsible”;”
The Palestinians have never sought to “live at peace” with Israel. Not in 1948, in 1967, in 2001 nor today. The United States also voted for the UN partition plan in 1947. How do any of the votes of 75 years ago matter today? In 2004, President Bush made clear that as part of Israel leaving Gaza, that “a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”
Arabs climb fence between Syria and Israel in Nakba Day protest (photo: Jalaa Marey/Reuters)
“Whereas Palestinian refugees’ right of return is not only stipulated in a General Assembly resolution, but is also anchored in international law and in Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country”;”
The UDHR principal is to return to a COUNTRY, not a town or house. As Palestine was not a country this article is irrelevant. Further, that same UN wanted to separate the land – not country – into new Arab and Jewish states in 1947. Moving the Arabs into the Jewish state undermines that basic principle.
“Whereas, on December 8, 1949, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 302 establishing the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, which the United States has financially supported on an almost continuous basis since its establishment;”
UNRWA was established as a TEMPORARY agency. It’s existence over 70 years later has proven an embarrassment and obstacle to peace. That is why the US had suspended payments to the organization and European countries are cutting back significantly.
An Israeli policeman bleeds from an injury during clashes with Palestinians commemorating Nakba Day at Damascus Gate, Jerusalem, May 15, 2013.(Photo by: Ryan Rodrick Beiler/Activestills.org)
“Whereas of the more than 7,000,000 Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East provides much-needed social services to 5,700,000 Palestine refugees today;”
UNRWA is a general social services organization that treats many people who are NOT refugees. By its own account, UNRWA continues to service hundreds of thousands of “other” people who live in the area. And why not? The idea that descendants of internally-displaced people are somehow “refugees” is an absurdity anyway.
“Whereas international law also recognizes that descendants of refugees retain their rights as refugees, and that according to the United Nations, “Palestine refugees are not distinct from other protracted refugee situations such as those from Afghanistan or Somalia, where there are multiple generations of refugees, considered by UNHCR as refugees and supported as such. Protracted refugee situations are the result of the failure to find political solutions to their underlying political crises”; and”
This is completely untrue. If Tlaib likes UNHCR so much, why not just fold UNRWA into that global organization? It would get rid of rampant corruption, support of terrorism and the major obstacle to peace in the region. UNHCR seeks to find a solution for refugees fleeing war. UNRWA seeks to find only one political solution for one particular group of people – Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) to move into Israel. UNRWA insists that SAPs stay registered with UNRWA and live in its environs, essentially making them prisoners. Should they opt to move – say to London – they would lose this anointed status of “refugee” and free housing, education and medical care today, as well as the chance for free housing in Israel or lots of money. UNHCR has no such political agenda and welcomes actual refugees fleeing war to find citizenship and life anywhere.
“Whereas a just and lasting resolution requires respect for and the implementation of Palestine refugee rights as enshrined in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Now, therefore, be it”
Concluding her introductory remarks, Tlaib called out legal principals for a “lasting resolution.” She continued the narrative that there can be no peace with Israel unless the manufactured issue of “refugees” is resolved.
Palestinian rioters mark Nakba Day, 2012 (photo: Majdi Mohammed/ AFP)
“Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is the policy of the United States to—
(1) commemorate the Nakba through official recognition and remembrance;
(2) reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States Government with denial of the Nakba;
(3) encourage education and public understanding of the facts of the Nakba, including the United States role in the humanitarian relief effort, and the relevance of the Nakba to modern-day refugee crises;”
The first three points highlighted by Tlaib refer to the ‘Nakba’. In Tlaib’s version of history, that would mean educating people that only Arabs are indigenous to Palestine; that Zionists attacked the native Palestinian Arabs and stole their lands; obfuscating that Arabs in 1948 – and today – desired a land free of any Jews; and that Palestinian Arabs want peace, even though they reject the very notion of a Jewish State in Palestine to this day. In other words, supporters of this resolution are looking to support continuing the 1948-9 Arab War against the Jewish State.
“(4) continue to support the provision of social service to Palestinian refugees through the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East; and
(5) support the implementation of Palestinian refugees’ rights as enshrined in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194 and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
UNRWA has shown itself to be a deeply flawed organization. In no situation should the US government be compelled to support a temporary UN agency, which is one of the leading obstacles to peace in the region.
Further, UN Resolution 194 was a document prepared in the midst of a war. It includes numerous provisions which have absolutely no relevance today. Bringing up the December 1948 resolution highlights the dated and irrelevant orientation about refugees from which Tlaib seeks to enshrine certain rights. Indeed, US presidents have made clear that the resolution of the “refugee” issue would have them settle in a new state of Palestine, not Israel.
Palestinians wave Hamas flags on the Jewish Temple Mount. Hamas warned Jews about visiting their holiest site on Nakba Day, 2022. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
The Nakba isn’t a historical fact but a biased narrative. It attempts to whitewash the Arab attempt to destroy Jews’ safe haven in their ancestral homeland immediately after the Holocaust. Its a flimsy veneer of refugee-washing to promote refugee rights as evidence of being the wronged victim, to distract the world from the violent anti-Semitic screed of the popular Hamas Charter which encapsulates Palestinian desire for a Jew-free land. It’s a disgusting attitude which inspired the war against the Jews in 1948 and continues to this day.
That six members of the US Congress would promote commemorating the ‘Nakba’, highlights how anti-Semitism and racism is being mainstreamed in America today.
Another vicious hate crime was committed by a violent extremist, this time by a White man in Buffalo, NY against Black people. After killing ten people in a grocery store, his online ‘manifesto’ was found which featured racist and anti-Semitic smears as well as a warning about the United States being transformed into a country dominated by non-Whites.
This notion of “Replacement Theory” can be found in a number of communities and is treated very differently by the media.
White Supremacists’ Replacement Theory
Anti-immigrant fervor picked up in Europe in 2015, as Muslims fleeing civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) began to flood the continent, and committed a number of terrorist attacks including in Paris, France. Accused of not participating in resettling the MENA refugees, President Obama accepted tens of thousands of additional refugees into the United States that year. In June 2015, Donald Trump seized on public fear of potential Islamic terrorism and announced his candidacy for president with anti-immigrant comments. Just two days later, a White man burst into a Black church and killed nine people. The murderer’s stated motivation was a racist and anti-Semitic perception of the fall of America, after seeing BlackLivesMatter protests:
“I hate the sight of the American flag. Modern American patriotism is an absolute joke. People pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets…. How about we protect the White race and stop fighting for the jews as well.”
Trump took office in January 2017 and issued an Executive Order to limit the influx of refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries where border controls were considered lax and pushed for building a wall on the southern border to stem the flow of immigrants from Central America. A few months later, White supremacists marched in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017 with shouts that “Jews will not replace us!” decrying liberal Jewish groups like HIAS that facilitate non-White immigrants coming to the US. In October 2018, a White supremacist took up that cause and shot 11 Jews to death in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA. His ‘manifesto’ said that HIAS “likes to bring invaders in that kill our people.”
The media has sharply criticizes the rhetoric of the White supremacists’ “Replacement Theory.” PBS describes the theory as “a plot to undermine the influence of white people. Believers say the goal is being achieved both through the immigration of nonwhite people into societies that have long been dominated by white people, as well as through simple demographics, with white people having lower birth rates than other populations. The conspiracy theory’s more racist adherents believe Jews are behind the so-called replacement plan.“
What is interesting in the media’s coverage of White supremacists’ Replacement Theory, is that it blends fiction and fact together to make everything appear as racist fiction. In truth, White people DO have fewer children than non-Whites (but birth rates for non-Whites are declining much faster than for White people). Projections by impartial groups like Pew Research estimate that the United States WILL decline to 47% Whites by 2050, from 67% now. The fictional component of the replacement theory is that these developments are part of a concerted plot hatched by Jews, as opposed to natural trends with a variety of causes.
Radical Islamists’ Replacement Theory
The fear of changing demographics is not limited to White Supremacists. It is prevalent among radical Islamists, especially Palestinian Arabs. Similar to their racist brothers-in-arms, they also kill Jews because of their perceived plight.
Arabs began to fear Jews moving to Palestine in 1920, after four global powers – Britain, France, Italy and Japan – convened the San Remo Conference to divide the defeated Muslim Ottoman Empire. The various mandates included the Mandate for Palestine (1922) which came under the British control, that included a call to facilitate the immigration of Jews to their ancestral homeland. Arabs rioted, slaughtered Jews and protested to the British to block the arrival of Jews, even though Jews were the only people moving to Palestine during the last 100 years of Ottoman rule.
Islamic radicals massacred Jews in the holy land in 1921, 1929 and during the multi-year pogroms from 1936 to 1939, in an attempt to maintain a Muslim-majority population in Palestine. During the European Holocaust, Palestinian Arabs effectively lobbied the British to limit Jewish refugees into the land, facilitating the deaths of tens of thousands of Jews. When Holocaust survivors came to Palestine after the war, Arab armies descended upon them to wipe them out for good. In the areas where the Islamists seized land – Gaza and the ‘West Bank’ – they ethnically-cleansed all Jews from the area.
Destroyed synagogue in Berlin, November 10, 1938Arab meeting in London to halt Jewish immigrationProtesting the Arab-sponsored British White Paper after Kristallnacht
Palestinian Arabs still commemorate the ‘Nakba’ in 1948 when they failed to destroy the Jewish State at its founding and were only able to wipe out Jews from a portion of the land. To this day, Arab leaders ask the British to renounce the Balfour Declaration.
But the media does not remark on the Islamists’ Replacement Theory as being inherently anti-Semitic. When Muslim extremists axe Jewish civilians to death the media adopts the killers’ narrative that they are “resorting to violence” because Muslims are “frustrated.” The Hamas Charter – the worst of all anti-Semitic ‘manifestos’ – and Palestinian leadership incitement to violence are deliberately omitted from the media’s anti-Semitic narrative.
“United the Right” in Virginia August, 2017Anti-Israel rally in New Jersey December 2017
The demographic makeup of most of the world continues to evolve, especially as people migrate to places which offer freedom and opportunity. The United States has long been a destination for immigrants, with the makeup of the home countries pivoting from Europe to Asia and Latin America with the passage of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965. In the 1950’s the makeup of immigrants to the US was 75% European, 5% Asian and 9% from Latin America. By the 1980’s those percentages changed to 23%, 26% and 44%.
The changing demographics happened in Palestine as well, where Muslims accounted for 60% of the population and Jews were a minority at 31% in 1945. Today the land is bifurcated, with Israel being 74% Jewish and 21% Muslim, while areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority are 100% Arab, in their ongoing quest for a Jew-free country. Jews moved to the land before the Jewish state was reestablished because it is the center of Judaism, and since 1948, as a safe haven from anti-Semitism.
The fear of racist Whites and Muslims are not unfounded, as it relates to changing demographics. However, the toxicity of their emotions emerges in believing that their new neighbors are inherently problematic, and that the former majority are victims who require protection.
For White Supremacists, the victims are White people suffering from a non-White invasion; for radical Islamists, the victims are Arab Muslims who must deal with Jewish “European colonialists” (even though Jews from Europe account for less than one-third of Israelis).
White Supremacists kill Blacks and Jews in an attempt to protect their vision of a White America; Jihadists kill Jews in an attempt to “free Palestine from the River to the Sea” of Jewish invaders.
The media calls out the racism and anti-Semitism of White Supremacists; HOWEVER, the media and United Nations lambast Jewish victims and protect Palestinian racists, fearing that calling out the obvious evil would hinder the possibility of a two-state solution.
The Great Replacement Theory is portrayed incorrectly in the media. The basic premise that the majority is becoming a minority is true. What is false is that: such dynamic is inherently a problem; is a concerted ‘plot by Jews’; is only limited to White Supremacists; and that the toxic hatred is only fed in social media, as the mainstream press and United Nations promote anti-Semitism and the Islamic Great Replacement Theory all of the time.
Jews killed in synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA 2018Jews axed to death in synagogue in Jerusalem 2014
The United Nations has a particular narrative about the Arab-Israeli Conflict which plays out in various fora.
The anti-Zionist organization has elevated the discussion of ‘settler attacks’ in an effort to paint the Zionists as not only illegal but dangerous, thereby clear obstacles to peace.
A UN press release by the poorly-named Human Rights Council noted the following in November 2021:
“Settler violence has always been an extremely disturbing feature of the Israeli occupation, but in 2021, we are witnessing the highest recorded levels of violence in recent years and more severe incidents…. This precipitous rise in settler violence is not simply the result of a few ‘bad apples’ among the settler population. The deep state support provided by Israel to the illegal settlement enterprise, including to the more than 140 settlement outposts established throughout the West Bank in defiance of even Israel’s own laws, has fueled this coercive environment and encouraged violence.“
Tor Wennesland, the UN’s Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, has adopted this line of reasoning. Wennesland gives a monthly report to the UN Security Council where he reports on his perception of Israel’s violations and treatment of Palestinians rather than on Middle East Peace.
Consider Wennesland’s comments in his March 22, 2022 report to the UN Security Council when he went detailed specific events of Israeli settler violence but glossed over Arab terrorism. Wennesland essentially blamed all attacks on the Israeli government, parroting the UN Human Rights Group talking points:
“The announcement of Tel Aviv’s [*note the dis of stating Israel’s government being in Tel Aviv and not Jerusalem*] plans to expand settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is deeply disturbing. The continuation of settlement construction and the intention to double the number of Israelis living in the Jordan Valley and the Syrian Golan Heights by 2026 can be seen as the de facto annexation of most of the occupied Palestinian territory. Against that background, there has been a sharp increase in settler attacks, as well as the disproportionate use of force by the Israeli military against Palestinians resulting in civilian deaths and injuries.” The statement suggests that the Israeli government’s actions promoting further development in Area C and the Golan Heights encouraged “settler attacks.” All he offered about Hamas, the political-terrorist group that runs Gaza was that “Hamas also called for increased clashes with the Israeli forces throughout the occupied West Bank,” when in fact, Hamas calls for attacks against all Israeli Jews, including civilians.
After even more Arab attacks against Israelis over the following weeks, Wennesland continued to emphasize attacks by Israelis. In his April 25 report, he mentioned “settlers” five time to only twice for Hamas. He again reiterated that settler violence was principally because the Israeli government supports Jews living throughout Israel and its territories, but at least added a caveat about Arab terrorism: “Against the backdrop of continued settlement activities and ongoing pressure on Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, as well as heightened tensions, settler-related violence remained high, particularly following the terrorist attacks in Israel.“
To be clear – according to Wennesland’s own reports – the number of Arab attacks dwarves attacks by Israelis. The monthly total for Palestinian Arabs attacking Jews ranged from 80 to 108 for the first four months of 2022, but only between 28 and 66 for “settler” attacks. Overall, there were 381 attacks by Palestinians to 210 by Israelis, or 81% more.
Israeli attacks were roughly half the number of Palestinian Arab attacks in the first four months of 2022. Israeli attacks were less than one-third the number of Arab attacks at the beginning of the year, before a wave of lethal Arab attacks prompted a response from Jews.
Wennesland remains blind to Arab incitement including naming schools and squares after murderers, governmental stipends to Palestinians who attack Jews, as well as straight out calls for violence. His jaundiced reports are fed to the waiting biased audience at the UN, with recommendation of more monies for Palestinians and fewer homes for Jews:
“Reducing violence and halting settlement activity, while shoring up the Palestinian Authority’s fiscal stability and strengthening Palestinian institutions are crucial. Steps to improve economic conditions must be implemented in a way that lays the foundations for a return to a meaningful political process.“
On one side, there is ongoing incitement to violence by Palestinian leadership which encouraged nearly 100 attacks against Jews every month. On the other, is an Israeli government which encourages Jews to coexist among Arabs, where Israelis commit roughly half the number of attacks a month, mostly in response to waves of Arab terrorism. Yet while those facts are admitted (in passing) by the United Nations, it directs blame solely on Israel, as it pushes another fund-raising appeal for the Arab government supporting terrorism.
Social justice is a concept that has been advanced by left-wing Americans into mainstream conversation. The idea covers a number of principles:
Access
Human rights
Participation
Equity
Diversity
The Jews in Jerusalem are slowly advancing in their movement on each of these principles, however, systemic anti-Semitism at the United Nations and for many Arab Muslim nations, has slowed progress.
Access
Despite the facts that only Jews consider Jerusalem as its holiest location and uniquely made the city its capital, Arab Muslim nations ethnically-cleansed the Old City of Jerusalem of its Jews in the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli war. Transjordan illegally annexed the eastern part of the city including the Old City and the west bank of the Jordan River, and subsequently denied any Jew the ability to visit their holiest sites.
Jordan attacked Israel again in 1967 but lost the ‘West Bank’ and eastern Jerusalem to Israel. While Israel once again allowed Jews to live and visit their holiest city, the Jordanian Waqf was given permission by Israel to administer the Jewish Temple Mount, and limits the time and number of Jews who can visit.
Human Rights
Not long after Jordan annexed lands west of the Jordan River in a move not recognized by almost every country in the world, it passed a citizenship law specifically excluding Jews in article 3. Now under Israeli rule, the Jews of Jerusalem – as well as Arabs – are afforded citizenship in a reversal to Jordan’s anti-Semitic law.
Jordan still enforces its ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, a flagrant violation of the basic human rights of Jews. Remarkably, the world stays mum on the subject, fearing radical Islamic violence.
Participation
The Jews in Jerusalem are marginalized by the United Nations and much of the world. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 2334 which stated that “Israelis” could not move to eastern Jerusalem. The anti-Zionists call Jews who live and visit ‘settlers’, even if they are not Israeli, and do not use the label for Israeli Arabs who do the same, clearly demonstrating the anti-Jewish nature of the smear.
The UN has set up distinct agencies, committees and inquiries uniquely for the Jewish State and does not afford Israel an opportunity to participate on the same basis as others in a forum stacked against it.
As noted above, the administration of the Temple Mount which holds the al Aqsa mosque is administered solely by Arab Muslims of the Jordanian waqf. Such formulation does not allow Jews to participate in the administration of their holiest site, and has led to their being completely marginalized.
Equity / Restorative Justice
There has been some measure of restorative justice for Jews, in facilitating the migration of Jews back to their ancestral homeland over the past hundred years. Germany has paid the state compensation for its actions in the Holocaust. The United States has invested in the fledgling state and facilitated its ascendency out of a third world emerging state to a thriving liberal democracy. The most persecuted people who faced a genocide have established a safe haven.
But evil still lurks. The Islamic Republic of Iran has stated its desire to destroy Israel. It has several terrorist proxies abutting the Jewish State including Hamas and Hezbollah which have thousands of missiles directed at it. The world is debating how to handle the leading state sponsor of terrorism’s quest for nuclear weapons, even though the answer is obvious to any toddler.
In relation to Jerusalem, the world has done the opposite of restorative justice. It did – and still does not – facilitate and recognize Jews in the Old City of Jerusalem. Israel had to reunite the city on its own in a defensive battle. It rebuilds the synagogues (like the Hurva) that Jordan destroyed in the face of global condemnation.
The Hurva Synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, shortly after its re-opening in March 2010 (photo: First One Through)
Diversity
Israel’s neighbors like Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, UAE, Iraq and others, are each over 90% Muslim. In contrast, Israel is only 73.9% Jewish and has over 26% of the population from a variety of religions including Muslims, Christians, Druze, Baha’i, Samaritans and others.
Israel’s diversity is seen in its schools and hospitals. The signs in the country are written in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Its parliament and Supreme Court have people of different religions, ethnic backgrounds, genders and orientation. All of those dynamics are lacking in the other countries of the Middle East.
Many of those same countries that lack diversity attack Israel economically, politically and militarily. They deny the history of the Jews, their rights and any acceptance of the Jewish State. They have stood against ‘normalizing’ the Jewish State in any manner in an aggressive campaign of ‘three denials.‘ These efforts are most pronounced regarding Israel’s capital of Jerusalem, which they seek to revert back to the Arab-only, Jew-free situation they enforced in the eastern half from 1949 to 1967.
Regarding the principles of access, human rights, participation, equity and diversity, Israel stands as a beacon in the Middle East. However, the country still faces many obstacles, mostly from the biased United Nations and at the Jewish Temple Mount. Hopefully those committed to social justice will engage in the hard work to end the systemic anti-Semitism, xenophobia, Islamic privilege, religious persecution and isolation of the indigenous Jewish people in their ancient homeland and in their holy capital city of Jerusalem.
Summary: Pause the debate on abortions on Mother’s Day, and demand justice for a woman who smiles as she slaughters children eating ice cream.
Mother’s Day 2022 was a peculiar affair as the United States debated the legal case for abortion with renewed vigor, after the leak of the Supreme Court draft questioning the validity of Roe v. Wade. Americans focused again on the rights of women on one hand and the rights of the unborn on the other, just as they celebrated the mothers who had and raised children.
While Father’s Day is definitely special in celebrating the men who raise children, the bond is a degree removed from the tether between mother-and-child. Only women can give birth. Only women can nurse a baby. The umbilical cord may only last nine months but the connection between women and child seems to carry far into the future.
Yet there are women who despise children. Jewish children anyway.
Ahlam Al-Tamimi is a Palestinian Arab who is a member of Hamas. In 2001, she walked around Jerusalem looking for a place to kill as many religious Jews as possible, “because the base of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is a religious struggle.” She chose a Sbarro restaurant in the center of town, frequented by many Jewish women and children for pizza and ice cream. Years later she smiled when she learned that eight children were killed in the suicide bombing attack that she orchestrated.
Ahlam al-Tamimi smiling when told she killed eight children, not three as she had thought.
Al-Tamimi was released after serving several years in an Israeli jail, as part of the prisoner exchange for Israeli Gilad Shalit, and was transferred to Jordan. The FBI put her on the “Most Wanted List” and considers her armed and dangerous. As recently as October 2021, she said that she loves the “scent” of Palestine, the “scent of musk from the martyrs (who kill Jews)… this is a pleasant relaxing scent, as if it was coming from Paradise.” She considered her terrorist operations as “crowns on my head.”
That interview was posted on YouTube on the “Gathering4Youth” site based in Turkey. The site includes interviews with other terrorists from Hamas such as Khaled Mashaal. This site that features a terrorist group addressing youth with calls for violence is still operating openly.
Regarding Al-Tamimi, FBI’s most wanted terrorist similarly lives freely in Jordan.
Several Jewish groups have been pushing the U.S. to extradite this murderer for several years as two of the victims were American citizens, but Jordan has long refused to hand her over.
During his confirmation hearing, Henry Wooster, now U.S. ambassador to Jordan said he would “explore all options to bring Ahlam Aref Ahmad al-Tamimi to justice, secure her extradition and address the broader issues associated with the extradition treaty.” That remains to be seen.
On May 13, 2022, just a few days after Mother’s Day, U.S. President Joe Biden will host Jordanian King Abdullah II to “reinforce the close friendship and enduring partnership between the United States and Jordan.” If the relationship is indeed close, Biden should be able to get Abdullah to hand over the murderer of Jewish children and Americans who openly calls for the next generation of youth to continue to slaughter innocent people.
Click here to CONTACT THE WHITE HOUSE to demand Biden secure the extradition of Ahlam Al-Tamimi, and shut down the Gathering4Youth incitement to terrorism YouTube page.
First One Through 