Tag Archives: anti-Israel

B.D.S., The Jewish Ban

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When Donald Trump pushed an executive order (EO) to limit the entry into the United States of people from a few countries who were deemed to have poor border controls and many terrorists, the Democratic Party called it a “Muslim ban,” even though the order still allowed people from over forty Muslim-majority countries to enter the US. The Democratic cheerleaders in the mainstream media picked up the phrase and each used it to advance the narrative of Trump as a racist and “Islamophobe.” It wasn’t hard to do, as Trump frequently attacked various minority groups and Islam in other situations.

But the phrase “Muslim ban” made no sense in regards to the actual EO which continued to allow in people from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim war-torn countries beset by terrorism.

In sharp contrast, the media refuses to call the global effort for a boycott, sanctions and divestment from Israel (BDS) campaign, a “Jewish ban,” even though it is explicitly that on many levels.

The BDS movement is economic warfare against the only Jewish state and does not target any other country involved in a dispute over land, of which there are many. The effort is to refuse selling products or services to Israel and also to refuse buying such from the country. It attempts to block any speakers, professors, exchange students, sporting teams and athletes, as well as to push investment funds to not invest in any Israeli companies. A variant of the BDS movement only seeks to impose those restrictions against the Israeli territory of Area C in the area east of the Green Line (EGL)/ the West Bank.

The rationale behind this effort is not to protect citizens like Trump’s EO, but to punish Israel for not annexing the West Bank, which Israel has held off doing in the hopes of trading some of the land for an enduring peace with Palestinian Arabs. Israel already gave the Palestinians the entirety of the Gaza Strip and land in the West Bank which is home to 86% of the Palestinian population. The Jewish State has offered more land in various initiatives but each proposal was rejected as insufficient by the Palestinian Authority.

BDS supporters are not interested in a negotiation between the parties but full Israeli capitulation to Palestinian demands.

In the interim, BDS supporters want to enforce a number of additional Jewish bans beyond those listed above. They want to ban Jews from living, working or visiting the West Bank and the eastern part of Jerusalem. They want to bar Jews from praying at their holiest site of the Jewish Temple Mount. They want Jews to abandon their second holiest location in Hebron and the Tomb of the Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs to sole Muslim control.

Members of the Israeli security forces stand guard to protect Jews from Palestinian Arabs as they visit the Jewish Temple Mount on Tisha B’Av (Ninth of Av), commemorating the destruction of the Jewish temples some 2000 and 2600 years ago. (Photo by AHMAD GHARABLI / AFP)

As part of the effort, they will deny Jewish history in the holy land and engage in Holocaust denial. They will attempt to alter Arab history by declaring that Jesus was a Palestinian rather than a Jew and instead of acknowledging that Arabs invaded the holy land in the 7th century, claim that Palestinians are descendants of Canaanites and Jebusites in a comic attempt to pre-date Jews. They will further attempt to smear Jews as “colonialists” engaging in “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” as a core message of their campaign, in sharp contrast to reality.

Many BDS supporters attack random Jews around the world including with shouts of “Free Palestine, Kill all the Jews,” in Brooklyn, New York, as well as “F*** their mothers, rape their daughters,” in London. They’ve beaten up Jews walking on the streets of Manhattan and Jewish diners in Los Angeles.

It’s not just a ban. It’s a jihad.

The so called-“Muslim ban” was solely placed on people coming from a few countries and did not persecute citizens from those lands nor Muslims generally in the US. Not so for the BDS movement, which attacks the Jewish State and Jews globally.

When the United States placed sanctions on the Islamic Republic of Iran, it did so because the leading state sponsor of terrorism was attempting to build nuclear weapons, a matter of global security concern. When the US put limits on the ability of China to own and operate communications infrastructure, it did so because of national security concerns.

But the BDS movement is not about protecting local or global interests. It is not even about being pro-Arabs-thousands-of-miles-away who have a better situation in Israel and Area C than Arabs in all of the surrounding countries. Those Arabs in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Libya, Iraq and elsewhere get no support from the BDS’ers, because BDS’ers aren’t pro-Arab but anti-Jew. They believe that a Jew controlling Arab land or people offends Muslim sensibilities and denies their dignity.

BDS is a movement against the Jewish State, Jews living in the holy land and Jews around the world. It is a “multipronged Jewish ban and jihad,” and should be clearly labeled as such.

Related First One Through articles:

BDS is a Movement by Radical Islamists and Far-Left Progressives to Block Your Freedoms

The Three Camps of Ethnic Cleansing in the BDS Movement

B.D.S. Is Not A Social Mission Action

The EU’s Choice of Labels: “Made in West Bank” and “Anti-Semite”

Abbas Declares All of Israel is a “Painful Settlement”

The Fourth ‘No’ of the Khartoum Resolution: No Return of Palestinian Refugees

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Will You Finally Show J Street and Its Backers the Door?

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The pro-Israel community is livid about Ben & Jerry’s decisions to ban the sale of its ice cream in the Israeli territories of Area C and to not renew its affiliation with the distributor who sells the ice cream in Israel. Kosher stores around the world are removing the ice cream from its shelves and pro-Zionists and human rights activists are considering boycotting Unilever (the conglomerate which owns Ben & Jerry’s) products.

But not J Street. Jeremy Ben Ami congratulated Ben & Jerry’s on the move:

J Street President @JeremyBenAmi said that @benandjerrys was drawing “​​a principled and rational distinction between commercial transactions in the State of Israel & those in the territory it occupies.”

Far left extremist rabbis and synagogue presidents proudly affiliate with the organization while members sit in silence and assume that if their religious leaders support the group which bills itself as “pro-Israel”, then actions advocated by J Street like boycotting Israel and giving Iran a legal pathway to nuclear weapons, must be the pro-Israel thing to do.

It is time for Israel supporters to show J Street and its backers the door before they advance truly dangerous initiatives to a feckless administration and susceptible organizations which might believe they actually speak for the Jewish community.

Related First One Through articles:

J Street is Only Considered “Pro-Israel” in Progressive Circles

The Evil Architects at J Street Take a Bow

J Street is a Partisan Left-Wing Group, NOT an Alternative to AIPAC

J Street: Going Bigger and Bolder than BDS

The Root of Left-Wing Anti-Zionism in Congress is Left-Wing Jews

WHY The Progressive Assault on Israel

The Non-Orthodox Jewish Denominations Fight Israel

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To Answer the Question Tying Anti-Semitism, Understand The Two Types of Anti-Zionists

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There is a loud chorus of people who don’t simply disagree with some Israeli policies, they are against the entire principle of Zionism. Keith Ellison, the current Attorney General of Minnesota and former Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Council summed up this attitude when he said “Zionism, the ideological undergirding of Israel, is a debatable political philosophy.“

The objection to Zionism stems from a belief that global powers had no right to facilitate the movement of Jews to Palestine as they outlined in the 1920 San Remo Agreement and the 1922 Mandate of Palestine. The fact that Jews always moved to Israel at rates far surpassing non-Jews even during the Ottoman Empire period is actively ignored as besides the point.

Jews moved to Palestine during the Ottoman Empire at a rate that dwarved other religious groups.

The root of the Arab objection was that it was no longer a fellow Muslim entity (the Ottoman Empire) which ruled them in Palestine but Western powers. Christian nations decided they would enable the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” another non-Muslim group. Even though Jews historically lived in the land, considered the land holy and moved to the land during Ottoman rule, the local Arabs considered the non-Muslim efforts an assault on their way of life.

Consider the statement by President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser in May 1967 as he readied to destroy Israel: “What is Israel? Israel today is the United States. The United States is the chief defender of Israel.” Muslim nations view the Jewish State as a foreign implant of western powers which continues to be supported by such foreigners (jihadists read ‘infidels’). It is an attitude that drives Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to demand an apology from Britain for the Balfour Declaration today.

That position manifests itself in two principal ways: hating the presence of Jews in Palestine, and protesting the sovereignty of the Jewish State of Israel.

The Presence of Jews

While Jews rapidly moved to Palestine under the Ottomans, they did so in even greater numbers under the British and then under the modern State of Israel. The influx of these people offended the Arabs who fought to curtail the immigration of Jews, even during the Holocaust as they were being wiped out in Europe, getting the British to institute the infamous 1939 White Paper. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met with Adolf Hitler and many other Nazi leaders to make sure European Jews never made it to Palestine. Palestinian Arab efforts caused the deaths of over 100,000 Jews, many more than the total number of Arabs who died fighting Israel since the country’s founding.

Telegram from Nazi Heinrich Himmler to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem about
their shared “battle against world Jewry.”

When Israel declared itself an independent state in 1948, several Arab countries invaded with the stated goal of destroying it. After the Transjordanian army took over Judea and Samaria, it ethnically cleansed every Jew from the area and gave citizenship to everyone as long as they weren’t Jewish. During the nineteen years that the re-branded Jordan held the Old City of Jerusalem, it destroyed 56 of the 58 synagogues and wouldn’t allow any Jews to enter the city walls to pray at the Western Wall.

That Judenfrei sentiment remains. Those Jordanian Arabs are now called Palestinian Arabs in the renamed “West Bank.” The current head, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he “would not see the presence of a single Israeli – civilian or soldier – on our lands,” calling to ethnically-cleanse Jews from the region once again. Palestinian law makes it a crime – either with a death sentence or life in prison – for selling land to Jews.

Today, many pro-Palestinians continue to argue that the mere presence of Jews is an affront to Palestinian pride. White House correspondent Helen Thomas said Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and “everywhere else.” In October 2014, President Barack Obama’s spokesperson said the Obama administration condemns Jews who move into “residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan” because their “agenda provokes tensions.” This inversion blamed new Jewish neighbors for the anti-Semitism of the local Arabs.

The Sovereignty of a Jewish State

Some anti-Zionists are less triggered by the physical presence of Jews and more by the notion of a Jewish State. They object to a land which had a Muslim majority for a thousand years suddenly having a flag with a Jewish star and an anthem reflecting the yearning of Jews. Many Muslims regard this as a direct insult to Islam.

Shortly after the founding of Israel, the Muslim world routed almost all of its local Jews. Almost all Muslim countries still refuse to recognize the Jewish State over 70 years later. Other Islamic regimes are more aggressive such as Iran, which said that Israel is “cancerous tumor” (a dangerous foreign entity) that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.”

The Palestinians are divided between those who want to see the Jewish State destroyed (HAMAS/Gaza) and those who won’t recognize it (Fatah/West Bank), like PA President Abbas who said “We will never recognize the Jewishness of the state of Israel.” The Palestinian objection to Jewish sovereignty is so ingrained that leadership would forgo establishing a new Palestinian Arab State if it also required recognizing Israel as a Jewish State. It begs the question of whether Palestinians truly are “desperate” for independence and sovereignty or to be rid of the Jewish State.

Many non-Muslim anti-Zionists hold common cause decrying Israel. While there may be dozens of Islamic states as well as religious Christian democracies like Denmark and Greece, Palestinian supporters shout absurd smears of “Jewish supremacy” and “apartheid” against the liberal country which has more rights for all of its citizens than any country within 1,000 miles.

Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism

People debate whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism in a more politically-acceptable form. As reviewed here, one needs to look at the nuances of anti-Zionism to reach the conclusion.

In the first instance – the people who do not want Jewish neighbors and would go so far as to support the genocide of the Jews in Europe – the answer is clear that they despise Jews. Palestinian Arabs are overwhelming anti-Semitic as further shown in recent ADL polls which show 93% of West Bank and Gaza Arabs hold anti-Jewish views.

Regarding the notion of Jewish sovereignty, it is true that the idea of creating a Jewish State 100 years ago may have been “debatable” to quote Ellison but Israel is a well established reality. The country is more stable, more democratic, more open and thriving compared to all of the countries which surround it. To call for the country’s destruction (as Iran does) or to call for boycotts and divestment only against this country for perceived short-comings is a poor double-standard which reeks of anti-Semitism.

The majority of Palestinians are complete anti-Zionists, objecting to both the presence of Jews and the sovereignty of Jews in the holy land. Most Muslim countries are less extreme and do not object to Jews living in Israel as long as they become a minority living under an Islamic flag. Other Muslim countries have normalized relations with the Jewish State, noting that the country is a wonderful trading partner and not going anywhere.

Outside of the Muslim world, liberal anti-Zionists believe that they are siding with the stateless Arab underdogs as part of their religion of empathy. However, they all-too-often adopt the anti-Semitic language and philosophy of anti-Zionism: seeking to minimize the presence of Jews in their ancestral and holy land, as well as to obliterate the only Jewish State.

Vocal anti-Zionists Keith Ellison, Helen Thomas and Linda Sarsour who said “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

Some anti-Zionists might object to these two categories and suggest they do not object to Jews as neighbors, just as invaders. That argument simply means they deny Jewish history which is also anti-Semitic. Others could protest that “Zionism is Racism” is a commonly held belief, as demonstrated at the 2001 Durban Conference to combat Racism. The reality is that there is a lot of systemic hatred, such as the reality that most of the world also considers homosexuality a crime which does not absolve the anti-LGBT sentiment, much as anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist laws do not wash the hateful stain. Anti-Semitism remains a large global problem in its many forms.

Thousands of years ago, it made sense to focus on the narrow strip of land that acted as a bridge between Africa and Europe / Asia, but no longer, in this larger, connected world.

The ongoing critical obsession on a country with 0.1% of the global population which is home to the most persecuted people in history which suffered both a genocide in the European continent and a mass expulsion from the Muslim Middle East / North Africa within the last century should raise immediate alarms. That the goal of much of the criticism of the Jewish State is to weaken it militarily and economically or even to destroy Jewish autonomy in their ancestral home and religious capital is terrifying, and must be combatted aggressively.

A person can be in favor of yet another Arab state to join the dozens of others without being an anti-Zionist. However, one cannot be an anti-Zionist without being an anti-Semite.

Related First One Through articles:

Israel was never a British Colony; Judea and Samaria are not Israeli Colonies

Abbas’s Speech and the Window into Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity

A Native American, An African American and a Hispanic American walk into Israel…

Squeezing Zionism

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Palestinian Xenophobia (music of Mr. Rogers)

I hate Israel, I don’t hate Jews

I hate Israel and Zionism

I hate Israel, a racist country

I hate Israel, I wish it would go away

I hate Israel, displacing people

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“Clarifications,” The Toxic Cleanse

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Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) decided to absolve Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) after Omar lumped the United States and Israel into the same basket as the terrorist groups of the Taliban and Hamas. Pelosi said “We did not rebuke her. We acknowledged that she made a clarification.”

“Clarifications” on anti-Israel and anti-Jewish comments have an interesting history.

Progressive professor and CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill offered a clarification after he quoted the tagline of the Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist group, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which calls for the eradication of Israel. Hill “clarified” his comment that he was actually seeking a “radical change within Israel, not a desire for its destruction,” to convert the Jewish State into a bi-national state. He implied he wants a purely Arab state of Palestine and the end of Israel as a Jewish State. That was clarity enough for his to keep his job at Temple University.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has a similar view about Israel and she tied it to the Holocaust. She told an outright lie that Israel was established in “trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust” at the expense of her Palestinian Arab ancestors. People criticized her remarks in failing a basic truth that the land of Israel has been center of Judaism for nearly 4,000 years and modern Zionism predates the Holocaust by many decades. The whitewashing of the active role her ancestors played in blocking Jews from entering Palestine in fleeing Europe – killing over 100,000 Jews – was beyond insensitive. Tlaib remained defiant tweeting “I will never allow you to take my words out of context to push your racist and hateful agenda,” in an attempt to invert her vile anti-Semitism as a charge against others who note basic facts.

Nation of Islam leader, Louis Farrakhan was a little less elegant in asking people to stop saying he’s an anti-Semite, clarifying “I’m anti-Termite.” That seemed to be enough for him to remain in a vaunted position with numerous politicians and celebrities quoting him.

Notorious anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan standing at the funeral of Aretha Franklin alongside Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and former U.S. President Bill Clinton (photo: Mike Segar/Reuters)

The “clarifications” of anti-Zionists and anti-Semites like Omar, Tlaib, Hill and Farrakhan are additional opportunities for them to spew venom. Their desired absolution cannot be granted by leaders like Nancy Pelosi, and each and everyone of us must hold the bigots to account.

Related First One Through articles:

Pelosi’s Vastly Different Responses to Antisemitism and Racism

Ilhan Omar Isn’t Debating Israeli Policy, She is Attacking Americans

Is Ilhan Omar’s Mentor the Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei?

Rep. Ilhan Omar and The 2001 Durban Racism Conference

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

Bitter Burnt Ends: Talking to a Farrakhan Fan

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Michigan’s Slide on Israel

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When Israel declared its new state on May 14, 1948, U.S. Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R-MI) supported Democratic President Truman’s quick recognition of the Jewish State. In his capacity as the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he said:

“The prompt recognition of the provisional government as the de facto authority in the new State of Israel is the logical and proper step following the termination of the British mandate…. It responds to a basic decision taken at the United Nations at our instance. It is a positive actions after many months of critical and unhappy indecision.“

The New York Times, May 15, 1948

The State of Michigan has changed a lot in its attitudes towards Israel since 1948.

In 2019, the state had the second highest total Arab population, just behind California, counting 221,631 persons, or about 2.2% of the state which perhaps changed the tone regarding policies towards Israel. In November 2018, the state elected Rashida Tlaib to Congress and re-elected her two years later. Born in Detroit, MI, she is the descendant of Palestinian Arabs and the most anti-Israel voice in Congress today. In January 2021 she said:

“I think it’s important to understand that Israel is a racist state… they don’t believe that [Palestinian Arabs] are equal human beings that deserve to live.“

On March 12, 2021, Tlaib penned a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that incorrectly called “Palestine” an actual entity and falsely claimed that Israel had an obligation to provide COVID-19 vaccines to people in Gaza, the neighboring strip administered by a U.S.-designated terrorist group committed to Israel’s destruction.

The letter continued with lies denouncing “Israel’s ongoing colonization of the Palestinian West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” as if East Jerusalem was an actual place rather than a footnote related to a city once divided by war for the years 1949-1967. Further, the “Palestinian West Bank” is Area A which Israel handed to the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo Accords. There was never a “Palestinian West Bank” before then, and it is not “colonized” by Israel.

Tlaib wrote the letter with Mark Pocan (D-WI) and secured signatures from Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Betty McCollum (D-MN), Marie Newman (D-IL), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Andre Carson (D-IN), Chellie Pingree (D-ME) and Hank Johnson (D-GA). All Democrats.

At the time of Israel’s founding, a leading Republican senator from the state of Michigan worked with a Democratic administration to support the Jewish State. Unfortunately, 73 years later, we see far-left Democrats following a shrill Congresswoman from Michigan in aggressively trying to pull this Democratic administration from supporting Israel. As it relates to Israel, mainstream Republicans and Democrats have more in common than either party has with the Socialist fringe inside the Democratic party.

Related First One Through articles:

Omar and Tlaib’s Antisemitic B.D.S.

Muslim Women Debate Anti-Semitism

The Palestinian-American You Never Heard Of: Issam Akel

Seeing the Holocaust Through Nakba Eyes

The Mourabitat Women of Congress

The Veil of Hatred

Conditional U.S. Support in The Middle East

“Occupation”-Washing Honor Killings

Palestineism is Toxic Racism

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel

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Biden Ignores Own Comments Hiring Vilifier of Netanyahu

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President Joe Biden has opted to ignore his own past comments by proposing to hire into his administration someone who attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In November 2015, Biden berated Israel about a prospective member of the Israeli administration who had said derogatory things while he was a private citizen, about US President Obama (that his actions are akin to “modern anti-Semitism”).  Biden waved his finger and scolded Israel: “There is no excuse, there should be no tolerance for any member or employee of the Israeli administration referring to the president of United States in derogatory terms. Period, period, period, period!”

Yet today, Biden has proposed hiring Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders, to a senior post in the U.S. State Department. Duss has a long history of anti-Israel and anti-Netanyahu statements including his criticism of the Abraham Accords which ushered in normalization agreements between Israel and several Muslim Arab countries. Duss’s 2020 tweets read:

  • “Netanyahu is right at home among these authoritarian rulers, who openly express disdain for liberal principles and incite against internal enemies supposedly plotting against them.“
  • “It was unsurprising that Netanyahu’s advocates would hail the deal, since they’re all basically racists who see despotism as Arabs’ natural state. What was disappointing was seeing how many liberal Democrats who should know better joining in.“

Duss had called Netanyahu a racist several times before, including his 2019 tweet:

“Netanyahu’s racist campaign now includes this ad about how he disrespected the first black president in his own house,” seeking to inflame the Black community against Israel.

In 2017, Duss said that U.S. President Donald Trump and Netanyahu were two racist peas in a pod in a tweet:

“Let’s be fair: Trump is America’s Netanyahu. Bibi has been a racist demagogue his entire career. Trump just makes it safe to point this out.“

Matthew Duss, Israel critic, being considered for position in Biden Administration’s State Department

Netanyahu pulled his candidate from assuming a role in the Israeli government so as to not to offend a key ally. Should Biden welcome a fierce critic of Israel who has insulted the leader of Israel many times into his foreign policy team, he is either a hypocrite or doesn’t view Israel as an ally anymore.

Related First One Through articles:

Ramat Shlomo, Jerusalem and Joe Biden

Trump’s “eastern Jerusalem” and Biden’s “East Jerusalem”

While Joe Biden Passionately Defends Israel, He Ignores Jewish Rights and the History of the Jewish State

Will Biden Enable Hamas’s Sponsors of Iran, Qatar and Turkey

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The Zionist Obelisk

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Satire?

The discovery of a metal obelisk in a remote desert in Utah has confounded the conventional mind but not the conspiracy minded.

Metal Obelisk in the Utah desert

Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota quickly surmised that “it’s a Zionist tool to hypnotize the world into being silent about evil Jewish actions.“

D.C. Councilman Trayon White said that the obelisk is “used by Jewish bankers to control the climate to create natural disasters so they can reap billions to own the cities.“

Dr. Achmat Salie, an imam from Detroit said that the obelisk “is used by the puppet-masters in Israel to control all of us like sheep.“

Iraqi Legal Expert Abu Yaqeen Al-Musawi said it was a tool for “planting a chip or a virus in people’s bodies in order to control them so the Zionists can reduce the world’s population, and to create a single unified regime that will rule and control the world.“

An Egyptian governor, General Abdel-Fadeel Shosha, is convinced that it is a beacon used by “Israelis to control sharks in the Red Sea to attack tourists to harm the Egyptian tourism industry.“

The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, said that the obelisk is used by Israel “to poison the air and water of the Palestinians so they can steal their resources.“

Dutch Muslim politician Arnoud van Door considered that the column may “control the minds of Muslims to behead people to make governments shut down mosques.“

Hiba Husseini, a legal adviser working on the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations observed that “the obelisk may a marker for the well-known ongoing Zionist expansionism to take over land all over the world.”

Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam recognized the “altar of the Synagogue of Satan” where Jews conceive of the “filth and degenerate behavior that Hollywood is putting out: turning men into women, and women into men.“

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the obelisk is used by “filthy Zionist agents” to turn Muslims against Muslims.

KKK leader David Duke warned that the obelisk is a tool of “Zionist power and the Jewish establishment to control the western world.“

Former leader of the UK’s Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn said that ” I strongly suspect that the monolith was planted by Israel to destabilize the world and pit Muslim against Muslim.“

French comedian Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala posted online that “the obelisk is yet another Holocaust memorial dropped on the world by the Zionist Lobby.“

Former president of the Students for Justice in Palestine at Hunter College, Nerdeen Mohsen Kiswani said that “this is yet another wall being built by this Zionist-colonial administration reproducing settler-colonial ideology on stolen land.“

Rick Wiles, a Florida pastor announced on his TruNews broadcast that the obelisk “is being used by Jews to spread the coronavirus since they deny Jesus Christ.“

Rep. Rashida Tlaib tweeted that the obelisk marked the spot “where Israeli settlers kidnapped and drowned a Palestinian child.” Upon discovering that to be unsubstantiated, Tlaib deleted the tweet and then tweeted that the obelisk was established by “White supremacists.” That tweet was also deleted and replaced by a new tweet that it represented a world free of Israel, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free.” She has since deleted that tweet too and is looking for anti-Zionist suggestions.

The British artist Banksy wondered whether the shiny obelisk “is an attempt by Zionists to create a wall which cannot be painted to shut down protest.” He added, listen, “Walls are hot right now, but I was into them long before [Donald] Trump made it cool.“

Fellow British artist Roger Waters, founder of the rock group Pink Floyd added “I don’t know what it is or how it got that there, but Jewish puppet-masters are behind the whole thing. Those Jews think that only Jewish people, are completely human…and everybody else on Earth is there to serve them and this thing is some sort of weapon in their scheme.“

Based on such insights, one can imagine seeing these objects showing up everywhere sometime soon. If they do not, it will just be a sign of how powerful this object truly is.

Related First One Through articles:

“Protocols of the Elders of Zion – The Musical”

Israel’s Kite Business Gets a Second Wind

Charlie Hebdo Will No Longer Sell Magazines to 20 Islamic Terrorist Groups

Fun With Cause-and-Effect: Gaza Border Protests

Netanyahu’s Doctoral Thesis on the Nakba

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Jewish Voice for Peace Ignores Dead Jews

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Jewish Voice for Peace is an infamous anti-Zionist organization among Israel supporters. The fact that it labels itself as “Jewish” only makes the dynamic worse. As “Catch the Jew!” author Tuvia Tenenbom wrote, such self-haters are more noxious than Arab terrorists who at least have a selfish motivation for wanting to see dead Jews. In writing about lar-left Jewish groups like Rabbis for Human Rights, Tenenbom noted, “if logic is any guide, Israel will not survive.  Besieged by hate from without and from within, no land can survive for very long.“

Consider the weekend of May 4-5, 2019 when the terrorists of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched over 600 rockets into civilian areas of Israel. Four Israelis were killed in the attacks: Moshe Agadi, Ziad Alhamada, Moshe Feder and Pinchas Menachem Prezuazman. When JVP wrote about the attacks, it did not lead with the four dead Israelis. Instead, it started its press release with the Palestinians who were killed:

“In the last 24 hours, Israeli airstrikes have killed eleven Palestinians, including a 14-month-old baby and her pregnant aunt. Seven of the eleven were identified as Saba Abu Arar, Falastin Abu Arar, Balal Muhammad al-Bana, Abdullah Abu al-Atta, Mahmoud Subhi Issa, Fawzi Abed Wadi, and Khaled Muhammad Abu Qleiq.”

JVP did not mention that Israel’s attacks were retaliatory for the Palestinian rocket barrage. Conversely, its press release took the time to mention seven of the dead Palestinian by name.

When JVP next turned its attention to Israelis, it wrote the following:

“Three people have been killed in Israel from rockets launched by Hamas — including Bedouin citizen of Israel, Zaed al-Hammamda, 50, and two more Israelis killed in a separate rocket strike later Sunday, at a factory.“

In ordering the story with dead Palestinians first and adding the clause “later Sunday” regarding the murdered Jews, JVP inverted cause-and-effect and made the Palestinians appear to be responding to an Israeli attack. Further, JVP would only mention the Israeli Bedouin by name but not the murdered Israeli Jews.

Member of Jewish Voice for Peace

JVP’s invective about Israel is so commonplace that it is not news-worthy, but its dismissiveness about murdered Jews should make even anti-Zionists pause.

Related First One Through articles:

Students for Justice in Palestine’s Dick Pics

Cause and Effect: Making Gaza

Palestineism is Toxic Racism

JVP and J Street Attack Foreign Affairs Committee

CNN Makes Clear the Attackers and Victims in Gaza-Israel Fight

The United Nations Can Hear the Songs of Gazans, but Cannot See Their Rockets

Denying Entry and Citizenship

The Left-Wing’s Two State Solution: 1.5 States for Arabs, 0.5 for Jews

Unity – not Unanimity – in the Pro-Israel Tent

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Every Picture Tells A Story: Palestinian Terrorists are Victims

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The New York Times has continued to use pictures which accompany its articles (read editorials) to frame narratives that are vehemently anti-Zionist.

On November 20, 2020, the paper had a two-page spread on pages A12 and A13 which touched upon the victims of terrorism but handled the stories very differently.

Pages A12 and A13 from The New York Times on November 20, 2020

Page A13 had a large color photograph of a victim of a terrorist attack in Toronto. The article’s title “Professed ‘Incel’ Who Killed 10 With Van Stands Trial in Toronto” had a caption under the page’s dominant picture which read “Cathy Riddell, 70, who sustained over 20 injuries, including brain trauma, in a 2018 van attack that killed 10 people and wounded 16.” The large picture gave a personal story of the tragedy that struck so many and left the reader feeling emotionally attached to her and the many victims of this ‘incel’.

The story on page A12 portrayed a very different picture for readers. The story called “Seeking Restart with Biden, Palestinians to Pare Prisoner Payments” also had a picture – but of a very different kind of “victim.”

The picture was of two people walking around rubble. The caption read “The parents of a Palestinian prisoner inspecting her house in the West Bank after it was demolished by the Israeli Defense Forces.” In this rendition of history, the Palestinian terrorist is the victim, by being in jail and having her house demolished. The dead and injured Israelis are nowhere to be found as they are not victims for the Times, as their very presence makes Arabs “resort to violence.”

While the paper could have shown pictures of Israeli victims as it did in the article on the following page, including the Henkins who were shot to death in their car in front of their children, or Tamar Fogel who was 12 years old when she entered her home to see her parents and three siblings stabbed to death by two Arab men, or hundreds of other Israelis, it opted to make the Palestinian Arabs serving in jail the victims.

Perhaps a dose-of-reality bubble could have been placed over this woman’s head as she inspected the demolished home, like Widad Barghouti who had her house demolished after her son Qassam Shibli killed a 17-year old Israeli girl on a hike. The text would read her statement just after her house was demolished: “I say to [my son Qassam], to all of them [the prisoners], that we are proud of you. If we want to talk about our achievements as mothers, then the most important achievement that we have made in our lives is that we gave birth to heroes such as these.” Nah, that would break the Times narrative crafted for its anti-Zionist readership.

The anti-Israel media will tell you explicitly, subtly, directly and indirectly until you’re brain-washed to believe that Palestinian Arabs are always the victims, even – or perhaps especially – those that murder.

Related First One Through articles:

Every Picture Tells a Story: Have Israel and the US Advanced Peace?

Every Picture Tells a Story: Goodbye Peres

Every Picture Tells a Story: Anti-Semitism

Every Picture Tells a Story: No Need for #MeToo for Palestinians

Every Picture Tells a Story: Fire

Every Picture Tells a Story: The Invisible Killed Terrorists

Every Picture Tells a Story: Arab Injuries over Jewish Deaths

New York Times’ Lost Pictures and Morality for the Year 2015

Every Picture Tells a Story: Versions of Reality

Every Picture Tells A Story: Only Palestinians are Victims

Every Picture Tells a Story: The Invisible Murdered Israelis

Every Picture Tells a Story- Whitewashing the World (except Israel)

The New York Times’ Buried Pictures

Every Picture Tells a Story, the Bibi Monster

Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?

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The British and Arab Press Assail “Settlers” While the Israeli Media calls out “Right-Wing”

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Roman Abramovich is a Russian billionaire who owns the Chelsea premier league soccer team. His dealings often make it onto the UK papers which love to gossip about the ultra-wealthy, especially those entangled with their favorite sport.

The British media went after Abramovich this week as he completed the trifecta of British obsession: his support of the Jewish State.

The BBC posted a video on September 21, 2020 called “FinCEN Files: The Israeli settlers Chelsea boss Arbramovich helped fund.” The inverted English title was a pretty good indication of the inversion of facts presented in the ten minute video including never stating that it was Yemenite Jews who founded the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan in the 19th century (not Arabs the way BBC presented) and that the archaeological findings in the City of David are historical treasures for the entire world, not booty for the Jewish people.

Roman Abramovich featured in BBC

The Guardian loved the story and published a piece “Leaks show Chelsea owner Abramovich funded Israeli settler group.” The article wrote that

“four companies he [Abramovich] either owns or controls in the British Virgin Islands have contributed more than $100m (£74m) to Elad, a group that supports settlements in the Palestinian neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem called Silwan, BBC News Arabic reported.”

This “Palestinian neighborhood” was never contemplated to be part of a Palestinian state, and the Oslo Accords which the Palestinian Authority signed in 1995 acknowledge that Israel rules Jerusalem.

The article continued:

“The group, which also receives backing from the Israeli government, has sought to strengthen the Jewish presence in the neighbourhood of Silwan at the expense of its Arab residents.

Elad runs an archaeological site in Silwan called the City of David that has become a huge tourist attraction. The dig has been criticised by European Union diplomats as seeking to ignore the ancient city’s diverse history in favour of “an exclusively Jewish narrative, while detaching the place from its Palestinian surroundings”.”

The statement is ridiculous on many fronts. Arabs dwarf the number of Jews in the neighborhood today. Before the Yemenite Jews settled this area outside the Old City of Jerusalem’s walls in the 1880’s, no one lived in that land for centuries; the Arab history on the site is only 100 years old.

Outside of the British press, the biased story was repeated almost verbatim by Arab media outlets:

The left-wing Israeli press ran their own stories:

The TOI piece included this doozy:

“Elad also purchases homes in the surrounding Arab village of Silwan — sometimes via Muslim middlemen — and rents them to Jews, a move that has led to charges that it is fueling tensions in the city.”

The use of “Muslim middlemen” to procure property stems from the fact that the Palestinian Authority considers selling land to Jews a capital crime. Rather than denounce the sick anti-Semitic Palestinian law which kills Arabs for a natural human right of selling property to another person in the spirit of coexistence and commerce, the article inverted the charge against the group, Elad, claiming that it caused the tensions.

It is a sad commentary on the world today that a non-profit group which helps uncover the beauty of Jewish history and facilitates Jews buying homes in their holiest city in an area founded by Jews is controversial. That the British and Arab press held common cause in vilifying support for such “settler group” while the Israeli news called out the “right-wing group” says quite a bit about the racial and nationalistic lens shared by the UK and Arab world, as well as the partisan political orientation in Israel today.

Related First One Through articles:

The New York Times All Out Assault on Jewish Jerusalem

Real and Imagined Laws of Living in Silwan

The Subtle Discoloration of History: Shuafat

Obama’s Select Religious Compassion

Obama supports Anti-Semitic Palestinian Agenda of Jew-Free State

“Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”

Ending Apartheid in Jerusalem

The New York Times Inverts the History of Jerusalem

The Nerve of ‘Judaizing’ Neighborhoods

BBC Welcomes Release of British Muslim Accused of Beheading Daniel Pearl

Al Jazeera’s Lies Call for Jihad Against the Jewish State

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