How Maureen Galindo Became Someone Else’s Story

Posted on May 26, 2026 by First.One.Through

Imagine a congressional candidate proposing detention camps for members of another minority group.

Imagine accusing that group of criminality, depravity, and collective guilt. Imagine that candidate finishing first in a major-party primary and having a realistic path to Congress.

What would journalists focus on? The candidate? Or everyone around her?

“turn Karnes ICE Detention Center into a prison for American Zionists” – Maureen Galindo, leading Democrat for TX-35

That question hovered over the New York Times coverage of Texas congressional candidate Maureen Galindo. Readers learned about Republican efforts to boost her candidacy. They learned that Democratic leaders denounced her. They learned of fears that she could become a liability for her party.

What they largely did not receive was a full accounting of Galindo herself.

accused her opponent of being “paid by Zionist terrorism and trafficking.” – Maureen Galindo, leading Democrat for TX-35

The article informed readers that Galindo had made inflammatory remarks. It offered a glimpse of the controversy. Yet it spent remarkably little time exposing the breadth and character of the rhetoric that made her candidacy so extraordinary. Galindo’s own words appeared only in fragments. Her worldview remained mostly offstage.

The effect was subtle but significant. Readers were encouraged to view Galindo as a political problem rather than as a political phenomenon.

Jews run Hollywood and worship at the “synagogue of Satan.” – Maureen Galindo, leading Democrat for TX-35

The frame became Republican meddling.

The story should have been why thousands of Democratic voters found her acceptable.

Republican spending may have increased Galindo’s visibility. Democratic leaders may have condemned her. Neither explains why a candidate whose rhetoric would once have ended a political career finished first in a Democratic primary.

“All politicians who have taken Israeli money should be tried for treason” – Maureen Galindo, leading Democrat for TX-35

That is the question the article never seriously explored.

The answer may lie in a reality that many journalists remain reluctant to confront that antisemitism is increasingly treated differently from other forms of prejudice.

When politicians target most minority groups, journalists lead with the offensive remarks themselves. Readers see the words and judge them accordingly.

When Jews or Zionists are the target, the instinct often shifts toward explanation. The discussion moves to grievances, movements, funding, coalitions, and historical forces. The prejudice becomes something to interpret rather than confront.

I don’t care “what any Zionist-owned politician thinks. They’re exposing themselves as Zionists which will backfire on them.” – Maureen Galindo, leading Democrat for TX-35

This pattern has become particularly visible in discussions surrounding Zionism. For years, much of the political and academic world insisted that anti-Zionism and antisemitism occupy entirely separate categories. One concerns a state. The other concerns a people.

Galindo’s rhetoric collapses that distinction.

Her remarks are not primarily arguments about settlements, borders, military policy, or diplomatic arrangements. They concern Zionists in the United States. They assign collective characteristics to an enormous population. They transform a political identity into a moral category. They depict entire groups as uniquely dangerous and deserving of extraordinary treatment.

That is why her candidacy matters.

Not because she is representative of all progressives. She clearly is not.

Not because every critic of Israel shares her views. They plainly do not.

She matters because she demonstrates how rhetoric that would be instantly recognized as bigotry in almost any other context can find an audience when directed at Zionists and Jews.

And that audience is no longer hypothetical.

Galindo finished first because real voters chose her. That fact should have been the center of the story.

Instead, the NY Times coverage drifted toward a more comfortable explanation: Republicans boosted her campaign because they wanted to embarrass Democrats.

Perhaps they did.

Political parties routinely try to elevate weak or extreme opponents. There is nothing novel about the tactic.

What is novel is the assumption that the tactic itself explains the outcome. It does not.

A campaign contribution can buy advertising. It cannot manufacture belief. A mailer can increase awareness. It cannot create enthusiasm where none exists. Electoral manipulation may shape margins, but it does not explain why a message resonates.

To understand Galindo’s success requires examining the movement that produced her supporters rather than the operatives who noticed them.

That inquiry would lead into uncomfortable territory. It would require asking why anti-Israel activism increasingly attracts rhetoric that once belonged on the fringes of political life. It would require examining how language once considered antisemitic is repackaged as moral virtue. It would require acknowledging that hatred can emerge from the left no less than from the right.

Instead, the Times watered down the belief system of Galindo’s voters. It argued that the bile had “significantly less attention in Texas’s 35th congressional district.” It claimed that “most were unaware of the controversy,” and “knew little about the specifics.” It quoted a progressive who heard about Galindo’s smears “but brushed them as a political attacks.”

In other words, the Times deliberately sought to portray the progressive voters for Galindo as NOT antisemitic nor anti-Israel, just unaware.

This is journalistic malfeasance. It would never happen for any other minority group, and certainly not one experiencing a wave of hate crimes.

Journalists are trained to recognize certain forms of extremism instantly and warn readers about their implications.

The danger is not only the prejudice they recognize. It is also the prejudice they explain until it begins to sound normal.

Maureen Galindo may or may not win her race. What matters is that a candidate who trafficked in rhetoric that would have dominated headlines if directed at almost any other minority group finished first in a Democratic primary.

Yet the discussion focused elsewhere: Republican strategy, Democratic embarrassment, campaign spending, electoral tactics.

Everything surrounding the candidate became the story.

The candidate – and her supporters – became someone else’s story.

The Genocide Script Was Written by Iran in 2001

Posted on May 19, 2026 by First.One.Through

In February 2001, long before Hamas ruled Gaza, long before Israel withdrew from Gaza, long before the security barrier, and long before the phrase “genocide in Gaza” became a campus chant, a United Nations “anti-racism” conference in Tehran was already accusing Israel of being a racist apartheid state guilty of crimes against humanity and “a form of genocide.”

The language was not improvised after October 7. It was drafted decades earlier.

Buried in the archives of the UN World Conference Against Racism sits a document that now reads like the prototype for today’s anti-Israel activism. Hosted by the Islamic Republic of Iran as the Asian preparatory meeting for the infamous Durban Conference, the 2001 declaration accused Israel of “racial discrimination,” “settler ideology,” “apartheid,” and genocide years before the events now routinely cited to justify those accusations.

The Tehran declaration described Israeli policy as “a new kind of apartheid,” “a crime against humanity,” and “a form of genocide.” It condemned “foreign occupation founded on settlements” and portrayed Israel as a uniquely racist state. It attacked Israel’s Law of Return as “racially based” while endorsing a Palestinian “right of return,” and framed the conflict almost exclusively through the language of colonialism and racial supremacy.

This was February 2001. Hamas would not seize Gaza for another six years. Israel had not yet disengaged from Gaza. The major Gaza wars had not occurred. There was no October 7 massacre. There were no TikTok videos, no encampments, no “Globalize the Intifada” marches winding through Western capitals.

Yet the ideological framework already existed in complete form.

The core vocabulary was already there:

apartheid
settler colonialism
genocide
racial supremacy
alien domination
decolonization

The slogans were set. The distribution system under the framework of “anti-racism” needed time to become global.

Iran understood this battlefield earlier than much of the West did.

The Islamic Republic did not wage war against Israel on only one front. It developed a multi-front strategy: terror proxies, missile programs, regional encirclement, propaganda networks, diplomatic campaigns, university activism, NGO penetration and information warfare. The battlefield extended from southern Lebanon to UN conference halls.

Iran understood something many Western governments failed to grasp: narratives can outlive battlefields. Terror attacks shock people temporarily. Moral frameworks reshape generations.

The achievement of the campaign was not inventing new hatred. It was laundering their own very old anti-Jew hatred through the moral vocabulary of human rights.

The regime in Tehran openly sought the destruction of the Jewish state while simultaneously helping construct an international framework portraying the Jewish state itself as the great racist evil of the modern world. The inversion was deliberate. A regime animated by antisemitism and eliminationist rhetoric repositioned itself as an anti-racist moral authority while recasting Israel as a global pariah.

Reality itself had to be inverted for the framework to function:

The Jewish people had to be stripped of indigenous identity despite Judaism being born in the Land of Israel and the core of the Hebrew Bible.
Jerusalem had to be detached from Jewish history despite being the holiest city in Judaism for three thousand years, and the direction of daily Jewish prayer.
Hebrew had to become the language of “colonizers” despite originating in the same soil activists insist Jews have no connection to.

And Israel had to be recast as uniquely illegitimate despite being the most liberal, democratic and pluralistic society for a thousand miles in any direction.

The objective was to transform the Jewish state from a country that could be criticized into a moral obscenity that could not legitimately exist.

The Tehran document placed Israel into the moral category occupied by apartheid South Africa, colonial domination and crimes against humanity. Once a country is assigned that status, compromise becomes collaboration and coexistence becomes moral surrender.

Iran supplied the ideological fuel. Large parts of the Western activist ecosystem supplied the distribution network. The result was one of the most successful political rebranding campaigns of the modern era.

NGOs, academics, journalists, activist groups and eventually corporate and educational institutions absorbed the vocabulary and repackaged it as the language of progressive morality. Traditional antisemitism had become morally discredited after the Holocaust, so hostility toward the Jewish state was translated into the vocabulary of anti-racism, anti-colonialism and social justice.

The old image of the malevolent Jew became the malevolent Zionist.

Ancient hatreds were repackaged as the language of anti-racism and liberation.

The old demand that Jews disappear became “decolonization.”

And because the rhetoric arrived wrapped in the language of human rights, millions of educated Westerners could participate while imagining themselves enlightened rather than radicalized.

The asymmetry inside the Tehran declaration is particularly revealing. The document devoted extraordinary attention to portraying Israel as the embodiment of racism while saying nothing about antisemitism in the Arab world, terrorism against Israeli civilians, the expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, or the openly eliminationist ideologies as the bedrock of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The imbalance was not accidental.

The conference was not constructing a universal anti-racism framework. It was constructing a hierarchy of permissible outrage in which Jewish sovereignty itself could increasingly be reframed as a moral offense.

The Durban process that followed later became notorious for antisemitic incidents, anti-Israel propaganda and efforts to revive the old “Zionism is racism” framework using newer terminology. Western democracies eventually began boycotting later Durban conferences because they viewed them as platforms for anti-Israel demonization masquerading as anti-racism initiatives.

But by then the political grammar had already escaped containment.

Over time, phrases first drafted in Iran migrated into university syllabi, NGO reports, newsroom style guides, faculty petitions, diversity trainings and street protests. Students who have never heard of the Tehran conference now repeat its vocabulary almost word for word, unaware they are echoing a political script written decades earlier by regimes that openly sought Israel’s destruction.

Long before October 7, the architecture had been built, the slogans drafted, and the moral categories assigned. More powerful than even the 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with racism, the new format for the 21st century is anti-Zionism is anti-racism.

For twenty years the distribution system slowly penetrated the world, and reframed Jew-hatred as morally acceptable under willing and unwilling eyes.

October 7 did not write the script. It activated one that had been waiting since 2001.

What to Say to Crazy Anti-Zionist Karens

Posted on October 12, 2025 by First.One.Through

If someone approaches you — as a lecturer at the University of Sydney recently did to a couple of Jews celebrating Sukkot — and asks if you’re a Zionist and to renounce Zionism, here’s what I suggest you say:

“Well, thank you for asking that. To make sure I answer you fully, let’s first be clear on what a Zionist is. It’s someone who believes in two facts and one principle.

The first fact is that Jews are a people.
The second fact is that the Jewish people originate in the Land of Israel.

The principle is that Jews should have self-determination in their homeland, the Land of Israel.

Yes, I believe in both of those facts and that principle. You can plainly see that nothing about Zionism has anything to do with any particular government, leader, or policy.”

That’s it. Calm, factual, and impossible to refute without revealing one’s true bias.

Now, it can very well be that some people simply believe Israel shouldn’t exist — and therefore call themselves anti-Zionists. But as Israel is a living, breathing reality today, to oppose its existence is not a theoretical stance about 1948; it’s a desire to dismantle a sovereign Jewish nation. That’s not political criticism — that’s eliminationism. That’s the desire of many groups including the People’s Forum, Within Our Lifetime and the Democratic Socialists of America.

In today’s world, anti-Zionism isn’t just a philosophical disagreement. It’s an active hostility toward Jewish self-determination, an echo of the same hate that fueled the October 7 massacre. It’s far more lethal and toxic than opposing the idea of creating another Arab state in the Middle East to be called “Palestine,” especially one that has opposed coexistence with the indigenous Jews for over a century.

To deny Jewish peoplehood, heritage, and rights in their homeland is not progressivism — it’s prejudice wrapped in the language of activism.

So, the next time someone smugly demands you “renounce Zionism,” repeat the verses above. Because once you strip away the slogans and hashtags, all that’s left of anti-Zionism is anti-Jewish animus.

Jews On The Spectrum At Columbia University

Posted on April 3, 2025 by First.One.Through

The latest “Pro-Palestinian protest” at Columbia University, as liberal media likes to call it, included a series of chants to murder Jews and destroy the Jewish State.

Jewish students – almost all unmasked and sporting kaffiyehs to show solidarity with Gazan Arabs – chained themselves to Columbia’s gates and chanted to free Mahmoud Khalil and demanded the names of university trustees who handed over the names of students to the New York Police Department and federal immigration services.

Meanwhile, masked onlookers chanted “There is only one solution: Intifada Revolution. Intifada, Intifada. Globalize the Intifada!” in calls to kill Jews all over the world. It is the running echo of campus rioters chanting for violence against Jews. The Columbia administration testified that these phrases are antisemitic before a congressional committee in April 2024.

It was a curious spectacle: Jewish students showed their faces as they demanded clarity regarding university due process and protections for fellow students, while students wearing masks for whom they were advocating, yelled antisemitic slogans as defined by the university.

If ever there was a group that took free speech arguments to the extreme, it is Jews that chain themselves to a fence to advocate for rights of students who despise them.

The Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were suspended by the university on Nov. 10, 2023, after the groups “repeatedly violated University policies related to holding campus events.” That has not kept them from storming the gates of the university, partnering with not-soon-enough-designated-terrorist group WithinOurLifetime.

Columbia’s chapter of JVP was more explicit about violence “by any means necessary,” like the October 7 massacre.

Somewhere in the middle of the pro-Palestinian Jewish community at Columbia is J Street U, which is an officially recognized student group on the university’s undergraduate website. The group is worried about antisemitic incidents and chants of “Pro-Palestinian protesters” but also wants to protect their speech and keep them from getting kicked off campus without due process.

SJP appreciates that sentiment but demands more of Jews, specifically calling for the end of Israel. The Tufts chapter of SJP said “While SJP recognizes that many Jewish people begin their anti-zionist political journey through J Street U and appreciates that J Street U’s Tufts chapter agrees that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not synonymous, it is crucial for students to refuse half-measures that condemn occupation while normalizing colonization.”

The Columbia and Barnard Hillel houses J Street U. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called Hillel and other Jewish groups “enemies of the Muslim community” for supporting Israel. It is seemingly lockstep with SJP and JVP that only Jews that call for destroying Israel “by any means necessary” can be considered allies.

There is a spectrum of left-wing Jews at Columbia and Barnard, ranging from virulently anti-Zionist, to modestly pro-Israel. Many are pro-Israel too, although they tend to be more centrist and right-leaning. The vast majority are targets of the pro-Palestinian gang. All of them are being ranked on an Israel litmus test for judgement, like no other diaspora community in the world.

Columbia University Sets New Standards For Free Speech (December 2024)

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

Hamas, CAIR, DSA, Within Our Lifetime, SJP Are All Gunning For Jews (May 2024)

Why Should Columbia Protect Jews If The Government Won’t? (April 2024)

Columbia University Completely Fails Mission. And Jews (October 2023)

Columbia University’s Latest Anti-Semitic Inanity: “Palestinian Hebrews” (July 2022)

Is Columbia University Promoting Violence Against Israel and Jews? (December 2019)

Columbia Syndrome

Posted on January 2, 2025 by First.One.Through

The sorry state of Columbia University’s treatment of Jews is apparent to all. The administration, teachers and student-led groups have participated in the harassment, intimidation and assault on Jews and Jewish life on campus before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre and very significantly thereafter.

It is now manifest that graduates of the school – including some Jews, remarkably – have bonded with Hamas and rationalized its barbarism and whitewashed its antisemitism.

Consider anti-Israel Jewish alum Anna Baltzer. According to her Wikipedia page, Baltzer has written a number of books, and it seems that Noam Chomsky is a fan of her 2014 book “Witness in Palestine,” which details “Palestinian resistance” against the existence of Jews in the land of Israel. On November 12, 2023, shortly after the Hamas-led massacre, she wrote on the socialist-jihadi site Common Dreams an opinion piece titled “Hamas Didn’t Attack Israelis Because They Are Jewish,” in which she attempted to argue that Hamas killed Israelis because Israeli Jews are White supremacist colonial invaders, not because of their religion.

It is willful and blind stupidity.

Hamas’s foundational charter makes very clear that it views the conflict as a religious war against Jews:

“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
“raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” (Article 3)
“Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
“Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” (Article 12)
“In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)

The Charter would go on to spin a bunch of Jew-hatred conspiracy theories lifted from the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has NOTHING to do with the conflict in the land.

“In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money” (Article 20)
“With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein…. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” (Article 22)
“The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” (Article 28)
“the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control.” (Article 30)
“The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… here is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one’s country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values… fight with the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)

So how does this Ivy League-educated anti-Israel Jew deal with these facts? She pointed to Hamas’s revised charter of 2017 which says in Article 16 “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”

If this were true, why did Palestinians throw a 69 year old wheelchair bound American Jew war veteran off a ship when he wasn’t an Israeli? Why did Palestinians shoot up a synagogue in Rome? Why did Palestinians separate Jewish passengers who weren’t Israelis to be hostages when the Arabs hijacked planes?

The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli physical attacks is long.

Hamas and its leaders have long denigrated Jews, calling them “the brothers of apes and pigs,” and told their followers that “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” among many other insults.

The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli verbal attacks is long.

Surely Baltzer knows all of this. So why make an argument that is plainly untrue, and why do it to fellow Jews?

While not all Jews are pro-Israel (or eat kosher, live in Israel, celebrate Jewish holidays or a variety of things that are inherently Jewish), some – like Baltzer – are anti-Israel. They may hate some government policies, the entire government, or the entire state. They may actually not hate Israel but are eager to see local Arabs achieve a state of their own.

Yet one needn’t be pro-Israel to acknowledge that Hamas is a deeply antisemitic genocidal jihadist death cult.

So how can people like Baltzer willfully ignore the deep Jew-hatred of Hamas? How and why do they try to convince fellow Jews that despite everything Hamas says and does, its radical views of Islam and jihad are somehow not toxic to Jews everywhere?

It’s a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome. In the case of Stockholm, an abused person develops a strong bond with their abuser and defends their actions in a strange twist of empathy. In this iteration, which I call the Columbia Syndrome, the root source is not purely from the ABUSER’S actions, but from the desire of someone to purge a part of their identity.

In an effort to rid oneself of a component of the Jewish collective – Israel in this case – a person bonds with someone who similarly attacks that element (Hamas, here). The fact that the abuser is not solely focused on that narrow element, or gives some soft talking points as cover to mask the general hatred in order to enlist people to the cause, is excused. The person suffering from Columbia Syndrome wants to expunge a core association so profoundly, that they will empathize with groups or people who despise them completely.

Columbia University did not originate this phenomenon and the phenomenon is not confined to anti-Israel Jews. People like Peter Beinart (Yale alum) have long been attempting to shield antisemites like Rep. Rashida Tlaib of charges of Jew-hatred. Brown University held a panel discussion about antisemitism which included Jews and non-Jews that echoed each other that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel, and to combat antisemitism one needed to be anti-Israel. Student groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow routinely link arms with those with extensive antisemitic credentials.

But Columbia stands above the rest.

Home to Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, the school has long served as a fountain of denial of Jewish history and heritage. Today it is home to Joseph Massad, who celebrated the October 7 massacre of Jews and said that the Jews of the Old Testament are really “Palestinian Hebrews.”

Columbia is a campus where people yell “we are all Hamas!” and student leaders say “be grateful that I am not going out and murdering Zionists.”

Columbia is where students hoist banners calling for an “intifada” and point to Jews to be the next victims for Hamas.

Columbia is where socialist-jihadi politicians come to fawn on students harassing Jews.

Rep. Ilhan Omar at Columbia “encampment”

And Columbia is located in the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world, New York City. The university has the largest percentage of Jews of all the Ivy League schools, according to Hillel, and likely the largest Jewish alumni network of the Ivies.

Jews on campus and Jewish alumni witness the vocal anti-Israel fervor and must make a decision of how to respond: fight, flight, join or ignore. Many students worked very hard to gain admission to the institution to get a good education, and are loathe to leave the school or exert the physical and mental energy required to fight the tide of hatred. The majority of Jewish students are left with the choice to either listen to the toxicity or join the seemingly popular horde.

The Columbia environment echoes the school curricula of UNRWA, the temporary United Nations agency to care for descendants of Palestinian Arabs who left Israel at its founding. They are lied to that Jews are “colonialists” and “invaders” who “stole the land” from local Arabs. They are taught that all of Israel is an illegal “Zionist project” which should be terminated and handed to the stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs).

In such framework, Columbia Jews hear teachers and students echo the Democratic Socialists of America who argue that every Israeli Jew cannot be considered a civilian and is fair game for Palestinian Arabs “deploying violence to liberate themselves.”

Israeli Jews are no longer victims and Palestinians can longer be considered terrorists in such mindset. Even Arab men stabbing children to death while they slept, as happened in 2011, was supported by 51% of Arabs in Gaza. Some Columbia allies of SAPs may find the actions and associated support for killing children abhorrent but believe it has context for which Israel is solely to blame.

The depravity is appalling but it is part of the culture; it is deeply embedded in the Palestinian historical narrative at this point. The “allies” of SAPs have ingested the toxicity, including anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian Jews. What may have begun as just wanting SAPs to have freedom or an objection of Israeli policies, became a marriage made in hell.

Anti-Israel Jews try to cleanse Palestinian terrorists of antisemitism to rationalize their allegiance and to get fellow Jews to join the self-immolation. Rather than rethink the dangerous dynamic, the anti-Israel Jews affix themselves to people who want to see them dead – after they help destroy Jewish relatives.

People suffering from Columbia Syndrome are not only convinced that they are acting rationally but also morally. Like Jews who push for laws to ban the ritual slaughter of meat or circumcision, they concoct moral arguments for such actions. Driven by their profound desire to amputate part of their ethnicity and culture, they embrace people and movements which want to decapitate them.

Too many Jews are suffering from Columbia Syndrome in which they join forces with Hamas and other vicious antisemites to amputate any tinge of Zionism in their comportment. While Stockholm syndrome is understood by society to develop from a trauma-related experience, unfortunately, Columbia syndrome is viewed by a socialist-jihadist culture as a form of moral awakening.

Is It Racist To Ponder Rashida Tlaib’s Terrorism Ties?

Posted on September 25, 2024 by First.One.Through

The National Review posted a cartoon in the aftermath of the political-terrorist group Hezbollah’s pagers blowing up around Lebanon and Syria, of U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sitting at her desk and pondering why her pager had just exploded. In response, many of her alt-left comrades rallied to her and accused the right-leaning media company of racism.

If Tlaib was targeted solely because she is an Arab Muslim, that would certainly be offensive and racist.

But Talib is much more than that.

For one thing, she is a vile antisemite and anti-Zionist. She trafficked in antisemitic tropes accusing Jews of trying to kill Black and Brown people around the world for profit at the Democratic Socialists of America annual conference in 2021. Her comments calling for the destruction of Israel earned her a bipartisan censure of Congress in 2023.

Tlaib has a history of falsely attacking Israel as engaging in “ethnic cleansing”, “apartheid” and “genocide.” She has also refused to call for Hamas to be held accountable for actual premediated genocide and ethnic cleansing. She seemingly believes that the best defense for Palestinian Arab terrorism is to go on the attack to make their evil actions appear warranted.

Does someone’s antisemitism and hatred of Israel warrant being labeled terrorist-adjacent, at least in jest?

On October 25, 2023, Canary Mission alleged that Tlaib has extensive fundraising ties to the Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas. In July 2023, A Telegram channel linked to jihadi factions fighting against the Bashar Al-Assad regime in Syria said that Rep. Ilhan Omar and Tlaib are getting money from Iran to support lifting sanctions against the leading state sponsor of terror.

Tlaib was one of the only members of Congress who refused to support a resolution condemning Iranian attacks on Israel. The fourteen members that refused to condemn Iran were almost the exact cohort that accused the National Review of anti-Arab bigotry, including disgraced Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

The recent exploding pager attack was narrowly targeted to members of Hezbollah, and hit those in its orbit including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. It clearly demonstrates the ties between politicians and the terrorist group, hence the cartoon.

Hamas and Hezbollah are both radical jihadi groups with manifestos calling for the destruction of Israel (“It’s destination is manifested in our motto, ‘Death to Israel'”- Hezbollah; “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” – Hamas). Tlaib has not stated anything that extreme, even though she defends the groups’ crimes against humanity.

Had the cartoon been made using Rep. Jamaal Bowman, would people have made a charge of racism about the cartoon? Is the alt-left’s aggressive defense of Tlaib acknowledgment that 75% of Palestinian Arabs support the heinous Hamas massacre of Jewish women, children and the elderly?

While other alt-left members of Congress have a few reasons for possibly being portrayed as anti-Israel, Tlaib is the unquestioned champion of vile antisemitism, promoting libels about Israel, defending anti-Israel terrorist groups and taking funds from their supporters.

The charge of “anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia” does not hold.

Tlaib And Bowman Have Aligned With Terrorists To Destroy Israel And America (May 2024)

Over Half A Million Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians. They Are Being Sponsored In Congress By Tlaib And Bowman (March 2024)

Rashida Tlaib Wants Shooters Of Palestinians Held Accountable, NOT Palestinian Shooters (November 2023)

Apartheid In Palestinian Authority, Not Israel (May 2022)

Tlaib Shields Anti-Semitic Murderers, If Not White (June 2021)

Criticizing Muslim Antisemitism is Not Islamophobia (March 2019)

Deconstructing The Nuance In Anti-Israel Antisemitism

Posted on September 23, 2024 by First.One.Through

The Pro-Palestinian camp has attempted to separate anti-Zionism and antisemitism, even when the overlap is almost exact. The pro-Israel camp typically points to that fact without acknowledging that some comments which are anti-Israel are indeed not antisemitic.

So let’s make the breakdown a little clearer by separating four components of anti-Israel rhetoric, those against the:

Government of Israel
State of Israel
Israelis
Land of Israel

Government of Israel

Criticizing the policy of a government, as a general matter, does not mean that someone hates the leaders as individuals or the country itself. It applies to Israel as much as the United Kingdom, Ecuador or India. In fact, many people who criticize a government’s policies are often big fans of that country, and want to see it be the best version of itself that it can be.

In the case of Israel, criticism of the government and policies veers into antisemitism based on the language and intent. Saying that the Israeli government is like Nazis is antisemitic as the intent is to specifically call them out in the manner of the worst antisemites. Declaring that the Jewish State is a puppet master of global powers is to promote antisemitic tropes.

*Cartoon posted in The New York Times showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog, leading a blind U.S. President Donald Trump*

Criticizing the Israeli government’s policies is not generally antisemitic, except when the attacks specifically incite and use antisemitic language.

State of Israel

Contrary to popular belief, NO COUNTRY has an inherent right to exist. Neither Montenegro nor South Sudan needed to be created. Cyprus need not be divided. PEOPLE have an inherent right to self determination but no country inherently deserves to exist.

That said, the world is much better off with good sovereign entities, with governments that care and protect their populace. The United States and Japan care for hundreds of millions of people who consent to be governed. The governments try to maintain peaceful relations inside and outside their borders.

So it is with Israel, a country which remarkably has added millions of people since it was founded, absorbing immigrants from around the world. It built a thriving economy and liberal democracy in the heart of an illiberal region.

Yet there are many countries that still refuse to recognize the Jewish State, including thirty Muslim-majority countries. They object to Jewish control of what they perceive of as “Muslim Arab land” in what they hope will be a Muslim-majority (only) State of Palestine. Those countries’ leaders call Israel a “cancer” which should be destroyed.

*Iranian leader called Israel an “unclean rabid dog” and a “cancerous tumor”*

The Jewish people are the most persecuted people in the world and have been for thousands of years. Calling for the destruction of a thriving country of the most persecuted people in their historic homeland, and only that country of the nearly 200 countries in the world, stinks of antisemitism.

Israeli People

Many western countries are diverse, while many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are homogenous. Israel is unique in being very diverse while being in the middle of MENA.

Israel consists of Black Jews, Brown Jews, White Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze. Yet the hate targeting Israelis narrowly targets just Jewish Israelis, making the attacks inherently antisemitic.

Land Of Israel

The BDS (boycott, divest and sanction) movement specifically calls Israel a “regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid.” To call Jews “settlers” and “colonizers” of their homeland is to deny Jews their thousands of years of history and heritage, a deeply antisemitic lie.

To make it illegal for Jews – and only Jews – to be banned from living somewhere, let alone in their homeland, is deeply antisemitic, no matter if it is codified in United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.

Palestinian law that makes it a capital offense to sell land to Jews is deeply antisemitic.

To deny that the Jewish Temple is the holiest location in the world for Jews, and/or to deny Jews from praying at that holy spot is deeply antisemitic and spits in the face of basic human rights.

*The United Nations declared that Jews cannot live in the Old City of Jerusalem and cannot pray at their holiest location on the Temple Mount*

Almost every type of anti-Israel comment – including those from the United Nations – are deeply antisemitic. Those that relate to debating policy as happens in every country, are the only ones that typically do not veer into Jew hatred.

The World Must Pressure Palestinians On Basic Truths (August 2023)

Act Against The Antisemitic Slanderers And Definitely Those In Power (August 2023)

The Anti-Semitism In Anti-Zionism (March 2023)

The Re-Introduction of the ‘Powerful’ Jew Smear (March 2021)

The Cave of the Jewish Matriarch and Arab Cultural Appropriation (November 2018)

Abbas’s Speech and the Window into Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism (May 2018)

Squeezing Zionism (January 2016)

The Legal Israeli Settlements (December 2014)

The United Nations and Holy Sites in the Holy Land (November 2014)

“An anti-Semitic Tinge” (July 2014)

UCLA Demands Right To Block Jews

Posted on August 15, 2024 by First.One.Through

Jewish students were physically blocked from sections of UCLA’s campus by anti-Israel protestors, many covering their faces with kaffiyehs in the Spring 2024 semester. Three students consequently sued to have the university ensure that they have equal rights to use and enjoy the campus facilities.

U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed with the plaintiffs that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs. His ruling ordered UCLA to stop “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.”

UCLA strongly disagreed.

Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said “the district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”

Thomas Harvey, the lawyer representing Faculty for Justice in Palestine, came up with the absurd notion that the ruling “paves the way for total removal of pro-Palestinian activity on campus. If the sincerely held religious belief being protected here is the belief in the Jewish state of Israel, any class, campus event or speaker that criticizes that nation’s legal or political decisions might be prohibited.”

*Jewish student at UCLA denied entry to campus while police looked on*

UCLA and the lawyer’s arguments aren’t just ridiculous but make one wonder if they are deeply antisemitic. The ruling doesn’t say anything about criticizing “political decisions” of any country; it is about free and fair access for all students to use every corner of the university campus.

In a strange bit of coincidence, on October 6, 2023, one day before the barbaric Palestinian massacre of Israelis, UCLA announced the UCLA Research Hub on Antisemitism, funded by a $600,000 gift by the Pritzker family. The hub is a joint effort between the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the Center for Jewish Studies. In announcing the new effort, UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said “It is critical that we do more than condemn the recent surge in antisemitism — we must actively work against it.”

Chancellor Block was pushed to resign in May 2024 by anti-Israel protestors who also called for canceling the school’s Israel Studies Department and for boycotting all Israeli universities.

UCLA is tacking to the jihadi fringe to remove any tolerance of contrary points of view and freedom of access in an undemocratic purge of Zionists and Jews. It is displaying a frightful lack of basic civility and critical thinking.

UCLA is so infected with anti-Zionism, that it is fighting to ban pro-Zionist students from campus and an education. It says a great deal about California and the terrible state of education today.

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

Drawing Muhammed On U.S. College Campuses (May 2024)

Considering Campus Antisemitism (November 2023)

The Antisemitic Campus: Decolonize Palestine (October 2023)

Biden Enables Anti-Semitism On College Campuses (July 2022)

The Campus Inquisition (April 2022)

Courageous Jews On Hostile Campuses (December 2021)

In San Francisco Schools, Anti-Zionism is Anti-Racism (February 2021)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

The Anti-Israel And Anti-American Woke Grows

Posted on July 25, 2024 by First.One.Through

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on July 24, 2024. He spoke of the strong ties between Israel and the U.S. and their mutual enemy of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. He thanked Presidents Biden and Trump for being reliable allies, helping Israel fight its enemies and forge peace with those willing to coexist with the Jewish State.

The speech was addressed to a bipartisan audience of past, present and future Democratic and Republican presidents and members of Congress, and reflected the bipartisan and bicameral invitation to Netanyahu.

Yet only one party attended en masse. Only one party rose to their feet again and again during Netanyahu’s remarks. Only one party closed ranks with a strong ally in the middle of a horrific war.

The Republicans.

There was also one party which stood divided about Israel. One party who disrespected and disparaged the Israeli leader. One party whose shrill anti-Israel voices drowned out those who support Israel.

The Democrats.

Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) was angry that Netanyahu came to address Congress as “bad faith efforts by Republicans to further politicize the U.S.-Israel relationship.” In truth, the bipartisan invitation did not politicize the relationship but laid bare the pro-Hamas and anti-Israel wing of woke politicians and Americans.

Nadler, a Jewish Congressman, insulted Netanyahu as “the worst leader in Jewish history.” He spent his time at Netanyahu’s speech reading from a book highly critical of Netanyahu that he brandished about like garlic before a vampire.

*Rep. Jerry Nadler read highly critical biography of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while the prime minister addressed a joint session of Congress on July 24, 2024.*

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who had invited the Israeli Prime Minister, refused to shake the leader’s hand. Schumer had sharply criticized Netanyahu four months earlier in Congress, calling for new elections and meddling in foreign affairs of a democratic ally.

There were some Democrats who were supportive of Netanyahu and the Jewish State. Reps. Torres, Gottheimer, Hernandez, Manning, Franel and Wasserman-Schultz were clear about being proud Zionists, voicing full bipartisan support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, calling for bringing home the hostages held by Palestinian Arabs, and blasting the antisemitic protests on the streets of Washington, D.C.

Yet few people took notice of their comments which were viewed only a few thousand times on X.

The anti-Israel and anti-Netanyahu politicians were much more popular.

Many far-left members of Congress boycotted the speech. According to Axios, roughly half of the Democrats in the Senate and the House did not attend the address, including Vice President Kamala Harris who chose to attend another event, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA.), former House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). That’s over two times the number of Democrats who boycotted Netanyahu in 2015.

When the generals of wokedom Sanders and AOC posted about their feelings of “war criminal” Netanyahu and skipping the speech, MILLIONS of followers took in the bile. Even Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) who has already lost his seat in Congress for the next term, had nearly five times the number of views as Rep. Ritchie Torres.

The streets of Washington were filled with woke antisemites. Some held placards calling for the “final solution” in a reference to Hitler’s plan for a genocide of Jews. Some painted on governmental monuments that “Hamas is comin.”

And they cursed America, lowered American flags while hoisting Palestinian flags. And burned Israeli and American flags.

The left-wing media joined the fray. The New Republic published an article about how horrible it would be for Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, to choose Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA), an Orthodox Jew. Such a move would “ruin Democratic Unity” and “fracture the party” because Shapiro is a Zionist. Jacobin wants Harris to pick 82-year old Bernie Sanders as her Vice President, enjoying his vilification of Israel and capitalism.

According to a Gallup poll in March 2024, the favorability rating of Americans about Israel dropped below 60% for the first time since March 2004. It was mostly driven by young people 18-34 whose favorability ratings for Israel dropped in the last year to 38% from 64%, while their opinions barely budged for the Palestinian Authority. As it relates to the war, Democrats and the youth were the only segments to have a higher favorability rating for Palestinians more than Israelis.

By every measure, in just 75 years, Israel built a successful and thriving liberal democracy in the heart of the Middle East. Despite its success, the ongoing war against Gazan terrorists have sapped the support of the young and most left-leaning Americans, according to another poll by Gallup in late March 2024. Whether justified or not and fought minimizing harm to civilians or not, the anti-war movement amongst the young is not just drawing support from the Jewish State, but accelerating a movement to attack it and Zionists globally.

Netanyahu called these young pro-Hamas socialists “Iran’s useful idiots” in his speech, claiming that Iran funds the protestors. Others highlighted the Tides Foundation and George Soros’ Open Society for fomenting anti-Israel hatred. Almost all mention the anti-Israel university system which has systematically lied to young people that Jews are “European colonial imperialists” with no history or rights in the Jewish holy land, a bunch of racist invaders who must be expunged from Palestine, along with its supporters from public spaces.

The messages of turning on Israel and Zionists continue to gain momentum, even among progressive Jews. Little known members of Congress like Rep. Sarah Jacobs’ (D-CA), not coincidentally the youngest Jew in Congress, post about boycotting Netanyahu got one million views on X, a platform more often used by young people.

Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress did not “politicize the U.S.-Israel relationship.” It exposed the deep rot of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in a growing segment of the Democratic Party, much like the Congressional hearings about antisemitism at universities shed light on the noxious Jew-hatred metastasizing in woke establishments.

ACTION ITEM

Contact Rep. Jerry Nadler and tell him he’s a vile and childish putz for insulting a leader of an American ally who was invited by a bipartisan and bicameral Congress. Call (202) 225-5635

“I Think We Need To Have A Real Conversation About Woke Antisemitism” (July 2024)

Peacefully Calling For The Annihilation Of Jews (May 2024)

AIPAC’s Open Tent Versus Justice Democrats Niche Extremism (April 2024)

Congressional Socialists Won’t Support Israel After Hamas Massacre (October 2023)

Rep. Bowman Plans To Boycott Pro-Peace Israeli President (July 2023)

The Blinding Witch Hunt of Minor Offenses (December 2021)

Michigan’s Slide on Israel (MIchigan 2021)

Missing Netanyahu’s Speech: Those not Listening and Those Not Speaking (March 2015)

On Accepting Invitations (February 2015)

The Democrats’ Slide on Israel (July 2014)

IfNotNow Is Racist, Blind And Lost

Posted on July 19, 2024 by First.One.Through

The anti-Zionist group IfNotNow was formed in July 2014 at the end of a war between Hamas and Israel. It concluded that Israel was an apartheid state that must be dismantled, as must American support for the racist Zionist project.

The goal of the organization is one state, in which Arabs and Jews live together. They want a complete “right of return” for millions of Arabs into Israel, with a Jewish minority between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.

Even after the savage October 7 massacre of Israelis by Palestinian Arabs, the organization has doubled down on its hypothesis, and is aggressively pushing its goals onto college campuses and into politics.

RACIST: Jewish Organizations and the Jewish State Are Right-Wing and Racist

INN believes that Jewish organizations are rife with “Ashkenazi dominance.” They believe that racism and antisemitism is only found among White people, and American Jews have been fed lies of “right-wing talking points” which have separated Jews from Arabs and people of color around the world.

INN believes that leading Jewish and Israeli institutions like the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC and Conference of Presidents “exploit traumatic events of our past and present” to support and “protect Israel’s system of apartheid.” The organization believes that powerful White Jews are suppressing everyone else, including Jews of color and Palestinians.

This is anti-white racism and antisemitism.

First, Israel does not practice “apartheid”. It is the most liberal country for 1,000 miles in any direction.

Second, white Ashkenazi Jews account for less than one-third of Israelis, even after the mass migration from the former Soviet Union.

Further, why should someone’s skin color automatically make them a racist? INN believes that all White people – whether Jewish or non-Jewish – are “white supremacists”, while simultaneously believing that no people of color are racist. That’s absurd and racist.

Additionally, the idea that Jews are “powerful” has long been used to foster antisemitism and INN’s philosophy and advocacy directly feeds to more antisemitic attacks.

BLIND: A Movement of Mutual Liberation

IfNotNow thesis is that in the face of white racist Jewish institutions protecting a white racist Jewish State, “mutual liberation” was needed. American Jews must fight and mimic movements such as BlackLivesMatter. It also wants to be like the Jewish prophet Moses, fighting for the liberation of his people and the “liberation of all people.”

This is ridiculous.

The BLM movement was specifically about Black people; it was not about “mutual liberation.” Moses went to Egypt to specifically free the Jewish people. These were particular movements and not intertwined with other groups.

Moses did not free Jews from slavery without “a mechanism of destruction.” Egyptians were set upon with plagues and its army drowned in the sea. INN doesn’t know if it’s for particularism or universalism; for violence or non-violence.

LOST: October 7 Massacre Is Israel’s Fault

Many Jews were horrified by the October 7 massacre, not only for the horrible and massive loss of life, but additionally that it undermined the notion that Jews-with-power would be safe.

IfNotNow was horrified for a different reason: that Jews were fighting back.

On October 7, IfNotNow blamed the government of Israel for the slaughter of its own people. It bemoaned the Palestinian terrorists who were killed alongside their victims.

Within days, it was attacking Israel for using “grief… [to] justify revenge or genocide.”

Rather than reconsidering their thesis that Jews and Arabs can get along – after thousands of Palestinian Arabs burned Jewish families alive and mutilated women, old and young – INN doubled down that Jews should not use their power to seek justice for the slaughtered civilians and to protect Israelis from a regime sworn to its destruction.

Even the anti-Zionist group Code Pink was appalled by the October 7 bloodlust of Palestinians. But not INN and other jihadists who seek the end of both Jews and the Jewish State.

Politics and Colleges

INN has aligned itself with groups like Justice Democrats and Democratic Socialists of America in trying to elect anti-Zionist people of color like Rep. Cori Bush and Rep. Jamaal Bowman. They have signed onto the “Reject AIPAC” tagline and smeared white progressive politicians like George Latimer “a racist,” because he’s a white man taking a black man’s job.

The anti-Zionist group was very active on college campuses during the 2023-4 school year promoting anti-Israel actions. Even at campuses which saw wild antisemitic activity like Columbia, Barnard, NYU and CCNY, INN was proud to stand in support of the anti-Israel activities.

It will likely continue such activities in the next school year.

Funding for INN

According to NGOMonitor, INN is backed by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Tides Foundation, the New Israel Fund’s Progressive Jewish Fund, and the Foundation for Middle East Peace. A cohort of far left-wing charities.

Summary

IfNotNow is part of the socialist-jihadi alliance which is becoming more active in politics and college campuses. INN wants Israeli Jews to shed their means of protection despite their lived experience. They similarly want white Jewish organizations to stop protecting white Jews in Israel and America to become a defenseless minority-minority which history has shown is easy fodder for attack.

Now that Jews have a country and army for the first time in 2,000 years, IfNotNow wants to see both dismantled. Now that some Jews have stature in the diaspora, IfNotNow wants them to renounce any power or privilege.

Rather than advancing the cause of non-Whites and Palestinians, IfNotNow wants to target and tear down Ashkenazi Jews and the Jewish State.

October 7 and the subsequent rise of antisemitism has left alt-left anti-Zionist groups like IfNotNow blind and lost like Samson before his death, and like the Jewish prophet, INN is intent on bringing down the Jewish people with them.