by any means necessary | FirstOneThrough

For thousands of years, Jews have been hunted, caged, expelled and exterminated.

In 1791, Catherine II confined Jews into the “Pale of Settlement” which consisted of only 25% of Russian lands and forbade them from living anywhere else. Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s restricted Jews to ghettos before shipping them to extermination camps. The Germans and their allies killed 6 million Jews, one-third of the global population.

Today, radical jihadi organizations in the United States and elsewhere want to liquidate the land of Israel of its Jews, where roughly 45% of world Jewry lives. Groups like Within Our Lifetime and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) were gleeful as Gazans went door-to-door on October 7, 2023 to rape women, shoot children before their parents and burn families alive.

WESPAC and the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) stand before Jewish schools and organizations and chant “by any means necessary” to intimate and harrass American Jews that the global intifada is here to claim more victims.

*Members of WESPAC gather before a Jewish Day School in Westchester, NY calling for “Liberation by any means necessary” after the October 7 slaughter of 1,200 Jews in Israel*

What is the defense against such people? Have they passed the point of rehabilitation? Should the focus be on limiting their power and influence? If so, by what means? Should they be prosecuted? Shut down or denied tax-exempt status?

Or is it to fight back similarly “by any means necessary,” that if they advocate for an immoral war, then the proportionate response is also by any means necessary, including advocating carpet-bombing Gaza? If they will protest in front of Jewish organizations, should Zionists map out every Muslim organization using the same tactic and confront children in school for complicity with heinous crimes against humanity?

*Masked people outside of Columbia University calling for destroying the Jewish State “by any means necessary”*

Jews and Zionists have tried to find a way to coexist with Arabs since they started returning to the Jewish holy land in greater numbers in the 1840s. The Arab response since 1920 has been a complete rejection of Jewish presence and rights.

Perhaps now is the time to not reply “in-kind” and refuse to allow evil actors to dictate the relationship between the groups.

Perhaps it is the moment for Jews to liberate themselves from antisemitism that has plagued them for centuries by being more assertive in claiming their basic human rights, which are being denied both by Arabs and the United Nations:

Declare United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 which made it illegal for Jews – and only Jews – to live in Judaism’s holiest city of the Old City of Jerusalem, a flagrant antisemitic edict, inherently illegal, and null and void as it denies Jews basic human rights
Declare that the Jordanian Waqf no longer can demand that Jews – and only Jews – cannot pray at Judaism’s holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount, as it is a flagrant violation of Jews basic human rights

Antisemitic anti-Zionist groups are calling for violence to ethnically cleanse Jews from their holy land – as Palestinian Arabs have done for a century – and to come after Jews and Zionists globally. In reply, Jews and Zionists should stand tall and demand “by human rights means only”, demand basic civility to live freely anywhere and everywhere, and to pray openly at their holiest location.