Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof writes about foreign and domestic affairs from a liberal and Arab point of view, honed by his Harvard and American University in Cairo education, and years at the anti-Israel New York Times.
His antipathy for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish State is only matched by his ignorance.
New York Times opinion by Nicholas Kristof on October 20, 2024
Kristof wrote an opinion in the aftermath of Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the savage October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel. He led with a call for the United States to pressure Netanyahu, and repeated the demand throughout his article.
Kristof said that Hamas will never surrender, so it’s up to the United States to apply significant pressure on Israel to declare victory against the unwavering foe. His ignorant view is not supported by polling data. Since the war started, Gazans have lowered their support for war to 36% from 51% right before October 7, 2023. Gazan support for negotiations has more than doubled from 19% in September 2023 to 40% in September 2024.
Similarly, Gazan support for the October 7 massacre dropped dramatically over the last six months from 71% to 39% as the war they initiated has become a dismal failure.
September 2024 PCPSR poll
Kristof continues with the lie that Israel’s defensive war is creating a new “generational threat” from young Gazans seeing the destruction all around them. Yet the opposite is true, that the United Nations educational system has created the “generational threat” of teaching Palestinian Arabs that their future is inside Israel, while Israel’s decisive defensive war is convincing Arabs that violence is not an answer.
Pressure needs to be applied to the UNITED NATIONS, not on Israel, to declare unambiguously that the future for the UNRWA wards lies in Gaza and the West Bank, not Israel; specifically, that there is no ‘right of return’ to homes where grandparents once lived inside Israel. Similar pressure needs to be made on the media to stop platforming lies, particularly from jaundiced woke jihadists.
ACTION ITEM
Write to Kristof’s assistant spencer.cohen@nytimes.com as well as letters@nytimes.com that Kristof’s views of Israel are disconnected from reality.
Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 massacre, was killed by an Israeli military operation in Gaza on October 17 one year later. The mourning among West Bank Arabs was likely much greater than for Gazans.
September 2024 PCPSR poll results for race for presidency
The appreciation for Sinwar was much greater in the West Bank than in Gaza, with 70% of West Bank Arabs expressing satisfaction with Sinwar to 29% in Gaza. Presumably this is because the Gaza Strip has felt more of the ramifications of Sinwar’s war against Israel than those living in the West Bank, although the poll does not ask.
The poll does ask about the “best means of achieving Palestinian goals in ending the occupation and building an independent state,” which showed the majority of 56% of West Bankers still preferring violence to 36% in Gaza, a 20 point spread.
Beyond the fighting forces of the decimated military in Gaza military while the armed terrorist groups in the West Bank remaining intact, is the gap in news sources. According to the poll, by far the biggest source of news to the region came from Qatar’s Al Jazeera, and “West Bankers are more likely than Gazans to watch Aljazeera, 80% and 30%, respectively.” That’s the media company which has told Palestinian Arabs that thousands of their comrades did not commit mass rape of Israelis and burn families alive, making films whitewashing the atrocities, despite ample evidence.
The war has made Gazans turn towards negotiations with Israel, as their military has been defeated and the propaganda machine has fizzled, yet West Bank Arabs continue to prefer a war to negotiations by a two-to-one margin. It remains to be seen whether it will take a conclusive defeat and termination of Iranian and Qatari propaganda to make West Bank Arabs give up their quest to destroy Israel.
Or the Palestinian jihadists of the West Bank can continue to threaten Israel, much like Monty Python’s Black Knight.
Palestinian Arabs believe that the pathway to gaining land is through violence, while Israel believes that land given to Palestinian Arabs becomes a launching pad for terrorism. The cause-and-effect is a bloody mirror: violence-for-land (Palestinians) and land-facilitates-violence (Israelis).
Palestinian Arabs have a “greater confidence in the efficacy of armed struggle” to achieve their goals of a Palestinian State, according to Palestinian polls. They point to the success in getting Israel to hand over Jericho, Bethlehem and major Arab cities because of the First Intifada, and abandoning Gaza because of the Second Intifada. This continued more recently in May 2021, when Hamas’s rocketfire caused Israel to halt the eviction of Arab squatters living in Jewish homes in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem.
Many Israelis see handing over Gaza as an enormous mistake as it clearly demonstrated that Arab-controlled land becomes a terrorist safe haven. Rather than turning the beachfront land into a peaceful paradise, the Gazans spent years building a terrorist infrastructure from which to launch a genocidal war to destroy Israel. In the aftermath of Israel leaving Gaza in 2005, Palestinian Arabs voted the US-designated terrorist group Hamas to 58% of parliament with the most antisemitic and genocidal charter ever written.
Palestinians are looking for more land; some want all of Israel to be wiped out in favor of Palestine, while others want personal property inside of Israel. Only a minority seek a two-state future.
Israel is not only attempting to destroy Hamas and rescue its hostages; it is educating the jihadists that violence does not pay.
One of thousands of Gaza terrorists killing civilians inside of Israel
It may be working.
A recent September 2024 Palestinian poll found that “for the first time since October 7, 2023, simultaneously in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, findings show significant drop in the favorability of the October 7 attack and in the expectations that Hamas will win the current war, and a moderate drop in the level of support for Hamas; moreover, findings show a drop in the Gaza Strip in the preference for a continued Hamas control over that area in the day after the war and a rise in the preference for PA control…. . Findings show significant rise in support for the two-state solution in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Support for armed struggle declines and support for negotiations rise.”
Both Israelis and Palestinians believe that land and violence are tethered in the holy land. Perhaps the current war is slowly severing that connection and will enable a pathway towards coexistence.
They were shipped to concentration camps to be gassed and incinerated.
They were sent on death marches in the winter to freeze to death.
They were lined up and shot in the heads after digging ditches to receive their corpses.
Almost the entirety of European Jewry was killed. One-third of global Jewry was liquidated.
Holocaust Survivors tried to return to their towns and homes after the war, to be greeted by the locals who had stolen their goods and moved into their homes, who quickly executed the survivors of horrors.
Yet the Holocaust survivors who watched their families, friends and people get annihilated did not take up arms against the German people. They didn’t begin gassing the Austrians after the war. They didn’t invade Poland to burn Poles alive.
Why?
People have argued that Israel’s war to destroy Hamas is breeding another generation of terrorists because of the massive death toll of Palestinian civilians. The argument posits that when young Arabs see the horrible devastation brought upon their families and towns, they will become terrorists when they grow up and seek revenge.
Yet the people who actually experienced a genocide – Jews – never embarked on such a lust for blood and revenge.
Why?
Jews wanted to just live a regular life before the Holocaust and afterwards. Their goals did not change with time. They went from loving their neighbors and governments in Europe to hating them but did not seek revenge.
Palestinian Arabs have also stayed their course. Their goal was to destroy the Jewish State and its founding and remains so today. The wars have not altered their goals and the death of friends and family are simply viewed as setbacks to achieving their aims.
Wars do not create a new generation of terrorists. A culture that dehumanizes the “other” as evil begets a generation of terrorists set on killing the invading entity.
During the Holocaust, Nazis kept Jews calm in concentration camps, making them believe that they were in forced labor camps, not death mills. In recent decades, the United Nations has kept Palestinian Arabs in “refugee” camps, making them believe that the world was going to help them reclaim the towns and homes where grandparents once lived.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews inside their camps, while the UN raised generations to kill thousands of Jews just a short distance away.
ACTION ITEM
Contact the White House and your local representative that UNRWA is a weapon of war that must be closed. Pressure the United Nations and Saudi Arabia to state clearly that there is no “right of return” for Palestinian Arabs to move into Israel.
To mark one year since the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and a year which saw the most dramatic spike in antisemitism in the United States – especially on college campuses – the young members of J Street doubled down on pushing the American government to combat Israel.
On October 7, 2024, J Street U, the university-oriented section of J Street, issued a press release on J Street’s site. On that day of mourning, J Street U recalled the brutal Hamas massacre while also expressing empathy “over the suffering of the Palestinian people and mourn every innocent life lost in Gaza.” On that day of mourning, J Street U sought balance about “vile antisemitism and Islamophobia.” On that day of mourning, J Street U urged the US government to ONLY pressure the Israeli government about the defensive war they didn’t start nor wanted.
J Street press release on October 7, 2024
In March 2022, Students for Justice in Palestine, a rabidly anti-Israel and antisemitic group, called J Street a gateway for Jews to become anti-Zionists. J Street U’s jihadi grooming gangs normalized anti-Zionism on campus much like Jewish Voice for Peace, to set the stage for what the world has witnessed on campuses since October 7, 2023.
J Street is not only harmful to the Jewish State, it has normalized antisemitism we see on college campuses today.
ACTION ITEM
Here is a list of rabbis associated with J Street. If you know them, contact them to tell them your feelings about the group, to get them to either fight for change within or to leave the group.
A prevailing discordant theme among pro-Palestinian protestors is that they are mourning the loss of life and destruction of Gaza, while simultaneously calling “Intifada, Intifada.” The two statements are incompatible.
Mourning the loss of life is something that all people can understand. It is a sign of basic empathy to be upset by death, especially young civilians who are inherently innocent.
The current strategy of pro-Palestinians is to use those feelings as an on-ramp to the Diaspora Intifada, to taunt, threaten, intimidate and discriminate against Jews, even though mass death is a core part of the strategy of those same people calling for an Intifada.
The Diaspora Intifada is attempting to enlist those who prioritize empathy (typically liberals and progressives) onto their jihadi platform. It bypasses facts and reason and pulls at heartstrings, drowning the new recruits in an empathy swamp of toxic antisemitism.
By all means, hold a vigil and be sad for ALL people who have died if you like. But chanting “Intifada” and “by any means necessary” are genocidal calls for mass murder, the exact opposite of the empathy you claim to champion.
In the Middle East, the Iranian Proxy Intifada is being fought militarily, and Israel is correct in using aggressive force to repel those attempting a genocide of the Jews in the region. Outside of the region, one needs to politically and legally prosecute those advocating to the slaughter of Jews, and extract friends drowning in the empathy swamp of dead Palestinians.
ACTION ITEMS
Write the White House and your senator and representative to keep arms flowing to Israel in its multi-front defensive war. Tell them to push to rescind the antisemitic UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which makes it illegal for Jews to live in their holiest city of Jerusalem. Intifada the Intifada.
Write your alma mater to kick Students For Justice in Palestine off of campus as a hate group no different than the KKK. Get them to expel professors who lie that Israel is a ‘European colonial settlement,’ denying thousands of years of Jewish history and centrality of the land in Judaism.
Write to your favorite media and social media about a ‘Draw Mohammed Intifada‘ to explore whether calling for the massacre of Jews and drawing a picture of the Islamic prophet are simple matters of free speech to be done everywhere. Diaspora Intifada the Diaspora Intifada.
The most powerful Jewish American politician is Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who is the Senate Majority Leader. He often claims to be a guardian – a ‘shomer’ in Hebrew – of American Jewry but he is nothing of the sort.
On the anniversary of the most heinous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, Schumer offered tepid remarks – to almost no one.
His sole post on the day condemned the October 7 and called for the hostages to be brought home. He expressed empathy for the slain and captive but nothing else.
His vanilla post was viewed by 62,700.
Compare that to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul who posted repeatedly on October 7.
Hochul talked about fighting antisemitism. She said that New York stood with Israel. She ordered flags to fly at half-mast to remember the massacred Israelis. She spoke about peace, all in several posts viewed much more than the Jewish Senate Majority Leader.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s post was viewed over 8 million times, or over 130 times more than Schumer. Her comments said that Hamas is a terrorist group that must never be allowed to govern Gaza. She spoke of standing with Israel and making sure it could defend itself against Iran and its proxies. She spoke of antisemitism.
Even outgoing Senator Mitt Romney had more moral clarity – and more views – than Schumer. In a succinct statement Romney said he wanted to see an end to the terrorist group Hamas, that he stood with Israel, prayed for the hostages and Israeli soldiers and to end rampant antisemitism.
Schumer did not stand with Israel. He did not call Hamas a terrorist group which must never be allowed to rule Gaza. He did not say he supports arming Israel to defend itself. He did not mention peace. He did not call out the sickening antisemitism everywhere.
Schumer is not a shomer.
Schumer prefers to use his pulpit to lead the charge against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer called for early elections in Israel while the country is engaged in a multi-front defensive war, in direct election interference.
Sen. Schumer’s term doesn’t end until 2029 when he will be 79 years old. The Jewish community should begin to strategize about who should primary him.
ACTION ITEM
Email Sen. Schumer and relay your disgust at his tepid remarks about the October 7 massacre.
It has been 366 days since the largest and most savage massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. A year since 1,200 people were slaughtered, beheaded and burned alive. A year since a large scale mass sexual assault of women in Israel by invading jihadists. 366 days, and counting, of 101 people remaining as hostages in Gaza, of the 251 who were abducted on October 7, 2023.
It is a time to memorialize the dead. To remember their lives, dreams and aspirations which were cut short.
It is a time to recount the bravery of those who fought off the barbaric invaders to protect the innocent.
It is a time to call out the mass sexual assault committed by Palestinian Arabs, a vile crime against humanity.
It is a time to pray for the hostages, cut off from light, food, family, friends and a normal life.
And it has been that time, every day, for a year.
Over the past year, people attended public events at the United Nations, the National Mall in Washington and Times Square as well as private events at synagogues and community centers.
National Mall, Washington DCRally at United Nations, NYCTimes Square, NYCHostage discussion in Westchester, NYYeshiva University focus on Hanukah fight then and now
People have done ‘Run For Their Lives’, heard from survivors and politicians and watched countless videos and movies about the atrocities committed by Palestinian Arabs. They’ve donated to Israeli causes and volunteered sending goods to Israel. They put signs on their lawns and ribbons on the trees and lapels.
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY17)Parents of hostage speaking in Central Park, NYCPanel about mass sexual assault committed on October 7
They’ve wept at concerts of Israeli singers, as they remembered their crew who was killed at the Nova Music Festival, and seeing Israeli soldiers reunited with their loved ones.
Hanan Ben AriIshay Ribo
And they’ve gone to Israel. Packing items for soldiers and their families, donating blood, serving soldiers on their way in and out of the terrorist enclave of Gaza.
Hostage Square, Tel AvivShuva Junction, Israel
While praying and fighting for Israel, they’ve done the same in combating antisemitism in the diaspora. They’ve attended protests, provided support for students on hostile campuses, attended lectures and rallied to expel toxic politicians from office.
Manhattan Jewish experience discussing antisemitism on college campusesAlan Dershowitz on American antisemitismGeorge Latimer victory party in primary over anti-Israel Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16)Protest in Scarsdale, NY after Jewish stores defaced
People have written to the anti-Israel media and cancelled subscriptions, emailed politicians and switched political parties. They’ve stopped giving money to their alma maters and started donating to Jewish and Israeli causes they never considered – let alone prioritized – before.
New York Times referring to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as seeking equality for all religions
The trauma of the brutality continues past the year anniversary. Hostages remain. The Iranian Proxies War continues. The PTSD of raped women does not fade, nor for those who witnessed their family and friends killed.
Antisemites continue to rage on diaspora streets. Anti-Israel protestors rant on college campuses to burn Tel Aviv to the ground and to “Globalize the Intifada by any means necessary.” Politicians and university presidents appear unable or unwilling to stem the tidal wave of hate.
The world advocates to give peace prizes to those that torment Jews rather than those that normalize relations with the Jewish State. Politicians blame any real or potential personal misfortune on Jews. Leading Jewish politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Jerry Nadler lead the charge to vilify the Israeli government, paving the way for non-Jews to comfortably condemn Israel’s just defensive war.
we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
A year since the savage Palestinian Arab massacre of Israelis, the bitter chill of isolation has set upon Jews in Israel and the diaspora. Exhausted, they will continue to fight the menace for their basic human rights, ideally with allies, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.
On October 3, 2024, the Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Henrik Urdal, announced his updated list today for the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. While PRIO is not associated with the Nobel committee, its views are considered influential. The list included:
OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights
Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms
UNRWA and Philippe Lazzarini
International Court of Justice (ICJ)
UNESCO and the Council of Europe
In selecting UNRWA, PRIO stated “The UN agency has faced a massive funding crisis for years, which has been exasperated by the war itself, and increasingly by the impact of US withdrawing funding following allegations by Israel that 12 participants of the 7 October attacks were Hamas militants, employed by UNRWA. The UN agency took the allegations seriously, by launching both an internal investigation and an external review of its procedures. UNRWA has extensive control mechanisms in place, with a zero tolerance, but not zero risk policy. They therefore terminated the employment of individuals where there was any indication that they might have had ties to militant groups. Throughout the war UNRWA itself has been heavily targeted by Israeli attacks, and by the end of September, 224 of its staff had been killed in Gaza, and 190 UNRWA installations had been damaged. UNRWA’s operation is absolutely fundamental to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. A Nobel Peace Prize to the agency and its Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini would send a strong message about its role in supporting the lives of millions of Palestinian women, men and children.”
Nowhere was it noted that UNRWA teaches its students to despise Israeli Jews. Nowhere was it mentioned that UNRWA has promised 6 million Palestinian Arabs – 42% of whom already live in historic region of Palestine – that their future is inside of Israel, whether Israel likes it or not.
In short-listing the ICJ, PRIO wrote “While a Nobel Peace Prize to the ICJ would largely be seen as uncontroversial, the Court acted boldly in January this year ordering Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide in the Gaza Strip. In addition, it acted early in March 2022 by ordering Russia to ‘immediately suspend the military operations’ in Ukraine.”
The anti-Israel actions were not an accident or related to the current war.
In 2021, PRIO did not recommend Jared Kushner who helped engineer the Abraham Accords which formed normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab and Muslim countries, a feat which was once considered impossible. Instead it nominated B’Tselem & the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) for “contributing to raising awareness in Israel and elsewhere of the need for the Israeli regime to change course if the conflict is to have any chance of reaching a peaceful and just resolution.”
In short, the recommendations for a peace prize in the shadow of the brutal slaughter of Jews was to send a political message that Jews deserve neither peace nor justice; they should have neither until the Palestinian victims of preference achieve all of their goals.
ACTION ITEM
Contact PRIO at urdal@prio.org and +47 92 04 78 41 that the barbaric slaughter of Jews should be condemned clearly and the murderers brought to justice, and their protectors should not be celebrated on the global stage, a mockery to both living and dead Jews.
In the immediate aftermath of the brutal October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel by various Palestinian Arab terrorist groups including the ruling party Hamas, the United Nations was silent. Neither UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres nor the UN Security Council issued any statement for days. When they finally emerged from their shells, they urged Israel to act with “utmost restraint” rather than issue a statement of solidarity with Israel and for Hamas to be held accountable for its actions (as it does in standard form with every other terrorist attack).
One year later, nothing has changed.
Guterres posted on X his condemnation of the actions of Hamas but would still not say that the genocidal jihadi group must face justice.
The United Nations has shown a complete disregard of the lives, rights, dignity and humanity of Jews. It should not only be defunded but expelled from the United States.
ACTION ITEM
Write White House: The United Nations has STILL NOT DEMANDED FOR HAMAS TO FACE JUSTICE. It should be defunded immediately and expelled from the United States.
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