Tag Archives: Gaza

Palestinians Utterly Fail Two Tests: Oslo Accords And Gaza Disengagement

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Palestinians have violently opposed Jews living in Israel for a century. The occasional massacres of the 1920s gave way to multi-year pogroms in the late 1930s. When the British announced their intention to leave the region and terminate their mandate, the local Arabs rejected the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan and enlisted neighboring Arab countries to destroy the Jewish State.

The loss of part of the land to Israel was balanced by the capture of Gaza by Egypt and much of Judea and Samaria by Transjordan. The Arab armies assembled to destroy Israel again in 1967 and in 1973 on Judaism’s holiest Day, losing their wars again. On their own, the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) continued the mayhem, killing Jewish Olympians, blowing up synagogues and hijacking planes in their persistent effort to eradicate the presence of Jews in the Jewish holy land.

The SAPs seemingly were willing to turn a new page in favor of coexistence with Jews in 1991 with the Madrid Conference which eventually developed into the 1993 Oslo I and 1995 Oslo II Accords. Despite ongoing Arab violence, Israel facilitated the creation of Palestinian governmental institutions and handed over significant sections of the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49) to Palestinian control. The goal was to finalize all matters by September 2000, at the five year anniversary of the Oslo II signing.

The SAPs chose to return to their violent ways instead of concluding an agreement.

In September 2000, under the command of Yasser Arafat, Arabs committed waves of terrorist attacks, blowing up men, women and children in pizza stores, parks, on buses and in synagogues. The Arab brutality was seemingly without end, and was only curtailed in 2004 when Israel erected a security barrier to stem the flow of Arab killers and the death of Arafat.

In an effort to reengage, Israel handed Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005, with assurances from the United States that it would support Israel’s positions on retaining some land in E49 and that all Palestinian refugees would be settled in a new Palestinian State.

The SAPs would fail to capitalize on this second chance at peace as well.

First, the Palestinians elected the terrorist group Hamas to 58% of the Palestinian parliament in 2006, and then had the political-terrorist group take over all of Gaza in 2007. The Palestinians used Gaza as a launching ground for missiles in the air and tunnels below ground to attack Israelis. Full blown battles from Gaza erupted in 2008, 2012 and 2014.

Rather than Gaza proving a model for coexistence of two states living side-by-side in peace, it showed that Palestinians will never accept the presence of Jews nor existence of a Jewish State.

There is an old adage “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” meant to convey that it’s not nice of the perpetrator to take advantage of someone one time, but by the second time, the fault lies with the victim who should have known better than to reengage.

There is no line for “fool me three times”, as no rational actor acting on free will would ever consider such preposterous notion.

Which is precisely why the anti-Israel community is calling for BDS resolutions against Israel and electing anti-Israel candidates like Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), to force Israel to reengage yet again with Palestinians who have repeatedly shown they have no interest in coexistence.

Alt-Left anti-Israel members of Congress, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Jamaal Bowman

“Fool me once or twice is a matter between parties; fool me thrice is a hostage situation” in which the victim is compelled to undermine their own well-being. Such is the situation today among those pressuring Israel to advance a DOA peace process.

Coercion is the polar opposite of freedom, and it is gaining strength while oblivious Israelis ponder how much power to leave in judiciary’s hands. Israel’s internal debate about democracy is shrouding the potential loss of freedom from external actors.

Related articles:

Rashida Tlaib’s Modern ‘Mein Kampf’

The Shrapnel of Intent

The Toxicity of The Latest “Nakba” Resolution

No One Mentions Actual Palestinians’ Sentiments

Anti-Israel Lobbyists Dwarf Pro-Israel Lobbyists

Anti-Israel and Jew-Ambivalent in Congress

Letter To Rep. Bowman About Palestinians’ Lack of Support For Two States

Mother’s Day And Ahlam Al-Tamimi

Palestine Islamic Jihad: NY Times vs. State Department

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Three leaders of the terrorist group, Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ) were assassinated by the Israeli military this week. As such, on May 10, The New York Times decided to devote an article to inform readers about the organization.

The Times’ description stands in sharp contrast to that supplied by the US State Department.

IssueNY TimesState Department
Year founded1980s1970s
Purpose“to fight the Israeli occupation““committed to the destruction of Israel and to the creation of an Islamic state in historic Palestine, including present-day Israel.”
BackersN/A“PIJ receives financial assistance and training primarily from Iran. PIJ has partnered with Iran- and Syria-sponsored Hizballah to carry out joint operations.”
HistoryLimited to last summer, when “Israeli military began the hostilities when it assassinated a leader of Islamic Jihad…. Islamic Jihad responded…”“PIJ terrorists have conducted numerous attacks, including large-scale suicide bombings, against Israeli civilian and military targets…”
New York Times and the U.S. State Department offer starkly different descriptions of Palestine Islamic Jihad

According to the anti-Israel NY Times, PIJ merely fights “the Israeli occupation,” while the State Department correctly notes that the group is “committed to the destruction of Israel.” The gap in understanding the nature of the group is enormous, and renders the entire review by the Times as a deliberate whitewashing of the terrorists’ activities.

The paper went on to describe the attacks of last summer, which it pinned on Israel killing one of its leaders making PIJ simply retaliating to the Israeli provocation. The paper paints Israel as the aggressor, when in fact, as described by the State Department, PIJ has long conducted “numerous attacks, including large scale suicide bombings, against Israeli civilians.”

All of the terrorist group’s activities are bankrolled and supported by the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is actively pursuing nuclear weapons. That important point about a group which launches thousands of missiles into Israel, went unmentioned in the Times article.

The New York Times correctly labeled PIJ as a terrorist group but turned the narrative upside down, making Israel the aggressor against an organization merely opposed to “Israeli occupation.” To read the Times, one might think that the State Department incorrectly labels PIJ as a terrorist group instead of Israel, a narrative being orchestrated by left-wing extremists in Congress, Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar.

Related articles:

Palestinian Terrorist Groups

Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave

Has the “Left-Wing” Joined the UN in Protecting Iran and the Palestinians from a “Right-Wing” Israel?

Imagining Israel’s Neighbors For The United States

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The United States is blessed in many ways.

One manifestation is that despite the country’s enormous size, it has only two bordering countries. One of them, Canada, is so closely tied to the U.S. in terms of language, culture, trade and military reliance, people often joke that it can be viewed as the 51st state, with 90% of its population living within 100 miles of the U.S. border.

In sharp contrast, small Israel is surrounded by several entities, all of which have gone to war to destroy the country within the last decades. Two of them – Lebanon and Syria – are broken and broke states, with Syria still engaged in its own civil war.

The small sliver of a country has 1,068 kilometers of boundaries with adjacent countries and territories. The breakdown is as follows:

regionboundary (km)percentage
Lebanon817.6%
Syria837.8%
Jordan30728.7%
Egypt20819.5%
West Bank33030.9%
Gaza595.5%
Length of Israel’s boundaries

To apply these percentages with the United States’ lower 48 state’s 9,560km land border with Canada and Mexico, would yield the following map:

Lebanon is led by an Iranian-backed terrorist organization, Hezbollah. It has roughly 150,000 missiles and rockets aimed at Israel. It devalued its currency by 90% last month, as its unemployment rate has rapidly increased each year, now reaching about 15%. The country is a shell of its former self.

Imagine such a neighbor for the states of Washington and Idaho!

It doesn’t get better.

Syria has even a longer border with Israel – it would equivalently cover the Montana-Canadian border. Syria’s genocidal leader slaughtered over half a million of his own citizens, in a civil war that has seen millions of people flee the country and millions of others internally displaced. The destructive leader attempted to build a covert nuclear weapons facility with North Korea a few years ago. The country remains in an active state of war with Israel, as it has been since the modern Jewish State came into existence.

At least not that many people in Montana!

Much of the rest of America’s northern border would be with two countries with a cold peace, Jordan and Egypt. While not at war, little economic activity or tourism exists, and the two countries almost always vote against you at the United Nations. A far cry from friendly Canada.

At America’s southern border, there is strain of millions of migrants coming into the country from Central America. They are coming looking for a better life than they had in Mexico, Nicaragua and elsewhere. They are not looking to upend the United States and overthrow it.

Not so with Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas-ruled Gaza. Hamas is actively looking to destroy its neighbor from its vantage point south of California and half of Arizona. The Palestinian Authority pays its people who kill its neighbor’s citizens and claim the country as its own.

This ugly theoretical snapshot of America’s neighbors were based on keeping America’s huge water boundaries. If one were to use Israel’s actual percentage of coastline, the map would look like this:

Lebanon would cover almost all of America’s northern border. Syria would wrap Maine’s land and water boundaries. Jordan would abut the New England states down to Virginia, while Egypt would extend southward to Georgia. The Palestinian Authority would envelope all of Florida and the Gulf states and the terrorist enclave of Gaza would border much of Texas. The balance would be coastline.

Now further imagine that instead of a large, tall and wide country that is the USA, it was flattened into a pancake with those same neighbors.

If you think Texans like guns now, imagine if they had Hamas digging tunnels under their homes and firing rockets at their schools!

This is Israel’s reality every day. Terrorist-led broken countries and territories surrounding a small sliver of land, attempting to destroy the only Jewish state through a variety of means, including militarily, economically, legally and via public opinion.

Related articles:

Israel: Security in a Small Country

Seeing Security through a Screen

Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave

Islamic Privilege

Wilayat Sinai: The Other Terrorist Group Abutting Israel

Running For The Wrong Kind Of Mental Health For Gaza

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On March 5, 2022, there will be races in Brooklyn, NY and Washington, DC to raise money for the mental health of the children in Gaza. Unfortunately, the fundraiser is to promote mental and emotional dysfunction.

Promotion for “Gaza 5K” run in Prospect Park, Brooklyn

The Gaza 5K race is sponsored by UNRWA, the Palestinian-political agency that masquerades as a global humanitarian organization. The fundraiser aims to raise $350,000 to:

“Your fundraising can enable UNRWA to employ mental health counselors recruited locally from the Palestine refugee population. UNRWA counselors provide psychosocial support to address the mental health needs of refugee children and families in Gaza. The people of Gaza suffer from trauma due to repeated Israeli military assaults and the continued blockade. Counseling offers kids in Gaza a safe space to express their emotions and fears and a way to learn valuable coping skills.“

Almost the entire UNRWA staff of 29,000 are local Palestinian Arabs. To say that the counselors are “recruited locally” serves to further the lie that UNRWA is run by a bunch of peace-loving Europeans, and these counselors are an aberration.

These days, as people watch over a million people flee the war in Ukraine, as well as the wars in Syria and Afghanistan, it is shameful to use the concocted phrase Palestinian “refugee children.” These kids aren’t fleeing a war zone. They, their parents and their grandparents were all born in Gaza. They live next to cousins – many, who are not refugees – with the same language and culture. The fact that their great-grandparents lived for a few years about 20 miles away in what is now Israel does not make them refugees.

Further, the “repeated Israeli military assaults and the continued blockade” are in REACTION to the aggressive goals and tactics of the Gaza leadership. The political-terrorist group Hamas that runs Gaza is a genocidal anti-Semitic group that has repeatedly engaged in crimes against humanity in their attacks on Israeli civilians. UNRWA’s distortion reverses cause-and-effect and therefore, perpetrator-and-victim.

Further, the lie once again proves that UNRWA is not a humanitarian aid agency that simply seeks to simply provide healthcare and education to Gaza’s youth, but a charged anti-Israel political group.

The children of Gaza do need mental health counselors – to deal with their society that instills hatred for Jews and women.

Gaza is one of the worst places in the world for “honor killings,” in which family members kill a woman in the family that brings shame to the family “honor.” Palestinian courts routinely give a pass to family members who engage in the heinous act.

Consider the mental health of a Palestinian child who participates in the killing of his sister, and is celebrated by the community.

Hamas runs summer camps for children where they are taught to make “sacrifices” in the war against Israel. These child soldiers are as young as 10 years old. A spokesperson for the terrorist defended the practice saying “The Al-Qassam Brigades has organized the Vanguard of Liberation camps for over ten years, as it believes that the youth have a significant role and that it has a responsibility towards the generation that all sides are trying to tempt and divert their attention from their cause and priorities.”

Palestinian children compelled to participate in a Hamas military parade. Photo: Twitter.

Girl schools in Palestinian territories are named after Dalal al-Mugrahbi, a terrorist who killed 37 Israeli civilians, including a niece of a U.S. senator and 13 children in the infamous Coastal Road Massacre in 1978.

Even the more mainstream Fatah party is in on the child abuse. Official Palestinian TV airs spots of children calling for the complete ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Yehuda Dimentman
In February 2022, Palestinian Authority TV airs ethnic cleansing comments of daughter of Palestinian terrorist who shot and killed unarmed Israeli in December 2021.

Consider the mental health of a Palestinian child who is brainwashed that killing Jews is a cause to be celebrated.

UNRWA is a disgraceful anti-peace organization disguised as a humanitarian agency. If you are at the UNRWA 5K race on Saturday, wear an Israeli flag to demand radical changes in the UNRWA-HAMAS alliance.

Related articles:

Palestinians Want Their Young Girls To Become Terrorists

The Proud Fathers of Palestinian Terrorists

UNRWA Is A Prison

A Tale of Three Palestinian Refugees, With and Without UNRWA

Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave

Empowering Women… To Murder

Shut UNRWA in Gaza Immediately

Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave

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In November 2021, the United Kingdom took the long overdue step of recognizing the entirety of the Palestinian Arab group HAMAS to be a terrorist organization. In making the decision to mark the ‘political wing’ as no different than its ‘military wing,’ British Home Secretary Priti Patel said “Hamas is fundamentally and rabidly antisemitic” and that the group has “significant terrorist capability, including access to extensive and sophisticated weaponry, as well as terrorist training facilities.“

This has long been plain to see for anyone who read the group’s foundational charter which includes such noxious declarations as “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” and “In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised“, “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people,” and “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.”

The immediate ramification of the British action is to make it illegal to be a member of Hamas or to express support for the group, including by flying its flag or wearing a T-shirt to that end. The maximum penalty would be 14 years in prison.

But the impact should have much greater consequences.

By recognizing that the entirety of Hamas is a rabidly antisemitic terrorist group, it marks the Gaza Strip, which is administered by Hamas, as a terrorist enclave. It is a new term that needs to be properly institutionalized as an expansion of established governmental terms like Foreign Terrorist Organizations, State Sponsors of Terrorism and Terrorist Safe Havens.

Hamas winning parliamentary elections in 2006
Hamas meeting with Taliban to congratulate them for expelling western forces in 2021
Masked Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, March 2008. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
Hamas drags a suspected ‘collaborator’ through the streets of Gaza in 2012
Hamas schools and camps train children to kill Jews
Hamas is a terrorist organization which runs the Gaza Strip from which it has launched repeated wars and terrorist attacks

The United States had long ago marked Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO), along with other Palestinian groups operating out of Gaza including the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC). The list of Palestinian Arab groups hell-bent on killing Jews is long and the designation enabled the government to block funding of such terrorists and to block their assets with EO 13224 of 2001. Subsequent amendments to that executive order limited the travel of members of these groups, and enabled monitoring agencies to track their activities with the support of numerous western countries including the United Kingdom, Australia and Switzerland.

The U.S. State Department similarly maintains a list of countries which are State Sponsors of Terrorism, including Cuba, North Korea, Iran and Syria. These countries are subject to a variety of sanctions.

State also recognized the threat of terrorist safe havens in its reports which defined them as “ungoverned, under-governed, or ill-governed areas of a country and non-physical areas where terrorists that constitute a threat to U.S. national security interests are able to organize, plan, raise funds, communicate, recruit, train, and operate in relative security because of inadequate governance capacity, political will, or both.” These locations enable terrorist to operate freely, threatening civilized society at any time they choose.

In summary, the U.S. government identifies terrorists, countries that support terrorists, and areas that enable terrorists to flourish. But Gaza, governed by Hamas (an FTO) and supported by a state sponsor of terrorism (Iran), doesn’t exactly mean the criteria of a “terrorist safe haven” because it HAS the political will and directive to commit terrorism. As such, it sets a new low water market in depravity and requires a new category designation: a terrorist enclave.

Actions Against Terrorist Locations

The U.S. State Department developed “Long-term Programs and Initiatives Designed to Counter Terrorist Safe Havens and Recruitment.” Its stated goals include “protecting the United States, our interests, and our allies by reducing the ability of terrorists to radicalize, recruit, mobilize, and inspire acts of terrorism.” But the department has been seemingly tepid in taking forceful actions.

In response, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) produced a plan in 2011 as it noted that the State Department had “multiple reporting requirements,” but failed to provide a “list of its efforts to address terrorist safe havens.” Therefore, the GAO took the important step to “identif[y] eliminating safe havens as a priority action against which all elements of national power – including military, diplomatic, financial, intelligence, and law enforcement – should be applied.”

One of the most important resources to extremists is safe haven. Safe havens provide the enemy with relative freedom to plan, organize, train, rest, and conduct operations.

U.S. Department of defense, national military strategic plan

The United States has long understood that Hamas is a terrorist group supported by state sponsors of terrorism. It is therefore past time to label the Hamas fiefdom of Gaza as a terrorist enclave, and to develop a comprehensive set of actions against this noxious hotbed of extremists.

Related articles:

Hamas’s Willing Executioners

The West Definitively Concludes Hamas is a Terrorist Group

Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians

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

The Scary Growth of Terrorist Propaganda

Why Blockade Gaza

Why Blockade Gaza

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The United Nations, liberal media and politicians are bemoaning the Israeli and Egyptian blockade of Gaza, arguing that it is a form of “collective punishment” and is creating an economic disaster in the small coastal enclave. Those articles and arguments all fail to describe why the blockade exists and why it is essential for it to continue.

The landside blockade of Gaza began in June 2007, shortly after the political-terrorist group Hamas ousted its rival Fatah from the area. A naval blockade went into effect in January 2009 to further clamp down on the region, after the December 2008-January 2009 war against Israel launched by Hamas.

Ruled by a Terrorist Organization

Hamas is an extremist Islamist terrorist organization sworn to Israel’s destruction and the murder of Jews. It is a designated foreign terrorist organization by the United States and many western countries. Its 1988 founding charter is the most anti-Semitic political document of the modern age, a combination of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Russian forgery, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Palestinian Arabs elected Hamas to a majority of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. The organization calls for the destruction of Israel in any form and calls for a global jihad against the Jewish State.

Repeated Wars from Gaza

Hamas has launched wars from Gaza against Israel in 2008, 2012, 2014 and May 2021. When not sending missiles all over the Jewish State, it launches arson balloons to burn Israeli fields, digs tunnels into Israel to abduct Israelis, and attempts to destroy the separation fence and infiltrate Israel.

Gazans Want To Kill Israeli Civilians

The Anti-Defamation League did global polls in 2014 and 2015 and found the Palestinian Arabs were by far the most anti-Semitic in the world, with 93% of the population harboring anti-Jewish attitudes. However, while almost every Palestinian Arab is anti-Semitic, the Gazans and West Bankers have different views about physically attacking Israeli civilians.

The gap in attitude between Gazans and West Bankers about violently attacking Israeli civilians inside of Israel has continued to grow
(source: Palestinian PCPSR polls)

Palestinians poll themselves every quarter about their attitudes on a variety of topics. One of the questions asked each poll is “Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I…” with choices ranging from “strong support”, “support” to “oppose”, “strongly oppose” and “I don’t know.” The fact that the poll asks such question says a lot about Palestinian society generally, but an analysis of the trend in the chart above is important.

Between 2001 and 2008, the attitudes among Gazans and West Bank Arabs were much the same, with Gazans preferring killing Israeli civilians inside of Israel by an average of 11.6% more than West Bankers. After the 2008-9 Gaza war and the implementation of the naval blockade, the gap in attitudes widened. Between 2009 and 2017, Gazans preferred attacking Israeli Jews inside of Israel by a gap of 22.1%, almost double the 2001-8 period. Between 2018 and today, the gap has become even more pronounced, with Gazans voting for violence by a difference of 43.9%, nearly doubling again. Further, after the 2014 and May 2021 wars, Hamas’s popularity soared as did the uptick in Gazans desire to see more Jewish blood.

The difference in attitude is stark and the sentiment is frightening. And it is not theoretical.

In March 2011, after a the horrendous slaughter of a family of five by Palestinian Arabs in the West Bank, Gazans celebrated the murder (51.0%) while West Bank Arabs did not (75.6%).

Palestinian poll taken shortly after slaughter of Fogel family in Itamar, including an
11 year old, 4 year old and 3 month old, all stabbed to death.

This attitude was not an outlier. In August 2019, Palestinian Arabs blew up a 17 year-old girl, Rina Shnerb, while she was on a family hike. Over 80% of Gazans supported the attack.

Palestinian poll taken shortly after bomb blew up and killed Rina Shnerb.

It is hard to imagine that there are any places in the world where there would be any support for stabbing to death a 3 month old lying in its crib, or for blowing up a 17 year old girl going on a nature hike. But in Gaza, the MAJORITY support the slaughter of innocent Jews.

For people who want to counter and prevent violent extremism, and who care about peace, justice and the sanctity of human life, it is well past time to pull all support from the terrorist enclave of Gaza, including shutting UNRWA in the area. Human rights and decency demand it.

Related First One Through articles:

UN’s Confusion on the Legality of Israel’s Blockade of Gaza

Quantifying the Values of Gazans

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

What’s Wrong with UNRWA

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Unequal Tallies and Israel’s Soft Force

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The Three Little Pigs is a well-known children’s story. It relays how three pigs lived in different houses – of straw, sticks and of bricks. When a big bad wolf blew on the house of the pig living in a straw house, it collapsed quickly. In some versions of the story that pig ran to his friend in the house of sticks and in other versions he was eaten by the wolf.

The wolf then pursued the pigs in the house of sticks. It too came crashing down under the force of the wolf and the pigs ran for shelter in the pig’s house made of bricks. Using the same approach as before, the wolf was unable to blow down the strong house and needed to use greater force and a variety of means to try to destroy the brick house and kill the pigs inside. Ultimately, the wolf tried to climb down the chimney but the pigs had a fire ready for him and he died due to his own maniacal pursuits.

While using an un-kosher / non-halal animal is not ideal, this story is useful in considering the situation of the Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors.

Global Destruction of All Homes

The Jewish people built their foundational home in the land of Israel and have always considered it the center of Judaism, but those homes were destroyed over the millennia. They rebuilt houses of straw, sticks and bricks around the world, almost all of which crumbled under the forces of foes and neighbors including Babylonians, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Cossacks and Nazis. As recently as a century ago, there were many Jewish brick houses found in Poland, Germany, Austria, Argentina and Morocco while the Jewish homes in the United States, Palestine and Russia were only built with sticks and straw.

The Holocaust in Europe and the expulsion of Jews of the Arab world destroyed the magnificent brick houses as well as the smaller and more delicate ones. The remaining Jews scattered to rebuild and fortify the remaining houses. Today, the main Jewish brick homes stand in Israel and the United States, where approximately 85% of world Jewry lives.

Jewish Brick Homes in Israel

In Israel, the Jews are surrounded by roughly 7.25% of the global Muslim population. Israeli Jews are outnumbered by 20-to-1 in just their immediate vicinity, even though Israel has the largest number of Jews in the world. That is because Muslims outnumber Jews by over 100-to-1 in total.

Over the past century, Arab Muslim neighbors fought many wars – conventional and otherwise – against the Jews, trying to destroy their presence in their holy land. Jews survived the attacks and hardened their homes to withstand the onslaughts of their neighbors’ tanks, guns, scud missiles, hijackings, rockets and more.

As in “The Three Little Pigs,” the wolves were forced to modify their tactics to achieve their goal.

Palestinian suicide bombers forced Israel to build a separation barrier in the West Bank and convinced Israel to abandon its presence in Gaza. Building upon the successful guerilla warfare, the Palestinian wolves built terror tunnels for abductions, and introduced widespread stabbings, car rammings and incendiary balloons against Israelis.

The schemes did not produce the Muslims’ desired effects so the wolves have adopted two new principle strategies: 1) obtain powerful weapons of mass destruction; and 2) get Israel to soften its defenses so the wolves can penetrate the Jewish homes and drive them from the land.

The nuclear weapons plan of Iraq (1981) and Syria (2007) were foiled by Israel. At present, the Islamic Republic of Iran remains committed to pursuing nuclear weapons while calling for the destruction of Israel.

Regarding softening up Israel, the Palestinians seek to use global pressure – economic, political and military – to make Israel much more vulnerable to its all-out attacks and ultimately achieve the stated aim as clearly articulated in the HAMAS charter: destroy Israel and kill the Jews.

Nothing mobilizes the world against Jews as much as pictures of them killing children to rekindle historic blood libels. So HAMAS puts children in the frontlines of incursions at the Gaza border fence. The terrorist group launches rockets from residential neighborhoods, stores rockets in schools and builds terror tunnels underneath homes. Israel’s retaliatory attacks are designed by Palestinians to kill children who are served in open square caskets on the pages of the anti-Zionist world media.

New York Times large front page color picture showing children killed in latest fighting between HAMAS and Israel.

The noise not only activates anti-Zionist forces and makes Israel rethink how to prosecute wars, it serves as effective cover for Iran and others Islamic regimes to continue to build their ballistic missile and nuclear weapons capabilities.

The Lies of Victim Tally and Proportionate Force

The tally of the victims in battles between HAMAS and Israel will always be lopsided and serves as another effective tool to hurt Israel. The anti-Zionist press readily regurgitates the false narrative that victim tallies equates to proportionality of force. The truth is that HAMAS uses the maximum forces at its disposal while Israel uses only an iota of its capabilities. Gazans deliberately fire at Israeli civilians while Israel attempts to minimize civilian casualties with targeted attacks after warnings.

The gap in victim tallies is the result of a difference of FORCE MINUS DEFENSES, not a disproportionate use of force. Gazans lack bomb shelters for civilians and an air defense system. They fire missiles from densely populated neighborhoods which are intertwined with terrorist infrastructure. To isolate the comparison of force between the parties is to consider Gazans’ all-out evil intent of using its maximal firepower, against the soft power of a superior army. The disproportionate defenses produced the real difference, not the applied force of each party.

If there was no Egyptian and Israeli blockade of Gaza and HAMAS was able to import more advanced weaponry from Iran and Turkey, the death and destruction which Israel would have been forced to unleash on Gaza would have been significantly greater. The blockade likely saved thousands of Arab and Jewish lives.

But pro-Palestinian advocates will argue for lifting the blockade of Gaza, for spending millions to rebuild the Strip complete with bomb shelters, for boycotting Israeli companies, for stripping the Jewish State’s military aid and charging the country and its leaders with war crimes. Each action would increase the duration of the next war and its death toll.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), attacking US support for Israel in Congress on May 13, 2021.

The world’s remaining Jews have only two brick houses, and have learned to recognize the tactics and relentlessness of those desirous of destroying them. Jews cannot be passive as both the wolves and the wolves in sheep’s clothing act to destroy their last homes.

Related First One Through articles:

Pray for a Lack of “Proportionately” in Numbers. There will never be an Equivalence of Intent.

The Disproportionate Defenses of Israel and the Palestinian Authority

The Death of Civilians; the Three Shades of Sorrow

The New York Times Excuses Palestinian “Localized Expressions of Impatience.” I Mean Rockets.

While Palestinians Fire 400 Rockets, the United Nations Meets to Give Them Money

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

Related First One Through video:

The 2002 Massacres of Netanya and Jenin (music by Gorecki)

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“I’ll Take Terrorism for Millions of U.S. Dollars, Alex”

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President Barack Obama pressured the Palestinian Authority to stop inciting terrorism against Israeli civilians late in his second term. The Consolidated Appropriation Act of 2016 outlined that the State Department should reduce funds to the PA “equivalent to the amount expended by the Palestinian Authority as payments for acts of terrorism by individuals who are imprisoned after being fairly tried and convicted for acts of terrorism and by individuals who died committing acts of terrorism.” That Act was followed by the Taylor Force Act which “condition[ed] assistance to the West Bank and Gaza on steps by the Palestinian Authority to end violence and terrorism against Israeli citizens.“

PA President Mahmoud Abbas was unmoved and refused to stop the very popular “Pay-to-Slay” program which rewarded terrorists and their families based on their crimes and how long they served in Israeli jails.

President Trump continued to act upon U.S. principles to withdraw American largess when Abbas said that he celebrated martyrs and was commitment to pay Palestinian terrorist families “even if it costs PA its last penny.” Trump not only pulled donations from the PA but from UNRWA, the United Nations agency which employs 30,000 Palestinians to handle the education, healthcare, housing and small business loans for 6.3 million Palestinian Arabs.

While funding to the Palestinians withered during Trump’s term, so did the wars and terrorist activity. The wars from Gaza which began shortly after Obama was elected (2008-9) continued with wars in 2012 and 2014, followed by the “Stabbing and Car Ramming Intifada” from the West Bank in 2015-6, slowed to a low boil. Overall, 47 Israelis were killed by Arab terrorists during Trump’s term, the lowest tally in any four year span going back decades. This coincided with the fewest Palestinians killed during the four Trump years due to the lack of any large scale attacks.

Enter President Joe Biden in 2021, who made clear his desire to start giving money to Palestinians without insisting on reforms to their laws or activities. Biden’s team began to work with the PA to figure out ways to funnel it funds without tripping U.S. laws. Some ideas floated had the “martyr” families getting “jobs” with the PA for which they needn’t show. Another considered using the Palestinian Postal system to make the prisoner payments as the U.S. laws were directed at banks.

Ha ha. HAMAS leaders know better.

Rather than having a trickle of money pour into Palestinian pockets, they manufactured a “humanitarian crisis.” They launched rockets (which had been gathering dust during the Trump years) from densely populated Gaza neighborhoods into Israeli towns, inviting retaliatory strikes causing tremendous damage to lives and infrastructure. Palestinians then mobilized with follow-up appeals to the global community, complete with pictures of children amid the rubble as they cast themselves as victims to a charged anti-Zionist audience.

The United States reduced funding to the Palestinian Authority because of its refusal to stop INCITING terrorism, but now plans to pour hundreds of millions of dollars because of COMMITING terrorism. Such is the finesse of HAMAS, playing on the stupidity of an administration which refuses to hold terrorists accountable as well as eager to cut checks to anyone who looks like a victim.

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The Selective Protests Reveal Anti-Semitism

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When protestors only show up for certain victims and conflicts, what is the takeaway?

The Palestinian terrorist political party HAMAS launched thousands of rockets into Israel in May 2021, seemingly ready to add a fourth war to its tally since it took over Gaza in 2007. In short order, the streets in major cities around the world were full of protesters raging about the hundreds of people who were killed by Israel’s retaliatory attacks on the HAMAS terrorist infrastructure.

Protesters at a Free Palestine demonstration in Sydney in May 2021. Thousands of people have marched in Sydney and Melbourne as the conflict in Gaza worsened. (Photo: Bianca de Marchi/AFP/Getty Images)

Yet no one has taken to the streets regarding the multi-year ongoing war that has killed 250,000 people in impoverished Yemen. Thousands of children have been killed in the bloody campaign but the loss of life of these poor Muslim Arabs gathers neither tears nor shouts. The United Nations and news agencies don’t post daily death totals on that tragedy. Or weekly. Or monthly.

That’s an Israel phenomenon.

In over six years of war, one cannot find a single article about protestors in Australia assembling in the streets to protest the carnage in Yemen. The best one finds is an opinion piece from two and one-half years ago, arguing that Australia should stop supplying Saudi Arabia with weapons because of the 85,000 children who died either directly or indirectly from the war which was only four years-old at that point in time.

The situation is identical for “Pro-Palestinian” protests in South Africa, Brazil, the Netherlands and the United States. Though tens and hundreds of thousands more Muslim Arabs in Yemen and Syria may be being killed, the streets only fill with protestors for Palestinian Arabs.

Which begs the questions as to why.

It is not as though the dynamics are unique with various state actors like Saudi Arabia/ Iran/ Yemen in one situation compared to Israel versus a non-state entity like the Palestinian Authority in the other, as many countries like Brazil and South Africa recognize Palestine as an actual country.

It is also a fact that Israel is not waging war against the Palestinians generally; it is targeting the terrorist group HAMAS, much like the U.S. targeting the Taliban in Afghanistan (another situation which has gathered virtually no global protests despite the war raging for twenty years).

The streets seemingly echo the halls of the United Nations, which adopted the Palestinians as its perennial wards, thereby making it incapable of condemning its own foster children regardless of its continued war crimes. Palestinians are always, and can only be victims.

But the protestors are even angrier than the U.N. The United Nations does not – at least openly – seek the destruction of the Jewish State. The same cannot be said of many of the agitators with signs ranging from “From the River to the sea“, “Hitler was right” and chants “We don’t want no two states; we want ’48.” These activists assemble in plazas where Nazis destroyed synagogues – literally on the ashes of Jews – to try to label Israel as the actual terrorist group rather than HAMAS.

It is in watching the protests that the answer to the uniqueness of solidarity with Palestinians shines through: it is not the nature of the victim or scale of the battle which brings out the anger but the underlying cause itself. The protestors do not see HAMAS as a terrorist organization or its charter calling for the destruction of Israel as unjust. They do not believe in the legitimacy of Israel and want it dismantled, and believe that IT CAN be dismantled.

Pro-Palestinian agitators aren’t seeking to protect Palestinian civilians as much as they want to pressure their own governments to make Israel vulnerable – politically, militarily and economically – to facilitate HAMAS’s goal of destroying the Jewish State.

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Protesting the Victor, not the Victims

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Liberal Hypocrisy on Foreign Government Intervention

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A Proper UN Security Council Resolution on Israel and HAMAS

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Adopted by the Security Council on XX May 2021

The Security Council,

Recalling the wars between Israel and HAMAS in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014,

Recalling the vast network of tunnels used by HAMAS to abduct Israelis run underneath civilians homes and neighborhoods,

Recalling the incendiary balloons sent into Israel destroying fields over the past two years,

Recalling the 1988 HAMAS Charter which calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews,

Recalling the 2007 rout in Gaza by HAMAS and the expulsion of the Palestinian Authority, and HAMAS’s usurpation of the administration of the region,

Reaffirming its strong commitment to the unity, sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity of Israel,

Reaffirming the legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority as the one government responsible for all Palestinian territories,

Recalling the Oslo Accord signed and agreed to by Israel and the Palestinian Authority regarding the administrative control of Areas A, B and C,

Strongly condemning the ongoing rocket barrage in early May 2021 against Israeli population centers including the Ben Gurion International Airport, and calling for an immediate cessation of such HAMAS attacks without preconditions,

Stressing the need for de-escalation across Israel and Gaza and calling for implementation of a ceasefire and the immediate cessation of hostilities against Israel,

Expressing concern at the ongoing political, security, economic and humanitarian challenges in Gaza, including the ongoing violence and threats arising from the illicit transfer, diversion, destabilising accumulation, and misuse of weapons,

Reiterating its call for all parties within the Palestinian Authority to adhere to resolving their differences through dialogue and consultation, reject acts of violence to achieve political goals, and refrain from provocation,

Expressing its alarm that areas of Gaza remain under the control of HAMAS and about the negative impact of their presence, violent extremist ideology and actions on stability in Gaza and other Palestinian territories, including the devastating humanitarian impact on the civilian populations,

Recalling the listing of HAMAS and associated individuals on various terrorist lists including by the United States, the European Union and Israel,

Noting the critical importance of effective implementation of the sanctions regime imposed by Egypt and Israel to stop the import of weapons by HAMAS into Gaza,

Condemning in the strongest terms the attack on Ben Gurion airport and the over 2,000 missiles fired into Israel by HAMAS,

Expressing grave concern at the threat to peace and security in Israel and Gaza arising from the illicit transfer, destabilising accumulation, and misuse of missiles,

Condemning in the strongest terms violations of International Humanitarian Law in firing missiles from dense civilian populations, turning innocent civilians into human shields,

Determining that the situation in Gaza continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security,

Acting under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations,

1. Declares the need for the full and timely implementation of the political transition of power from HAMAS to the Palestinian Authority in Gaza;

2. Decides that HAMAS and its leaders listed in the annex be placed on a global sanctions list;

3. Encourages the Palestinian Authority to bar HAMAS from participating in any future parliamentary or presidential elections;

4. Encourages Member States to place HAMAS on it terrorist list and impose necessary sanctions until it gives power over Gaza to the Palestinian Authority;

5. Affirms that the recruitment or use of children in armed conflict in violation of international law;

6. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.

Rockets are launched towards Israel from Rafah, in the southern the Gaza Strip, controlled by the terrorist Palestinian Hamas political party, on May 12, 2021. (Photo by SAID KHATIB / AFP)

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