In an ongoing insult to Jews around the world, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said at the 32nd Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) Central Council meeting on April 23, 2025 that the two Jewish “Temples were in Yemen.”
PA President Abbas claiming the Jewish Temples were in Yemen, April 23, 2025
Abbas falsified history in an attempt to deny Jews any rights or privileges at their holiest location. The fact that it was an insult to over 2 billion Christians who believe that Jesus was in Jerusalem and not Sanaa was a slight he was willing to make to claim the site as purely Islamic.
The United Nations adopted the same position. In a 1949 map of the holy places in Jerusalem, the Temple Mount was marked as only holy to Muslims, while the Western Wall was marked as holy to both Muslims and Jews.
1949 UN map of Jerusalem’s holy places
The United States should therefore adopt a resolution called “Status of the Temple Mount,” similar to the twisted United Nations resolutions called “Status of Jerusalem,” to correct the wrong. Its passage in Congress will serve as a template for other countries to adopt before being submitted to the United Nations General Assembly.
Key phrases should be included in the resolution, to combat the disgraceful UN remarks about Jewish rights:
The United States abhors the “aggressive and dangerous” comments made by the president of the Palestinian Authority which “could inflame tensions and lead to a religious war that has no boundaries.”
Comments made by the PA president “serve the forces of extremism around the world.”
Incendiary remarks that deny Jews their heritage and history “do absolutely nothing to improve the lives of Palestinian Arabs,” and simply “push back the Middle East peace process.”
“The Temple Mount built by King Herod two thousand years ago has been and will always be the holiest location of Judaism.”
On December 9, 2021, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) expressed his disgust with a December 3 UN General Assembly resolution about Jerusalem saying “The recent vote by the United Nations disavowing Jewish historical ties and exclusivity to the Temple Mount—the holiest and most sacred Temple in Judaism—is an outrageous act of religious persecution. This is a transparent effort, supported by 129 nations but opposed by the United States, to rewrite history, cleanse the holy area of its religious ties to the Jewish faith and deny that Israel has roots to the Middle East…. The Jewish Temple, located in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City, is holy ground to Jews and it belongs solely to their faith. I object to any effort to ethnically cleanse the Jewish people from their sole historic claim to this land and temple.”
It is time for U.S. Congress to endorse a resolution to correct the shameful religious persecution and ethnic cleansing of Jews, by passing the “Status of the Temple Mount” resolution.
ACTION ITEM
Write Paul Gosar (if you are in his district), your representatives in Congress and the White House (comments@whitehouse.gov) to clearly stand by historic truth and correct the ongoing slander and religious persecution of Jews. “In light of the ongoing antisemitic insults by the Palestinian Authority and the United Nations, please pass a resolution which clearly states that the Jewish Temples stood on the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem and that the site has been the holiest site for Jews for 3,000 years. https://primarybowman.com/2025/04/29/resolution-recognizing-the-jewish-temples-stood-on-the-temple-mount-in-jerusalem/“
In the world of archaeology, there is nothing as prized as finding something in situ, meaning in its original place. The location helps provide archeologists with clues as to the surroundings’ age and usage, who lived in that location and the nature of society. Once an item moves, critical details of the environment are lost forever.
From that moment, the provenance is often a curiosity. Who owned the item and for how long? How did it come to find its way into this collection or that museum and what happened to the artifact over this time? These matters are often used to prove the subject’s authenticity, by tracing it back without interruption to the point of discovery.
When it comes to works of art (rather than archeological finds), provenance is less of a curiosity. Experts and viewers mostly focus on the art itself as well as the artist. The visual and message are the primary matters, not the journey of the art onto a museum’s wall.
Yet there are stories too remarkable to ignore. Sometimes the provenance is as much of the subject as the art itself, even reorienting the very perception of the artwork to modern viewers.
A Dutch Masterwork, As Seen By A Jew, A Nazi And Complicit Government
Consider the painting A River Landscape with a Waterfall (1660) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).
A River Landscape with a Waterfall (1660) by Jacob van Ruisdael (1628-1682).
Van Ruisdael was considered among the greatest landscape painters of the Dutch Golden Age. While his peers Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) and Rembrandt (1606-1669) mostly painted people, Van Ruisdael painted scenes of nature.
In A River Landscape with a Waterfall, we see the artist’s work with contrasts. The right side of the painting is illuminated by the setting sun, with a solid house on a hill set under clouds. To the left is dark scene in the shadow of the sun. Broken branches lay on the rocks and a hint of a house protrudes from the standing leafy trees. A barely perceptible person makes his way towards that house before sunset. A stream separates the two sides of the painting with a small waterfall.
This is one of many waterfall paintings by Van Ruisdael during the middle of his life. Of them all, this one is the most serene, with the title’s inclusion of “river” and “waterfall” seemingly an exaggeration of a modest calm landscape.
The story of the painting’s journey to the Phoenix Art Museum where it is exhibited today was anything but calm.
In the mid-1930s, the painting came into the collection of Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), a Jewish Dutch art dealer who was among the foremost collectors of Old Master works. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Nazi military leader Hermann Göring confiscated Goudstikker’s collection. Over the course of the war, Göring is estimated to have amassed over 4,000 works of art. Most of the art was taken from France, including from the Rothschild family. Goudstikker’s collection made up a sizable part of the non-French collection, as he was partial to landscapes and the Old Masters.
Jacques Goudstikker (1897-1940), a Jewish Dutch art dealer
As the war started, Goudstikker fled Holland with his wife and one year old son. They first went to England and then caught a boat to the United States. On the ship to America, Jacques accidentally walked into an open hatch and plummeted to the ground below, dying instantly. His wife and son made it to America without him.
At the end of the war, the Dutch government confiscated the looted Nazi art. Most of the paintings did not find their way back to the rightful owners as there were few notes about the provenance of each work. However, because Goudstikker was a leading arts dealer, he had ledgers with each work, including this Van Ruisdael painting. Despite the clear markings on the back of the painting with Goustikker’s seal, and Goustikker’s wife and family showing records of being the proper owners, the Dutch government would not release the painting to the family until 2002, 57 years later. The family sold the painting in 2007 to a doctor in Phoenix, Arizona who donated it to the Phoenix Art Museum in 2022, where it hangs today.
During World War II, private art collections like Goustikker’s were often seized by the Nazis, while those from public museums were better able to protect the most prized works.
To mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, the Mauritshuis public art museum in The Hague is having an exhibition until June 29, 2025 called “Facing the Storm – A Museum in Wartime.” It relays the efforts taken by the museum to hide its most valuable art from the Nazis. As described by the museum, “The exhibition will devote attention to the travels of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring during the war. The Mauritshuis had a bombproof ‘art bunker ’ in which it would store all its masterpieces overnight, bringing out a few – including the Girl – during the day…. During the course of the war, the most important works of art were taken to the various ‘National Storage Facilities’, where they remained until the war ended. During this time, the gallery walls at the Mauritshuis were a sorry sight, lined as they were with empty frames.” During some of the public showings during the war, Hitler featured his personal paintings and his book Mein Kampf alongside the museum’s Dutch masters.
Moving paintings from Dutch museum to hide from Nazi theft and bombings
There was a split dynamic between public and private museums as well as viewing art during the day and night during the war in Holland. Private collections were seized and public collections were hidden at night. When collections made it to the light of day, they were used as propaganda for Dutch residents and the enjoyment of Nazi officers who were able to walk the streets freely. Empty frames were like the disappeared Jews of Holland, perhaps hidden away like Anne Frank and her family, or shipped to Nazi concentration camps for liquidation.
Empty frames at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, July 1944
The background story and provenance of the Van Ruisdael painting is very much part of viewing the painting today. The pastoral scene of light and darkness owned by a Dutch Jewish family on the eve of World War II was seized – and enjoyed – by Nazi criminals. After the defeat of the Nazis, the Dutch government held onto the artwork and would not return it to the Jewish family which had to flea across the ocean to survive the Holocaust, even as the man who owned the painting did not survive.
To view the painting with such knowledge, the stream becomes an ocean which the Goudstikker family crossed to save themselves. They left their open, illuminated and public house on a hill for an unknown future. Indeed, Jacques’ untimely death during the journey is like the broken branches in the foreground of the painting.
The home and art the Goudstikkers left behind became a showcase for Nazi propaganda, like the house on the right side of the painting enjoying the full setting sun and completely exposed to the world. The dark left side of the painting are the works of art and the Jews of Holland who were hidden and transported to death camps, or perhaps they were lucky to leave the war early like the Goudstikkers, attempting to find a new uncertain home across the ocean. And even when they made it safely to the other side, did they get to enjoy their freedom, or were they fighting for their basic rights and property, such as against the Dutch government who would not surrender their art?
A painting made in the 17th century can be understood anew hundreds of years later because of its provenance. Journeys can shape the subject.
That is most certainly true of Jews, especially on Passover.
Passover Seder As Seen By A Guest
It is a tradition for hundreds, if not thousands of years to invite someone to a Passover seder. Inviting a guest unfamiliar with the story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt over 3,000 years ago – especially for meals that do not have any children present – provides an opportunity to tell the story of the Jewish journey from slavery to freedom, and from Egypt to the Jewish Promised Land.
The seder uses a Haggadah, a standard text used by Jews around the world, which not only discusses the Exodus, but prior generations telling the story of the Exodus on Passover. The seder is both a story FROM 3,000 years ago at the point of origination, as well as the journey of that story over the intervening years until today.
The guest at the seder is not only learning about ancient Jewish history but seeing and hearing the provenance of that history.
A person can read the bible at any time of year to get a clinical understanding of the Exodus from Egypt. However, to sit at a seder is to see the redemption of Jews in a new light, incorporating the journeys they have taken over the centuries.
The story of the Exodus and the journey of Jews for millenia are too remarkable to ignore. Viewing both simultaneously is the magic of Passover, a gift for everyone attending a seder.
To read progressive media, one would believe that the Trump administration is seeking to end “research and science” and “great debates” on the country’s campuses. That’s how papers like The New York Times understand the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia demanding change.
The New York Times article on March 20, 2025 misdirecting readers about the Trump administration’s letter to Columbia University
It could not be further from the truth.
The March 13 letter is just two pages long and covers nine points. Nowhere is “science” and “great debates” mentioned. “Research” is mentioned once, and the Trump administration’s letter is actively trying to protect it.
The first two points in the letter demand that the school must enforce consequences for the students that break university policies, including vandalism and harassment. It asks that the “Office of the President” handle such matters rather than the University Judicial Board, presumably because many members of the board are sympathetic to the student rioters.
The next three points build on this theme of discipline. It demands that the university adopt “time, place and manner rules,” – very common and ordinary measures – to prevent the disruption of “teaching, research and campus life” (emphasis added). It adds a mask ban so rioters can be held accountable and demanded a formalized university plan for groups that violate university policy.
The sixth point shifted from general disciplinary matters to define antisemitism, because that has been the crux of rioters’ conduct against Jews at Columbia. Presumably, it would help clearly define matters of free speech versus hate speech (to the extent that such thing exists).
The seventh bullet transitions back to discipline, empowering university security to arrest rioters.
The eighth point refers to a particular department within the school – the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department (MESAAS) – which is to be put under “academic receivership.” If there is a claim that Trump is coming after “research” and “great debates”, it must be in this discipline.
The ninth point seems to cover perhaps a related point to eighth – to make sure that admissions, including “international recruiting… conforms with federal law and policy.”
As seen above, the letter seeks to ensure the ability of students and faculty to do research (third bullet), albeit the MESAAS department has been marked as a problemed child.
The reality is that American universities have been trying to paper over their critical problems by importing students from the Global South, from those MESAAS countries. If there is a Trump target on academic research, it lies there, not in scientific matters, despite the Times claim that Trump is “imperiling the backbone of the nation’s research endeavors.”
America’s core problem lies in its PUBLIC K-12 schools which are FAILING TO TEACH MATH AND SCIENCE, with the US placing 25th among 37 OECD countries for 15 year olds. The country is relying more and more on international students – many deeply distrustful and anti-Western values – to fill the university’s STEM departments because America’s elementary and high schools have failed.
Progressive media will not place the blame squarely where it belongs – on the public school system – because it has long ago adopted the fiction that pouring billions of dollars into teacher unions will magically produce better educated students.
The Trump letter is an immediate call to make universities safe, not a call to dismantle research. The long-term fix is to remake America’s public schools, which have catered to teachers and administrators over students for far too long.
The New York Times is accelerating its attempt to redefine facts and U.S. policy, especially in regards to the State of Israel.
Nowhere is this more pronounced than attempts to educate its readers that “East Jerusalem,” is an actual city, even though it existed for only 18 years in its 4,000 year history from 1949-1967 because of war.
The Times wrote “East Jerusalem” no less than SIX times in an article on March 7 about a Hamas leader’s release from prison. Using the phrase repeatedly was meant to grant another victory to Hamas, in its “Al Aqsa Flood” war.
At the fifth mention of “East Jerusalem,” the Times wrote that “Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war in a move not recognized by most of the international community.” So what? Most of the “international community” considers homosexuality a disgusting offense and crime, yet the Times doesn’t append such comments when discussing the gay community.
The United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and only Israel. When President Donald Trump issued his statement of official recognition, he specifically referred to holy sites in the Old City of eastern Jerusalem saying “Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs. Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Jerusalem has been reunited under Israel for decades and the U.S. embassy in Israel straddles the area that was considered “no man’s land” during those horrible years of 1949 to 1967. It is time to be explicit that the United States recognizes the unified city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and does not recognize any place called “East Jerusalem.”
Location of new U.S. embassy to Israel
The Trump administration can cement such understanding with blessing Israel’s expansion of Jerusalem eastward in an area known as “E1.”
ACTION ITEM
Write the White House comments@whitehouse.gov to clearly state that the U.S. recognizes all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and endorse construction of homes in E1.
Write The New York Times CORRECTION editors corrections@nytimes.com to stop calling a place “East Jerusalem” or to similarly change policy for all historically divided capitals referencing East and West Berlin as well as East and West Beirut and in its articles.
The story of Chanukah happened in 164 BCE. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes had defiled the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and enacted several laws against Judaism, including banning circumcision, celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays, forcing Jews to eat pork, and making it a capital offense to have a torah scroll. The Jews of the holy land revolted against the Syrian-Greek king and got rid of all the anti-Judaism decrees and rededicated the Temple.
This was a war of pagans against the Jewish religion, before Herod built the expanded Temple Mount plaza and before Christianity.
Over the following centuries, King Herod (72 BCE – 4 BCE) built the expanded Temple Mount and Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by the Romans. Jewish revolts against the Romans in 66CE-70CE and 132-135CE led to the destruction of Jerusalem and expulsion of Jews from the area, renaming the city to “Aelia Capitolina” and the region to “Palestina.”
This was a war of pagans against Jews and Christians, before the birth of Mohammed and creation of Islam.
Mohammed’s quest to bring Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the world brought a Muslim invasion into the Jewish holy land in the 7th and 8th centuries. Muslims built their third holiest site on top of Herod’s Temple Mount, the Al Aqsa Mosque. Christians and Muslims waged several wars over the holy land between 1095 and 1291.
Those battles between Christian crusaders and Muslims, were over the Jewish holy land and Judaism’s holiest location.
In 1948, Muslim Arab armies invaded and tried to destroy the newly declared State of Israel. The Jordanian army ethnically cleansed all of the Jews on the western bank of the Jordan River all the way through the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1954, it granted citizenship to all Arabs, as long as they were not Jewish.
This was a war of Arab Muslims countries against the physical presence of Jews in the Jewish holy land.
From the Chanukah story to the creation of Israel in 1948, many groups laid siege to Jerusalem, often attacking Jews through anti-religious actions, or lumped in with other religious groups. Since 1948, the war has been about the physical presence of Jews in Jerusalem, a place where Jews have been the majority since the 1860s.
At the story of Chanukah, there was no Temple Mount, no Christianity and no Islam. It was a battle of pagans against a small local tribe’s religion, who lived at the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Chanukah marks the beginning of Jews in the holy land being attacked for their religion. The successful battles proved to be short-lived, as most Jews were forced into the diaspora over the following centuries, until the recent past. Celebrating the holiday today amidst a multi-front defensive war and global antisemitic chants that Jews are “European settler colonialists” is a chance to reassert Eight Attestations On Jerusalem:
Jews have an Inalienable right to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount
Banning Jews from living and praying in their holiest city is blatant anti-Semitism, as is denying Jewish history
There is no “Judaizing” Jerusalem, as Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s, and have devoted themselves to the city since 1000BCE
The security of Israel demands that its capital sit well within its borders
Divided capitals are a function of war, not peace. The place known as “East Jerusalem” only existed for a few years, 1949-1967
No part of Jerusalem was ever contemplated to be part of Palestine. Not only is “East Jerusalem” not an actual city, but there is no basis to call it “Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Jerusalem Arabs have been and are continued to be offered Israeli citizenship
There is no ethnic cleansing of Arabs. The Arab population in Jerusalem has grown faster than Jews since Israel reunited city
On Chanukah, diaspora Jews should pay particular attention to the direction of their prayer, the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel, as Jews have done for thousands of years.
Happy Chanukah signs on the walls of Jerusalem, 2021
The election of Donald Trump has brought out the anticipated comments by politicians and pundits. The talking heads have said that they are “outraged”, “disgusted” and “horrified” that the nation would elect a convicted felon who was accused multiple times of sexual assault.
Cover of Vanity Fair magazine
They referred to Trump has “Hitler” and a “Nazi” who would destroy democracy, an autocrat hell-bent on power. His racist ideology would punish minorities like Hitler did to the Jews.
Cover of the Daily News from December 2015
After the 2016 election of Trump, many liberals stopped inviting people who voted for Trump to their houses, parties and events. Anyone who did not have the clarity to see the vileness of Trump was deemed morally corrupt.
It’s a scene that has had a parallel over the past year among Jews who watched the glee of the socialist-jihadi alliance about the gruesome October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel.
Jews were appalled that university presidents did not have the basic humanity to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews on campuses. That the United Nations Secretary General would demand that Israel not bring the terrorists to justice. That the Jewish Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer would not bring acts meant to stem the tidal wave of antisemitism to a floor vote.
People have been disgusted by scenes of Jews being openly attacked, intimidated and harassed on streets and college campuses. Outraged that attackers are immediately released and suffer no consequences. Incensed that people affix stickers that “rape is resistance” while ripping down posters of Jewish toddlers stolen into captivity. Revolted that members of Congress would deny rape – if it happened to Jewish women
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) yelling to a crowd on the streets of White Plains, NY after the October 7 massacre that Israel is making up propaganda to kill Arabs
Decent people are sickened that the International Court of Justice could accuse Israel of “genocide” for a war it didn’t start, doesn’t want, would end immediately if the hostages were released and terrorists surrender, and has the lowest civilian-to-terrorist death ratio of any urban combat. People are horrified that nations would vote to recognize a Palestinian State in the aftermath of Palestinian Arabs proving that they will not accept the basic presence of Jews anywhere.
On one side, people are disgusted that fellow citizens have elected a vile person, while on the other side, people are horrified that people have embraced antisemitic murderers. Liberals are shocked by the figurehead while Jews have been traumatized by pogroms.
Where does all of the revulsion lead? Will liberals once again end friendships with Trump supporters? Will Jews fire rabbis who sit on the board of Jewish Voice for Peace?
Will people recognize that the polarization is mutual? Will it matter?
Democrats and Republicans are no longer negotiating the finer points of economic or foreign policy. We have enabled the extremist members of the House of Representatives, as well as our politically active and biased media and school systems to redefine language and dismantle the foundation of facts to reframe the narratives of history advancing an us-versus-them dynamic.
“Us” is the “powerless,” minority groups and LGBT+ communities. “Them” are White misogynistic powerful men. The battle is a broad redistribution of power, wealth and privilege. The combatants are the socialist-jihadi coalition embedded in your school system, running your media and serving in Congress, against “The Man,” now in the caricature of Donald Trump.
There have already been two assassination attempts on Trump before he was even elected. Has our society reached such a terrible state that unhinged extremists would have theoretically tried to kill John McCain or Mitt Romney because they are White male Republicans?
Many blame Chinese-owned TikTok and other social media algorithms for fueling the outrage. However, it is our education system, legacy media and political process that are the main culprits. It’s not just everyday citizens’ posts and reposts on social media meant to shock and awe to get followers, but historic institutions that upheld society which have tacked to the immoral perverse.
The feelings and comments of Americans about the disgust they feel for America – fellow Americans, actually – about the election of Trump should NOT be to double down on the war against the “Patriarchy.” The left and right should retool their worldview for a country that provides freedom and opportunity for everyone collectively. Pitting one group against another will always be bad for society.
Will Democrats let the education system which they control via the teachers unions be fixed? Will mainstream media reorient their news towards facts instead of biased narratives? Will the country retool its political processes to allow moderates to win seats in deeply blue or red districts?
I doubt it.
People elected Joe Biden as a moderate to bring the nation together. He and Kamala Harris were a complete disaster. We remain disgusted with each other’s sense of humanity and morality.
It is time for us to be honest about our collective condition: there is a thin veneer of civilization covering tremendous anger and contempt for fellow Americans. At this vulnerable time – like a long dry spell marking susceptibility for forest fires – we need to douse our fields, cut back the dense wood, have emergency cut off of power lines and have early warning systems. Politically that means inserting civics classes into our schools, encourage volunteerism in our communities, cut back our viewing of mainstream and social media, and aggressively monitor hate groups, including expelling them and their financial sponsors from universities.
Donald Trump is not the cause of our disgust nor are the rabbis marching with Students for Justice in Palestine. They are byproducts of a deeper decay in our society, an us-versus-them mentality being aggressively fomented by a socialist-jihadi alliance.
Globalize the Intifada is a violent revolution brewing in the United States. Disgust may seem a quaint emotion before long.
Israel and its supporters have long desired to see a Jewish State existing peacefully in the broader Arab Middle East since before the modern State of Israel was founded, while Arab states and pro-Palestinians have refused the formulation. The two most notable examples were Zionists’ acceptance of the United Nations General Assembly 1947 Partition Plan which was met with Arab refusal and launching a war to destroy Israel, and Israel’s refusal to annex Gaza and the land East of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49/”West Bank”) after the 1967 Six Day War in the hopes of trading land-for-peace, which was met by the infamous Khartoum Resolution of “Three No’s” from the Arab world.
The world has now cast a narrative that the situation is inverted, and that Israel refuses the two-state formula for two-states coexisting in peace while the Arab world embraces it. On its face, it seems accurate but is actually far from it.
On July 17, 2024, the Israeli Knesset overwhelmingly voted to reject a resolution for the establishment of a Palestinian state by a vote of 68-9, with many members of the 120-member parliament not voting. The vote seemingly confirmed the world’s portrayal of Israel stifling Palestinian independence and sovereignty to enable a peaceful two-state solution.
The United Nations Secretary General lambasted Israel in January 2024 – before the vote – that the Jewish State’s rejection of a two state solution was “unacceptable” and that “this refusal, and the denial of the right to statehood to the Palestinian people, would indefinitely prolong a conflict that has become a major threat to global peace and security.”
Lost in the charge is that the U.N. refuses to acknowledge current reality and prefers the fantasy. Its formula for two states living in peace includes a new Jew-free Palestinian State with a fully functioning military, and millions of antisemitic Arabs moving into Israel.
Anyone observing the region knows that the U.N. formula is the opposite of two-states living in peace but a direct call for the annihilation of the only Jewish state.
Masses of Palestinians beat a dead Jewish Israeli woman who was hauled into Gaza, October 2023
Recognizing the impasse that Palestinians still want to destroy the Jewish State, several Democratic senators tried to advance a “compromise” of sorts, in which a demilitarized Palestine could be established next to Israel. The hope is that while the Palestinians would still want to destroy Israel, they would be unable to achieve their goals.
Palestinians haul Israeli women into Gaza, October 2023
That vision was expressed in a March 2024 letter from several Democratic senators to Democratic President Joe Biden “to publicly outline a path for the United States to recognize a nonmilitarized Palestinian state.” That letter was signed by Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE),Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chris Coons (D-DE), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ed Ma1aheen (D-NH), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), Elizabeth Warren (-D-MA), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
Home in Israel torched by Palestinian terrorists, October 2023
Today, as in the past, Israel hopes for a two-state solution, as laid out by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2009. However, the reality of the current “deformity of Palestinian political culture,” as so labeled by Palestinian activist James Zogby, prevents such action today.
Destroyed and bloody home in Israeli kibbutz after being attacked by Palestinian terrorists in October 2023
Pushing for a Palestinian state in the shadow of the Palestinian military butchering innocent Israelis is either harmful whitewashing of Arab genocidal intent or a vicious call for the ethnic cleansing of Jews. Adorning the violent charge with decorative language of “coexistence” and “living side-by-side in peace” will do nothing to protect Jews from being slaughtered again.
Israelis do not have the luxury of surrendering to the fantasy of peaceful coexistence when the counterparty celebrates butchering women and children.
Perhaps in forty years. Perhaps sooner, after the militants are vanquished and the toxic Palestinian culture is reoriented towards respecting the humanity of Jews and rights to live in their ancestral holy land.
The top court of the United Nations, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s presence in territories it captured in the June 1967 Six Day War is illegal. Specifically, it decided that “Israel’s presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory unlawful.” ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam said that “Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and the regime associated with them, have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law.”
To arrive at such conclusion, the ICJ must believe that Jordan is Palestine.
The “West Bank and East Jerusalem” were captured in a defensive war that Israel fought after Jordan (Transjordan at the time) attacked it from those lands in 1967. TransJordan had annexed those lands in April 1950 after it fought a war to destroy the nascent Jewish State. Only Britain, Pakistan and Iraq recognized that annexation.
It would appear that the ICJ has now recognized that annexation as well.
The San Remo Conference of April 1920 set the outline for carving up the defeated Ottoman Empire into a number of mandates, including the Mandate of Palestine which covered today’s Israel, Gaza, West Bank and Jordan. According to the British Mandate which took effect in July 1922, Britain had the right to separate Mandate Palestine into two areas: one for the Jews west of the Jordan River and one area east of the river, according to Article 25. It did so on May 23, 1925 in the area that became Trans-Jordan. Trans-jordan declared its independence on May 25, 1946.
Britain was having difficulty dealing with the eastern Palestinian Mandate and turned to the United Nations for assistance. In November 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition the remaining eastern Palestine into a Jewish State and and Arab State, with the area of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem to be held by the United Nations in a Corpus Separatum, an international zone.
UN’s plan for an internationally-controlled “Corpus Separatum” including Greater Bethlehem and Jerusalem
The UNGA and the Jews accepted the planned division but the Arabs rejected it. When Britain left the region in May 1948 and the Jews declared a new State of Israel, the Arab world attacked. At the end of the war, Transjordan seized the area that became known as the “West Bank”, the eastern part of Jerusalem and all of greater Bethlehem. Israel took the western part of Jerusalem. Transjordan ethnically cleansed its annexed lands of all Jews and gave citizenship to everyone who lived in those lands in 1954, except if they were Jews (Article 3).
“Corpus Separatum” in purple as divided between Israel (shaded grey) and Trans-Jordan (in white)
Palestine did not exist as a distinct country pre-1948, but was a subset of Greater Syria as part of the Ottoman Empire until 1917, and then under British rule. Under the British, the land was separated into a portion west of the Jordan River set up to be a reestablished Jewish homeland, and east of Jordan River to be Transjordan. After the Israeli war of independence, there was still no “Palestine” but an expanded Jordan which seized the western shores of the Jordan River which were to be part of the Jewish homeland, and eastern Jerusalem which was designated to be an international city.
Whether during the Ottoman Empire, British Mandate, or during Israeli and Jordanian rule, there was never a country called Palestine. Further, “East Jerusalem” a fragment of the city which existed only during 18 years from 1949-1967 under Jordanian rule, was never contemplated to be part of Palestine in any formulation.
Israel fought a defensive war with Transjordan in 1948-9 and then again in 1967 in land that was specifically designated in the San Remo Conference and the British Mandate to be an integral part of the Jewish homeland. In order to consider the “West Bank and East Jerusalem” to be “occupied” and “illegal”, one would have to declare that:
the British mandate to have been illegal
the annexation of the seized land west of the Jordan River by Transjordan in 1949 to be legal
Jordan’s ethnic cleansing of Jews from those lands and barring them from citizenship to be legal
Jordan to be Palestine
In no other configuration could the ICJ conclude that Israeli Jews living in eastern Jerusalem is illegal and should be expelled.
The ICJ ruling is revisionist history and deeply antisemitic. It shows the moral rot of the United Nations which still has “Zionism is racism” in its lifeblood.
Incumbent Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York’s 16th District is so deeply unpopular that almost every single local Democratic committee has come out in support of his popular opponent in the Democratic primary, Westchester County Executive George Latimer. Bowman’s histrionics, lies, hypocrisy and race-baiting have long made him unpopular among his constituents.
Bowman has continued to ratchet up his insanity, and is now calling his opponent(s) ‘the devil.’
I kid you not.
In an April 6 X/tweet he was proud to post as he walked the streets of Westchester, Bowman screamed at full volume (0:33) “Always remember this. The devil’s a liar!! And will always be a liar!”
Is Bowman accusing mild-mannered, hard-working, progressive Latimer of being the devil? The thousands of people backing Latimer?
Jamaal Bowman is proving every day that he is an unhinged madman who should be removed from public office – and away from children – as quickly as possible. Volunteer and donate to George Latimer here.
First One Through 