Some far-left extremists have taken up the cause of Palestinian Arabs under the framework of being anti-colonialist, falsely believing that Jews have no history or connection to the land of Israel.
The bold lie is just the opening problem. They also protest blanketed in hypocrisy.
While standing firmly with Hispanic immigrants coming to the United States, the alt-left radicals demand that Jews “go back” to the concentration camps in Poland. As they demand full rights for gay people, they side with Gazans who execute homosexuals.
One such gay Palestinian was Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh. He was granted asylum in Israel – along with roughly 90 other Palestinian homosexuals – because he correctly feared for his life among Palestinian Arabs. One year before Gazans raped and massacred over 1,000 people in Israel, Palestinian Arabs decapitated Ahmad and dumped his torso on the streets of Hebron. The killers took a video of the murder and shared it on social media, much as they did with the butchering of Israelis one year later.
Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, 25, decapitated by Palestinian Arabs because he was gay
There is a sick evil ideology amongst Gazans who want to kill Jews, murder those who sell land to Jews, behead gay people, and stone people who convert from Islam. Yet the alt-left looks away from the Palestinians’ jihadi manifesto and shouts their support for those who despise everything in which they believe.
Well not everything. Palestinians and the alt-left both agree on death to Israel and death to America.
Many commentators about the 2023-4 Hamas-Israeli War quote body counts to not simply frame and update the situation but to drive emotions and policy. While it is true that every civilian death is a tragedy, using statistics distracts from the core problem.
And it’s intentional.
Mainstream media and pro-Palestinian voices use Hamas-fed figures of Gaza’s dead and injured to make the claim that Israel is committing “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” of the enclave. Pro-Palestinian lawmakers compare the roughly 1,200 people in Israel killed to the much larger number of Gazans. They append the figures of the hundred-plus Israelis held in Gaza with finger-pointing to thousands of prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Yet there is no mention of the qualitative chasm between the perpetrators.
Gazans invaded Israeli homes in the early morning and pulled women in their pajamas outside to be raped and mutilated. Members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad burned families alive. They spent hours going house-to-house to butcher and slaughter children and the elderly. Fellow Palestinians celebrate and applaud those actions, and their leaders have promised to commit the atrocities again-and-again.
Meanwhile the Israelis simply want to bring their hostages home and the perpetrators to justice. The Jewish State wants the fighting to end quickly with as few casualties as possible to achieve their aims, while the goal of Palestinian terrorists is the death or expulsion of over 7 million Jews.
And people are deliberately silent about these critical facts when they discuss the war, all in an effort to shield Hamas and its aims to destroy the Jewish State.
Palestinians take back the dead body of an Israeli woman to parade through the cheering streets of Gaza
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) just spoke about the evil ideology of Hamas at a UN Watch panel and opened (0:53) with a quote from the prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials saying “‘The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish are so calculated, so malignant, so devastating, that we cannot tolerate them being ignored, because we cannot survive them being repeated.‘ Those same words should be said about October 7th.”
The number of dead on each side of the conflict has nothing to do with the disproportionate intentions of each side. Knowing this full well, pro-Palestinian activists ignore or deny the barbarism of Gazans and only repeat figures as a way to shield Hamas.
All decent people want the violence to stop but it can only end when Palestinians are freed of their toxic ideology seeking the death of Jews and destruction of the Jewish State.
Sunday morning is a time for protests in Barcelona, Spain. Advocates for Peru took their customary spot on top of La Rambla. About ten people listened to a woman yelling into a megaphone.
Just ahead of the small gathering were thirty people protesting Russia’s war on Ukraine. They held placards and then marched together through Catalunya square of people feeding pigeons.
Further ahead were 2,000 people marching with Palestinian flags down the main street of Pg. de Gracia. Led by a ten people wearing kaffiyehs on a truck, they marched with signs calling to “Free Palestine” and “Boycott Israel.”
Thousands marched for Palestinians in Barcelona, Spain on February 25, 2024 (photo: First One Through)
Many of the marchers wore kaffiyehs and held signs “it did not start with Hamas.” They chanted in Spanish about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blamed the United States for “Genocide.”
There were no counter-protestors.
The Jews of Spain have long since been vanquished. Once the greatest center of Jewry in the 1400s, Spain is amongst the dozens of countries which now have fewer than 25,000 Jews. By way of comparison, there are 27 cities in the United States with over 25,000 Jews.
But Muslims have returned to Spain. After the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War brought thousands of Muslim refugees and immigrants to Europe, many have once again settled in the Iberian peninsula.
Consequently, the street narrative – populated by many local Catholics – was neither nuanced nor balanced. There was no mention of the Israeli hostages or Hamas burning families alive. No demand for the Hamas rapists to face justice. Just for Israel to be replaced “from the River to the Sea.”
Pro Palestinian protestors in Barcelona
Catholic religious fanaticism routed Jews from Europe 500 years ago. Today, Muslim jihadi extremism is attempting to do the same in both Europe and the land of Israel.
There used to be jokes about how to handle one’s racist uncle during the holidays. Now the question is how to deal with a person’s antisemitic niece.
While many older cisgender White men continue to be challenged by the changing nature of America, a large percentage of women aged 18-34 (and under 24 in particular) have a hatred for Jews that would make Nazis blush.
The results from the December Harvard/Harris poll about views of Israel and Hamas segmented by age were shocking. While well over 90% of people over 55 viewed the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion and slaughter in Israel as an act of terrorism, only slightly more than 70% of the 18-34 cohort believed the killing of 1,200 people to be terrorism. An estimated 90% of people over 55 thought there was no justification for the Hamas attack, but 60% of people 18-24 thought the massacre was justified.
Young people are evenly split on supporting Hamas and Israel, while almost every older person supports Israel. After the October 7 attack, 76% of 18-24 year-olds thought Hamas is a rational actor with whom Israel can negotiate while 87% of those over 65 believe Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Consequently, 84% of seniors oppose a ceasefire now that would leave Hamas in place while 67% of the youth think a ceasefire should happen immediately and leave Hamas intact.
In the aftermath of the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust, a majority of 51% of 18-24 year-olds think Israel should be dissolved and handed to Hamas and the Palestinians. Only 4% of those over 65 hold such views, with 71% preferring two states and 25% supporting Palestinians moving into neighboring Arab countries.
Lastly, the poll touched on gender-related violence. Two-thirds of seniors believe that human rights groups did not adequately condemn the rape of Israeli women, while 80% of those 18-24 thought that women’s rights organizations condemned Hamas sufficiently.
These findings confirm a January 2023 ADL poll which found “Young adults have more anti-Israel sentiment than older generations.”
The age divide is much the same regarding antisemitism in the United States.
An estimated 90% of people over 65 years old think that Jews face harassment on college campuses which drops to about two-thirds for 18-34 year-olds. Much of that disparity seems to do with whether words constitute harassment, as 92% of people over 65 think that calling for the genocide of Jews should be against university rules, while 53% of people 18-24 think students should be free to call for the genocide of Jews.
In addition to penalizing particular speech, one of the drivers seems to be driven by ideology. Roughly 81% of people over 65 oppose the notion that people should be viewed through the lens of White oppressors and non-White oppressed classes of people, while 79% of 18-24 year-olds support the ideology. Among those over 65, 91% believe that Jews should not fall into the White oppressor class while 67% of 18-24 year-olds believe Jews should be in the oppressor class.
What has driven the enormous disparity of opinions in which young people side with terrorists who slaughter Jews? What drives so many 18 to 24 year-olds to be so anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist?
A few ideas to review including a post-9/11 world, indoctrination in schools, race, social media and human rights groups.
Post-9/11 World
Americans who were adults in 2000 and 2001 can easily remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the continued heinous killing of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs from 2000 to 2004. The clarity about the jihadi extremists perpetrating the disgusting murders was apparent to all, so the support for the United States and Israel responding to the attacks was wide and deep.
For young people who do not remember the attacks but only the consequences – America’s 20-year long war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli Security Barrier which was put up to stop the flow of Palestinian Arab terrorists – the cause-and-effect is now inverted. Rather than see the Security Barrier as the effective reaction to jihadi terrorism, it is viewed as an obstacle to coexistence. Rather than appreciate the lack of mass casualty attacks in the U.S. over the past two decades, young people question why America fought wars abroad for so long.
Young people have come to believe that western powers are “imperialist” and wage wars to subjugate others. They have internalize the Iranian narrative of the US and Israel being “big Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively, aggressively fighting Muslims and people of color for no reason.
When the 2014 Gaza War concluded around the same time as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, the SJP chapters started to align themselves with the Black community in an effort of allyship. It created narratives of “Gaza to Detroit” and “Ferguson to Palestine” as if the two have anything remotely in common.
Muslims claimed it did – and latched onto the oppressor/oppressed narrative which has now become university doctrine over the past decade. Teacher union bosses pushed the notion into lower schools as well, that Jews should be seen as part of the elite “ownership class” who try to keep others down.
Coupled with this incorrect portrayal of American Jews as powerful is the mischaracterization of Israel as a European colonial project. In university departments focused on decolonization, Israel is being cast as a racist state which must be dismantled. There is no subtle debate about Israel/Palestine for young people; they have been taught that Jews are not indigenous to Israel and “stole” Palestinian land.
As toxic ideologies like this inevitably metastasize, the calls to actively be “anti-racist” compelled students to become vocal anti-Zionists. Elective courses on “anti-racism” in California universities soon became mandatory in high schools, infecting the minds of tens of thousands.
While older Americans were spared this indoctrination, many Americans under 30 have been schooled in antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
UN and Human Rights Groups Slander
Universities celebrated when Amnesty International published a report in February 2022 calling Israel an “apartheid” state. It gave credibility to anti-Zionists who had long defamed Israel at will – like The New York Times – using a third party’s definition rather than state personal bias.
The Obama Administration’s last middle finger to Israel as it departed was allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan, including in Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem. While older people may recall that Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, younger people have grown up where Jews living in Jerusalem is an act of evil colonization.
Racial Overview of Youth
Today’s youth is much more multi-ethnic than older generations.
America’s youth has many more non-White people while older Americans are mostly White. According to Pew Research, the most common age for Whites was 58 in 2019, and a much younger 29 for Asians, 27 for Blacks and 11 for Hispanics.
Among 70 year-olds, there are about 2.5 million White people but not even 1 million non-White people. However, among 20 year-olds, there are roughly 2.3 million White people and only slightly fewer, 2.1 million non-Whites, roughly an even split.
The multi-ethnic youth have come to see their White Jewish peers as part of the “White oppressor” class. They incorrectly assume that Israeli Jews are mostly White, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, White Ashkenazi Jews make up only one-third of the Israeli population.
Race In Colleges
The race of college students varies by the type of school. Overall, 42.3% of students are White, 17.4% Hispanic, 10.6% Black, 5.8% Asian according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The figures change dramatically when considering the type of school and degree.
At private, nonprofit four-year universities, 47% of students were white and 33% of students were Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). A similar mix was found at public four-year schools where 46% of students were white, 38% were BIPOC. Shorter associate degrees attracted more minorities, with private two-year schools, 38% of students were white, 44% were BIPOC and public two-year schools, 29% of students were white, 42% were BIPOC.
More people are opting to not attend colleges, viewing them as expensive and not worth the time or investment. White enrollment declined the most from 2018 to 2022, dropping by 17.4%, while Black and Hispanic enrollment declined by 13.6% and 3.6%, respectively. Men are skipping universities in greater numbers than women, with women now accounting for 8.3 million students compared to 6.1 million men.
Despite women and minorities making up a greater share of college students, the professors are still mostly white, with White men making up 39% of all faculty and White women, 35%.
While White people make up a plurality of four-year degree programs, the schools have made very direct actions to change their faculty and curricula. They have implemented DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which are getting a lot of attention after the resignation of Harvard’s Black female president who failed to clearly condemn antisemitism at a congressional hearing.
Universities are not simply deploying indoctrinating students in a new socialist ideology compared to past generations; they are preaching to a more muti-ethnic population who are embracing the theology.
Social Media
The socialist antisemitic educational system deserves part of the blame but social media has fostered the toxicity as well.
While smartphones came to the world in 2008, the social media phenomenon on phones really took off from 2010 to 2015. Young people began to rely on news from influencers they followed (think sports stars, models, entertainers) rather than on professional news outlets. Young people fled to these idiots who offered opinions rather than facts, on platforms that pushed engagement via extremism rather than nuanced debate.
People like Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and Bella Hadid have many more people reading their drivel than CNN or the Wall Street Journal, especially young people. The youth get to enjoy the thrill of interacting with their stars rather than sit passively taking in boring news. Instagram became the simplest (fewest words) and most popular social media platform for young people while older Americans barely touched it.
And here also, race plays a part.
According to a May 2020 PRRI report, “young adults (ages 18-29) are notably more likely to use social media frequently than other age groups. Nearly half of young Americans (47%) report using social media sources frequently, compared to one in four (25%) Americans ages 30-49, about one in ten (11%) Americans ages 50-64, and only 3% of senior Americans (ages 65 and older).” It added that “Hispanic Americans (30%) are substantially more likely than white Americans (19%) and black Americans (19%) to be frequent social media user.”
According to Statista, Blacks are as likely as Hispanics to be active on social media, both much more than Whites. Daily use of social media is 46% for Blacks, 44% for Hispanics and only 34% for Whites. The gap in never-users shows the same contrast with only 18% of both Blacks and Hispanics never using social media and 30% of Whites never using it. So while 2.5 times as many Blacks and Hispanics use social media daily compared to never users, the numbers are almost the same for Whites.
So while over 70% of older Americans are White and not active on social media (and more inclined to use Facebook), the younger generation is almost 50/50 White/non-White and active on Instagram.
The Chinese company Tik Tok has a similar pattern. Roughly half of viewers are under 29 years old and 57% of all viewers are female. Almost no one over 55 uses the platform. Further, 80% of the content is made by people under 24 years old.
While the United States has the most viewers, it is followed immediately by Indonesia, Brazil and Russia. Almost all of the countries where the platform has the highest penetration are Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, followed by Thailand, Qatar and Malaysia.
Antisemitism in Young People / Non-Whites
Aggregating this information leads to a real divide among older and younger Americans. Those 65 and over tend to be White, remember 9/11 and the Second Intifada, get their news from newspapers made in western countries and went to work believing in meritocracy. That’s in sharp contrast to Americans 18-24 who are are as likely to be non-White as White; have no recollection of 9/11, just the War on Terror; get their news from social media stars and very young people alongside the Muslim world and Russia; and receive an education that meritocracy is a myth and that they live under the thumb of a White patriarchy which imposes its imperialist whims on the Global South from where many of the youths’ ancestors originated.
Young people don’t comprehend that Jews were active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and view Jews as part of the White elite. They don’t believe the FBI Hate Crime reports that Jews are the most targeted group of hate crimes, and they hold antisemitic views that Jews and Zionists are deeply racist who only care about money, power and themselves.
Older Americans are relatively homogenous and see a disappointing new generation which hates America and its ally Israel. They watch young people loudly cheering the mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, and call the young socialists and jihadists out as antisemites. For their part, the young see the older generation as impossibly out-of-touch White racists, unwilling to let the multi-ethnic future take the reigns of power.
Jews know math and their impossibly small numbers, and turn to the government and cling to law enforcement to protect them from the percolating tidal wave of hate.
After the heinous butchering, raping and slaughtering of 1,200 people in Israel, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres did not call for Hamas to be brought to justice nor did he lambast Muslim extremism. Instead, he called for Israel to use “maximum restraint” against the killers. It seemed bizarre to excuse mass terrorism but the rationale soon became clear.
Just last week, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths was more explicit about excusing Hamas’s atrocities and said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
The UN is correct at some level: Hamas is a popular Palestinian political party which was elected to 58% of the Palestinian parliament in 2006. It has had complete rule over Gaza since 2007. So it is indeed a political group. It is also a terrorist group and a deeply antisemitic group, but the UN refuses to acknowledge those two plain facts.
That is because the United Nations has long tried to distance the idea of “terrorism” and “Islamic extremism,” which are both at the heart of Hamas’s evil ideology.
On March 17, 2016, the then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon addressed the UN Human Rights Council about a “Plan of Action to Prevent Violent Extremism.” At the event, the then-UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Kate Gilmore said that “selective application of the term “violent extremism” only to Muslim believers reinforces intolerance and discrimination.”
UN Secretary General visits Gaza in 2010, even though the region was not a UN member state, and it was ruled by Hamas, a terrorist Group (Photo: Reuters)
At least in regards to Islamic extremists. The media and United Nations talk about “Israeli settler extremism” and “right-wing Israeli government,” all of the time but whitewash the brutal attacks committed by Islamic fanatics.
US Politicians And NGOs
Aggravating this horrible situation, people attempt to smear people discussing terrorism and vicious antisemitism of jihadi radicals, as “Islamophobes.” Rep. Ilhan Omar made several comments which were widely viewed as antisemitic in her first weeks in office and then inverted the perpetrator-and-victim saying, “what I am fearful of is that because [Rep.] Rashida [Tlaib] and I are Muslim, that a lot of Jewish colleagues, a lot of our Jewish constituents, a lot of our allies, go to thinking that everything we say about Israel, to be anti-Semitic, because we are Muslim.”
Years later in 2024, when Congress passed a resolution condemning Hamas’s mass raping and mutilation of Jewish women, Rep. Tlaib refused to join civilized society and simply voted ‘present.’ The sadism of the emasculated Palestinian men was absolved by a sitting elected American official.
Tlaib’s sponsors like the DSA say much the same. The Democratic Socialists of America said that every Israeli Jew is fair game for annihilation by “resistance groups” in the months before the October 7 massacre. CAIR’s Zahara Billoo clearly called all Jews are the “enemy.” The “Mapping Project” in Massachusetts created by proponents of boycotting Israel, tried to make the targeting of Jews easy by providing names and addresses of Jewish organizations.
Notorious antisemite Rep. Rashida Tlaib being embraced by censured Rep. Jamaal Bowman (photo: AP)
The Arts and Media
The art world found its muse in Palestinian jihadists.
John Adams composed an opera called “The Death of Klinghoffer,” with arias about Palestinian terrorists who killed an elderly wheelchair-bound American Jew and threw him off a ship. The New York Times said the Metropolitan Opera’s general manager, Peter Gelb, said that the composer “John Adams said that in composing ‘The Death of Klinghoffer’ he tried to understand the hijackers and their motivations, and to look for humanity in the terrorists.” The Times went on to call the opera a “masterpiece.”
The media world’s empathy and shield for non-Palestinian jihadists extends to those who murder Jews around the world.
In 2008, ten Pakistani men from the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba terrorist group entered Mumbai, India and started slaughtering people. After killing dozens of people at a train station and luxury hotel, the terrorists descended on a small Jewish community center run by a Chabad rabbi. The terrorists killed the rabbi and his pregnant wife along with others at the facility. At no point in the storyline did CNN convey that the Pakistani men were Muslim and that they belonged to a radical jihadi group.
In 2015, four radical Muslim men killed people at the publishing offices of the magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, and then entered a kosher supermarket to kill more Jews. While CNN mentioned that the terrorists were upset at Charlie Hebdo for printing a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, it never wrote that the killers were jihadi extremists.
The problem is not limited to The New York Times and CNN. Reuters avoids calling Hamas a terrorist group in its articles while comfortably doing so for other terrorist organizations.
The jihadists and socialists have already entered the final phase of their war against the Jews. The Four Step Battle Plan started with 1) Denying the Enemy Rights and Legitimacy; 2) Gathering Masses to the Cause; 3) Removing the Enemy’s Defenses; and 4) Assembling the Armies for the Battle. They are now bringing the world into phase 2 at the International Court of Justice, to advance quickly to phase 3, to abandon the Jewish State and global Jewry.
When the United Nations says aloud what radical socialists and jihadists have argued for years, that Hamas is not an antisemitic jihadi terrorist group but a legitimate political actor, it is time to ring the alarm bells. Global “legitimate” actors are now backing Hamas and its supporters who attack Jews around the world, smearing Jews as supporters of an apartheid, colonizing Zionist regime, consequently not victims but fair targets for assault.
For the last few hundred years, Jews inserted three lines after their penultimate prayer in their daily services. Right after Aleinu and before the final mourner’s Kaddish, a sentence from Proverbs and two from Isaiah are found:
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.
Al-Tirah
Roots Of Al Tira Prayer
Leaving synagogue was often a traumatic affair when Jews were scattered around the world. Inside of the synagogue, Jews were both together and felt connected to God; outside was a starkly different reality. Sometimes the local non-Jews would attack the Jews with pogroms and edicts, and at other times, Jews would be fortunate to find salvation.
Today, very few congregations actually recite the prayer despite its inclusion in prayer books.
I suggest that perhaps it is now time for all congregations to begin saying it.
Israel has responded to the Palestinian barbarity. It has killed and injured roughly one-third of the political-terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and has leveled much of the terrorist enclave. Hamas has claimed that nearly 30,000 Gazans have been killed at this point, with children accounting for over one-third.
On top of the frozen state of terror of Jews from the ongoing antisemitic attacks since October 7 is the sadness of watching the destruction of Gaza. Why did Hamas do this and why does the evil group insist that Israeli forces continue to pound Gaza rather than release the hostages and surrender the terrorists?
Hamas has an evil and twisted ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam that demands the destruction of the Jewish state, believing its presence is an embarrassment for Muslims. As it states in its foundational charter “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time… In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.”
For its part, Judaism has a different set of beliefs that stretches back thousands of years before the Islamic prophet Mohammed was born. It urges calm in the face of fear.
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. (Proverbs 3:25)
Jews are carrying both the shock of October 7 in Israel and the sickening reaction of Hamas’s fans around the world. They are simultaneously witnessing the destruction of that enemy. It’s a lot to process – the “sudden fear” and the “desolation of the wicked” – and has led many Jews and Zionists to huddle together in synagogue, and hide symbols of being Jewish when they go outside.
Jewish Calendar And Numbers
The Jewish year 5784 is a Jewish leap year which adds another month, and the year 2024 in the secular calendar is also a leap year which adds a single day. Both the Jewish calendar and the secular calendars add the time in the winter to “correct” the calendar for the upcoming spring.
We are now in the first of two months of Adar. Jewish tradition holds that Adar is a month of happiness and when Jews defeated their mortal enemies who attacked the weakest Jews. The double month of Adar is meant as a moment of double celebration.
This year of 5784 is the eighth year of the 19-year Metonic cycle which marks leap years on the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth year. Just as 2024 is the eighth year in the cycle, so was 1967, when Israel reunified Jerusalem, as was 1948, the year that the Jewish State was reborn. From 1948 to 1967 was one Metonic cycle and from 1967 to 2024 were three full cycles.
Numbers have significance in Judaism. One is connected to the singularity of God in the Jewish monotheistic faith. Three symbolizes Judaism’s founding fathers, the sections of the Shema prayer, three holidays of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the three groups of Jews.
Eight is also meaningful. Beyond the day that Jewish males are circumcised to join the Jewish nation, tradition is that eight connects man in the natural to the supernatural world. While God made the world in seven days and had seven branches on the menorah in the holy Temple, eight is the step beyond. The seven branch menorah was for the Temple, while Jews light an eight branch menorah in their homes and synagogues today to connect to the miracle.
Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. (Isaiah 8:10)
These months of Adar seem like important months to recite the oft-skipped prayer. A time to mark the third complete leap year cycle of Jewish control Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It is a time to remember that God is with us and he is the sole source of fear.
Amalek And Arms Aloft Together
When the Jewish people left slavery in Egypt they were attacked by the nation of Amalek. During the battle, Jews looked up to Moses who held his arms pointing to the sky with the assistance of Aaron and Hur who held the elderly prophet’s arms. The Jews were empowered when they saw Moses praying to God to vanquish the enemy, and prevailed as God enabled their success.
And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4)
Today, there is no Jewish leader like Moses to pray on behalf of the jews, and every Jew takes their own prayer book to talk to God. They gather in minyanim around the world to pray for Jewish soldiers fighting with weapons, and Jewish lay leaders who fight against Hamas’s supporters in governments, college campuses and everywhere.
Let us all recite Al Tirah together, holding the hands of the people to our right and left, and pray for God to deliver success in defeating all of our foes.
People are trying to figure out what to do with UNRWA, the troubled United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. The organization has long perpetuated the Arab-Israeli conflict, fomenting hatred for Jews in its schools, and promising millions of Arabs that their future is in Israeli towns and villages where grandparents who had wished for the destruction of the Jewish State once lived.
The temporary agency is funded by voluntary contributions from UN member states, so can be dissolved very quickly, as was always intended. The issue at the moment is that the hospitals and schools still need to operate, with or without the existence of UNRWA. The five regions where UNRWA operates – Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon – all have different dynamics, politics and infrastructure, and the future will be different for each.
The best solution is for UNRWA to be dissolved and its personnel and infrastructure to be handed to proper authorities: operations in Lebanon and Syria would shift to the UNHCR, the UN Refugee agency; Jordanian operations to the government of Jordan; and operations in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinian Authority, in a staged process.
Syria and Lebanon to UNHCR
There are approximately 581,000 descendants of 1948 Palestinian Arabs in Syria being cared for by UNRWA in 2022, and another 93,000 people for whom the agency also gives free services. The numbers are 487,000 and 70,000 in Lebanon for refugee descendants and other wards, respectively. All of them have been denied citizenship by their host countries.
These people and the associated infrastructure should be handed over immediately to UNHCR which cares for over 89 million people as of 2022. UNHCR would try to settle the 1.23 million people either in those host countries or find them citizenship elsewhere, just as it does with millions of other stateless people.
Jordan
Jordan was part of the original Palestine Mandate of 1922, and England separated the land east of the Jordan River to become a new country known as Transjordan in 1923. After Transjordan attacked Israel at its founding and illegally seized the eastern part of what remained of Palestine, it illegally annexed that land and renamed itself “Jordan.” It ethnically cleansed all Jews from the region, including eastern Jerusalem, and granted citizenship to everyone in 1954, as they long as they weren’t Jewish (Nationality Law Article 3).
Not surprisingly with such deep history with the land “between the River and the Sea,” roughly half of Jordan is “Palestinian”, approximately 2.6 million people including Queen Rania. These “UNRWA refugees” in Jordan have Jordanian citizenship and have zero need to collect global charity under the false notion that they are stateless and lack self-determination.
The schools and hospitals should be transferred to the government of Jordan’s control immediately. Some countries may want to continue to voluntarily contribute to the Jordanian king for some time to help absorb the hit to the country’s budget, and then slowly wean the king from the global money teat.
West Bank to the Palestinian Authority
Palestinians declared a state in 1988, and most non-western countries have recognized its independence. It is ruled by the Palestinian Authority, which elected a president from the Fatah Party in 2005 and a parliament in 2006 with a majority from Hamas.
The PA operates from the West Bank city of Ramallah and has responsibility for the vast majority of Palestinian Arabs living in the West Bank. The Authority is viewed as weak and corrupt by Palestinians and others. It supplies money to terrorists and their families in a program alternatively called a Martyrs’ Fund / Pay-to-Slay program, which is popular amongst Palestinians and detested by civil societies for directly supporting terror. The PA has failed on all fronts, not being able to show the ability to govern internally nor to advance a future of coexistence with the Jewish State.
Alas, it’s much better than the alternative Hamas which has ruled in Gaza since 2007 when it seized control of the region from the PA. Perhaps with greater focus on good governance with western oversight, the PA can be reformed.
Handing the 96 schools and 43 health facilities operating in the West Bank to the PA should happen immediately. Funding for the operations should cover only six to nine months and a cohort of countries led by the United States, which is UNRWA’s principle benefactor, should use the time to stabilize the transition. That includes ensuring that no hatred for Jews or teaching about the destruction of Israel is found anywhere in the facilities or educational materials.
Continued funding for the schools and hospitals after the initial transition period should be captured under the United States Taylor Force Act. Just as the PA is denied getting any US monies as long as it pays terrorist salaries in the Pay-to-Slay program, it would also lose funding that used to come through UNRWA for the schools and hospitals. The historic backdoor circumventing American laws would be sealed closed, and the US and PA would need to work together to ensure that supporting terrorism comes to a definitive end for any monetary support to come to the PA.
Gaza, At Some Point, to the Palestinian Authority
While UNRWA’s West Bank operations should move to the PA immediately, UNRWA in Gaza is a different story. Not only must the PA prove it can absorb the many facilities and cleanse them of their toxic hatred, the PA will be tested as to whether it can take control of Gaza after 17 years of Hamas rule.
Hamas’s complete rule of Gaza since 2007 brought the region complete destruction. It focused all of its energies on building a war infrastructure to destroy the Jewish State next door, rather than build a functioning economy and society. It left the schools and hospitals for the world to fund and run, so cared little about letting them get destroyed while its leaders hid like cowards underground.
Neither Hamas nor the PA can take over the rebuilding of the schools and health care facilities. Over the next several years, another global cohort, perhaps similar to the one easing the UNRWA transition in the West Bank, should be tasked with building institutions anew. Basic humanitarian values and rights must be incorporated into the very foundations to chart a path for a future when the PA may be able to take over Gaza as well as the new former-UNRWA infrastructure.
UNRWA camp with a keyhole and key on top symbolizing the false promise that through UNRWA, Palestinian Arabs will get to move into homes in Israel
These actions, if properly executed, should empower and moderate a new Palestinian Authority which can take over Gaza at some point, and ultimately negotiate peace with Israel.
Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group has been called many things since its barbaric massacre on October 7. Due to the grotesque nature of the mass rape, slaughter and mutilation of people, people quickly thought of Nazis, as the killing of 1,200 Jews on a single day was the worst massacre since the Holocaust and committed with an intent to humiliate and torture Jews.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that “The brutality of Hamas — this bloodthirstiness — brings to mind the worst — the worst rampages of ISIS,” and many government officials agreed. The radical jihadi group burned its enemies alive and broadcast it for the world to see as a recruiting tool, similar to the torching of Jewish families alive by Hamas fighters which they similarly broadcast.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Hamas to Amalek, the biblical foe that sought out the weakest members of the Children of the Exodus for attack and slaughter, much as Hamas raped women and butchered children. Lawyers from South Africa have incorrectly argued at the International Court of Justice that Netanyahu’s comparison showed that Israel has genocidal intent to kill every man, woman and child in Gaza. The biblical passage actually calls for eradicating the emotional scar that Amalek left in the Jewish people which can happen in different ways: for Amalek it was to destroy them; for Nazis it was to defeat them and then have them accept responsibility and repent for their actions.
Israel has good relations with Germany today.
Hamas resembles all three groups. It is a ruling government like the Nazis, democratically elected to 58% of parliament by Palestinians. It rules over territory, much like ISIS and has a radical jihadi philosophy about killing Jews. Like Amalek, Hamas specifically targeted the most vulnerable Jewish non-combatants.
The foundational charter of Hamas is a noxious screed of antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control with calls to slaughter Jews and destroy the Jewish State. A sample of the invective includes:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
“Moslems fight the Jews(killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time” (Article 13)
“In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)
“In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money” (Article 20)
“The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates…. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… fight with the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)
The evil philosophy of Hamas was laid out in its carefully constructed charter by dozens of people over months in the 1980s, Palestinians voted them to power in 2006 and widely support them post-October 7 according to many Palestinian polls.
The very word “Nazis” brings to mind the most evil and sadistic murderers. Over the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, it was used to mark the worst antisemitic and racist White people. “Hamas” has earned that loathsome dishonor, for the most heinous and vicious antisemitic jihadists of the 21st century.
White people preaching antisemitism today are called neo-Nazis and their actions against Jewish targets bring convictions in courts for hate crimes. So it must be with Hamas supporters (neo-Hamasites?) who attack Jews and Jewish targets with messages related to the annihilation of the Jewish State.
The United Nations has long been a terrible actor in the Israeli-Arab conflict, perpetuating the conflict through terrible policies and procedures. One of the worst offenses which contributed to the October 7 massacre and the current Gaza War was backing the “right of return” for millions of Arabs into Israel.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, services roughly 7.5 million people of which 6.7 million are registered as refugees, with another 763,000 on the global dole. The vast majority of the 7.5 million are descendants of people who used to live in Israel in 1947. Amongst these so-called “refugees,” approximately 1.8 million live in Gaza and 1.1 million in the West Bank, a total of 2.9 million, or 43 per cent of UNRWA “refugees” live inside of 1947 Palestine.
These 2.9 million have been told by the United Nations that they will get to move into Israel for the last 75 years, based on a single line in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948, that has long passed its expiration date. With that false promise, Gazans spend their time and money building a war infrastructure rather than an economy as they don’t imagine a future in their current neighborhood of historic Palestine, but in the Jewish State.
On January 23, 2024, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres may have laid the groundwork to finally end the dream of these 2.9 million Palestinians that their future homes will be in Israel.
In his remarks to the UN Security Council he said “The right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent State must be recognized by all. And any refusal to accept the two-State solution by any party must be firmly rejected. What is the alternative? How would a one-State solution look with such a large number of Palestinians inside without any real sense of freedom, rights and dignity? This would be inconceivable.”
The first part of Guterres’s comments is simply wrong. No state has a right to exist. None. Not Portugal, not China, not South Sudan, not Kurdistan. Individuals have a right to self-determination and there are many ways for that to be realized which do not create another Arab and Muslim country.
The second segment of his remarks, marked in bold above, is an important milestone for the UN. It is the first time Guterres essentially rejected the notion of Arabs swarming Israel – either in a one state solution or as part of a two-state solution in which 6.7 million Arab “refugees” enter the Jewish State.
Finally acknowledging that this will not happen, Guterres should make an unambiguous statement that there is no “right of return” for Arabs into Israel, a stale idea floated over 75 years ago in the midst of the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. In addition to such proclamation, he must follow up with actions to dismantle the “refugee” camps which dot Gaza and the West Bank, where UNRWA schools teach young Arabs that they will move into Israel and where UN facilities have keys above the portal to emphasize that the doorway for Palestinians to move into Israel is via the United Nations.
Entrance to Aida Refugee Camp (مخيم عايده) in Bethlehem with keyhole gateway and key on top to symbolize that UNRWA is the pathway for Palestinians to return to ancestors’ homes.
The United Nations finally said the obvious, that millions of Palestinian Arabs moving to Israel is “inconceivable.” It is time to explicitly state that there is no “right of return” and to dismantle the “temporary” refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank which have long served as incubators for extremism and terrorism.
Swag is commonly thought of as customized merchandise which people take from parties or conventions. The actual definition is illegally taken booty or loot.
Swag from Gaza comes in both varieties.
Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza are obviously confiscating weapons that they find throughout the territory. As Gaza is a densely-populated civilian area, these weapons of war are found in many homes, schools and mosques. Soldiers find many other items in those locations which they also bring back to Israel.
A favorite item are the Hamas headbands. These are found throughout Gazan homes, as the group which governs Gaza is very popular. Some Israelis bring these back as souvenirs. Israeli soldiers are reported to have taken Hamas patches and logos on other items as well.
Young Gazan child with Hamas headband, cool shades and a machine gun.
Hamas posters in UNRWA schools are also a favorite. Some are handed to the Israeli government along with school textbooks which call for the genocide of Jews to press the case for reform at the United Nations. Others are keepsakes to hang on the soldiers’ own walls when they come home, to remind them of the barbarity of Hamas.
Al-Qassam Brigades logo, the military wing of the Hamas movement
Many soldiers have reported seeing screensavers on computers of Adolf Hitler as well as his book “Mein Kampf” written in Arabic in people’s homes. Some of those things have found there way into Israel as well.
Palestinian Arabs also took swag from Israel: Jewish bodies.
Israeli soldier Cpl. Adir Tahar, 19, was decapitated by Palestinians on October 7 after he was killed in an explosion. His father found out from an interrogation of captured Hamas fighters that Arabs took his son’s severed head to Gaza and tried to sell if for $10,000.
Hamas also took many whole Jewish bodies to Gaza. The corpses were beaten and spat upon by dozens of Palestinians as the dead Jews were driven through the streets. It is unclear if the dead were marketed to the locals or held for ransom, as Hamas has said that they do not know the location of many hostages. Many were alive, some children to poke and prod. Grandparents and peace activists pulled from their homes. To shouts of “Allahu Akbar!“
Dead Israeli woman, killed by Hamas in a dance festival, being taken into Gaza
Israelis are bringing Hamas swag to Israel as evidence of the United Nations’ complicity in the war against Israel and reminder that the evil ideology extends well beyond 30,000 fighters. Meanwhile Hamas hauls Jews to Gaza – alive and dead, in whole or in parts – as a form of income and satisfaction.
There is a profound political deformity and moral depravity in Palestinian society today. When governments demand that Israel ignore both and discuss enabling a Palestinian state next door at this very moment in time while Jews are still trapped in captivity is a cruel form of psychological torture.
First One Through 