Due to Muslim Arab terrorism now going on in Israel during the month of Ramadan, the United States embassy has placed the Old City of Jerusalem on its restricted list.
The security alert from the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem was published on March 30, 2022 and stated:
Due to recent terrorist attacks in the area and potential security issues associated with the upcoming April 2022 holidays, U.S. government employees and their family members are restricted until further notice from entering the Old City of Jerusalem after dark (dusk to dawn) and on Fridays. Damascus, Herod’s, and Lions’ Gates are off limits as well.
U.S. citizens should take this into consideration when planning their own activities.
The question is whether the imposition of a no-go zone in the holy city of Jerusalem during Passover, Easter and Ramadan was because the United States does not trust Israeli security or in deference to Muslim sensitivities. Will the US embassy impose this restriction on American Muslims at the embassy as well, or just non-Muslims?
Terrorist attacks are happening all over Israel, including in Bnei Brak, Beersheva and Tel Aviv. Will the US put those cities on the no-go list as well? That’s highly doubtful as the U.S. focuses on religious tension – not terrorism – in the city considered holy to three faiths.
The United States embassy to Israel has bowed to Islamic demands to restrict its non-Muslim personnel from visiting the holy city of Jerusalem. One can imagine the administration demanding Israeli Jews to do the same in the future.
Israeli flag at the western wall of the Jewish Temple Mount
The pictures and stories coming out of Ukraine are horrible. The suffering of the people of Ukraine and the hands of Russian forces is hard to fathom – or is it?
Neighboring countries go to war all of the time. Before the invention of the airplane, it was basically the only way to wage war. Iran-Iraq was the typical format, not U.S.-Afghanistan. When Russia and the United States engaged in the “Cold War,” they mostly used adjacent proxy states.
Today, vulnerable countries at the edge of war are watching the Russian invasion in horror for the suffering of Ukrainian civilians, as well as for important lessons to be gleaned about their own situations.
Ethno-nationalism surpasses borders. Vladimir Putin of Russia claimed that Ukraine is not a valid country, as its people are actually Russian by identity, language and culture. Palestinian Arabs believe the same, as outlined in the opening of the Palestinian National Charter, “Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people; it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people are an integral part of the Arab nation.” Russia does not believe it is invading a distinct foreign entity but bringing its own people back into the fold, much as the Arab countries surrounding Israel thought (and think) nothing of invading the sovereign State of Israel. Everyone should only use the term ‘Israeli Arabs’ and not ‘Palestinian Citizens of Israel’, as the latter serves the aim of invasion.
The pretext of preventing ‘genocide’ convinces hordes of morons to back warfare. Putin claimed that Russian-speakers in Ukraine were being slaughtered in a “genocide” and was therefore coming to their aid. Arabs – and increasingly “human rights organizations”, the liberal media and the United Nations – are falsely alleging that Israel is committing a “genocide” of Palestinian Arabs and engaging in “ethnic cleansing,” despite the plain facts that the number of Arabs in Israel has grown at a faster pace than Israeli Jews and Arabs in surrounding countries. The Russian propaganda to rally its people against Ukraine is much the same as the insidious jihad of anti-Zionists who are preparing to wage economic, psychological and military warfare against the Jewish State. The vile libel must be fought aggressively.
Concession of a small amount of land is an invitation for more. When Russia invaded Crimea and took over part of Ukraine, the world barely uttered a protest, pleased that the bloodshed was minimal. The larger problem was that a dangerous lesson had been taught that even Ukraine did not believe in the sanctity of its borders and Russia could claim more on the same grounds. While Israel handed over lands in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority during the late 1990’s and then Gaza in 2005, as opposed to losing them in battle, the Palestinian Authority believes much like Russia that it should have more – whether the entirety of the West Bank or all of Israel.
A country cannot overly rely on security agreements and guarantees. In 1994, Ukraine signed the Budapest Moratorium – also executed by Russia, Britain, and the U.S. – in which Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for assurances of its territorial integrity. Not only did Russia not abide by the agreement in its invasion of Crimea, the U.S. and Britain did not come to the aid of Ukraine. Today, Israel may appreciate the statements from the United States that its commitments to the Jewish State’s security is “enduring and ironclad“, but Israel must fully plan and operate under the assumption it must be able to defend itself by itself.
Don’t have a capital city on the border. The Russian forces quickly penetrated deep into Ukrainian land early in the war. As the capital city of Kyiv is far from the border with Russia, the country has managed to survive the initial onslaught and continues to defend itself. Israel, a very small country surrounded by Arab Muslim countries, cannot allow its capital city of Jerusalem to sit on a border as well. Not only should the city never be divided again as it was for eighteen years 1949 to 1967, but Israel must secure many miles around the city as well.
Beware the Alter of Large Players. Russia’s size and clout are enabling it to get away with murder. As an enormous military and economic force, many countries are refusing to hold Russia to account. Israel is similarly surrounded by the vast Muslim Arab world, with much of it refusing to recognize its existence and some openly demanding Israel’s destruction. In that backdrop, Israel’s primary sponsor, the United States, is working with the Islamic Republic of Iran to maintain a semblance of a nuclear weapons program, even as Iran has threatened to destroy Israel. The situation threatens Israel existentially on one side and economically and psychologically on the other.
Russia is significantly larger than UkraineIsrael sits as a small dot in the vast Muslim world
Democracies are vulnerable to war when abutting dictatorships. For many years, the western world convinced itself that wars were only for authoritarian regimes. Wars in Africa and the Middle East were considered alien matters between tribal warlords. Intellectuals convinced themselves that a free people with a functioning democracy would simply vote out corrupt or ineffectual leaders and would embrace peace as has existed in Europe since World War II. Lost in that arithmetic is when a democracy abuts a dictatorship, as is the case with Ukraine and Russia. As it is for Israel and all of its neighbors.
There are unfortunately many similarities between the Ukrainians suffering at the hands of its Russian neighbor since 1994 on the one hand, and Israel’s treatment by its Muslim and Arabs neighbors since the reestablishment of the Jewish State, on the other.
In the rampant misinformation campaign that is propagated in the liberal media and anti-Israel universities, conflating Palestinian Arabs with the foreign terrorist organization Hamas is considered a sign of Islamophobia. In the same breath, those deluded souls will tell you that Israel is a racist European settler colonial regime.
The facts are clear that both statements are lies.
The last time the Palestinian Arabs held elections for their parliament was in 2006. The political-terrorist group Hamas won 76 of 132 seats, or 57.6%, trouncing Fatah which won 43 seats. According to a March 2022 poll, if presidential elections were held today, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh would win 54% to Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas getting 38%. If Abbas would not run, the winner would be convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti. Further, a majority (52%) of Palestinian Arabs support terrorism, which the poll termed “armed confrontation and intifada.” Two-thirds of Palestinians want Hamas and another terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, to be incorporated into the Palestinian Liberation Organization to “make it more representative of the Palestinian people.” This is apart from the 93% of Palestinian Arabs who are antisemitic.
In regards to Israel, it is the most diverse country in the Middle East. 73.9% of the country is Jewish, 21.1% are Arab (Muslim and Christian) and 5% are other groups including Ba’hai (a religion banned in several neighboring countries), Samaritans and others.
Among Jews, nearly half of the population is Brown and Black.
As of 2018, only 31.8% of Jews were Ashkenazi, of European heritage, and 12.4% were from the former USSR. That compares to 44.9% who are Mizrahi and 3.0% from Ethiopia. The balance (7.9%) are of mixed heritage.
Those figures mean that 32.7% of Israeli Jews are European, when combining all Ashkenazi and Jews from the former USSR.
Ethiopian Jewish woman praying at the Western Wall of the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel (photo: First One Through)
College campuses and the media are lying when they state that Hamas is not representative of the Palestinian people and that Israel is a colonial project of European Jews. The simple current facts are that over 50% of Palestinians support the terrorist groups of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, and less than one-third of Israelis are European Jews.
The dichotomy of the people in the Middle East came into sharp focus this week.
Israel advanced its peace process with a number of Arab and Muslim countries when it hosted Bahrain, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco in its Negev region. The foreign ministers met to discuss how to deal with the regional threat and nuclear aspirations of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the war between Russia and Ukraine, as well as ways of building economic and military ties with each other.
Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid al-Zayani, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Morocco’s Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita, and United Arab Emirates’ Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahyan, pose for a group photo following their Negev meeting in the Israeli kibbutz of Sde Boker on March 28, 2022.
The parties to the Abraham Accords were excited to come to the Jewish State to foster trust and trade, peace and prosperity.
On the other extreme, the promoters of violence and mayhem were busy killing people and celebrating the slaughter of innocents.
On March 22, an Israeli Bedouin killed four people in Negev city of Be’er Sheva. The murders were celebrated by fellow murderers:
The spokesperson for the political-terrorist group Hamas that leads the Palestinian parliament said “the crimes of the occupation are met only with heroic stabbing, ramming and shooting operations.“
Another Palestinian terrorist group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)said “the operation comes in the natural context of responding to the crimes of Zionist terrorism in the occupied Negev.“
On March 27, two Arab gunmen shot and killed two Israeli police officers in Hadera. The killings brought out the anti-Semites:
ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack and declared “This is for the apostate Jews to know that our promises will always reach them, Allah willing,” and added “We are coming to you with slaughter.“
PIJ said the killings were “an eloquent message from our people against attempts to break our will.“
On March 29, five Israelis were shot by a Palestinian terrorist in Bnei Brak, a community that has virtually no on serving in the military. The Palestinian blood lust continued to be extolled:
Hamas “blesses the heroic operation against the Zionist occupation soldiers in the so-called ‘Tel Aviv’ area, which led to the killing and wounding of a number of Zionist occupiers, and stresses that all the heroic operations carried out by our Palestinian people, in every inch of our occupied land, comes in the context of the natural and legitimate response to the terrorism of the occupation and its escalating crimes against our land, our people and our sanctities.“
Hamas openly called for the killing of Israeli Jews, even those who never serve in the army, and denies the existence of any part of Israel. Palestinian Arabs support this approach, with 54% saying they would vote Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh to the presidency over Mahmoud Abbas (38%), according to a poll done over the past two weeks. The same poll shows that 58% of Palestinians oppose a two state solution, and that 52% support armed attacks against Israel.
Palestinian cartoon promoting violence in the face of Arab countries bonding with Israel
While Israel convenes conferences to promote peace, Palestinians are engaged in and encouraging the slaughter of innocents. Each party in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has a clear mission, with only one party deserving any support.
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Palestinian Arabs have seemingly been successful at getting the Biden Administration to demand “equality” between the Israelis and Palestinians. It is unclear what that means.
In May 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden said “I believe the Palestinians and Israelis equally deserve to live safely and securely and to enjoy equal measures of freedom, prosperity and democracy.” A few days later, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken tweeted something similar “I underscored America’s ironclad commitment to Israel’s security, and we discussed the importance of promoting peace, security, and dignity for all.” For those who make a living parsing words of politicians who rehearse their sound bites, there was a bit to review.
Biden’s comments were focused on the people (Palestinians and Israelis) while Blinken focused on security for a country (Israel) and then rights for everyone (Palestinians and Israelis). Biden sought “equal measures” regarding “freedom, prosperity and democracy” while Blinken highlighted “peace, security and dignity for all” after giving preference to Israeli security. Biden’s “safely and securely” and “freedom and democracy” were likely meant to be used interchangeably with Blinken’s “peace, security”, but it is doubtful that Biden’s focus on “prosperity” was meant to equate to Blinken’s “dignity.”
Months later, Blinken leaned into “dignity” when he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in February 2022 when he said “Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve to live with equal measures of security, freedom, prosperity and crucially, dignity.” He introduced Biden’s focus on prosperity but sought to underscore his belief that dignity is crucial for both people.
In March 2022, when Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel and Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr came to the region, he “reiterated the Biden Administration’s philosophy that Israelis and Palestinians alike deserve to live safely and securely and enjoy equal measures of freedom, security, and prosperity.” Amr continued the administration’s emphasis on prosperity as a key goal but declined to mention “dignity.”
The various statements beg the question of what equal measures regarding freedom, security, prosperity and dignity, and whether each are just as important.
Freedom. One interpretation might mean the Palestinians should have freedom of movement for people and goods in and out of the terrorist enclave of Gaza. Is the U.S. pushing to end the blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt immediately, or only in context of a resolution to the conflict? Would such stand exist if the terrorist group of Hamas continues to rule the area?
Freedom could mean the right of self-determination. While one might belief based on the media that Palestinian Arabs have none, in reality, all Gazans have self-determination and the vast majority of Arabs in the West Bank (those living in Areas A and B) similarly have self-determination.
Security. Does the Biden Administration want the Palestinians to have an army like Israel? Since the Oslo Accords in the mid-1990s began a pathway towards Palestinian self-determination, Israelis held firm that any future Palestinian state could not have a standing army in the narrow strip of land abutting Israel. Is the Biden campaign pressuring Israel to change that position?
Prosperity. The United States gives Israel billions of dollars each year and has had a difficult time sending monies to the Palestinian Authority directly (it funnels monies to them indirectly via the United Nations) because the PA refuses to stop rewarding terrorism with “martyr payments” to terrorist families. Is Biden signaling that he will push congress to get rid of the laws which prohibit the promotion of Palestinian Arab terrorism and start sending the PA the same amount of money as the government invests in Israel?
Dignity. Israeli Jews lack the basic human rights to pray at their holiest location of the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Will the Biden Administration push to overturn the current status quo in exchange for Palestinians having a military?
The action plans may be underway.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides tweeted on March 16, 2022 about his excitement that more monies were flowing to Palestinians: “Pleased to see lots for Palestinians in the budget just signed by @POTUS Biden: $144 million increase (now $219 million) for Economic Support Funds, $40 million for security forces training in the WBank, and $50 million for 2nd year of the Nita Lowey MEPPA Fund,” a strange comment for the ambassador TO ISRAEL to comment on aid elsewhere.
Blinken is in Israel now and will talk about the Russia-Ukraine war, the refugees crisis and its impact on the region, Iran’s nuclear program and its threat towards the world, the emerging peace between Israel and various Arab countries stemming from the Abraham Accords, and the Palestinian Arab- Israel conflict. The administration’s pivot towards the Palestinians can be seen at 11:50 in the video, when Blinken said that he will meet with “Palestinians in East Jerusalem who are a critical part of the city’s vibrant and diverse civil society and underscore our work with Palestinian non-governmental government organizations.” Is Blinken saying that East Jerusalem is Palestinian and that “equality” further extends to splitting Israel’s capital?
The United States is pushing the notion of equality between Israel and the Palestinian Authority as an end-goal of negotiations. Will advocating for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount and a Palestinian army kill the peace process before it begins?
The war against the Jewish State began militarily at Israel’s inception, as the armies of five Arab nations invaded Israel in 1948 in a war to annihilate it. In June 1967, the Arab world attempted the same but failed spectacularly.
Since that time, the armed conflict by Muslim countries has continued with more modest ambitions, as the goal of destroying Israel is considered too remote a possibility, unless and until Iran obtains nuclear weapons. The violent attacks against Israel have mostly been about pestering and killing Jews to obtain concessions. The 1973 Yom Kippur war ushered in a willingness for Israel to hand the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt, and Palestinian Arabs believe that the Second Intifada War made Israel abandon the Gaza Strip. The various Hamas wars from Gaza since 2008 and the political-terrorist group’s kidnapping of Israelis, secured the release of thousands of fellow terrorists and other modest gains.
The failure to destroy Israel did not make the Muslim countries accept its existence. In fact, it has done its utmost to deny its existence.
Immediately after the 1967 Six Day War, the Arab League passed the Khartoum Resolution declaring a policy of ‘Three No’s’: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” For the Arabs, the Jewish State had a name but was to be ignored until the Arabs could prevail at destroying the foreign presence.
In the 1970’s, the Arab League enlisted allies to their cause. Leveraging their control of the oil markets, and with a former Nazi sitting as head of the United Nations, the Muslim and Arab countries got the world to pass UNGA Resolution 3379 in November 1975 that declared that “Zionism is a form of racism.” This was an attempt to deny Israel’s legitimacy broadly.
Meanwhile, faced with the impossibility of destroying Israel, the Arabs and Muslims went after Jewish “soft targets,” like plane and boat hijackings (Dawson’s Field in 1970, Rome and Vienna airport shootings in 1985, and Achille Lauro in 1985), as well as blowing up Jewish community centers (Argentina 1994) and synagogues (Turkey 1986). If people inside Israel were too difficult to kill, the Muslim world came for the Jews around the world.
While the ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution was ultimately thrown out in 1991 due to the efforts of the United States, it simmered as the Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1995 anticipated a peace deal in September 2000. Instead of finally accepting peace, the Palestinians launched the Second Intifada War which only subsided with the erection of Israel’s security barrier in 2004-5. That led to two new movements which are unfortunately thriving today: the demonization of the Jewish State and the BDS Movement (Boycott, Divest and Sanction), both economic wars.
Demonization of Jews and Zionists
The 2001 Durban Conference against racism served as the global launch party to amplify and expand upon the prior “Zionism is racism” propaganda.
As the world no longer relied on oil as it had in the 1970’s, the Muslim Arab world hoped to convince the western world to join their war against the Jewish State based on democratic values, a sly and peculiar approach for autocratic regimes. The global conference advanced a new lexicon to vilify Israel with terms like “apartheid,” “settler-colonialism,” “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide,” and “crimes against humanity” to name a few. It similarly painted Palestinians as noble victims, misusing words like “desperate,” “resistance,” and “dignity.”
This approach is more insidious than used during the 1970’s and 1980’s which relied on far-flung violence. The violent attacks against Jews around the world by Arab Muslims made it difficult to portray the Palestinian Arabs as “desperate.” Instead, since 2001, the demonization tactic has penetrated the west through the education systems, the media and the democratic system itself.
The Arab world funneled billions of dollars and tens of thousands of students to universities including New York University, MIT, Columbia and Tufts. The donations funded Middle East Studies departments and Divinity schools with anti-Israel narratives. Due to this activity, college campuses have become hotbeds of anti-Semitism, often denying Jews the right to participate in public spaces as perceived Zionists and racists.
These young voices have been indoctrinated with a new anti-Zionist vocabulary and worldview over the past twenty years. They are now running the western liberal media, working at “human rights” organizations and voting for far-left anti-Zionist politicians endorsed by the Democrat Socialists of America.
The 2001 Durban campaign, now 20-plus years running, has been very successful in not only demonizing Israel, but demonizing Zionists. Under this current version of “Zionism is racism,” Jews in Israel and around the world are no longer only being attacked by Arab Muslims but by their fellow citizens. While the legitimacy of Israel is still being denied, the focus has expanded to Israel’s supporters.
The movement seeks to boycott not only Israeli products but those companies that do business in Israel. It wants universities to bar Israeli professors and athletes to refuse to compete with Israelis.
It has even gone after its own, turning on Arab Muslim states which normalized ties to Israel such as the United Arab Emirates.
After failing to destroy the Jewish State militarily, the Arab Muslim world has gone through three stages to destroy it economically, with the current effort enlisting global support against all Zionists
The current Muslim and Arab war against the Jewish State is being fought everywhere, as Zionists of any religion or ethnicity are falsely branded “racists” who should be canceled. The intent is to pressure people and governments everywhere to sever ties with the Jewish State, making it vulnerable and weak by every measure.
The war against Israel has mutated since the country was founded but the goal remains the same: the end of the Jewish State. What has alarmingly changed now is that YOU are being asked to participate in that anti-Semitic endeavor by your neighbors, schools, media and elected officials.
The sole Jewish State is unique in many ways. One situation that causes constant strain is that it is surrounded by armed terrorist groups.
To the north is Hezbollah in Lebanon. According to recent reports, the Iranian-backed terrorist group “currently possesses between 120,000-140,000 short-range rockets (range of 25-28 miles), which cover Israel’s north, including Haifa Bay and Tiberias; several thousand medium-range rockets (range of 56 miles), which can reach the Sharon coastal plain and northern suburbs of Gush Dan; and several hundred long-range rockets and missiles (range of hundreds of miles), including Scud missiles from Syrian military warehouses, capable of hitting targets anywhere in Israel.“
To the west is the terrorist enclave of Gaza. The terrorist group Hamas has launched several wars against Israel since taking over the region.
In the east, Israel has to face Hamas as well, which has significant support in Areas A and B of the West Bank. Palestinians maintain that the best way of dealing with Israel is through armed conflict, and support a number of Palestinian terrorist groups which operate both west and east of Israel including: Palestine Liberation Front (PLF); Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ); Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP); PFLP-General Command (PFLP-GC); Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade (AAMB); and Army of Islam (AOI).
To the south, there is another terrorist group that operates out of the Sinai Peninsula called Wilayat Sinai, or ISIS in the Sinai. They have been fighting both Egypt and Israel.
Israel is surrounded by terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism
Wilayat Sinai
Wilayat Sinai began in 2011 around the time of the “Arab Spring” under the name Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, before pledging its allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014 as that group was gaining prominence and then change its name. Like many of the terrorist groups in the region, it’s banner is jihad and the imposition of Islamic Sharia law throughout the region.
Wilayat’s main target is the Egyptian government which is viewed as too secular. Not only did Egypt make peace with Israel, but it actively opposes the Muslim Brotherhood.
The group stepped up its attacks against Egypt in 2014 when Abdul Fattah al-Sisi ascended to power after forcing out Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. With the support of Israel, al-Sisi began to clamp down on the smuggling tunnels between Sinai and Gaza which were instrumental in the Hamas war against Israel in that year. Israel would go on to allow Egypt to expand its military presence in the Sinai, above the limits set in place by the 1979 Peace Agreement. By 2018, 42,000 Egyptian soldiers were in the Sinai.
In February of that year, al-Sisi launched an aggressive “Operation Sinai 2018” campaign against Wilayat Sinai with Israeli support. The actions severely curtailed the groups ability to operate.
The attacks have not been limited to Egypt. In 2015, the group downed a Russian civilian airplane killing 224 because of Russian attacks against ISIS in Syria.
In 2011, attackers from Sinai – including some terrorists from Gaza – shot and killed Israelis near the resort city of Eilat. In 2012, rockets were fired into Eilat and later that year armed men from Hamas and Wilayat Sinai killed Egyptian soldiers and attacked Israeli Defense Forces at the Kerem Shalom Crossing near Gaza. The group would fire more rockets into Israel in 2017.
While Hamas gets most of the attention because of its vile anti-Semitic foundational charter and persistent attacks against Israel, the Jewish State is completely surrounded by terrorist groups and state sponsors of terrorism. While each has a different take on the goals of imposing Sharia law and establishing a caliphate, they all seek a purely Islamic region and an end to the Jewish State.
An anti-Zionist teacher was fired from the Westchester Reform Temple in Scarsdale, NewYork, and is now suing the institution. Religious organizations should support the Reform Temple in this lawsuit.
Jessie Sander wrote an article in May 2021 in which she “call[ed] for American Jewish institutions to revisit their educational philosophy and curriculum about Palestine and its history,” and that American Jews must stop their “racist practices and beliefs” and support of Israel (which she spelled each time with a lower case “i”) in its “settler-colonial violence” and “genocide in Palestine.” She added that “israel actively trains the actors of our military state to enact violence against our Black and Brown siblings,” portraying Israel as committing racist violence both in Israel and the United States.
A few weeks later she was hired as a Hebrew teacher at the Westchester Reform Temple before the school was aware of her writings. Once the administration found out about it, she was questioned and then dismissed. She is now suing the school for reinstatement plus compensatory damages.
February 6, 2022 New York Times article on a Jewish school firing an anti-Israel teacher
The New York Times covered the story in its typical anti-Israel jaundiced fashion. It noted that Sander is like many younger American Jews, who are not emotionally attached to Israel, as it cited a poll which found that 25 percent of Jews believed Israel to be an “apartheid state” and 22 percent said it was “committing genocide against the Palestinians.”
Those aren’t “beliefs” any more than Holocaust denial is a belief. They are simply wrong. When 25 percent of a class gets a question wrong on an exam, we don’t reorient the narrative to accommodate the incorrect.
Schools must be able to evaluate the teachers they hire and whether they pose a threat to the students and mission of the institution. This teacher was not simply stating that she was concerned about Palestinian self-determination but sought to change the “educational philosophy and curriculum” with her false impressions about the state of Palestinian “genocide.” Together with her deliberate refusal to capitalize the state of Israel, the institution was rightly concerned about what she was going to teach in her classes.
While liberal anti-Zionists like Peter Beinart may run to defend this teacher, it is important for other religious denominations – especially the Orthodox – to rally to the side of the Reform Temple.
Jewish institutions have long hired a variety of people from different backgrounds. Yeshiva University, the flagship Jewish university in the United States, hires many non-Jewish faculty. Jewish Day Schools hire people with a range of political views from conservative to progressive.
But they do not hire someone who seeks to instill a false narrative into the cirriculum.
Yeshiva University, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Council of America and other Orthodox organizations do not always have an opportunity to bond with the Reform movement. These mission-driven groups – as well as non-Jewish ones – should rally to support the Westchester Reform Temple in the suit by an anti-Israel extremist, in an important defense of their religious rights.
On January 20, 1942, Germans met in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to develop the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.” The persecution of Jews was already well underway, and on that day, the Nazi regime put into place a program to push the Jews to extinction. They succeeded in wiping out nearly all of the Jews in Europe, about one-third of global Jewry.
Since the end of World War II, the Arab and Muslim world picked up the fight to “the Jewish Problem.”
The Arabs in Palestine were successful in lobbying the British in impeding Jewish immigrants desperate to leave the Holocaust in Europe with the “White Papers”, likely causing well over 100,000 Jewish deaths. The remaining Holocaust survivors landing on the shores of Palestine after World War II were very vulnerable targets. The Palestinian Arabs enlisted the help of neighboring Muslim countries to complete the genocide of the Jews, killing nearly one per cent of the region’s Jews in the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. The Arabs then ethnically-cleansed all Jews from the lands they seized, and forbade Jews from visiting their holiest locations in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Angry at the survival of the Jewish nation, Muslim Arab countries purged their Jews. Roughly 99% of the region’s Jews were forced out, an estimated 850,000 Jews, a total which excludes the Jews who fled Afghanistan and Iran.
Algeria 140,000
Egypt 75,000
Iraq 135,000
Lebanon 5,000
Libya 38,000
Morocco 265,000
Syria 30,000
Tunisia 105,000
Yemen 55,000
Arab countries attempted to kill all of the Jews in Israel again in 1967, though they failed spectacularly. Stinging from the loss, the Arab League adopted the Khartoum Resolution which called for “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations with Israel.” The Arabs soon launched another war against Israel – during Judaism’s holiest day, Yom Kippur – in 1973, while pushing the noxious idea that “Zionism is a form of racism” at the United Nations under the watch of former Nazi, Kurt Waldheim, who was serving as the UN Secretary General.
Meanwhile, Christianity rethought its complicity in the European Holocaust and declared in 1965 that Jews were no more responsible for the death of Jesus than anyone else, and declared clearly that Jews should not be persecuted. Less than 25 years later, the “Iron wall” in the Soviet Union crumbled and allowed thousands of Jewish “refuseniks” to leave the country to Israel and elsewhere.
But the bile in the Arab Muslim world did not let up during this time, even as Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979.
The Palestinians declared themselves to have an independent state in 1988 on all of the land of Israel including the “West Bank” and Gaza, a move which was rejected by much of the western world. At the same time, Hamas introduced its foundational charter calling for the death of Jews and complete destruction of the Jewish State. The group (and other Palestinian terrorist groups) became immensely popular and received funding from Iran and Syria.
Iran and its proxies like Hezbollah, together with Palestinian Arabs, targeted and killed thousands of Jews around the world in the following decades. Iranian leaders have continued to hold Holocaust denial conferences, call for the destruction of Israel and pursue nuclear weapons and long range ballistic missiles.
On the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, the United Nations approved a resolution condemning Holocaust denial, with only Iran standing in opposition. The story was covered by The New York Times and other media outlets which wrote about the resolution and described today’s prevalent “right-wing” anti-Semitism and completely ignored that the vast majority of anti-Semitism stems from the Islamic world.
Not only will Muslim anti-Semitism not go away by ignoring it, but it may enable the leading state sponsor of terrorism and Holocaust denial to obtain weapons of mass destruction to carry out another genocide of the Jews.
Zionism has been defined as the “Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews.” Gil Troy, a historian and author of a new book “The Zionist Ideas,” expanded upon that definition and says Zionism has three principle components: that Jews are a nation; that Jews have ties to their particular homeland in the land of Israel; and that Jews have a right to establish a state in that homeland, much like other people have rights to their own country.
That view of Zionism purely through a nationalistic lens enables many people to view Zionism as inherently racist. While Zionist advocates – like Troy – clearly articulate that Jews’ attachment to Israel does not mean that other people do not have attachments to the land as well, and that Israel welcomes the one-quarter of its population that is not Jewish with full rights, the anti-Zionists consider the core of the movement as exclusionary. The sentiment that nationalist populism inherently poses a risk “to the fundamental human rights principles of non-discrimination and equality” as stated in a 2018 United Nations report, puts Zionism in the crosshairs. The phrase “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” as once declared in UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1973, gets new air.
Zionism is more than the nationalistic movement of Jews reestablishing a thriving community in their homeland. It is a mission to combat anti-Semitism by providing a safe haven and a base from which to attack the noxious hatred.
Historic Zionism
Jews have always been Zionists. For thousands of years, Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem. Their daily prayers are replete with calls to rebuild their holy city. Jews have lived in and moved to the land of Israel throughout their history. The Jewish nation and religion are bound to the land. Jews were a majority in Jerusalem decades before the first Zionist Congress.
The connection of Jews and their Promised Land is a bedrock laid down in the bible and thousands of years of history. It naturally set the foundation for viewing the modern Jewish State through a three-part nationalist lens of people, religion and land. And it led humanitarians like Henry Dunant (1828-1910) to call for the rightful restoration of Jews to their homeland many years before Jewish Zionists articulated their vision.
But modern Zionism is more than the nationalist yearnings of thousands of years as articulated in Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, written in 1878. It is a clarion call to fight and end Jew hatred.
The man credited with founding modern Zionism is Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). While completely assimilated and secular, Herzl saw a world which only saw him and others like him as foreign Jews.
He was horrified at the conviction of a secular Jew, Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) in France on trumped up espionage charges. The anti-Semitism on bold display in the courtroom and media convinced Herzl that Jews would never be tolerated anywhere if they could not find peace in a liberal society like France. He said:
The pogroms in Russia (Ukraine, Poland) from 1881 to 1884 as well as Kishinev in 1903 and 1905 further cemented the opinion of Herzl and many other early Zionists that Jews would never be able to live in peace where they were treated as despised foreigners. Zionism was a tool to address systemic anti-Semitism. The principle was that only in a place where Jews governed themselves could they escape persecution.
The situation for the Jews in Europe and the USSR actually got worse after Herzl. On January 20 1942, the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, Germany, developed the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem,” calling for their extermination. Nazi Germany and its supporters killed one-third of the global Jewish population. The horrors of the European Holocaust which confirmed the radical anti-Semitism prevalent in the world, most likely encouraged many nations to support the reestablishment of the Jewish State just a few years later.
Modern Zionism Fights Anti-Semitism
Today, Israel does not simply seek to be a safe haven for Jews but actively fights anti-Semitism and anti-Semites around the world.
In 1960, years after the Holocaust, agents of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, captured former Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial for his crimes.
In 1976, after Arab terrorists hijacked an Air France plane to Uganda, Israeli commandos flew in to rescue the innocent.
In 1991, when the situation of Ethiopian Jews became dire, Israel launched Operation Solomon which air-lifted 14,325 people out of the country and resettled them in Israel.
In 1994, after Iran and Hezbollah blew up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina killing 85 people, Israel sent a team to investigate.
In 2015, after Muslim terrorist targeted killing Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris, France, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed French Jews and said “any Jew who chooses to come to Israel will be greeted with open arms and an open heart, it is not a foreign nation, and hopefully they and you will one day come to Israel.“
The government of Israel has a special division for world Jewry called The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. A core mission of the office is “monitoring and treating the scourge of anti-Semitism.” No other government in the world has an office dedicated to its diaspora and to fighting the terrible hatred it endures.
When Zionism only portrays itself as the rightful national aspiration of Jews to self-determination in their homeland, it opens itself up to noxious attacks. A core tenet of Zionism is the fight against anti-Semitism which should be broadcast, as it makes abundantly clear that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.
First One Through 