NY Times Select “Evictions” in Jerusalem

Posted on May 9, 2021 by First.One.Through

The anti-Zionist New York Times is accelerating its attacks on the Jewish State with a narrative that Jewish Israelis are racists as it moves towards accusations of apartheid. It would seem that the Gray Lady is newly interested in evictions when it comes to illegal Arab squatters as opposed to Jewish families thrown out of their homes in their most holy city.

On May 8, 2021, the Gray Lady printed an article “As Court Decision Nears, Battle over Evictions in East Jerusalem.” The article noted that the Israeli Supreme Court will soon rule on whether to evict Arab residents of Jerusalem (the Times calls them “Palestinians of East Jerusalem”) who moved into homes “vacated” by Jews in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. The article failed to state that Jordan (and four other Arab armies) invaded Israel in that war, evicted all of the Jews from Judea and Samaria including the eastern portion of Jerusalem in an act of ethnic cleansing, illegally annexed the region in 1950, and then granted Jordanian citizenship to all Arabs in 1954 while specifically excluding Jews in a further highly anti-Semitic action.

*The New York Times on May 8, 2021 article about Israel*

Instead, the Times said that “Jordan captured the area, including East Jerusalem in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948” making East Jerusalem sound like an actual city rather than the fact that Jordan invaded Jerusalem and seized the eastern half CREATING “EAST JERUSALEM,” an entity that existed until Jordanians attacked Israel again in a war that resulted in Israel reunifying the city.

The paper had the temerity of calling the Jews who moved back into their homes in the reunified capital as “settlers.” Recasting people moving back into their homes nineteen years after being evicted in a brutal act of ethnic cleansing as new foreign interlopers, is something that only an alt-left anti-Zionist can explain.

To support its jaundiced narrative, the Times quoted an Israeli who said that Jews have an ancient connection to the city so they have a right to keep the city Jewish, making the Jewish claim to the area seem ancient and fanatical. The Times statement was designed to be inflammatory and distracted readers from the legal property rights of the Jewish owners. If the paper wanted to add historical context to the story, it could have added the fact that Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for over 150 years. Jews living in the eastern part of the Jerusalem is not recreating a 2,000-year old factoid, but a continuation of Jews living – and being a majority – in the city for centuries.

Jerusalem Day, a holiday marking the reunification of the city divided by war, is also a moment to celebrate the end of the anti-Semitic Arab ethnic cleansing in Judaism’s holiest city. This year, it should also be celebrated with writing to The New York Times at letters@nytimes.com and corrections@nytimes.com to demand the paper stop its misinformation campaign regarding Israel, ignoring Jerusalem’s Jewish majority since the 1860’s and the eviction of Jews from the eastern half of the city at the hands of invading Arabs. The false narrative promoted by anti-Zionists is the basis for outrageous declarations like UNSC Resolution 2334, which advocate for a Jew-free “East Jerusalem,” and a reinstitution of the ethnic cleansing program of 1949 to 1967.

Related First One Through articles:

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Featured Idiot: John Brennan, Obama’s CIA Chief

Posted on April 28, 2021 by First.One.Through

On April 27, 2021, The New York Times offered its readers an opinion piece by former President Obama’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan. His ridiculous piece was called “Why Biden Must Watch This Palestinian Movie.“

John Brennan, Former Director of the CIA (photo: Al Drago, The New York Times)

There are too many lies and omissions to do a line-by-line review but some major themes emerge which highlight Brennan’s willful blindness of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Major Lie #1:
Israel No Longer Has Security Concerns

Brennan noted that in his visit from Jordan to Israel in 1975, Palestinian Arabs had to go through aggressive security screening which he understood as “I knew that Israel had legitimate security concerns in the aftermath of the 1967 and 1973 wars, worries that had been heightened by attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets by Palestinian terrorist organizations.” Those “worries” included wars to annihilate the Jewish State in 1967 and 1973, and the Arab world’s “Three No’s” regarding making peace, recognizing and negotiating with Israel. The Palestinian attacks were not limited to Israel but countries which supported the Jewish State, and included the assassination of U.S. Presidential hopeful Robert Kennedy as well as tens of airplane hijackings.

Brennan commented that today’s world is a far cry from his 1975 experience, as Israel struck peace agreements with many Arab nations and made “significant progress in reducing violence carried out by Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories,” with the exception of Hamas.

First, well over twenty Arab and Muslim countries still refuse to recognize Israel. Those Arab countries which have recently welcomed relations with the Jewish State were loudly condemned by Palestinians.

Second, the reason that there has been such a reduction in violence is because of the security barrier that Israel erected in reaction to the so-called “Second Intifada.” It is that very security barrier that Brennan criticized in the article, with a completely fabricated reason for that barrier’s existence:

“Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has spearheaded relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank. That expansion has brought along more concrete walls, security barriers and control points, further reducing the spaces where Palestinians can live, graze their flocks, tend their olive groves and vegetable gardens without being challenged by their occupiers.”

As President Biden is fond of saying, that’s complete “malarkey.” Palestinian Arab terrorism brought the security barrier, not Jewish family homes.

The Second Intifada – not waged from Gaza but from the “West Bank” – was omitted from Brennan’s narrative. The “stabbing intifada” and the “car ramming intifada” from the West Bank in 2015 and 2016 were similarly ignored.

Further, the Muslim and Arab actors encircling and threatening Israel are irrelevant in Brennan’s opinion. The Islamic Republic of Iran has stated its desire to destroy Israel, yet Brennan’s boss gave the country over $100 billion and a legal pathway to nuclear weapons. Iran supports Hezbollah in Lebanon (which fought a war with Israel in 2006), Syria and Hamas in Gaza, each at Israel’s borders.

Brennan continued in his imaginative telling of history that former President Trump “senselessly severed funding to the Palestinian Authority.” Trump took those actions specifically because acting President of the Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas refused to stop inciting violence against Israelis by committing to send monies to Palestinian terrorists.

So much for Palestinian Arabs and the Muslim world being peaceful and welcoming Israelis.

Major Lie #2:
Palestinians Have Made No Progress Towards Autonomy

Brennan added that “Despite sharply reduced tensions between Israel and the Arab world, the Palestinian people themselves have seen no appreciable progress in their quest to live in their own sovereign state.” Really? Since 1975 there has been no progress?

Israel handed many cities and towns – including the holy city of Bethlehem which was designated to be an international city in the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan – to the Palestinians in the 1990’s. This was the first time that local Arabs every had sovereignty in the region.
Israel abandoned Gaza in 2005. It was rewarded with wars from the region in 2008, 2012 and 2014. Missiles and arson balloons continue to bombard Israeli civilian centers from the strip.
The Palestinian Authority was created in the 1990’s as part of several agreements with Israel. The PA last held presidential elections and legislative elections in 2005 and 2006, respectively. At that time, the Palestinians elected a Holocaust denier as the president and the terrorist group Hamas which is sworn to the destruction of Israel to 58% of the parliament. The front-runner in the proposed 2021 presidential elections is a terrorist in an Israeli jail convicted of killing five and injuring many.
Despite Palestinians having autonomy in Gaza, an outrageous 77% of Gazans support armed attacks against Israeli civilians in a December 2020 Palestinian poll.

Palestinians have made significant advances towards independence. It has not reduced their quest for Israeli blood.

Inverted Cause-and-Effect; Upside Down Conclusions

Brennan’s fictitious narrative of the security barrier is emblematic of his distorted vision of the steps towards an enduring peace. Ignoring the fact that the security barrier was needed and built to stop West Bank Palestinians from slaughtering Israelis, and retelling it as something Israel elected to erect to protect Israeli “settlements”, turned Israelis into the aggressors rather than the victims.

Brennan wrote that Palestinian children “grow up traumatized by injustice, discrimination and violence. They live with the feeling that their existence is controlled by people who don’t care about their welfare, their safety or their future.” This is upside down. Brennan argued that the “people who don’t care” and make their lives miserable are Israelis instead of the Palestinian leadership which uses its resources for weaponry to attack Israel and for “martyr payments” to terrorists.

So Brennan celebrated Biden restarting the money spigot even though the Palestinians have not changed their violent activities.

The Times featured Obama’s CIA chief’s distorted view of history and of the present in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Ignoring reality six years ago, the Obama administration enriched and empowered a state sponsor of terrorism. Brennan now hopes that the new Biden administration will similarly be oblivious to Palestinian lies and loathing, and enrich and create a new state sponsor of terrorism.

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NY Times Manufactures “Palestinian East Jerusalem” Narrative

Posted on April 25, 2021 by First.One.Through

Over Jerusalem’s 4,000-year history, it has been attacked and ransacked dozens of times. In modern times, the city was divided for 19 years, from 1949 to 1967, after the Jordanian army invaded Israel, evicted all of the Jews from Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, annexed the region and granted Jordanian citizenship to all Arabs, specifically excluding Jews. After the Jordanians attacked Israel again in June 1967, Israel took the region that Jordan had illegally seized and removed the barbed wire and roadblocks which had split the city, unifying Jerusalem once again. The Jewish State officially annexed the city in 1980.

The United Nations, which had wanted Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem to be an international Holy Basin, neither part of a Jewish State nor an Arab one, still uses the term “East Jerusalem” even though the demarcation has long been erased. Pro-Arab publications like the New York Times have called it “Arab East Jerusalem,” adding a non-Jewish adjective, either to note that the eastern part of the city is 60% Arab and only 40% Jewish, or to distance the Jewish Temple Mount, the holiest place for Jews, from the public sphere. Or both.

As the number of Jews continues to grow throughout unified Jerusalem, the left-wing anti-Zionist publication took yet a new pro-Arab step on April 24, 2021, calling the eastern part of the city “Palestinian East Jerusalem,” in an article which inverted the Arab attacks on Jews and response of Jews to those attacks (but that’s standard reporting for the Times.)

*April 24, 2021 article in The New York Times now calling “Palestinian East Jerusalem”*

For clarity, Israel granted all Arabs living in Israel in 1948 citizenship and has allowed any Arab living in Jerusalem to apply for Israeli citizenship when it officially annexed the eastern part of the city. Thousands of Jerusalem Arabs have already taken Israeli citizenship and many more have applied and are in process. However, the New York Times has now opted to distance Arabs in Jerusalem from Israel by declaring that they are Palestinian and that the area is occupied Palestinian territory. This is a complete lie, as the area was never Palestinian, just illegally occupied Jordanian territory and the Arabs are either Israeli citizens or residents.

The article written by Isabel Kershner attempted to further the fabrication of a “Palestinian East Jerusalem” with statements like:

“Jews and Palestinians then split off into gangs and roamed the streets on their respective sides of the city…”
“… a main thoroughfare which that runs along the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem.“

These statements are ridiculous. There hasn’t been a dividing line in Jerusalem for 44 years as Jerusalem is a single unified city. Some of the largest Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem are in the so-called “Palestinian” side of the city.

For the Times, those facts need to be challenged as often as possible.

In the same article, the paper noted that “Israel annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it in the 1967 Middle East War,” failing to state that Israel didn’t capture it from “Palestine” which didn’t exist, nor that Israel took it from Jordan which had illegally annexed it, nor that Israel took it in a defensive battle. Instead, the Times added that “most of the world considers it occupied territory [by Israel].” An ill-informed reader is left with the false impression that Israel illegally seized Palestinian land.

Conversely, when speaking of the Palestinians claim for the eastern half of the city with quotes of “East Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine,” and that Fatah “praised the Palestinian residents of Jerusalem for defending the city and the Aqsa mosque, the revered Muslim holy site,” it again called the Arabs of Jerusalem as “Palestinians,” noted that Jerusalem was holy to Muslims (the article never said anything like that for Jews) and did not have any counter-narrative as it did in regards to Israel reunifying the city.

To further its jaundiced narrative, the Times wrote about “an extremist Jewish supremacy group,” and “young, Jewish supporters of the Jewish supremacist organization Lehava,” continuing its narrative that Israeli Jews are racists. This is in sharp contrast to Palestinian Arabs who are portrayed as innocents who were prevented from gathering at a “festive meeting place… during Ramadan” by police. The facts that Palestinians are the most anti-Semitic group in the world, voted a Holocaust denier to the presidency and a terrorist group with a charter which reads like a combination of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion to 58% of its parliament, never make it into the pages of the anti-Zionist Gray Lady.

The New York Times has taken yet another anti-Israel step in the Arab-Israeli conflict to fabricate a narrative that eastern Jerusalem is an actual Palestinian city, uniquely holy to Muslims, besieged by a racist Jewish State.

Related First One Through articles:

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Trump’s “eastern Jerusalem” and Biden’s “East Jerusalem”

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The Jews of Jerusalem In Situ

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First One Through video:

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NY Times Alternative Facts: Area C

Posted on March 22, 2021 by First.One.Through

The New York Times has an aggressive re-education effort about the world. It distorts history and facts in its enterprise, particularly when it comes to Israel.

A March 21, 2021 article was designed to elicit empathy for Palestinian Arabs, which is the anti-Israel’s paper common practice and right. What is unfortunate is not simply the bias but distortion of truth.

March 21, 2021 New York Times article about Palestinian sheep hearders suffering under Israeli “occupation”

The paper’s background to the area commonly known as the “West Bank” was as follows:

“The Israeli government’s explanation for the demolitions dates back to the 1990s Oslo Accords with the Palestinians. The agreement gave Israel administrative control over more than 60 percent of the West Bank, including most of the Jordan Valley, pending further negotiations which were meant to be completed within five years.

“But over two decades of talks, the two sides have failed to agree on a deal, so Israel retains control of the lands – known as Area C – and has the right to demolish homes built there without planning permission.”

The 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords did not “give Israel administrative control” over area C; the Accords gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) control over Areas A and B. Israel has had administrative control of the West Bank for over fifty years. The Israelis gave the Palestinians the opportunity to control an area for the first time in history.

The Israelis were willing to give the PA more lands, including the vast majority of Area C in 2000. Not getting 100% of their stated desires, the Palestinians launched what is gently described as the “Second Intifada,” a murderous guerilla war waged for four years until Israel was able to halt the Palestinian killers by constructing a security barrier.

Israel handed additional lands to the Palestinians in 2005, as it withdrew from the Gaza Strip. That action led to wars from Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014 followed by West Bank car ramming and stabbing attacks in 2015 and 2016. The Palestinian actions destroyed any notion of Israel ceding control of more land to an entity hell-bent on murder. This reality is a far cry from the Times narrative that “the two sides failed to agree on a deal.”

Lastly, the Times, which forever likes to use harsh terms like “occupation” and “illegal” for Israel, is loathe to point out Palestinian terrorism and illegal activities. Like “illegal aliens” in the United States being called “undocumented immigrants,” the Times sanitized the illegally built Arab structures by claiming they were simply completed “without planning permission.”

The New York Times is deliberately posting ahistorical information to sway its readership to take a positive view of Palestinian Arabs and a negative view of Israel. It is part of the left-wing mantra to engage globally by distancing America from allies like Israel and warming relationships with state sponsors of terrorism like Iran.

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The NY Times Will Not Write About the Preferred Violence of Palestinians

NY Times Disgraceful Journeys

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Names and Narrative: ‘Slain Attackers’ and ‘Popular’

Posted on March 14, 2021 by First.One.Through

The United States Congress passed bi-partisan legislation which was signed into law by President Donald Trump in March 2018 which limited funds to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as long as it supported terror.

H.R. 1625 included language from the Taylor Force Act, named for an American murdered by a Palestinian Arab while visiting Israel, which specifically called out:

“The Palestinian Authority’s practice of paying salaries to terrorists serving in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of deceased terrorists, is an incentive to commit acts of terror.“

It added that Congress further

“calls on the Palestinian Authority, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and any successor or affiliated organizations to stop payments for acts of terrorism by individuals who are imprisoned after being fairly tried and convicted for acts of terrorism and by individuals who died committing acts of terrorism and to repeal the laws authorizing such payments.“

The terms “terrorists” and “terrorism” being used for Palestinian Arabs is an anathema for The New York Times. The liberal paper actively seeks to portray the Palestinian Arabs in a favorable light as much as possible and did so in a March 11, 2021 article called “Chance of Renovation of School on West Bank Hinge on Aid From U.S.”

March 11, 2021 pro-Palestinian propaganda article by The New York Times

After twenty paragraphs of describing the students in an Arab school simply wanting an education and fearful of “ultranationalist settlers,” the article described the Taylor Force Act, albeit quite differently from than the actual text cited above. The Times wrote:

“The Act restricts the U.S. government’s ability to disburse aid that “directly benefits” the Palestinian Authority as long as the authority pays the salaries of Palestinian security prisoners and slain attackers.“

The word “slain” is defined as “to kill violently, wantonly, or in great numbers.” In other words, according to the Times, it is the Palestinian “attackers” who are killed violently and wantonly by Israelis. In regards to the Palestinians, they are not terrorists, but just “attackers” who may or may not kill violently, wantonly or in great numbers. Probably not.

This is a complete inversion of the U.S. law which sought to defend basic human rights by denying the funding of terrorism, turning the killers into the victims.

The misdirection of the Times continued a few paragraphs later with:

“The Palestinian Authority hasn’t announced plans for any significant reforms to its highly popular payment system.” That’s true. Palestinian Arabs love the flow of money coming from U.S. taxpayers to terrorists even if it means that they will be denied any aid from the United States. They would rather continue funding the murder of Israelis than have money to pay for a school.

But that story is lost in the Times’ misinformation piece which made the money to Palestinians look like a convenient system set up to aid the impoverished. Instead, the article finished with the plea “Our [Palestinian] kids have nothing to do with politics… why should they pay the price?” A brilliant advertisement, making the reader adopt the first person image that their “own” children are the ones who suffer from the U.S. law.

The United States stands against terrorists and those who fund and support them – not just including, but specifically – the Palestinian Authority. It is an insult to the memory and families of the American and Israeli victims of Palestinian Arab terrorists that the Times actively inverts the killers and the victims.

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The Proud Fathers of Palestinian Terrorists

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Media Exacerbates Minorities’ Fears of Getting Vaccinated

Posted on March 11, 2021 by First.One.Through

The mainstream media has been advancing the notion that the United States has always been, and remains, a country entrenched in systemic racism. It uses myriad statistics to support this theory such as higher Black unemployment, poverty and incarceration nationwide.

Recently, the liberal media has used the pandemic as another example to support their belief of systemic racism. For months, they reported that more Black and Hispanic people lost their jobs, and have been infected and died from COVID-19. The media informed the public that it was because of systemic racism and rich White people taking all of the vaccines as a matter of privilege.

So it was a (momentary) nice surprise to see The New York Times finally write that a major reason that Black people have not been vaccinated is that they don’t want to be vaccinated. The March 11, 2021 Times article “Misinformation Deepens a Gap in Vaccinations” described how Black people do not trust the government and believe that the vaccines are harmful because they have been fed “misinformation”. As the Times has repeatedly described mis/disinformation campaigns as a right-wing phenomenon, it was clear that the Times was attempting to portray another right-wing racist assault on people of color.

Front page article of New York Times on March 11, 2011

The Times article described over-and-again how Blacks and Hispanics and “communities of color” were weary about being vaccinated because they distrusted the government – and for good reason. It noted that “the belief that doctors are interested in experimenting on certain communities has deep roots among some groups, Ms. Kolai said. Anti-vaccine activists have drawn historical examples, including Nazi doctors who ran experiments in concentration camps, and the Baltimore hospital where, 70 years ago, cancer cells were collected from Henrietta Lacks, a Black mother of five.” Somehow, the Times omitted that the Nazi victims were Jews (who have been getting vaccinated), leaving a reader to imagine that those in concentration camps may have been Hispanics at the Mexico-U.S. border, as liberals termed those detention facilities.

The Times went on to accuse White people because “Many Black and Hispanic people were already struggling to make appointments and reach vaccination sites that are often in whiter, wealthier neighborhoods. And officials in some cities say that people from those [whiter, wealthier] neighborhoods also have been flooding appointment systems and taking supply intended for poorer Black and Hispanic residents.” It seemed like the Times was pushing a narrative in which rich White right-wing racists convince Black people that the vaccines are unhealthy so they could then sweep in to take all of the vaccines intended for poorer neighborhoods.

Lost in all the conspiracy peddling was self-reflection. The progressive disinformation campaign about American systemic racism has further instilled the sense of distrust in the government and the medical profession, making minorities increasingly wary of signing up to get vaccinated.

Indeed there is a disinformation harming minorities, but its sources is the very media that points elsewhere.

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Every Picture Tells a Story: Israel Is Scared of Female Iranian Shoppers

Posted on February 20, 2021 by First.One.Through

The New York Times has begun its latest battle with Israel and other Arab countries which seek to ensure that Iran does not obtain nuclear weapons and threaten the region, now that Joe Biden is president. The paper’s game plan is seemingly to make Iran appear as a benevolent actor, akin to other nuclear powers like France.

The February 20, 2021 print edition of The New York Times had an article called “Israel Reacts to U.S. Strategy on Iran Quietly, but Warily.” The article contained two black and white pictures with the larger top picture featuring two Iranian women shopping, while the bottom picture featured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surrounded by security people. The caption read “Above, a bazaar in Tehran. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, avoided direct comment on the U.S. plan to reopen negotiations with Iran.“

For a story about the Iranian nuclear deal, the “news”paper opted to showcase a couple of women shopping to “educate” its readership about the nature of Iran. It declined to use footage which would have actually added context to the story such as:

a map of the Iranian nuclear sites and enrichment facilities
pictures of the Iranian centrifuges enriching uranium
a picture of Iran’s “supreme leader” together with his quote that Israel is a “cancerous tumor” to be “wiped out“
a picture of Iran’s proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon next to Israel
a picture of the bus carrying Israeli tourists in Bulgaria which Hezbollah blew up, killing five Israeli civilians
a picture of the Jewish community center in Argentina which was blown up by Iran and Hezbollah, killing 85

There are many pictures which would have been appropriate to include with the article as to why Israel is against the leading state sponsor of terrorism which threatened to wipe it off the map, gaining nuclear weapons. However, The NY Times wants to portray Israel as unduly nervous and paranoid about Iran, perhaps even racist. For the Times, Iran is much like France where women like to shop for handbags. Perhaps the Times will re-launch its tourism junket to Iran (which it billed as a “powerful country [which] has entranced, mystified and beguiled the world. Discover the ancient secrets and modern complexities of this influential land”) as soon as the pandemic winds down.

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Every Picture Tells a Story: Anti-Semitism

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Every Picture Tells a Story: The Invisible Killed Terrorists

Every Picture Tells a Story: Arab Injuries over Jewish Deaths

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Every Picture Tells a Story: Versions of Reality

Every Picture Tells A Story: Only Palestinians are Victims

Every Picture Tells a Story: The Invisible Murdered Israelis

Every Picture Tells a Story- Whitewashing the World (except Israel)

The New York Times’ Buried Pictures

Every Picture Tells a Story, the Bibi Monster

Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It?

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NY Times Considers Notion That Terrorism Against Israel is a Matter of Free Speech

Posted on January 24, 2021 by First.One.Through

The January 22, 2021 article (24th in the print edition) in The New York Times “What Zoom Does to Campus Conflicts Over Israel and Free Speech” could have been an interesting discussion about the ongoing role of big media companies and censorship. Remarkably, the Times opted to tackle an easy and extreme case – the dissemination of terrorist propaganda and calls for violence – and decided the answer was sure, if the target is Israel.

The opening sentences of the article made it clear that the author understood the subject to be used as a foil in the discussion:

“Leila Khaled is a two-time hijacker, a member of a Palestinian group on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. So it came as a shock to Javier Cohen, a senior at New York University, to find her speaking on an N.Y.U. webinar last semester.“

From such factual clarity, it is frightening that the Times would follow:

“In a conflict that has divided campuses in recent years, here was a new dimension: A commercial technology company [Zoom], under pressure from pro-Israel groups, was controlling content at a major American university.

“We’re usually not in the position of having campus speech being adjudicated by outside agents,” said [NYU Professor] Mr. Ross, arguing that criticism of Israel was being labeled anti-Semitism. “But Zoom is in the position of doing that right now. ”

This is preposterous and incendiary. Saying that pro-Israel groups are shutting down “content” through the guise of charges of “anti-Semitism” completely misses the mark that the university invited a terrorist who calls for violence onto the college square on the basis of free speech. In no civilized society does free speech cover such activity. To blame the target of the vitriol for shutting down discussion adds to the delusion and reeks of fanning more anti-Semitism.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had written about Leila Khaled a few months ago when she was due to speak at San Francisco State University (SFSU):

“In some anti-Israel circles, PFLP terrorists Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh have drawn particular admiration. Leila Khaled took part in the hijacking of two civilian aircraft in 1969 and 1970. In recent interviews, she has remained unrepentant for her role in the hijackings and continues to hold the view that the Palestinian national movement is justified in using all means of resistance, including armed struggle.”

At the same time in September 2020, Colorado Congressman Doug Lamborn wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General William Barr outlining the criminal charges that should be brought against SFSU which had invited Khaled and possibly the technology companies like Zoom for hosting such discussions which “appeared to be [for the purpose of] the promotion of the PFLP’s [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] terrorist agenda to a wider audience.“

While the Times did not quote the ADL or Lamborn’s letter, it seemed to acknowledge the issue of promoting terrorism but then it quickly shifted gears back to anti-Israel free speech:

“A spokeswoman for Zoom, Colleen Rodriguez, said Ms. Khaled’s association with a terrorist group violated the company’s terms of service. The company also banned three other colleges’ webinars featuring Ms. Khaled.

“As schools around the country have shifted to virtual learning, the battles over Israel and the Palestinian territories — with opponents accusing one another of anti-Semitism or suppressing free speech — have migrated with the technology, evolving from campus demonstrations and fliers to social media and Zoom.”

It is as though the article was written by Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in acknowledging the problem of promoting terrorism but then excusing it as a matter of “suppressing free speech.” The article would go on for another 37 paragraphs – three pages including large color pictures – about whether criticism of Israel is a matter of free speech.

The 2,000-word article ended with an exchange that suggested the public square deserved to hear from Leila Khaled:

“The history is “messy,” he said, with “justice on both sides, and injustice on both sides.”

“Even without remote learning, students have little incentive to see the other view and strong support for hardening their own side’s.

“Mr. Stern said, mildly, “That makes conversations very difficult.””

One cannot imagine that the Times would go to such lengths to defend a university inviting a member of al-Qaeda onto campus to discuss the evils of the United States and its desire to continue an armed struggle against the western world. Maybe an alt-left university in California or New York would entertain a member of ISIS delivering a lecture under the banner of the university but hopefully law enforcement would shut it down.

The New York Times spent considerable ink over this past week saying that the new Biden Administration will help unify the country. That will only happen if he sends the attorney general and law enforcement after the alt-left universities and media companies like The New York Times which continue to promote terrorism and terrorists.

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NY Times Will Not Write About Arab Pogroms

Every Picture Tells a Story: Have Israel and the US Advanced Peace?

The New York Times wants the military to defeat terrorists (but not Hamas)

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NY Times Alternative Facts on Palestinian Elections

Posted on January 16, 2021 by First.One.Through

The New York Times once again wrote an article about Palestinians considering holding elections that could only be called #AlternativeFacts if one wanted to be charitable.

Page A10 of The New York Times of January 16, 2021

The article wrote that “Mr. Abbas was now seeking to renew his legitimacy in the eyes of the international community, especially with the imminent arrival of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the White House, which they said Mr. Abbas hoped would herald a return to negotiations with Israel.”

Nowhere in the article did it state that Abbas has no legitimacy with Palestinian Arabs.

The Palestinians poll themselves every quarter and the last results were released on December 15, 2020. There are important results to share with the public which were omitted by the Times:

86.3% of Palestinians think the Palestinian Authority is corrupt
That 86.3% compares to 63.4% who think Hamas-led institutions are corrupt
64.4% of Palestinians are not satisfied with the job of Abbas as president
66.0% of Palestinians want Abbas to resign
If Abbas was in an election against the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, he would lose 42.8% to 50.2%
If it were a three-way race including jailed terrorist Marwan Barghouti, Abbas would place third, with Barghouti at 41.2%, Haniyeh at 32.3% and Abbas at 24.5%
75.9% of people polled do not expect Abbas’s Fatah party to accept the results if Hamas wins
37.7% and 21.0% of Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank, respectively, seek to emigrate
The number one concern for Palestinians is unemployment and poverty. The “occupation and settlements” was number two

Marwan Barghouti, a convicted terrorist, is the leading contender to win Palestinian presidential elections, yet his name did not make it into the Times article at all. How not surprising – on both fronts.

If the authors had read the poll results, they would have known that the Palestinians are more concerned with their economy than negotiations with Israel.

The Times called Abbas’s Fatah as “the mainstream Palestinian party,” even though it is highly unpopular and likely to lose the elections.

The Times continued that “The United States and much of the west refused to work with the unity government [of Fatah and Hamas] because Hamas, which they consider a terrorist organization, would not accept international demands such as renouncing violence and recognizing Israel’s right to exist.” There was no commentary on how Biden would work with a PA president who was either a convicted killer (Barghouti) or leader of a terrorist group (HAMAS).

Making sure Israel could be cast in a negative light, the article added that “Israel may also decide to bar Palestinians from voting in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem.” The December poll states that 56% of Palestinians favor such people being able to vote in West Bank polling stations, if Israel does not allow a foreign election to take place on its soil.

The Times coverage of the Palestinians is an alternative universe of peaceful Democracy-loving people being unfairly cast in a negative light by right-wing Israeli and American governments. It will be interesting to see how the paper’s language evolves during a year in which the U.S., Israel and Palestinian Authority might all change administrations.

Related First One Through articles:

The New York Times Refuses to Label Hamas a Terrorist Group

New York Times Recharacterizes Hamas as a Right-Wing Terrorist Group

New York Times Grants Nobel Prize-in Waiting to Palestinian Arab Terrorist

Every Picture Tells A Story: Palestinian Terrorists are Victims

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Featured Idiot: NYT’s Friedman on Harris as Rural Broadband Czar

Posted on December 17, 2020 by First.One.Through

On December 16, 2020, The New York Times editorial board elected to give its entire opinion page to long-time journalist Thomas Friedman to discuss a topic he knows nothing about: rural America.

The one-time foreign affairs correspondent presented his bold idea that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris should become the czar of rural America and bring broadband to bridge the “connectivity gap.” He wanted this accomplished not so much for the benefit of rural America but to put on a show that Democrats care about these lagging Americans, so those red states might loose a touch of their rosy glow and prevent Democrats from getting trounced in the next election cycle.

What Friedman failed to understand and convey in the editorial was that the Trump administration committed billions of dollars to bring broadband to rural America.

It was just TEN DAYS AGO that the FCC announced the results of Rural Digital Opportunity Fund Auction 904 which awarded $9.2 billion of federal grants to telecom companies to subsidize the buildout of broadband networks in remote parts of the country. This came two years after the Connect America Fund II Auction 903 which granted $1.5 billion to operators to construct broadband networks for rural America.

But don’t let facts get in the way.

Friedman further noted that Harris “is a natural bridge builder to a more inclusive America.” Maybe Freidman is not aware that non-partisan GovTracks observed that Harris was the least bi-partisan U.S. senator. She also scored as the most extreme leftist in her voting record, even more than proud Democratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders and closeted Democratic-Socialist Elizabeth Warren.

But don’t let history get in the way.

The Times will have its urban readers believe that rural Americans are waiting for Democrats to save them, but all Friedman’s editorial really showed was his ignorance and contemptible view that non-urban Americans are just pawns for progressive politics.