The Islamic Republic of Iran has many proxies surrounding Israel: Hamas which controls Gaza; Hezbollah which controls Lebanon; Syria; and farther away, the Houthis in Yemen.
Does it also have cells in the West Bank?
As Iran sent over 180 missiles into Israel on October 1, 2024, two Palestinian Arabs from Hebron shot and killed seven people in Tel Aviv and injured many others. The timing was minutes apart.
This was the first time that Palestinian Arabs shot up Tel Aviv streets during the year long war against Palestinian terrorists. Is it a coincidence that Palestinian Arabs decided to blast Tel Aviv just as Iranian missiles showered from above?
West Bank Arabs have been much more supportive of the October 7 attacks and commitment to destroying Israel than their counterparts in Gaza according to Palestinian polls. Israeli activity likely prevented a two-front war on October 7, which would have resulted in thousands of additional Israeli deaths in cities like Kfar Saba and Ra’anana which are very close to the 1949 Armistice Lines.
While the world is focused on the violent storm between Israel and Iran, Israel’s security will need to investigate how deeply Iran has integrated with the newer terrorist groups in the West Bank like Jenin Battalion, Lions’ Den and Tulkarm Brigades, to clamp down on yet another front of jihadi terrorism.
ACTION ITEM
Write White House and pro-Israel members of Congress like Ritchie Torres, Mike Lawler and Josh Gottheimer or your local representative to get the State Department to label the Jenin Battalion, Lion’s Den and the branches of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade as US designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that it will permit the phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free” on its platform despite protests from groups that it is a call for the mass genocide of Israeli Jews. Meta’s Oversight Board sided with pro-Palestinian groups which argued that it is simply an expression for equal rights for all Arabs in the region.
The decision stemmed from three situations in which the phrase was used on the platform, and concluded that “the three pieces of content contain contextual signs of solidarity with Palestinians – but no language calling for violence or exclusion. They also do not glorify or even refer to Hamas, an organization designated as dangerous by Meta,” suggesting that only when the phrase is used connecting to calls for violence will the language be banned from the platform. Or stated differently, the expression itself is benign, and it is only the calls for violence that will cause censorship, as “the phrase’s use by this terrorist group [Hamas] with explicit violent eliminationist intent and actions, does not make the phrase inherently hateful or violent – considering the variety of people using the phrase in different ways,” the board said.
In short, Meta decided to side with pro-Palestinians over Zionists and Jews who view the phrase as an open call for the genocide of Jews.
It is interesting to compare that phrase to the “N-word” which is also used a wide variety of contexts.
Many Black musicians use the word in their songs. The Black comedian Dave Chappelle uses the N-word repeatedly in his shows, both for Black people or White people. These artists are seemingly given a pass as they themselves use the derogatory term. Chappelle mocked such sensitivity openly and defiantly.
Yet the NAACP voted to ban the word in 2007 and issued a follow-up statement in 2014 which clarified the reasons to block the term, including by artists:
“the stigma of this word embodies and invokes painful memories and inhumane ill-will; and countless individuals including NAACP freedom fighters, have lost their lives due to the beliefs perpetuated by the use of this word.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVEDthat the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People shall not condone, award, or engage any person that uses the N-word in any capacity, or in any artistic endeavor that does not allude to the historical context of the word, or that does not highlight the prejudicial nature of the word; and
BE IT FINALLY RESOLVEDthat the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People implement the following actions to reinforce its ban on the use of the N-word issued in 2007 and bolster education and awareness about the offensiveness of the word across racial and generational lines: Make the ban reinforcement a top civil rights priority for all units; and urge every youth unit in consultation with their corresponding adult branch develop a plan of action for implementation. Plan must include internal branch affirmation, public awareness, community outreach and a reporting process. In places where no active youth unit exists, the adult unit would be held to the same said requirement.”
While the corresponding derogatory term for Jews, the K-word, might be a better comparable to the N-word for Black people, it is not the antisemitic phrase that has often accompanied the slaughter of Jews.
“Free Palestine” is shouted at Jews on streets, painted on their synagogues and while they dine in restaurants. It is the placard hoisted at rallies in front of Jewish institutions and Hillels on college campuses. It is a taunt and threat, accompanied by the slogan “by any means necessary,” including burning Jews alive, as Palestinians brutality did en masse on October 7, 2023, to wild Arab support.
On October 26, 2023, not long after the barbaric attack on Israel, the Anti Defamation League (ADL), issued a statement that clearly tied the “Free Palestine” phrase to antisemitism:
“‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ is an antisemitic slogan commonly featured in anti-Israel campaigns and chanted at demonstrations.
This rallying cry has long been used by anti-Israel voices, including supporters of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the PFLP, which seek Israel’s destruction through violent means. It is fundamentally a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, territory that includes the State of Israel, which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state. It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland.
Usage of this phrase has the effect of making members of the Jewish and pro-Israel community feel unsafe and ostracized. It is important to note that demanding justice for Palestinians, or calling for a Palestinian state, should not mean, as this hateful phrase posits, denying the right of the State of Israel to exist.”
The Jewish victims of attack do not ask for “context” when people use the “Free Palestine” phrase; they know that more Jews “lost their lives due to the beliefs perpetuated by the use of this word” than any time since the Holocaust.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on HR 883 in April 2024 to label the phrase as antisemitic by a wide 377 to 44 margin. It specifically stated that “the slogan, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, is outrightly antisemitic and must be strongly condemned;” and “this slogan perpetuates hatred against the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” Notable anti-Israel squad members Bowman, Bush, Dingell, Barbara Lee, AOC, Omar, Pocan, Schakowsky, Tlaib, Velazquez and Waters voted against the resolution.
Society has so internalized the Black community’s objection to a hateful word that it cannot be uttered nor written. Yet calling for the genocide of Jews has been given a passing grade at universities, and a green light on social media.
ACTION ITEM
Contact ADL and your member of Congress to pressure the group to demand Meta change its policy regarding the genocidal phrase “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free.” Mark the phrase with the same opprobrium as the N-word.
Extremist groups on the right and left are winning elections. Wars are raging around the world including Russia-Ukraine and Iranian proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis against Israel. And new terrorist groups continue to emerge like the Palestinian’s Tulkarm Brigades and Lion’s Den.
Yet one would not know this from tracking how the United States designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs).
Since the U.S. State Department began listing FTOs on October 8, 1997, every Democratic and Republican administration was on top of the global terrorist threats, adding new FTOs with regularity. The longest gap between designating a new FTO was 992 days, from June 17, 2005 to March 5, 2008.
Until now.
The Biden administration last added a terrorist group on December 1, 2021, 1,005 days ago when it added two Colombia-based terrorist groups. Since that time it delisted five groups.
U.S. State Department Foreign Terrorist Organizations
Why hasn’t the U.S. listed any of the groups which have been murdering civilians for over 1,000 days? Has ignoring the “evil ideology” (to quote Obama) or “tragic deformity” (to quote James Zogby) of Palestinian culture pacified them?
The U.S. has spent the last three years with its head in the sand pretending that terrorist groups only exist INSIDE America as it left open its borders and ignored the toxic mushrooming of jihadi terrorist groups.
The United Nations Press team published its usual anti-Israel smear on August 13, 2024, as it described the latest Gaza war. In a headline that read “Humanitarian official describes pitiful regard for International Law, as delegates deplore continued attacks on civilians, suffering of Palestinians,” one would imagine another one-sided piece only critical of Israel. The sub-header about a “financial liquidity crisis” at the UN requiring a shortened article, may explain why the text of the article wasn’t scrubbed of any Israeli narrative.
While the article began that there was a “desperate need to reach a ceasefire” after an Israeli strike on a school in Gaza on August 10, the article – remarkably – included quotes from Israeli sources about who was killed in the attack, rather than only parrot Hamas’ figures which refers to every Palestinian as a civilian and every Israeli as a colonizing terrorist.
The UN article quoted Israeli officials that “its forces targeted a Hamas command centre in a mosque inside the compound and killed at least 31 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters.” Just a couple of paragraphs later the text would cover an August 3 Israeli strike in Tulkarem where nine Palestinians were killed who were planning “an attack inside Israel.”
While the article did quote Palestinian officials as well, that is routine. What was exceptional in this case was that the Israeli version of events was included in the press release, which is normally absent.
It would appear that the best way to get the United Nations to treat Israel with a modicum of respect and fairness is to starve it of funds.
Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group Hamas, was killed in Iran last night. Hamas, a popular political-terrorist group that seeks the destruction of Israel according to its charter, has killed thousands of Israelis since it was founded in 1988. The terrorist group launched a massive war against the Jewish State on October 7, 2023, killing and butchering 1,200 people – including hundreds of women and children – and taking over 250 people – living and dead – into Gaza. The terrorist group has stated that it intends to repeat the barbaric attack “again and again“, thrusting Israel into a war to stop the terrorist machinery and bring the hostages home.
None of this was covered by The New York Times.
The Times led that Haniyeh was a “political leader” as if his hands were clean. His “assassination raises fears of war,” rather than the killing of a leading terrorist bringing justice to a region that has only known war.
The Times continued:
Over a picture of a smiling Haniyeh amongst friends, the Times wrote that this leader “was a key player in negotiations to stop the fighting in Gaza,” cementing the notion that Israel killed a man of peace.
Not once did the Times call Hamas a terrorist group. Not once did it show a picture of the heinous massacre that Hamas committed on October 7.
Instead, the Times repeated their twisted narrative that Israel’s killing of this “political leader” would “engulf the region in further conflict,” as though Israel launched this war it never wanted. It added to the story about Israel’s killing of a leader of Hezbollah, another U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, spinning an article that Israel is a rogue nation of assassination.
The Times continued that it will now be Hamas that “responds” to the assassination, as opposed to the fact that Israel has been responding to Hamas’s attack. The Times’ cherry-on-top to its toxic sundae was that “Mr. Haniyeh was a key figure in Hamas’s cease-fire negotiations with Israel,” crowning the terrorist as a man of peace.
Many Jews and Zionists stopped reading the Times because of its anti-Israel and anti-religious bent. The whole world should condemn the #FakeNews which inverts reality and causes real-world harm when it canonizes a chief jihadi terrorist.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United States in July 2024 to thank the United States for its support in fighting five Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza who carried out the October 7 massacre. As part of the visit, he spent time with President Joe Biden, Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris, and former president and Republican nominee President Donald Trump.
While all three senior American politicians defended Israel’s right to defend itself from the terrorist groups, Harris went in a different direction and condemned “extremist settler violence and settlement expansion.”
Remarks by VP Harris about her meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, July 2024
Some education for Harris, and others who might miss some important facts:
This is not a war solely against Hamas but all Palestinian terrorist groups who kill Israelis and continue to threaten Israelis
West Bank Palestinians are more pro-Hamas and desirous of repeating the October 7 massacre than Gazans
Palestinian Terrorist Groups
As it relates to the brutal October 7 massacre, Human Rights Watch found “strong evidence of the participation of at least five Palestinian armed groups from Gaza in the attacks: Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades; the Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s armed wing, the Quds Brigades; the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s armed wing, the National Resistance Brigades or Omar al-Qasim Forces; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s armed wing, the Martyr Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades; and the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, formerly linked to the Fatah political faction.”
The United States State Department has labeled several Palestinian groups as foreign terrorist organizations including: HAMAS, 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). Backgrounds on each can be found here.
There are many other Palestinian terrorist groups not yet designated by the United States, including three new ones operating in the West Bank: Lion’s Den, Jenin Brigades, and Tulkarm Brigades, each of which has conducted murderous attacks against Israelis.
All of these groups – as well as individuals associated with them – should be condemned unambiguously. The US should provide full support in rooting out these groups and its supporters, and America should arrest and / or expel such individuals found in the US.
The West Bank Is Rife With Terrorist Supporters
Harris seems to think that Palestinian terrorism is confined to Hamas in Gaza, as that is where the October 7 emanated from and where hostages are supposedly being held. In fact, West Bank Arabs are more supportive of Hamas, its leadership and the October 7 massacre than Gazans.
According to a June poll conducted by the PCPSR, West Bank Arabs immediate reaction to the butchering of Israelis was overwhelming glee. In a December 2023 poll, 82% of West Bank Arabs supported the heinous attack, far more than the 57% of Gazans. Support continued to remain high in June 2024, with 73% of West Bank Palestinians supporting October 7.
West Bank Palestinians also support Hamas.
Asked in a variety of formats, West Bank Arabs support Hamas (82%) and the architect of the October 7 atrocities, Yahya Sinwar (76%) significantly more than Gazans (64% and 50%, respectively). A majority of 71% of West Bank Arabs want Hamas to rule Gaza compared to 45% of Gazans. West Bank Arabs prefer Hamas over the less genocidal Fatah (41% to 17%), higher than the margin among Gazans (38% to 24%).
Consistent with West Bank Palestinians support for Hamas and the October 7 massacre is the preference for violence, with 62% expressing support for an “armed intifada.”
Harris’s concern for West Bank Palestinians is not reciprocated. Only 1% have a positive view of the US, less than the 6% of Gazans who are happy with the US.
The “extremist settlers” highlighted by Harris are resisting genocidal maniacs who want to repeat the October 7 massacre on Jews throughout the West Bank and Israel.
It is time to lay bare plain facts: the supporters of Palestinian murderers are found throughout the West Bank and their enablers are increasingly found in western countries.
Roughly 3,500 Palestinians Arabs from Gaza stormed into Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023. They went into civilian homes and killed children in front of their parents as well as parents before their children. They burned families alive. Roughly 1,200 Israeli civilians and hundred of security personnel were murdered.
Imagine that the Israeli army acted quickly.
Imagine that Israeli soldiers and drones quickly encircled the Palestinian terrorists and wiped all of them out. Imagine that the Israelis killed 3,500 Palestinians after the terrorists killed only 100 people in Israel, a 35-to-1 ratio.
Would the world have condemned Israel for the “disproportionate” slaughter of Palestinians? Would extremist American politicians like Jamaal Bowman have gone onto the streets of his district to rile up a crowd that Israelis have been brutalizing Palestinians “for 75 years [since the founding of Israel]” and that Israel “values certain lives over others“? Would protests on college campuses have become hotbeds of antisemitism calling to “Globalize the intifada [to kill Zionists everywhere]?”
Gazans started and are still engaged in a war intended to destroy the Jewish State and annihilate Jews. The fact that Palestinians are dying in much greater numbers than Israelis does not change the basic facts that Gazans are engaged in a genocidal war while Israel is fighting a defensive war.
On Saturday June 8, 2024, Israeli security forces rescued four of the Israeli hostages who were kidnapped to Gaza from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023. In the action to bring everyone back to Israel, one of the Israeli vehicles got stuck and was surrounded by Palestinian terrorists. Israel called in the Air Force to provide protection and scores of Palestinians were reportedly killed.
Pro-Israel media portrayed the rescue operation as an enormous success. Israelis celebrated on the streets at the return of the seized peaceful party-goers who were held illegally in captivity for eight months by Gazans.
NY Post cover pageWall Street Journal cover page
The anti-Israel media lambasted the operation as it killed many Palestinians. It mocked the rescue as being inhumane because of the toll on Palestinians who were part of the Hamas infrastructure imprisoning the Israelis.
Pundits went on to speculate that Hamas would now likely move hostages from apartments to the underground tunnel network and embed them with Palestinian soldiers.
That is inverted logic.
Hamas has no possibility of militarily defeating Israel, a fact made abundantly clear over the past eight months. The only war Hamas is attempting to win is one of public opinion, which it tries to do by getting the woke anti-Israel media to see Israel as mercilessly killing civilians – ideally as many women and children as possible. Hamas watches the news, and celebrates the latest victory that so much of the media has not condemned it for keeping hostages in the heart of a residential neighborhood.
It will make the next attempt even more heinous.
After the daring rescue operation, Hamas is likely to move remaining hostages into nurseries, to force Israel to kill as many Arab infants as possible, should the Jewish State attempt another rescue. It would be a huge victory for Hamas, as it offers infant martyrs for the cameras.
The Israeli government and army were shocked as over 1,000 members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad invaded Israel and butchered babies, women, men and the elderly. They were totally unprepared for the abduction of 250 people to Gaza.
But the world didn’t voice shock that thousands of Palestinian Arab civilians from Gaza participated in the atrocities. The world remained silent.
The Israeli army has killed and captured thousands of Palestinian terrorists since October 7. The intelligence gathered from the Gazan soldiers provided information to launch rescue operations to free Israeli hostages.
On June 8, four Israelis were rescued from an apartment complex in the United Nations run-Nuseirat “refugee” camp in central Gaza. The camp is right next to the Izz ad Deen al-Qassam Mosque, named for a Syrian terrorist who hunted the British and Jews in Palestine in the 1920s and 1930s.
The four Israelis included a 26-year old woman, held hostage in an apartment for eight months. The local Gazans said and did nothing the entire time but is not flagged in the media.
Freed Israeli hostage Noa Argamani reunited with her father
It is being reported that the hostages were forced to read the Quran and learn Islamic teachings. Such activity evidences the religious nature of the war from Gaza is not a battle over land.
The Islamist war is not being discussed in the mainstream media.
It is also being reported that one of the people who kept the hostages, or lived next door, was Abdallah Aljamal, an employee of Al Jazeera, the Qatari-based media company aligned with Hamas, or more likely, Palestine Chronicle, another media outfit. Whether Aljamal was the guard overseeing the hostages or not, a journalist would certainly have known about hostages next door. And he said nothing, showcasing his allegiance to the terrorists over journalism.
The Gaza journalists complicit with terrorism is not being discussed in the mainstream media.
Polls of Gazans have long shown that they support Hamas and the goal of killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. Recent polls show a majority of Gazans support the October 7 attack. They view the abduction of civilians as part of a war effort which they support and from which they will benefit.
And the world continues to say nothing about the desire of Gazans who want to see Jews murdered.
Many people had assumed that the hostages were being kept by the terrorist groups in underground tunnels with Gazans kept as human shields for the underground terrorist infrastructure. However, the recent rescue operation shows that assumption to be incorrect: the people of Gaza are keeping Jews as hostages in their homes and in their neighborhoods, under the watch of Hamas and the United Nations.
The Arabs of Gaza are not human shields for Hamas; they are an integral part of the infrastructure of antisemitic terror.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush and Betty McCollum put forward H.Res 1123, a ‘Nakba Resolution’ in May 2022 which demanded that millions of Arabs who had parents, grandparents or great-grandparents who once lived in Israel should be allowed to move there against the wishes of the sovereign State of Israel. They continue to make incendiary comments to strip Israel of its sovereign rights to determine who may live inside the country, and even more glaring, are trying to compel the admittance of people who voted a genocidal regime into a majority of the Palestinian parliament, and which just tortured and brutally murdered 1,200 civilians and almost 400 security personnel.
Tlaib, Bowman and crew attempted to push the resolution through Congress again in May 2023.
Tlaib was roundly censured by Congress – including by fellow Democrats – for her vilification of Israel, calling for the end of the Jewish State, and her lies that Israel and the United States were responsible for the October 7 Hamas massacre, in H.Res 845. Jamaal Bowman was one of the few people who came to Tlaib’s defense.
In the aftermath of the October 7 Palestinian slaughter of Jews, Bowman went onto the streets of White Plains, NY and said before an anti-Zionist crowd “What we never talk about- the number of women and children that have been taken by Israel in the West Bank. They need to be released as well [even those who committed murder]. We have to tell the truth about what’s been happening there for 75 years [since the founding of Israel in 1948]. The occupation [the basic existence of Israel] is a war crime.”
Bowman would go on to describe Israel’s claims of beheaded babies and raping of women as “lies and propaganda.” Tlaib followed suit, and was the only member of Congress to not vote on a resolution to condemn Hamas’s rape of Israeli women, essentially defending her position by concocting a fiction that Israeli forces are raping Palestinians.
Tlaib continued to vote in Congress to protect the antisemitic genocidal group Hamas:
H. Res 966 had 200 cosponsors which condemned Hamas’s murder and raping of women. Rashida Tlaib could not bring herself to condemn rape if done by Hamas. She was the only member of congress to abstain from voting.
H. Res 8304 resupplied Israel’s military in its defensive war against Hamas. It passed by 366 to 58, with Tlaib, Bowman, and other members of the squad voting against the measure.
While Tlaib is invited to speak at conferences which sek to end the Jewish State, Bowman runs for the blessings of these groups and holds fundraisers with their donors.
Bowman proved his anti-Zionist bona fides to such a level, that he was able to get the endorsement of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America, after lobbying to get their approval.
The NYC-DSA is a grossly antisemitic group. It held a rally in Times Square on October 8 and mocked the hundreds of young peaceful dancers who were butchered and taken hostage by Hamas.
DSA in Times Square on October 8, 2023 mocking the young Israelis who were killed and taken hostage
A majority of Gazans have long supported Hamas and killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. Reps. Tlaib and Bowman and standing beside them and begging them and their sponsors for support, as they attempt to remove Israel’s critical ally in its battle with genocidal maniacs. The alt-left duo is aligning with an axis of evil which wants to destroy the United States and Israel.
Westchester County Executive George Latimer, Bowman’s Democratic Party opponent, put it best: Jamaal Bowman actively courted and finally secured the endorsement of “a group that wants to pull the US out of NATO; end sanctions against Russia, North Korea and Iran; wipe Israel off the map; stonewall President Biden’s agenda; and legalize fentanyl.”
First One Through 