Probably the greatest living graffiti artist alive today is known as ‘Banksy,’ who manages to stay anonymous.
That’s probably a good thing in light of his being a sponsor of Palestinian terrorism.
Banksy has several paintings on walls in the Palestinian territories which depict Israelis as merciless and Arabs as suffering souls, looking for an escape.
In one painting, Banksy shows a protestor throwing a bouquet of flowers instead of a Molotov cocktail. The implied message is that one needs to be violent to effectively protest, as throwing flowers would not yield any results.
Perhaps on the other side or along this wall, Banksy could draw images of Jewish families burned to death in their cars. Maybe a decapitated infant with an overturned crib. A woman grabbed by her hair and raped, or an elderly couple with bullets in their heads at a bus stop. Any of the gruesome images that Hamas terrorists inflicted on Israelis, with the Palestinian protestor seemingly tossing flowers onto Jewish graves.
The work could be called “Celebrating The Slaughter of Jewish Civilians” and he can sign it “Gaza and West Banksy.” The same art world which loved the Klinghoffer Opera can celebrate the “masterpiece.”
Banksy knows that he beautifies terrorists and softens their images in an appeal for sympathy. But the brutality is not beautiful and sympathy for such savages is sacrilegious.
The music at the Israeli dance festival was stopped by Palestinian bullets, and it is time for Banksy and other artists to stop adorning evil with wreaths.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY16) represents the eighth largest Jewish district in Congress. He represents Americans.
And he has abandoned them all.
On October 16, 2023, while nearly 200 hostages remain captive in Gaza by the Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas, the American far left-wing “squad” put forward a resolution which ignored them.
The “CeasfireNOW” Resolution leads that “between October 7 and October 16, 2023, armed violence has claimed the lives of 2,700 Palestinians and over 1,400 Israelis, including Israelis, and wounding thousands more.”
There was no acknowledgement of the sickening and unprovoked terrorist attack which started the violence.
There was no mention in the resolution of the hostages taken, which President Biden’s team said “are the highest priority. He [Biden] has sent hostage experts to coordinate and consult with the Israeli government on hostage recovery efforts.”
There was no statement to bring the Hamas perpetrators to justice. Quite the contrary, it called for “the Biden Administration to immediately call for and facilitate deescalation and a ceasefire to urgently end the current violence,” to allow the butchers to remain free, laughing at Israel and taunting the hostages.
Jamaal Bowman and fellow extremists Rep. Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib, have abandoned innocent hostages and are working to ensure that Hamas terrorists are never brought to justice, free to wantonly kill Jews whenever the mood strikes.
Is the squad being paid by Iran too?
ACTION ITEM
Email White House: “The CeasefireNow” Resolution put forward by the left-wing radical fringe including NY’s Bowman ignores Hamas terrorism and the hundreds of hostages held by the jihadi group. It is disgraceful and alarming surrender to violence. It must not only be rejected but the sponsors should be censured.”
The New York Times publishes a large “Opinion” section each Sunday which typically features a dozen opinions which tilt to its far-left readership. On occasion, it publishes center and right perspectives to provide readers a wider view of a situation.
In the aftermath of the worst atrocities committed against Jews since the Holocaust, the Times opted to serve up exclusively left-wing opinions which essentially offered that Palestinians really aren’t at fault for the October 7 atrocities, and even if they were somewhat to blame for the massacre, you cannot take it out on them.
The New York Times opinion section on October 15, 2023
Using Peter Beinart, an anti-Zionist as the main feature on the cover to discuss “How did we get here and how do we get out of here?” was setting the stage for a pile of bile. Another contributor listed on top of the front page was “Nicholas Kristof on how bombing civilians promotes extremism” was certainly going to be a blame-the-victim spectacle.
All this, while Israelis were still trying to identify the dead who were burned to death and hacked to pieces.
There were seven articles in all. All gave the same message of “why can’t we all just get along?” and blamed religious radicals in Israel and Palestinian territories for all the death and hatred. But especially the Israelis. As the stronger party, calling them out serves the progressive idols.
These are opinion pages, so people can repeat each other in their echo chamber to make them feel as if their opinions have miraculously transformed into facts all they want.
Alas, it is not so.
As a stark example, take one paragraph from Kristoff’s piece “What Does Destroying Gaza Solve?” He decided to veer from enlightened-snobbery opinion to give statistics from a Palestinian poll. He lied outright when he wrote:
“Gazans voted in Hamas in 2006 but have a mixed view of it, with 70 percent saying in a July poll that they would like Hamas to hand over administration of the territory to the much more moderate Palestinian Authority. Some 62 percent of people in Gaza said this summer they wanted to continue the ceasefire with Israel.”
Sounds like Gazans have moderated, right? It’s a total fabrication.
79% of Gazans are in favor of forming new “armed groups such as the ‘Lions’ Den’ and the ‘Jenin Battalion,’ which do not take orders from the PA and are not part of the PA security services”
55% of Gazans believe that they will “recover Palestine”, meaning take over all of Israel
78% of Hamas-supporters believe Israel won’t exist in 25 years
If presidential elections were held today, Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh would win with 65% of the vote in Gaza
“Level of satisfaction with the performance of president Abbas stands at 17% and dissatisfaction at 80%…. Moreover, a vast majority of 80% of the public wants president Abbas to resign while only 16% want him to remain in office.”
“31% say Hamas is most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people while 21% think Fatah under president Abbas is the most deserving”
“63% say the PA is a burden on the Palestinian people”
“Only 28% support the two-state solution”
“53% support a return to an armed intifada”
“52% believe that armed action is the best way to end occupation”
Does that sound like a region that wants to hand administration over to the Palestinian Authority or supports a ceasefire? That has moved away from armed conflict and wants to pursue coexistence with Israel?
Even an opinion piece needs fact-checking when completely false data is presented to bolster the opinion, and the Times is either incompetent or complicit in lying about Gazans actual evil intentions.
The Beinart piece was a work of inversion of cause-and-effect. He blamed the frustration of Gazans being under blockade for causing their violence, rather than Gazans feeling that all of Israel is rightfully theirs and want to kick out the “colonial invader” Jews.
The blockade of Gaza started in 2007 when Hamas killed members of Fatah and seized the area. The formation of Hamas, with its antisemitic genocidal charter was written in 1988, roughly twenty years earlier. There’s a clear cause-and-effect and getting the sweet cover picture promotion by the Times doesn’t change facts.
To answer the question posed on the cover “how do we get out of here?” requires being honest about the situation to produce possible solutions. The New York Times believes that openly lying to its readership about a peaceful Gazan population under the domination of a handful of radical Islamists will produce a solution. It will not. The media lies will only produce more anger against Israel, especially as civilians in Gaza die in Israel’s attempt to save hostages, bring the Hamas perpetrators to justice, and end the threat posed from Gazan terrorist enclave.
ACTION ITEM
Write to The New York Times letters@nytimes.com: “The Kristof statistics about Gazans favoring the Palestinian Authority and a ceasefire are complete lies as shown in the June PCPSR poll.”
As Israel attempts to free hostages in Gaza taken captive by the political-terrorist group Hamas, people are debating how innocent Gazans are relative to the group that administers the territory. Those defending Palestinian Arabs argue that Hamas seized the territory in 2007 from the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority so cannot be held responsible. They dismiss that Palestinians voted Hamas to 58% of parliament since that election happened in 2006 and doesn’t represent current attitudes.
Arguable the best way to truly consider Gazans attitudes towards Israel, both before and after Hamas took over Gaza, is to look at poll data.
The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) has been conducting polls of West Bank and Gazan Arabs since the turn of the century. There are many questions that change based on the reality of the moment and some which have remained consistent.
Supporting terrorism has been a constant through the polls. For over twenty years, it has been a question that is asked in that format: “Concerning armed attacks against Israeli civilians inside Israel, I….” with the choice of either Strongly support/ Support/ Oppose / Strongly oppose / NA. Here are the results, with links to the original polls.
As seen in the table above, two-thirds of Gazans support terrorism, specifically, killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel like the gruesome massacre of October 7, 2023. That suggests 1.5 million Gazans (67% of 2.25 million Gazans) were supporters of the Hamas barbarism.
This was not a momentary blip in time. Over the past 23 years, there was a single moment – when Israel left Gaza – that only 43.6% of Gazans supported murdering Israeli Jews. At any other time, a majority between 53% and 76% approved terrorism.
The spike in support for terrorism in June 2007 coincided with confidence that Hamas’s approach of attacks yields better results than Fatah’s approach of negotiations, both “in stopping Israeli settlement activities” which portrayed “Hamas as successful in breaking the [Israeli] siege and as a victim of Israeli attacks,” according to PCPSR.
The support is not theoretical.
In March 2011, when two Palestinian Arabs went into the town of Itamar and slaughtered two parents and three children in their beds, 51% of Gazans supported the grisly killing when asked specifically about the attack (question 67).
The people of Gaza are not “innocent” and victims of Hamas, and the media constant refrain of saying as much is a deliberate lie meant to narrow the scope of the conflict.
October 7, 2023 will be marked in Israeli and Jewish history as one of the most horrible days in modern times. Not since the Holocaust had such Jews experienced such savagery.
It would be hard to understand that from looking at pictures in The New York Times coverage of the Hamas massacre.
The attack was featured on the front page as well as in two other pages with many color pictures.
Front page of NY Times on October 8, 2023
Four pictures were featured under the headline “Palestinian Militants Stage Attack On Israel.” The four pictures included two of Palestinians attacking Israel, one with rockets and another with a bulldozer ripping down a fence. The other had an Israeli soldier walking past “bodies of Israelis killed by militants in the city of Sderot,” which gave no clarity as to whether the Israelis were soldiers, like the one standing in the picture, or civilians. The last picture had people in Gaza carrying “the body of a slain militant.”
From the pictures on the cover, one would imagine a battle between armed opponents, Palestinian militants and the Israeli army.
Page 12 would build on this theme.
Page 12 of The New York Times on October 8, 2023
Three small pictures on the top of the page show missile strikes and debris. One shows an Israeli town being hit and two pictures show Gaza being struck. The large picture in the center of the page has an Israeli woman, shown from the back, running for cover from a “rocket siren”, and the bottom picture has young Palestinian Arabs looking up at the sky from the “sound of airstrikes.”
The picture coverage started to move to civilians, with the war being a battle from the skies.
Page 13 of NY Times on October 8, 2023
The final page of coverage continued with the theme of rocket fire, with a large picture on top showing a strike in Gaza, then a small picture of a house in Israel with damage. Below the fold was an Israeli family running from “a site that was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip.”
This pictorial narrative is utterly and completely disgraceful.
Well over 1,000 Palestinian terrorists stormed into Israel and slaughtered over 1,000 people. They set fire to homes and burned people alive. They shot up people in the streets and in their beds. The raped women and dragged them through the streets. The Arabs chopped the heads off babies and soldiers.
It was a vicious slaughter committed by people in close proximity, mostly of armed Hamas terrorists against civilians.
All unprovoked, in an attack on the Jewish Sabbath and holiday of Simchat Torah.
The New York Times attempt at showing a similar number of pictures of damage from rockets in both Israel and Gaza right after the massacre distorts the entire narrative of the grotesque slaughter of Jewish families and young people, to warrant being called antisemitic and libelous.
Throughout 2023, Arab media has promoted fake news that Jews are taking over the third holiest site in Islam, the al Aqsa Mosque. They are doing it to incite 1.8 billion Muslims around the world to call for a jihad against the Jews and to destroy Israel.
And it’s a total fiction that is not repudiated by any media and government, even knowing that it is not just false but designed to set the Middle East on fire.
The incitement happens in regular media as well as social media.
Wafa, the official media of the Palestinian Authority wrote on September 10 that “Dozens of settlers break into Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque.” It claimed that the Jews “conducted provocative tours through the courtyards of the mosque, received explanations about the alleged ‘Jewish Temple,’ and performed Talmudic rituals near the Dome of the Rock.” As seen in pictures, all the Jews did was walk around the site during normal visiting hours.
WAFA article with fake news to deliberately incite the Muslim world against Jews
It is part of a string of highly charged lies repeated around the Arab and Muslim world.
The list goes on, falsely stating that Jews walking around the Temple Mount were in any way entering, let alone harming, the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Social media did much the same over the summer, showing Jews – many of them elderly – walking around the courtyard. However, the text to its readership was “Israeli settlers raided Al-Aqsa” and “Colonial Israeli settlers break into Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa courtyards.”
There are many highly visible examples of Muslim and Arab media and governments deliberately lying to the masses to stoke a religious holy war against the Jews and Jewish State. Yet the United Nations, U.S. government, mainstream and social media companies have never said a word to stop the hateful propaganda which has cost thousands of lives.
ACTION ITEM
Write White House “Demand that Arab and Muslim governments and media stop inciting hatred by falsely claiming that Jews are storming Al Aqsa when they are simply visiting their holiest site.”
It is difficult for people to comprehend the trauma felt in Israel. It goes beyond numbers as reviewed here.
The 9/11 Comparison
The Murdered. On September 11, 2001, 2,977 American civilians were killed by radical jihadists affiliated with the al Qaeda terrorist group. By comparison, on October 7, 2023, an estimated 900 people were killed in Israel. Relative to each population, roughly 1 out of 100,000 Americans were killed on 9/11 while 9.6 out of 100,000 Israelis were killed.
After 9/11, there were basically no further casualties on American soil. In Israel, several hundred additional people have been killed, with each day almost the equivalent of a 9/11. The total scale of the massacre of Israelis easily surpasses 10 times 9/11.
The Killers. There were 19 hijackers of four airplanes on 9/11, a relatively small number. The massacre in Israel involved an estimated 1,500 Palestinian Arab terrorists, about 80 times as many bent on killing civilians.
The Methodology. The 9/11 operation was clinically cold: the hijackers crashed planes into buildings. In the 10/7 atrocities, 1,500 Hamas terrorists went town-to-town hacking and shooting families to death. They raped women and dragged them through the street by their hair. They burned people alive. The butchers decapitated dozens of babies. For hours, they scoured the horizon for Jews to slaughter by hand.
Broad Local Support. The al Qaeda terrorists were a band of radical jihadists in 2001. They weren’t elected to any office. Not so for Hamas, which was elected to 58% of Palestinian parliament in 2006 with the most antisemitic charter ever written. They continue to hold that majority of the government, and according to polls, Hamas would win presidential elections if held now.
Location. The horde of al Qaeda terrorists were on the other side of the globe for the U.S.A. Hamas is literally next door to Israel – with the majority in Gaza but many in the West Bank. These Palestinian terrorists could carry out attacks against Israel from their backyards whenever they want.
The Aftermath. All 19 hijackers on 9/11 were killed in the suicide operation. They took no prisoners. However, well over 1,000 of the Arab terrorists survived and returned to their safe haven in Gaza, taking roughly 150 hostages with them. The Palestinian jihadists continue to fight on, now surrounded by 25,000 fellow jihadi terrorists, ensconced among civilians.
International Support. Al Qaeda became public enemy number one around the world after 9/11. America enlisted many countries in a fight against global terror which focused on America’s enemy. Yet now, in the immediate aftermath of the sickening slaughter in Israel, people and countries call the terrorism “resistance” and the massacre a cause for “celebration.” Israel will have a very difficult time gathering and maintaining global support to finally terminate this noxious evil.
Existential Threat. At the end of the day, while the 9/11 attacks were evil, the United States did not suddenly become really vulnerable; it was not going to disappear. But Israel is surrounded by many parties who refuse to accept its existence since its founding. The Islamic Republic of Iran, now at the cusp of nuclear weapons capability, has threatened to wipe it off the map and is actively sponsoring terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah on Israel’s borders. Israel is highly vulnerable.
As people watch the news or consider the “pro-Palestinian resistance” protests taking place in cities and campuses, it is critical that they understand the current fear of Jews and Israelis: the collective post traumatic stress disorder which echoes the wails of parents and grandparents from the Holocaust and pogroms, has emerged again as the Satan of Gaza.
Even the most persecuted people in the world can be shocked by the barbarity of antisemites, and by the people who abandon them in their time of need.
The reports coming out of Israel are horrifying. The actions of Hamas in places like Kfar Aza are horrific as entire families were gunned down in their homes and babies decapitated.
The United Nations Secretary General issued a statement that “The attacks have so far claimed numerous Israeli civilian lives and injured many hundreds. The Secretary-General is appalled by reports that civilians have been attacked and abducted from their own homes.
“The Secretary-General is deeply concerned for the civilian population and urges maximum restraint. Civilians must be respected and protected in accordance with international humanitarian law at all times.”
The phrase “maximum restraint” is only used when terrorists kill Israelis and the UNSG gets worried that Israel will pursue the Palestinian Arab assailants. When terrorists kill people in other places including Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan or Nigeria, the UN Security Council declares “the need to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism accountable and bring them to justice.”
In light of the gross deformity of Palestinian culture and barbaric attacks by the popular political-terrorist party Hamas, it is time for Israel to pursue ‘maximum justice,’ to finish ALL “perpetrators, organizers, financiers and sponsors of these reprehensible acts of terrorism”, including the Islamic Republic of Iran if they were indeed behind the attacks.
Mohammed Deif, supreme military commander of Izz ad-Din al-Qassam BrigadesYahya al-Sinwar, current leader of Hamas in GazaIsmail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas based in Qatar
There are estimated to be 30,000 people affiliated with Hamas, not including those who aid and abet the group. Israel will require significant time to bring these murderers to maximum justice and rout them from the region. We should support Israel in destroying the terrorist entity and hopefully bringing calm to the region.
In response to the heinous massacre of Israelis and kidnapping of an estimated 150 Jews, Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant announced a “complete siege [of Gaza]. We are fighting barbarians and will respond accordingly.” The siege is anticipated to include halting the supply of electricity, food, water and fuel as Israeli soldiers scour the region in search of innocent hostages.
For its part, Hamas announced that it would “respond to any targeting of our people who are safe in their homes without warning, with the execution of our civilian hostages, and we will broadcast it with audio and video.”
The United Nations Secretary General immediately took sides on the competing threats – one by Israel to halt supplies while it sought to redeem its captives, and the other by Hamas which threatened to execute the Jewish civilians and broadcast it to the world.
He sided with Palestinian terrorists. His statement read:
“I am deeply distressed by today’s announcement that Israel will initiate a complete siege of the Gaza Strip, nothing allowed in — no electricity, food or fuel. The humanitarian situation in Gaza was extremely dire before these hostilities; now it will only deteriorate exponentially.
“Medical equipment, food, fuel and other humanitarian supplies are desperately needed, along with access for humanitarian personnel. Relief and entry of essential supplies into Gaza must be facilitated and the UN will continue efforts to provide aid to respond to these needs.
“I urge all sides and the relevant parties to allow United Nations access to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians trapped and helpless in the Gaza Strip. I appeal to the international community to mobilize immediate humanitarian support for this effort.”
That is not a misprint.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres said that the UN would rally the world to ignore Israel’s search and rescue mission for Jewish hostages marked for public execution in Palestinian territory, and instead focus on Palestinian civilians who were “trapped and helpless” ruled by Arabs which they support and elected.
Bound Israeli female hostage pulled into Hamas jeep for Gaza
Blinded by its long-standing desire to help Palestinian Arabs, the United Nations has lost all legitimacy, and now participates in crimes against humanity and the murder of Israeli Jews.
The heinous massacre of Israeli Jews by the Palestinian political-terrorist group HAMAS meets every definition of a crime against humanity. The whitewashing of the evil source should therefore be considered a grave offense to be fought aggressively.
He flagged the “terrorist organization, Hamas” and called out terrorists a total of nine times and Hamas five times. He made it clear that the United States views the organization and its actions as evil with such declarations.
However, Biden misdirected the vitriol by constricting his language away from clearly labeling the group as the highly popular political party of Palestinian Arabs.
Worse, he made Palestinian Arabs appear as peace partners to stop the violence, saying “I’ve also directed my team to remain in constant contact with leaders throughout the region, including Egypt, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman, the UAE, as well as with our European partners and the Palestinian Authority.“
CNN has done much the same calling out “Hamas fighters” and “Hamas militants” but disassociating the terrorist group with Palestinian Arabs. Instead, it limits the use of “Palestinians” to describe death tolls of local Arabs.
The New York Times echoes much of the narrative that Hamas is an “Iran-backed militant group that controls the Gaza Strip,” stripping the group of its Palestinian roots and nature and dressing it as a foreign implant.
This is toxic misinformation.
Hamas is the majority political party in Palestinian parliament, with 74 of the 132 seats, or 58 per cent of the total. According to a September 2023 Palestinian poll, “If new presidential elections were held today and only two candidates, Mahmoud Abbas [of Fatah] and Ismail Haniyeh [of Hamas], the voter turnout would be only 42%, and among those who would participate, Abbas would receive 37% of the vote and Haniyeh 58%,” showing the continued strength and popularity of the political-terrorist group.
The majority of Palestinians voted Hamas into power with the most antisemitic charter ever written, and a majority of Palestinian Arabs support the killing of Jews inside of Israel according to polls, just as Hamas has carried out.
Palestinian Arabs are engaged in a war to eradicate Jews from their homeland, and launched an attack on a Jewish religious holiday with a grisly crime against humanity. Efforts to recharacterize the war as stemming from a foreign-backed militant groups grossly paints Palestinian Arabs as twice-over victims – of Iranian-backed Hamas and of Israel – instead of squarely placing the root of evil on the local Arabs themselves.
The grisly crimes against humanity being waged by Palestinian Arabs against Jews must be fought militarily, financially, morally and with clarity. Hamas is the popular Palestinian political-terrorist party, not a foreign implant. Palestinian Arabs are responsible for the atrocities.
Write White House: “The grisly crimes against humanity being waged by Palestinian Arabs against Jews must be fought militarily, financially, morally and with clarity. Hamas is the popular Palestinian political-terrorist party, not a foreign implant.”
First One Through 