When notorious terrorist Osama Bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in May 2011, United Nations committees issued various congratulatory statements.
UN Secretary General said “The death of Osama bin Laden, announced by President [Barack] Obama last night, is a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism. The crimes of Al Qaeda touched most continents, bringing tragedy and loss of life to thousands of men, women and children. The United Nations condemns in the strongest possible terms terrorism in all its forms, regardless of its purpose and wherever it is committed.”
UN Security Council statement read: “Recalling the “heinous” terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in New York, Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, as well as the numerous attacks perpetrated by the Al-Qaida network around the world, the Security Council welcomed today the news that Osama bin Laden would never again be able to perpetrate such acts of terrorism.”
“The Security Council’s Al-Qaida and Taliban Sanctions Committee welcomes the news on 1 May 2011 that Usama Bin Laden will never again be able to perpetrate acts of terrorism and refers to the Presidential Statement of the Security Council dated 2 May 2011 in this regard.”
Israel did not receive a similar wave of congratulations in successfully killing Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas and chief architect of the gruesome October 7, 2023 massacre. As opposed to the commentary above, the UN used its various panels on October 17 and 18, 2024 to condemn Israel.
In a discussion about “Global Poverty,” Mauritania offered “Israeli aggression in Gaza and Lebanon has led to inhuman conditions, high levels of food insecurity and extreme poverty. Israel has targeted valuable infrastructure, including schools, mosques and churches as well as water and sanitation facilities.”
In a discussion about the “Rule of Law,” Oman “condemned Israel’s bombardment of hospitals, schools and other sites in which Gazan civilians have sought refuge, also warning against pursuing a policy of collective punishment,” while the representative from Palestine said “For 76 years, the Israeli exceptionalism has haunted the development of the rule of law and the advancement of the protection of civilians in an effort to make might right.”
In a discussion about “Machine Autonomy,” the representative from the League of Arab States “proposed an embargo on arms supplies to Israel.”
In a discussion about “Internally Displaced People,” Algeria called Israel a “killing machine,” while a Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression said that Israel was killing journalists “with total impunity” and was alarmed that Israel was attempting to call anti-Zionism a form of antisemitism.
In a discussion about “Colonialism,” Pakistan’s representative said “No Israeli massacre and brutality will extinguish the struggle for freedom and self-determination of the people of Palestine.”
In a discussion about “Food Rights,” a Special Rapporteur on the right to food said “Israel’s war proved to be a genocidal campaign against the Palestinian people.”
For those scoring at home, the Taliban in Afghanistan and China’s treatment of Rohingya were never mentioned. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was only referenced once in the report on food rights.
For his part, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres admonished Israel about the importance of UN’s military force in Lebanon, which has not prevented Hezbollah from digging tunnels to Israel or stockpiling weapons.
The UN Security Council hasn’t issued any statement since the October 17 killing of Sinwar.
No one at the UN denies that Sinwar planned and called for the massacre of over a thousand people and abduction of hostages. But since they also believe the targeted victims were Jews who perpetually carry some guilt like the mark of Cain, that he is absolved of all crime.
Opinion columnist Nicholas Kristof writes about foreign and domestic affairs from a liberal and Arab point of view, honed by his Harvard and American University in Cairo education, and years at the anti-Israel New York Times.
His antipathy for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Jewish State is only matched by his ignorance.
New York Times opinion by Nicholas Kristof on October 20, 2024
Kristof wrote an opinion in the aftermath of Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, mastermind of the savage October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel. He led with a call for the United States to pressure Netanyahu, and repeated the demand throughout his article.
Kristof said that Hamas will never surrender, so it’s up to the United States to apply significant pressure on Israel to declare victory against the unwavering foe. His ignorant view is not supported by polling data. Since the war started, Gazans have lowered their support for war to 36% from 51% right before October 7, 2023. Gazan support for negotiations has more than doubled from 19% in September 2023 to 40% in September 2024.
Similarly, Gazan support for the October 7 massacre dropped dramatically over the last six months from 71% to 39% as the war they initiated has become a dismal failure.
September 2024 PCPSR poll
Kristof continues with the lie that Israel’s defensive war is creating a new “generational threat” from young Gazans seeing the destruction all around them. Yet the opposite is true, that the United Nations educational system has created the “generational threat” of teaching Palestinian Arabs that their future is inside Israel, while Israel’s decisive defensive war is convincing Arabs that violence is not an answer.
Pressure needs to be applied to the UNITED NATIONS, not on Israel, to declare unambiguously that the future for the UNRWA wards lies in Gaza and the West Bank, not Israel; specifically, that there is no ‘right of return’ to homes where grandparents once lived inside Israel. Similar pressure needs to be made on the media to stop platforming lies, particularly from jaundiced woke jihadists.
ACTION ITEM
Write to Kristof’s assistant spencer.cohen@nytimes.com as well as letters@nytimes.com that Kristof’s views of Israel are disconnected from reality.
Many Americans are disillusioned by the state of antisemitism today. Not only is it rampant on college campuses but alive and well in U.S. Congress from people like Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Jewish Americans are considering buying a home in Israel, and perhaps relocate for all or part of the year.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MN), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) on November 30, 2021 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Before they do, they should relocate within the United States.
Most American Jews live in deep blue or red states like New York, New Jersey, Florida, California and Illinois. Before moving to Israel, they should change their place of residence to one of the swing states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona or Nevada. That will enable the person to submit an absentee ballot in a state where the vote could actually impact the outcome of a presidential election, tipping the electoral college towards candidates which favor western values.
Even as the world watches the tragedy in the Middle East, many Jewish Americans have greater fear for their futures in the United States and are moving to a war zone. While abroad, they can continue to help America by making sure their votes will matter by first relocating to Philadelphia, Atlanta, Phoenix or Las Vegas.
Palestinian Arabs believe that the pathway to gaining land is through violence, while Israel believes that land given to Palestinian Arabs becomes a launching pad for terrorism. The cause-and-effect is a bloody mirror: violence-for-land (Palestinians) and land-facilitates-violence (Israelis).
Palestinian Arabs have a “greater confidence in the efficacy of armed struggle” to achieve their goals of a Palestinian State, according to Palestinian polls. They point to the success in getting Israel to hand over Jericho, Bethlehem and major Arab cities because of the First Intifada, and abandoning Gaza because of the Second Intifada. This continued more recently in May 2021, when Hamas’s rocketfire caused Israel to halt the eviction of Arab squatters living in Jewish homes in the Sheikh Jarrah section of Jerusalem.
Many Israelis see handing over Gaza as an enormous mistake as it clearly demonstrated that Arab-controlled land becomes a terrorist safe haven. Rather than turning the beachfront land into a peaceful paradise, the Gazans spent years building a terrorist infrastructure from which to launch a genocidal war to destroy Israel. In the aftermath of Israel leaving Gaza in 2005, Palestinian Arabs voted the US-designated terrorist group Hamas to 58% of parliament with the most antisemitic and genocidal charter ever written.
Palestinians are looking for more land; some want all of Israel to be wiped out in favor of Palestine, while others want personal property inside of Israel. Only a minority seek a two-state future.
Israel is not only attempting to destroy Hamas and rescue its hostages; it is educating the jihadists that violence does not pay.
One of thousands of Gaza terrorists killing civilians inside of Israel
It may be working.
A recent September 2024 Palestinian poll found that “for the first time since October 7, 2023, simultaneously in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, findings show significant drop in the favorability of the October 7 attack and in the expectations that Hamas will win the current war, and a moderate drop in the level of support for Hamas; moreover, findings show a drop in the Gaza Strip in the preference for a continued Hamas control over that area in the day after the war and a rise in the preference for PA control…. . Findings show significant rise in support for the two-state solution in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Support for armed struggle declines and support for negotiations rise.”
Both Israelis and Palestinians believe that land and violence are tethered in the holy land. Perhaps the current war is slowly severing that connection and will enable a pathway towards coexistence.
Vice President Kamala Harris continues to lose Democratic voters in each poll. Of particular concern for Democrats is that the first Black female presidential candidate is fading among the majority-minority cohort of Black and Latino voters who are normally lock-step with the party.
The pundits blame Harris’s poor showing on the belief that former President Donald Trump will do a better job on two key policy matters, the economy and immigration. What is not mentioned is that people view Harris as a phony.
Most recently, they’ve watched the Democratic big wigs push out the sitting president and anoint his successor without consulting the public.
In these few weeks before election day, Americans are watching Harris avoid unscripted events. They’re watching the Democratic machine script a platform designed to gather broad appeal remaking the candidate.
This is not the easy oratory of Barack Obama but a puppet show. Harris is a mannequin dressed for the crowds by Democratic power brokers looking to quickly cement a presidency which they will choreograph.
And people don’t like it. They may enjoy Harris’s (her handlers’) packaged statements but know they are being duped in a very heavy-handed manner by a cabal that concealed President Joe Biden’s mental decline for months.
Half of the top six traits that people look for in a successful leader are being trustworthy, honest and authentic, according to U.S. News & World Report. Harris – and the current cast of Democrats – fails on all three.
Black and Hispanic votes were more likely to place ambitious and humble as important characteristics, but no candidate to lead the great nation can approach that position in the current political framework without ambition and arrogance.
Trump may say outlandish things but people believe him to be authentic. He may be convicted of felony crimes but he doesn’t waffle. He may be making the Republican party chase after him but it beats watching the Democratic elites completely orchestrating the election and controlling their candidate and the media.
And dominating a female minority to boot.
Democrats would do better by encouraging Harris to do town hall meetings in the seven swing states and let her answer questions honestly. The lingering fear of Harris’s statements may be more of a liability than her actual comments.
They were shipped to concentration camps to be gassed and incinerated.
They were sent on death marches in the winter to freeze to death.
They were lined up and shot in the heads after digging ditches to receive their corpses.
Almost the entirety of European Jewry was killed. One-third of global Jewry was liquidated.
Holocaust Survivors tried to return to their towns and homes after the war, to be greeted by the locals who had stolen their goods and moved into their homes, who quickly executed the survivors of horrors.
Yet the Holocaust survivors who watched their families, friends and people get annihilated did not take up arms against the German people. They didn’t begin gassing the Austrians after the war. They didn’t invade Poland to burn Poles alive.
Why?
People have argued that Israel’s war to destroy Hamas is breeding another generation of terrorists because of the massive death toll of Palestinian civilians. The argument posits that when young Arabs see the horrible devastation brought upon their families and towns, they will become terrorists when they grow up and seek revenge.
Yet the people who actually experienced a genocide – Jews – never embarked on such a lust for blood and revenge.
Why?
Jews wanted to just live a regular life before the Holocaust and afterwards. Their goals did not change with time. They went from loving their neighbors and governments in Europe to hating them but did not seek revenge.
Palestinian Arabs have also stayed their course. Their goal was to destroy the Jewish State and its founding and remains so today. The wars have not altered their goals and the death of friends and family are simply viewed as setbacks to achieving their aims.
Wars do not create a new generation of terrorists. A culture that dehumanizes the “other” as evil begets a generation of terrorists set on killing the invading entity.
During the Holocaust, Nazis kept Jews calm in concentration camps, making them believe that they were in forced labor camps, not death mills. In recent decades, the United Nations has kept Palestinian Arabs in “refugee” camps, making them believe that the world was going to help them reclaim the towns and homes where grandparents once lived.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews inside their camps, while the UN raised generations to kill thousands of Jews just a short distance away.
ACTION ITEM
Contact the White House and your local representative that UNRWA is a weapon of war that must be closed. Pressure the United Nations and Saudi Arabia to state clearly that there is no “right of return” for Palestinian Arabs to move into Israel.
To mark one year since the most brutal massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and a year which saw the most dramatic spike in antisemitism in the United States – especially on college campuses – the young members of J Street doubled down on pushing the American government to combat Israel.
On October 7, 2024, J Street U, the university-oriented section of J Street, issued a press release on J Street’s site. On that day of mourning, J Street U recalled the brutal Hamas massacre while also expressing empathy “over the suffering of the Palestinian people and mourn every innocent life lost in Gaza.” On that day of mourning, J Street U sought balance about “vile antisemitism and Islamophobia.” On that day of mourning, J Street U urged the US government to ONLY pressure the Israeli government about the defensive war they didn’t start nor wanted.
J Street press release on October 7, 2024
In March 2022, Students for Justice in Palestine, a rabidly anti-Israel and antisemitic group, called J Street a gateway for Jews to become anti-Zionists. J Street U’s jihadi grooming gangs normalized anti-Zionism on campus much like Jewish Voice for Peace, to set the stage for what the world has witnessed on campuses since October 7, 2023.
J Street is not only harmful to the Jewish State, it has normalized antisemitism we see on college campuses today.
ACTION ITEM
Here is a list of rabbis associated with J Street. If you know them, contact them to tell them your feelings about the group, to get them to either fight for change within or to leave the group.
If ever there was a champion of the woke, it is the author Ta-Nehisi Coates. He worked as a journalist for years at many left-wing publications including the Village Voice, Time and The Atlantic and has written a number of books. One of his books won the National Book Award.
His latest book, The Message is principally about his view on Israel which he believes is racist to the core. He spent ten days visiting cities in the West Bank and read reports about the country from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and B’Tselem, all organizations deeply critical of Israel to arrive at his conclusion.
His book tour took him to his favorite liberal outlets which could not heap enough praise on the author and his book.
The New York Times called Coates a “public intellectual” who could “wield his moral authority” to “call out injustice,” “especially regarding Israel and the occupied territories.” Why would the editor of a major news organization give a glowing review of someone completely unfamiliar with the region who based his entire view from talking to select individuals over ten days, and a number of publicly available jaundiced reports? That says much more about the Times than it does about the book and his analysis.
MSNBC gave him a glowing interview by a gushing Chris Hayes for sixteen minutes. Coastes called Israel an “apartheid state” which he said was immediately obvious since there were streets he could not walk down. Hayes chimed in that he agreed, having been on the “same streets and Hebron and had the same reaction which is that this is is obviously a moral abomination.” (5:20) The two of them were in violent agreement “obviously, obviously, obviously” they echoed to each other.
There was no discussion that 90 percent of Hebron is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and JEWS ARE FORBIDDEN from going there. No education that when the area was under Muslim control pre-1967, JEWS WERE FORBIDDEN from even entering their holy site of the Tomb of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs. No mention that the 1929 Arab riots which slaughtered Jews, led the British to ETHNICALLY CLEANSE ALL JEWS from the city, because the British concluded that the massacre was so savage and massive that the victims could not be protected from Muslim Arab mobs.
Hayes accidentally let out that the two of them are friends (7:35) and talked about writing together. That fact was not a disqualifier for the executives at MSNBC which wanted Coates to have a warm and glowing interview, pushing his book.
When Hayes asked Coates why he didn’t interview anyone pro-Israel (9:20), Coates offered that “it’s very very difficult to spend almost thirty years in media as I have, and not be very much exposed – and frankly to live in America as a thinking person and not be exposed – to the defenders of the ‘Zionist Project.'” A rich criticism that Jews who control the media have continuously lied to the American public to protect their racist ‘project.’
Hayes grunted in agreement.
He went on to say that because Israel is an apartheid state, nothing else matters. He doesn’t care what actions Arabs have taken or what they say because that inherent situation is evil.
Hayes pointed his finger and waved that Coates was right on point. He urged everyone to read the book.
Chris Hayes on MSNBC telling people to buy Coates’ book
At 11:50, Coates suggested that the Jewish State acts so bigoted and violent against Arabs because of “the humiliation of the Holocaust.” Stewart suggested (14:45) that Arabs around the Middle East were humiliated by the British and French chopping up the region post World War I. He thought the region needed to “reconcile humiliation” (16:50).
In this telling, the genocide of European Jewry was conflated with creating new nations. The extermination of six million Jews connected to the lack of a Palestinian State because the local Arabs want all of it. The return of Jews to their ancestral homeland could only be celebrated if Jews got to subjugate the people who had been living there.
If that premise were true, would Jews have accepted a partition for just part of the land in 1947? Granted all non-Jews Israeli citizenship in 1948? Handed the Jewish Temple Mount, the holiest site for Judaism, to the Muslim Waqf in 1967? Every other faith group which took the plateau for the past 2,000 years converted it to paganism, a church or mosque.
Until the Jews. They handed control to Muslims in the fervent wish for peace and coexistence.
Stewart, a professed “cultural Jew”, endorsed the book.
CNN’s Amanpour & Co. interviewed Coates in an 18 minute interview. He talked (5:00) about how Palestinian Muslims had to wait as much as 45 minutes to enter the Old City of Jerusalem, while those entering from Israel were able to just walk in. Notice: that’s called border controls; Israeli Arabs have no issues going to the Old City of Jerusalem and do so constantly.
He went on to say that Israel’s laws are like the Jim Crow era of separate and unequal. He called Israel an “illegal apartheid regime (8:00)… based on what I saw and read afterwards.” But in interviews Coates made clear that he only read from parties that lambast Israel. He defends himself by saying that the context was irrelevant and the situation is intolerable and inhumane. That has the intellectual and moral idiocy of criticizing a prison without understanding the crime of someone, or the harshness of what chemotherapy does to a person without considering the cancer that riddles a person’s body.
Israel has not annexed the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL/ “West Bank”) because it hopes to arrive at a two-state settlement. It has already given Gaza and the major Arab population areas to the Palestinian Authority to give Arabs there self-determination. Unfortunately, the Arabs made clear in the Second Intifada/ Two Percent Pogrom that they want all of Israel, not just pieces of it.
The interviewer pushed back at 9:00 that Coates was only there for ten days and Jews have indigenous claims to the land too. Coates said that “context… won’t make [it] okay.” He then compared defenders of Israel to American Southern racists telling northern White people condemning slavery that “you don’t know the Negro like we do.” (11:25) Coates implied that the pro-Israel community wants to treat Arabs like Black slaves. He said that in Israeli “citizenship is decided by ethnicity and religion, and rights are decided by ethnicity and religion” (16:05) showing that he is completely misinformed and ignorant about the country, where 26% of its citizens are non-Jews.
Coates went back to his theme (17:40) “that just because you went through some horrific experience you therefore have a kind of moral authority and are therefore then not capable of inflicting hurts on other people.” Coates seemingly thinks that Jews think themselves both “humiliated’ (Daily Show) and morally superior because of the Holocaust, and can therefore act with impunity.
The basic context that Coates refuses to acknowledge is that the Holocaust wiped out one-third of global Jewry. While he thinks of himself as a minority, there are over one billion Black people in the world. There are nearly two billion Muslims in the world. Jews are not majority-minorities that are discussed constantly, but a minority-minority of just 15 million people which are on the endangered humans list. When they returned en masse to their homeland, five Arab armies and the local Arab population tried to genocide the remaining rump of Jews. In the lands that Arabs conquered in the 1948-9 war, they ethnically cleansed the land of every single Jew and gave citizenship to people as long as they weren’t Jewish (1954 Jordanian Law, Article 3). They voted Hamas with a vile genocidal antisemitic charter to 58% of the parliament, and celebrated the group’s October 7 massacre.
CNN would not endorse the speaker or book.
The firestorm over the book came about recently when CBS interviewed Coates in a six minute interview by three interviewers. One of the three, Tony Dokoupil asked Coates why he omitted so much context (1:50) and Coates replied that the pro-Israel context is known so he didn’t feel compelled to repeat them, as well as making the arguments listed above in the other interviews. The staff at CBS went ballistic at the line of questioning so CBS News chief Wendy McMahon scolded Dokoupil for not meeting “our editorial standards.”
Perhaps Dokoupil was the only journalist who actually did his job, as most “news” organizations were no more than paid advertising spots.
The shame of Coates is the willful smugness of his ignorance. The horror of the media is the willful platforming of miseducation.
A prevailing discordant theme among pro-Palestinian protestors is that they are mourning the loss of life and destruction of Gaza, while simultaneously calling “Intifada, Intifada.” The two statements are incompatible.
Mourning the loss of life is something that all people can understand. It is a sign of basic empathy to be upset by death, especially young civilians who are inherently innocent.
The current strategy of pro-Palestinians is to use those feelings as an on-ramp to the Diaspora Intifada, to taunt, threaten, intimidate and discriminate against Jews, even though mass death is a core part of the strategy of those same people calling for an Intifada.
The Diaspora Intifada is attempting to enlist those who prioritize empathy (typically liberals and progressives) onto their jihadi platform. It bypasses facts and reason and pulls at heartstrings, drowning the new recruits in an empathy swamp of toxic antisemitism.
By all means, hold a vigil and be sad for ALL people who have died if you like. But chanting “Intifada” and “by any means necessary” are genocidal calls for mass murder, the exact opposite of the empathy you claim to champion.
In the Middle East, the Iranian Proxy Intifada is being fought militarily, and Israel is correct in using aggressive force to repel those attempting a genocide of the Jews in the region. Outside of the region, one needs to politically and legally prosecute those advocating to the slaughter of Jews, and extract friends drowning in the empathy swamp of dead Palestinians.
ACTION ITEMS
Write the White House and your senator and representative to keep arms flowing to Israel in its multi-front defensive war. Tell them to push to rescind the antisemitic UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which makes it illegal for Jews to live in their holiest city of Jerusalem. Intifada the Intifada.
Write your alma mater to kick Students For Justice in Palestine off of campus as a hate group no different than the KKK. Get them to expel professors who lie that Israel is a ‘European colonial settlement,’ denying thousands of years of Jewish history and centrality of the land in Judaism.
Write to your favorite media and social media about a ‘Draw Mohammed Intifada‘ to explore whether calling for the massacre of Jews and drawing a picture of the Islamic prophet are simple matters of free speech to be done everywhere. Diaspora Intifada the Diaspora Intifada.
The most powerful Jewish American politician is Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) who is the Senate Majority Leader. He often claims to be a guardian – a ‘shomer’ in Hebrew – of American Jewry but he is nothing of the sort.
On the anniversary of the most heinous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, Schumer offered tepid remarks – to almost no one.
His sole post on the day condemned the October 7 and called for the hostages to be brought home. He expressed empathy for the slain and captive but nothing else.
His vanilla post was viewed by 62,700.
Compare that to New York State Governor Kathy Hochul who posted repeatedly on October 7.
Hochul talked about fighting antisemitism. She said that New York stood with Israel. She ordered flags to fly at half-mast to remember the massacred Israelis. She spoke about peace, all in several posts viewed much more than the Jewish Senate Majority Leader.
Vice President Kamala Harris’s post was viewed over 8 million times, or over 130 times more than Schumer. Her comments said that Hamas is a terrorist group that must never be allowed to govern Gaza. She spoke of standing with Israel and making sure it could defend itself against Iran and its proxies. She spoke of antisemitism.
Even outgoing Senator Mitt Romney had more moral clarity – and more views – than Schumer. In a succinct statement Romney said he wanted to see an end to the terrorist group Hamas, that he stood with Israel, prayed for the hostages and Israeli soldiers and to end rampant antisemitism.
Schumer did not stand with Israel. He did not call Hamas a terrorist group which must never be allowed to rule Gaza. He did not say he supports arming Israel to defend itself. He did not mention peace. He did not call out the sickening antisemitism everywhere.
Schumer is not a shomer.
Schumer prefers to use his pulpit to lead the charge against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Schumer called for early elections in Israel while the country is engaged in a multi-front defensive war, in direct election interference.
Sen. Schumer’s term doesn’t end until 2029 when he will be 79 years old. The Jewish community should begin to strategize about who should primary him.
ACTION ITEM
Email Sen. Schumer and relay your disgust at his tepid remarks about the October 7 massacre.
First One Through 