What’s Bigger News, The Killing of 80 Civilians Or 5 Terrorists? Wrong Question.
The media is obsessed with Israel. Don’t believe me? Look at The New York Times newspaper published on October 26, 2022.
Leading off the International section on page A4, was an article written by three reporters – Isabel Kershner, Gabby Sobelman and Hiba Yazbek. It was one of only two articles on the page, and featured a medium-sized picture of Palestinians at the funeral of “militants” killed by Israel.
The article spoke about Israel’s military raid on the most active Palestinian terrorists who have been shooting Israelis and planting bombs. The army successfully eliminated five of the group’s members, including its leader.
In another part of the world, 80 civilians in Myanmar were killed when several military jets deliberately bombed an outdoor music concert. That story was on the last page of the International section, page A10. It was one of three stories on the page and was written by a single journalist. It contained no pictures and competed for readers attention against two large color photos on the page, including one with cute penguins.
The population of Myanmar is 54.8 million, 5.8 times the size of Israel’s 9.4 million people. The 80 Myanmar civilians killed is 16 times as large as five Arab terrorists. Despite this, three journalists were deployed on the “smaller” story which dwarves the minimum number required to write about the large massacre at an outdoor concert.
Why does a larger story by every measure get less emphasis and coverage?
It’s not just the media. The United Nations has special agencies just to deal with Israel. Its Human Rights Council has a standing item every session for one country- Israel – to “produce a database” of Jewish businesses. It has censured Israel more than the rest of the world combined.
Reporting. Investigating. Censuring.
Watching the Jews.
Society may have acknowledged that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an antisemitic forgery, but has none-the-less internalized its lie that Jews are conspiring to control the world. The smear emanates constantly from the mouths of antisemites like Marc Lamont Hill’s “from Ferguson to Palestine” and Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s “from Gaza to Detroit“.
As such, the media deploys teams of journalists and spills much ink on the Jewish State just as the UN overspends time and money, as each believes that Israel will ultimately impact everyone much more than billions of people around the world. Martin Niemoller’s famous saying may have warned about “Then they came for the Jews…” portraying them as persecuted victims, but in fact, the antisemitic conspiracy theorists focus on Jews as the globalists, perpetrating vile crimes wherever they are found.
Israel is not simply held to a double standard; it is constantly under a microscope by antisemitic voyeurs who are waiting to “Catch the Jew” to validate their noxious Jew hatred.
The Los Angeles City Council was rocked when a secret recording was released of various Hispanic members of the Council making highly offensive comments about various groups. They ranged from calling the Black child of one of the other council members a monkey, to lambasting ‘Jewish power.’ President Biden and various community members called for their resignations which were tendered in short order.
It is unclear whether the push to expel the bigots was due to the desire to not have racists represent the city, whether there were concerns that such bigots would actively harm groups because of their prejudice or a combination of both.
The motivation for terminating a racist was more clear in 2019, when an Ohio doctor, Lara Kollab, was fired from her position at the Cleveland Clinic after it was revealed that she posted many anti-Semitic tweets for the whole world to see. Beyond the various insults about Jews, she posted that she would “purposely give all the yahood the wrong meds” using the Arabic word for Jews. This was a woman who broadcast that she was in the Jew-killing business.
Anti-Semitic doctor, Lara Kollob and one of her tweets
A similar situation occurred at the University of Vermont where a TA publicly taunted Jewish students by asking on social media whether “Is it unethical for me, a TA, to not give zionists credit for participation??? I feel like its good and funny“. The students protested for her censure and removal, but to no avail. The president of the university, Suresh V. Garimella, sent a letter to the school community that there didn’t appear to be evidence of harm, so decided to take no action. The Brandeis Center For Human Rights Under Law and Jewish On Campus, two non-profits issued a strong rebuke to Garimella’s inaction and complacency in the face of blatant anti-Semitism. The Department of Education is now looking into the matter.
Society has clearly taken a range of actions in dealing with bigots in power. While there are laws in place to protect people from unfair bias, they are typically enforced after an incident happens.
Yet in the case of the Los Angeles City Council, the president of the United States got involved even though no action happened or was even threatened. For the Ohio doctor, no one wanted to wait for her to kill a Jew, and it was easier to fire her immediately as the threat of violence is a crime as well.
But what of the Jews on university campuses today? They are publicly threatened by teachers and student groups, and administrations are loathe to take any action under the guise of free speech – even though threatening to lower the grades of Jews is a threat of the powerful over the weak, with serious personal long term consequences, which has nothing to do with free speech.
President Biden has allowed this anti-Semitism on college campuses to flourish, waiting until after midterm elections to decide on applying the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to Title VI. Such move could protect the Jewish students from both the bigots and complacent university leadership.
There will always be bigots and racists but society has moved to protect the persecuted with a variety of laws. It is time to finally check the anti-Semites as well.
There are reported to be roughly 90 gay Palestinian Arabs who have moved to Israel and granted asylum as they fear for their lives from their homophobic Arab neighbors. Last week, one such man, Ahmad Abu Murkhiyeh, 25 years old, was beheaded and his body and torso were dumped near his home in Hebron. A video of the slaughter was taken and then circulated on Arab social media.
Arab sites like Al Jazeera and Wafa would not cover the event. The liberal media like MSNBC and The New York Times also remained silent on the story. Well, the Times finally got to it. Sort of.
The paper did not cover the brutal beheading of a homosexual on its cover page nor its World News section. It actually didn’t cover the story in its news section at all.
Only in the Opinion section, did it share the thoughts of its most conservative columnist, Bret Stephens, who wrote about “A Cruel Death In Hebron,” which a reader might think was possibly committed by an Israeli. In the article, Stephens not only took aim at Palestinian society which enables such heinous acts, but Palestinian supporters who ignore and whitewash the systemic evil and corruption.
That includes his own paper, which he politely/ politically omitted.
It’s actually even worse than Stephens points out. Liberal and Arab media not only ignore Palestinian Arab actions but exaggerate the actions of Israeli Jews. The Times posts articles about “settler violence” but fails to report that even by the jaundiced United Nations accounting, Palestinian Arab violence far surpasses that of “settlers.”
Ignoring rampant Palestinian Arab violence and incitement while only reporting on Israeli actions paints a false narrative of one party attacking a helpless minority. It is as though the liberal media looks to Al Jazeera for permission on what it can report. Left wing media has essentially become a parrot of Palestinian propaganda that they sometimes “resort” to violence.
If the brutal beheading of a gay Palestinian man cannot be mentioned – let alone condemned – by liberals and Muslim “activists” while they decry any perceived problem committed by Israeli Jews, then the left wing and Arab media and communities have admitted their profound anti-Semitic bias. It is not news, but further evidence that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and Jews must be guarded in the company they keep.
The “Women’s March” has a deep history of anti-Semitism of its own making. The New York Times touched upon some of those points in an article about “Russian troll factories” which “put a sustained effort into discrediting the movement by circulating damning, often fabricated narratives around Ms. [Linda] Sarsour.” The article focused on the fuel which amplified her extremist anti-Zionist views which rocked the message of the movement.
The article stated that fractures in society, distrust in institutions and Sarsour’s dabbling in anti-Semitism were already present, and that the Russian bots added fuel to the fire by exaggerating Sarsour’s statements on social media. The Times even touched upon the anti-Semitic charges against other members of the Women’s March movement who support the notorious anti-Semite Rev. Louis Farrakhan.
But the article made the anti-Semitism embedded in the Women’s March appear minor; a couple of discrete and misunderstood comments by the founders, which were inflamed by a foreign government. In doing so, it absolved the organization for repeatedly inciting Jew hatred.
That’s the wrong conclusion.
Just a few months after the large January 2017 march in Washington, D.C., the city of Chicago held a rally where Jewish marchers carrying a rainbow flag with the Jewish star in the middle were asked to leave because the organizers said they “repeatedly expressed support for Zionism.” One of the people who was asked to leave told the Windy City Times that she was made to feel that “as a Jew, I am not welcome here.”
In June 2019, the Washington, D.C. march followed suit and prohibited marchers from carrying flags with the Jewish star on it. Organizers said “The DC Dyke March is a pro-Muslim and pro-Palestinian space…We do ask that participants not bring pro-Israel paraphernalia in solidarity with our queer Palestinian friends.” Several Jewish groups including A Wider Bridge, Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, and Zioness wrote a joint statement that “We come together to strongly condemn the leadership of the DC Dyke March for their decision to ban the Jewish Star of David on a pride flag and Israeli iconography.”
The repeated banning of Jewish pride at the marches stems from Linda Sarsour’s “activism,” as the Times calls it. She’s tweeted “Nothing is creepier than Zionism.” She equated the belief that Jews should be free of anti-Semitism as self-governing people in their ancestral home as the equivalent to being a Nazi, with “We will not be silenced by Blue Lives Matter, by white supremacists, by neo-Nazis, or right-wing Zionists.” She’s said that feminism and Zionism are incompatible.
Those are Sarsour’s words, repeated again and again, specifically meant to instill the discredited noxious “Zionism is Racism” libel into the fabric of the Women’s March movement.
The Times neglected to tell its readers that when Sarsour and her colleagues stepped down from their leadership positions of the organization, other anti-Semites took their place, like CAIR’s Zahara Billoo. She was in kindred spirit of Sarsour, having tweeted the grotesque “Israel is an apartheid, racist, terrorist state and it commits war crimes as a hobby.” An obvious choice to lead the Women’s March if it is hell bent on advancing anti-Semitism.
Billoo also offered this bit of advice for Muslims some time after leaving the Women’s March board, that Jews are the enemy: “Know your enemies, and I’m not going to sugar-coat that. They are your enemies. There are organizations and infrastructure out there who are working to harm you. Make no mistake of it. They would sell you down the line if they could, and they very often do behind your back. I mean the Zionist organizations, I mean the foreign policy organizations that say they’re not Zionists but want a two-state solution. I’m not a Palestinian myself but it’s my understanding that that is laughable. So know your enemies.” Billoo listed some of them: “We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. Because just because they’re your friend today, doesn’t mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights. So oppose the vehement fascists but oppose the polite Zionists too. They are not your friends.“
It could very well be that Russia added some fuel to the Linda Sarsour story, but the anti-Semitic toxicity prevalent among the group’s founders was their own. The insidious jihad fomented by the alt-left activists was a deliberate feature of their own making. Russia may have helped fan the flames, but the inferno of hatred came from within the movement itself.
The young Arab men got into their car. The backseat had machine guns and bottles prepared with Molotov cocktails. They checked their watches and called friends that they were on their way to meet them at the designated spot on the highway.
Their colleagues got to the designated spot on dirt bikes. It was a favorite way of riding around the Judean Desert and this was a relatively cool morning which made for a pleasant ride. They arrived at the perch early and prepared for the attack.
The hill afforded them a nice view of the Israeli cars coming and going on a road they demanded be Jew-free. The Muslim Arabs considered the vehicles as daggers in the heart of a land they considered purely Arab, and they were mujahideen fighting for the liberation of their country from imperialist European colonial settlers.
Their fellow jihadists phoned that they were approaching the site for the attack. It was important to concentrate their efforts, as the Zionist Occupation Forces would swarm shortly after their actions.
The stationary Arab men began to pelt the cars carrying Jews with rocks. They watched as the rocks popped against the roofs and smash into pieces on the road. Cars behind them and in the opposite direction began swerving and accelerating away from the rockstorm. Soon the Jews would call in the location of the attack. They had no more than five minutes to kill as many Jewish settlers as possible.
While the barrage was underway, the Arabs in the car gathered their weapons. The passenger in the front seat took the machine gun while the driver grabbed a pistol. As their adrenaline caught up with the speed of the car, they saw a large bus coming in the opposite direction. A ripe big bus full of Jews.
They opened fire together. They chanted “Allahu Akbar” as they shot up the bus. At least a dozen hits they estimated as they zipped past. The driver shouted that he hit the bus driver, and sure enough, his jihadist passenger spun his head around to watch the bus crash into a hill on the side of the road. The Arabs cheered and sped away.
The scene of a shooting attack on an Israeli bus in the Jordan Valley, on September 4, 2022. (photo: Israeli Bus Drivers Union)
The Bronx
The Black Congressman was annoyed but not too worried. His district had been redrawn in the latest census, leaving him without much of his base in the Bronx and handing him a bunch of wealthy White suburbanites in Westchester County. Could his Socialist message still prevail amongst one of the most Jewish districts in the country?
He decided to change nothing. His staff was 100 percent made up of Black women, unique amongst all politicians. He wasn’t going to pivot to adding a White Jew to the team at this point. Maybe he’d meet with a local Jewish politician who was peeved at being ignored during the entirety of his first term. But he only would do it at the request of a local Black leader who swore that he was the right kind of Jew.
He stood on the subway platform to greet his people. It didn’t matter that he would only gather about 3,000 votes from the nub of New York City left in his district. He was delivering a message: he was a man of the people. Let the other candidates stand on the fancy Metro North train platforms in Westchester pandering the rich for votes. There were working class people in those towns too and his message would attract their votes as well.
Confident in his approach, he told his staffers that they should not respond to the invitation by the American Jewish Congress to hear from the congressional candidates. Let the two White people split the protest vote. It assured him of an easy path to victory.
He flew down to Washington, D.C. to confer with members of the “Squad”, fellow left-wing extremists making headway in the Democratic Party. Yes, he would co-sponsor a resolution calling the founding of the Jewish State of Israel, a “Nakba“, meaning a catastrophe. Yes, he would pull his support from the Abraham Accords, which advanced peace between Israel and four Muslim countries.
The Jews are now a loud annoying part of his district but ultimately an unimportant minority. He will make that abundantly clear to them as he votes against their wishes over his next term, letting everyone know that the “Jewish Lobby” is dead.
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) hugging fellow anti-Israel Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Charlottesville
The White supremacists walked the streets with torches in hand. “Jews will not replace us!” they chanted, as several sported a Nazi salute. They called out the handful of Jews who were using their Jewish power to import non-Whites onto the White shores of America.
Their actions drew the national attention they sought. While they were few in number, they wanted to galvanize support against Jews and immigrants. Against racial preferences. Against giveaways to minorities that kept holding Whites back. They saw Donald Trump as the most vocal non-politically correct politician that ever held office, and they were going to embrace this man who coveted love and loyalty more than anything else.
This spark would catch fire.
White supremacists from around the country boarded their pickup trucks, now with flags perched high. They despised the woke culture finding its way into every facet of the Christian nation they loved. And the Jews. The Jews were abetting all of it.
Several hundred white nationalists and white supremacists carrying torches march in a parade at the University of Virginia. (Evelyn Hockstein for The Washington Post)
The Spouses, Kapos And Abettors
Not every Jew was hauled to their deaths in cattle cars during the European Holocaust. Some Jews remained in major Nazi-controlled cities, even Berlin.
While the Nazis were hell-bent on eradicating the untermenschen Jews, some Juden had all but abandoned their people and faith, and had married proper German women. The Aryans loved their Jewish spouses, for whatever reason. The Nazis reluctantly concluded that they could not haul the Jewish spouses off to concentration camps for extermination, while these Aryan brides had brothers and fathers fighting for the Nazi cause. They allowed some of the sub-humans to remain.
The interfaith couples were relieved, and paid back their masters with silence, as Jews from around Europe were carted off for liquidation.
Monument in Berlin, Germany for the German women who fought to save their Jewish husbands from death in the Nazi concentration camps. (photo: FirstOneThrough)
Some Jews who were hauled off in cattle cars to the camps managed to survive by working with Nazi overlords. These Kapos served as stand-in guards, working with the Nazis to hustle fellow Jews off the trains, into lines and into the showers. Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer of the SS, praised the Kapos as it saved critical German manpower during the war-effort, and helped divide the Jews amongst themselves. The irony was sweet poetry to the Nazis: Jews implementing the Final Solution upon themselves.
Jewish Head Kapo serving in the concentration camp of Salaspils in Latvia. (Photo courtesy Bundesarchiv)
Today, Jews continue to divide themselves. Some cling to jihadists. Some to anti-Semitic woke politicians. Some to bold racists, who nevertheless embrace common positions.
And the Jews know the history. They can see the highway to hell mapped by the terrorists on the ridge, the woke politicians standing on the platform, and the racists shouting from trucks.
And they have made up their minds. They are marrying these new Germanic lovers who will surely save them while fellow Jews are carted off. For them, “Ich bin ein Berliner” is a renewed slogan to be aired openly and publicly that they are not untermenschen. That’s those other Jews.
Some may look and others will turn away, but all will cleave to their Brides of Absolution while the anti-Semites send Jews off in cattle cars once again.
“Zionism, the ideological undergirding of Israel, is a debatable political philosophy.“
– Keith Ellison, Attorney General of Minnesota, former Congressman (D-MN), former Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee
Over 1,000 Jews from around the world came to Basel, Switzerland this week to mark the 125th anniversary of the first World Zionist Congress. They celebrated the incredible success of the Modern State of Israel, now 75 years since its reestablishment, a mere 50 years from Theodore Herzl’s initial conference of inspiration was turned into a reality.
The kickoff speaker was Israeli President Isaac “Bougie” Herzog. His speech welcomed the Zionists from around the world, regardless of their religious denominations or political affiliation. He urged all of them to get involved in the Zionist project and questions regarding “the whole Jewish People… to debate them together, in a spirit of mutual responsibility, and most importantly, of full and institutionalized partnership.“
He concluded his remarks that the broad community must “reclaim Zionism” from the vile smears that populate society today. Herzog offered his prescriptions which included uniquely Jewish and Israeli goals, as well as dealing with global issues such as climate change. He mentioned “tikkun olam (repair the world)” three times, as a mission (and potential balm) to combat the insidious woke anti-Semitism infecting the world. “[M]odern Zionism gives us our sense of not only shared fate but also shared destiny, as long as it remains anchored in our deepest roots, weaving together the inseparable threads of peoplehood, land, and state.”
“Nothing is creepier than Zionism. Challenge racism”
Linda Sarsour, former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, co-chair of the 2017 Women’s March
Herzog’s outreach to his diverse Zionist audience was sweet but showed that he has not internalized the anger and misconceptions about Zionism from the anti-Israel world. Joining the far-left in combatting climate change under the banner of Zionism sounds like he’s read a few articles about intersectionality and “allyship.” To be sure, fighting global issues is a responsibility Israel shares with the entire world, but was not a foundational matter for Herzl’s Zionism 125 years ago, and redefining Modern Zionism in such a manner today will do nothing to “reclaim” the definition from Israel haters who wish to tarnish and destroy the Jewish State.
“We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. Because just because they’re your friend today, doesn’t mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights. So oppose the vehement fascists but oppose the polite Zionists too. They are not your friends.”
Zahra Billoo, SAN FRANCISCO EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE COUNCIL OF AMERICAN ISLAMIC RELATIONS (CAIR)
Herzog is correct that we need to “reclaim Zionism,” but not by stretching its meaning into something far afield from its core tenets. We need to educate the world about simple foundational truths, and what Modern Zionism actually means and created.
“European Jewish Zionists claimed to be descendants of the ancient Palestinian Hebrews and to be merely “returning” to their ancient land.”
Universities and extremist media have painted Zionism as a violent nationalist effort by European Jews to steal Arab land. They claim Jews have no history or ties to the land and are simply the latest version of European colonialists. Does Herzog really believe that Israelis bonding over climate change help stop such inanity?
Jews, historians and all people of good will need to be clear about basic historical truths and the mission of Modern Zionism.
Modern Zionism did not steal Arab history or land. It is not a derivative of the forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which falsely asserts an aim to rob Palestinian Arabs as a subset of global domination. The simple fact is that Jews have thousands of years of history in the land of Israel, and have always lived and moved to the land because it is a central part of Judaism.
“The Zionist idea to dominate the area from the Nile to the Euphrates was well known, but Israel realized that the two-State solution would not take it in that direction.”
Hiba Husseini, chairs the Legal Committee to Final Status Negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis, and a speaker at the united nations
“The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.“
Modern Zionism was launched by Herzl on only two ideas. First, that Jews will forever be targeted as minorities in countries around the world, whether they present as devout Orthodox Jews or assimilated secular ones, and second, that the only way for Jews to be secure and have a future is to have sovereignty in their homeland once again.
To be an anti-Zionist means that one doesn’t believe in one of those two things. To be against the first, is to ignore and belittle the horrific crimes committed against the most persecuted people in history. To stand against the second, is to urge for the destruction of the one Jewish State. Both are blatantly anti-Semitic.
“The three basic characteristics of Zionism are: racism, expansionism and settler colonialism”
“Reclaiming Zionism” as Israeli President Herzog desires is needed, but his prescription for joining woke causes is nonsensical. Such efforts will not reorient college campuses and the media away from their misconception that Israel is a violent European colonialist state.
Instead, we must state repeatedly the fundamental truths about Jews and the land of Israel. We must clearly articulate the meaning of Zionism, and that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. And we must loudly proclaim that we are proud Zionists, and amazed by the liberal democracy that thrives in the illiberal Middle East.
The Islamic spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, addressed the Muslim world on May 7, 2021 to inspire them to reject any peaceful relations with the Jewish State and its supporters. He said that “Israel is not a state, but a terrorist camp against the Palestinian people and other Muslim peoples” and that “Muslim and Christian scholars must declare that normalization is forbidden by Sharia.” He encouraged Palestinian youth to battle the “usurping entity” and urged the 14 million Palestinians around the world to return to “the Holy Land” to decide “the fate of the [Jewish] foreign settlers.“
The focus of this [Muslim] unity should be internal jihad and distrust of enemies. And Palestinian politics should not depend on the main enemy of the Palestinians, namely America, the British and the vile Zionists.
Islamic spiritual leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, May 7, 2021
Khamenei concluded his remarks calling for waging war: “The Palestinian Mujahideen [militant jihadists] must ably continue their legitimate and moral struggle against the usurping entity [Israel] until this entity acquiesced [surrenders].“
Iranian Ayatollah Khamenei
These sentiments were echoed in California by the San Francisco Executive Director of the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Zahra Billoo, six months later. While addressing the American Muslims for Palestine conference, she made clear that all Zionists are enemies. “Know your enemies, and I’m not going to sugar-coat that. They are your enemies. There are organizations and infrastructure out there who are working to harm you. Make no mistake of it. They would sell you down the line if they could, and they very often do behind your back. I mean the Zionist organizations, I mean the foreign policy organizations that say they’re not Zionists but want a two-state solution. I’m not a Palestinian myself but it’s my understanding that that is laughable. So know your enemies.” Billoo listed some of them: “We need to pay attention to the Anti-Defamation League. We need to pay attention to the Jewish Federation. We need to pay attention to the Zionist synagogues. We need to pay attention to the Hillel chapters on our campuses. Because just because they’re your friend today, doesn’t mean that they have your back when it comes to human rights. So oppose the vehement fascists but oppose the polite Zionists too. They are not your friends.“
Billoo continued that “We have to connect the dots between the organizations that promote Zionist agendas, materials, marketing and legislation are the same ones that want to ban Muslims, are the same ones that want to pass anti-sharia legislation.“
CAIR came out strongly to support Billoo’s remarks, stating it “continue[s] to proudly stand by Zahra and all American Muslim leaders who face smears and threats because they dare to express an opinion about Palestinian human rights.”
CAIR Executive Director Zahra Billoo addressing American Muslims for Palestine, November 27, 2021
A Massachusetts-based socialist extremist group that stands against “the colonization of Palestine, US imperialism, policing, displacement, and other interlocking systems of oppression” produced an anti-Semitic “Mapping Project,” which embraced the anti-normalization of any Zionist – person or organization. The group falsely claimed that “institutional support for the colonization of Palestine is structurally tied to policing and systemic white supremacy.” It listed names and addresses of organizations like Yachad New England which helps individuals with disabilities. The site called out this aid organization as “complicit in propaganda/normalization of Zionism.” It included Yachad’s address so extremists can easily track down and target disabled Jews.
Amalek would blush.
Socialists have bonded with Islamic extremists in Iran and the United States in calling for a jihad against anyone who supports the rights of Jews to live in the Jewish holy land and to have self-determination. These jihadists are branding Zionists and their supporters as enemies not just to Palestinians, but to the entire world.
Anti-normalization is now enshrined in Sharia and Progressive law, and is coming to a community near you.
The toxic environment of America’s educational system was brought into sharp focus in April 2022, as Hamas and Harvard made pronouncements they wanted the entire world to hear.
The leader of the Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group Hamas, Yahya Sinwar declared “Whoever takes the decision to repeat this scene (of a deployment inside the mosque) will be taking the decision to destroy thousands of synagogues across the world.” In the proclamation, Hamas refreshed its mantra that its battle against Israel is a religious one, specifically against Jews around the world, as made clear in its noxious foundational charter statements such as “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious,” and “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.”
Remarkably, not every country in the world has acknowledged that Hamas is a terrorist group. In November 2021, the United Kingdom and Australia finally designated all branches of the group as such and in May 2021, the Organization of American States (OAS), stated unequivocally that Hamas is a terrorist group that targets civilians which “makes the invocation of the principle oflegitimate defense by Israel essential.” Hopefully, more countries will finally join civil society and do likewise, after the latest direct threats against its Jewish citizens.
Regrettably, while the world may finally be waking up to the anti-Semitic genocidal worldview leading Palestinian Arabs, America’s liberal educational institutions are going in the opposite direction.
As anti-Semitic terrorist groups abutting Israel like Hamas and Hezbollah celebrated the murder of Israeli civilians, and liberal papers wrote about the slaughter from the terrorists point of view, Harvard University endorsed a prevailing anti-Zionist progressive stance of absolving Palestinian terrorism and supporting a boycott of Israel.
On April 29, 2022, The Harvard Crimson Editorial board wrote “In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanction and a Free Palestine,” and opened with words of comfort for Palestinian Arabs, portraying them as non-violent victims of a brutal Israeli regime.
“We first and foremost wish to extend our sincere support to those who have been and continue to be subject to violence in occupied Palestine”
“unlawful killings that victimize Palestinians day in and day out”
“Israeli soldiers have killed nearly 50 Palestinians, including eight children, this year alone”
Not a word about Israelis slaughtered by Arab Muslims over the past few weeks.
Harvard proudly endorses a boycott of Israel, April 29, 2022
The Harvard piece never discussed Israel’s efforts to hand land to Palestinians.
In 1967, Israel decided not to annex the Gaza Strip or the “West Bank” in an effort to make peace but the Arab world responded with the infamous “Three No’s” of “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it” which has become the Three Denials: to deny the history of the Jews; deny the rights of the Jews; and deny the acceptance of the Jews in their holy land.
Israel would go on to hand the Palestinian Authority several cities between 1995 and 2000 and was scheduled to do much more, but the Palestinians launched the 2000 Two Percent War which killed over 1,000 Israeli civilians because Israel was only meeting 98 percent of the PA’s stated demands.
Israel gave the Palestinians Gaza in 2005, with the express direct support from the United States that “it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949” and that “through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.” Instead of using their new self-determination for peaceful co-existence, the region has become a terrorist enclave run by Hamas, which has repeatedly launched wars against Israel.
These points were completely ignored. Instead, this institution of higher learning stated its “categorical imperative to side with and empower the vulnerable and oppressed” in a situation where the “overwhelming power imbalance” rests with Israel. Israel is accused of “ethnonationalist legislation” and responsible for “human rights and international law violations and of Palestine’s cry for freedom.”
The sole Jewish state with about 7 million Jews, which is surrounded by dozens of Muslim countries and 1.8 BILLION Muslims is somehow cast as the real power player. The mental gymnastics to accuse Israel of “ethnonationalist legislation,” while simultaneously supporting the creation of a Palestinian State which demands to be free of Jews (because the presence of Jews “difficults the prospect of a two-state solution“), is so outrageous that one must be part of the Harvard elite to comprehend.
Has Harvard simply become the latest progressive institution to view every situation in a narrow construct of the party viewed as powerful and the one cast as victim? Do the millions of dollars the institution receives from Muslim countries have any bearing on its twisted perception?
Harvard acknowledged it accepted $30 million from Saudi Arabia between 2013 and 2019, and another $6 million from Qatar, which openly supports Hamas. But the Department of Education noted that the school failed to report millions of additional donations beyond that and launched an investigation.
Hamas and Harvard probably sat next to each other in grade school and passed notes about “The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion” (Article 28 of the Hamas Charter) and “They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” (Article 22)
Hamas and Harvard are attempting to educate the world that Jews and the Jewish State are powerful forces, seeking to undermine societies as they seek greater control and expansion of land and resources. If that sounds familiar, you took Holocaust Remembrance Day seriously.
Hamas and Harvard are attempting to educate the world that Jews and the Jewish State are powerful forces, seeking to undermine societies as they seek greater control and expansion of land and resources. If that sounds familiar, you took Holocaust Remembrance Day seriously.
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) has long been viewed as a hate group on college campuses which “isn’t to promote education about Palestinians, but make the campus environment hostile for Israel supporters,” as summed up by Aviva Slomich, international campus director for CAMERA.
On March 14, 2022, Tufts University’s SJP chapter posted an opinion piece in the student run paper, Tufts Observer, called “Justice Through BDS.” The article promoted the familiar anti-Zionist propaganda, mislabeling Israel as a creature of “European settler colonialism” that runs an “apartheid regime.” It referred to Israel with a lowercase “i” to insult the Jewish State, and advocated for violence in its statement “SJP supports the full range of Palestinian resistance against settler-colonialism.“
The call for violence should get the group kicked off campus, but that is unlikely to happen unless and until Tufts’ alumni and student body demand action from the university (president Anthony P. Monaco’s office number is 617-627-3300).
In the same article promoting violence against Israel, SJP noted the good work that J Street has been doing in the Jewish community:
"While SJP recognizes that many Jewish people begin their anti-zionist political journey through J Street U, and appreciates that J Street U’s Tufts chapter agrees that antisemitism and anti-Zionism are not synonymous, it is crucial for students to refuse half-measures that condemn occupation while normalizing colonization."
SJP specifically called out its appreciation for the lobbying and anti-Israel propaganda disseminated by J Street, but the hate group still could not embrace its colleagues, as the left-wing Jewish group still has a stated platform that Israel should exist in some form. SJP has therefore called for J Street to be included in its broad boycott.
T-shirts praising Palestinian terrorism seen for sale at the National Students for Justice in Palestine conference in November 2016. Photo: NSJP/Facebook.
SJP and J Street U have stood as allies on different college campuses, such as in February 2019, when both groups blasted the University of Vermont’s Jewish Hillel for accepting money from the pro-Israel group Maccabee Task Force. The SJP-J Street allyship has built bridges – to encourage more Jews to despise Israel, but not for Israel haters to embrace coexistence with the Jewish State.
When a virulently anti-Israel hate group like SJP praises J Street, a group that claims to be pro-Israel, it may finally dawn on the pro-Zionist community that the Jewish left-wing group is a dangerous gateway organization to destroy the Jewish State from within.
Zionism has been defined as the “Jewish nationalist movement that has had as its goal the creation and support of a Jewish national state in Palestine, the ancient homeland of the Jews.” Gil Troy, a historian and author of a new book “The Zionist Ideas,” expanded upon that definition and says Zionism has three principle components: that Jews are a nation; that Jews have ties to their particular homeland in the land of Israel; and that Jews have a right to establish a state in that homeland, much like other people have rights to their own country.
That view of Zionism purely through a nationalistic lens enables many people to view Zionism as inherently racist. While Zionist advocates – like Troy – clearly articulate that Jews’ attachment to Israel does not mean that other people do not have attachments to the land as well, and that Israel welcomes the one-quarter of its population that is not Jewish with full rights, the anti-Zionists consider the core of the movement as exclusionary. The sentiment that nationalist populism inherently poses a risk “to the fundamental human rights principles of non-discrimination and equality” as stated in a 2018 United Nations report, puts Zionism in the crosshairs. The phrase “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination” as once declared in UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 of 1973, gets new air.
Zionism is more than the nationalistic movement of Jews reestablishing a thriving community in their homeland. It is a mission to combat anti-Semitism by providing a safe haven and a base from which to attack the noxious hatred.
Historic Zionism
Jews have always been Zionists. For thousands of years, Jews have prayed facing Jerusalem. Their daily prayers are replete with calls to rebuild their holy city. Jews have lived in and moved to the land of Israel throughout their history. The Jewish nation and religion are bound to the land. Jews were a majority in Jerusalem decades before the first Zionist Congress.
The connection of Jews and their Promised Land is a bedrock laid down in the bible and thousands of years of history. It naturally set the foundation for viewing the modern Jewish State through a three-part nationalist lens of people, religion and land. And it led humanitarians like Henry Dunant (1828-1910) to call for the rightful restoration of Jews to their homeland many years before Jewish Zionists articulated their vision.
But modern Zionism is more than the nationalist yearnings of thousands of years as articulated in Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, written in 1878. It is a clarion call to fight and end Jew hatred.
The man credited with founding modern Zionism is Theodor Herzl (1860-1904). While completely assimilated and secular, Herzl saw a world which only saw him and others like him as foreign Jews.
He was horrified at the conviction of a secular Jew, Alfred Dreyfus (1859-1935) in France on trumped up espionage charges. The anti-Semitism on bold display in the courtroom and media convinced Herzl that Jews would never be tolerated anywhere if they could not find peace in a liberal society like France. He said:
The pogroms in Russia (Ukraine, Poland) from 1881 to 1884 as well as Kishinev in 1903 and 1905 further cemented the opinion of Herzl and many other early Zionists that Jews would never be able to live in peace where they were treated as despised foreigners. Zionism was a tool to address systemic anti-Semitism. The principle was that only in a place where Jews governed themselves could they escape persecution.
The situation for the Jews in Europe and the USSR actually got worse after Herzl. On January 20 1942, the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, Germany, developed the “Final Solution to the Jewish Problem,” calling for their extermination. Nazi Germany and its supporters killed one-third of the global Jewish population. The horrors of the European Holocaust which confirmed the radical anti-Semitism prevalent in the world, most likely encouraged many nations to support the reestablishment of the Jewish State just a few years later.
Modern Zionism Fights Anti-Semitism
Today, Israel does not simply seek to be a safe haven for Jews but actively fights anti-Semitism and anti-Semites around the world.
In 1960, years after the Holocaust, agents of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, captured former Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Israel to stand trial for his crimes.
In 1976, after Arab terrorists hijacked an Air France plane to Uganda, Israeli commandos flew in to rescue the innocent.
In 1991, when the situation of Ethiopian Jews became dire, Israel launched Operation Solomon which air-lifted 14,325 people out of the country and resettled them in Israel.
In 1994, after Iran and Hezbollah blew up the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina killing 85 people, Israel sent a team to investigate.
In 2015, after Muslim terrorist targeted killing Jews in a kosher supermarket in Paris, France, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed French Jews and said “any Jew who chooses to come to Israel will be greeted with open arms and an open heart, it is not a foreign nation, and hopefully they and you will one day come to Israel.“
The government of Israel has a special division for world Jewry called The Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. A core mission of the office is “monitoring and treating the scourge of anti-Semitism.” No other government in the world has an office dedicated to its diaspora and to fighting the terrible hatred it endures.
When Zionism only portrays itself as the rightful national aspiration of Jews to self-determination in their homeland, it opens itself up to noxious attacks. A core tenet of Zionism is the fight against anti-Semitism which should be broadcast, as it makes abundantly clear that anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic.
FirstOneThrough 