In the United States there are 328 local chapters of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights. This is the Mission Statement of the USCPR:
“As part of a global movement for collective liberation, we work to end U.S. complicity in Israel's massive violence against the Palestinian people.”
And this is their Vision Statement:
“Freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people in a world without racism and oppression.”
Taken together these two statements make it clear that they view any opposition to Palestinian actions as racist and that it is both Israel and the United States that are complicit in this racism. All of the rhetoric on the USCPR.org supports that assertion. The USCPR is well structured with a network of chapters (Local Groups) in large cites and Universities. They also have a very active Youth Fellowship program:
“With a vision rooted in our collective liberation, young organizers around the country are fighting for a future free from the violent systems that harm our communities, where we all have access to the resources needed to thrive. A future where the Palestinian people are free and the U.S. is no longer complicit in Israeli apartheid.”(emphasis added)
“US Palestinian Council (USPC) is a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization that aims to represent, educate and advocate on issues of concern to Palestinian Americans, strengthen ties between the US and Palestine, and push forward a vision based on liberty, justice, and human rights for all.”
The USPC issued this statement concerning the massacre conducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023:
U.S. Palestinian Council
October 7, 2023
After a yearlong increase of atrocious and deadly Israeli settler violence against the Palestinian people, disrespecting Muslim and Christian holy sites, and the continued stranglehold on the people in Gaza, the situation yesterday reached a breaking point.
World authorities ignored this violence and killing of Palestinians. In addition, months of recent killings by Israeli settlers of Palestinian women and children, as well as destruction of Palestinian homes and confiscation of their land to build illegal settlements was not reported by the media.
Ignored by the world to their suffering, Palestinians in Gaza resisted. After decades of occupation, apartheid, torture and loss of life, Palestinians are demanding their freedom, their human rights and their right to self-determination.
We implore the world to step up and put a stop to the ongoing Israeli occupation by recognizing and enforcing the human and national rights of Palestinians under international law.”
The USPC would have you believe that events of October 7, 2023 were a spontaneous uprising by everyday Palestinians who live in Gaza and the brutal and barbaric massacre of innocent Israeli men, women, and children that was two years in the planning didn’t happen.
The Resources tab on the USPC page takes you to a list of federal, state, and local elected officials and judges of Palestinian heritage. First among them is Rashida Tlaib (D) MI US House of Representative. Tlaib is under investigation for instigating and perhaps facilitating Palestinian supporters to occupy the Cannon Office building on October 18. Nearly 300 “protestors” were arrested.
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The mission of the Palestinian American Organizations Network, PAON, is: “…to promote, empower, educate and advocate for Palestinian American civil rights and human rights, as well as the national issues pertaining to community interest. PAON strives to empower our member organizations to achieve more for the betterment of the community and the Palestinian cause through leadership, advocacy, education, culture, and media.”
This is their logo. Note the prominence of the fist which is most often used in connection with socialist organizations around the world.
Created in 2021, PAON has established itself as the umbrella organization for all Palestinian organization in the US. There is no current list of member organizations on their website.
And then there is the militant organization Within Our Lifetime; “Within Our Lifetime is a Palestinian-led community organization that has been building the movement for Palestine in NYC since 2015.”
This is one of four “Points of Unity” provided by WOL:
“We uphold the right of all Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland in all of historic Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. This requires that we stand against the entirety of the zionist settler-colonial project and for the national liberation of all of Palestine so that those in exile can return to live in freedom and dignity.”
In other words this organization supports the idea that Palestinians have always been the true occupants of modern day Israel and that they were kicked out by the Jews and they have right to return to that land and to remove the Jews occupying it — “by any means necessary”.
Tomorrow, October 28, 2023, the Jewish Shabbat, WOL will be leading a protest called 'Flood Brooklyn for Gaza'. The protest march will begin at the Brooklyn Museum and will pass through the heavily Chabad-Hasidic neighborhood of Crown Heights and will end near the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Jew.
WOL is a group with a known tendency toward violence. Jews have been warned by “security sources” to “avoid the area” where this “rally” will be held.
The First Amendment — Free Speech
The right to associate with whomever we wish and right to freedom of speech are protected by the US Constitution. But there are limits on free speech which include threats, calls for violence, and the utterance of “fighting words”. That one sign in the center of the photo above conveys all of those messages: it issues a threat, calls for the use of violence, and are most assuredly viewed by Jews as “fighting words”.
The Second Amendment — The Right To Bear Arms
Should this “protest” turn violent and threaten the safety of Jews and others and overwhelm the ability of the NYPD to hold it in check, the laws of the state of New York and the City of New York virtually prevent the ownership of guns even for the purpose of self defense. Those laws obviously exclude criminals.
Just two paragraphs up I wrote: “Jews have been warned by “security sources” to “avoid the area” where this “rally” will be held”. The area where this pro-Palestine rally will be held is precisely where Jewish Americans live. Are they to flee from their homes on the Shabbat and be subject to the laws of the state and city of New York which render them defenseless? This “rally” is intended to end at the door step of Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader. There is a better than even chance that even though he is most likely not going to be in his kitchen eating lunch his property will be well defended by the NYPD. But what about the property of others? Who will defend that.
On October 7, 2023 Israel was sucker punched by the terrorist organization Hamas which is sponsored by Iran, a host of other Arab nations, and the United Nations. The Israeli’s are tired of being sucker punched but they are outraged at having their children murdered in cold blood.
The organizations that I very briefly described are all antisemitic. Their sole purpose is to influence the people of the United States that black is white, up is down, and Israel is the illegal occupier of land that they have inhabited for 3,000 years for the sole purpose of helping them steal the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean “by any means necessary.”
One last point. The notion of the “innocent Palestinian citizen” is questionable. A “scientific poll” conducted in 2021 found that found that 53% of Palestinians believe Hamas is “most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people….”
More recently, Mark Mellman writing in The Hill explained that:
“ If new presidential elections were held with two candidates, Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas’s Ismail Haniyeh, Abbas would receive 37 percent of the vote, and Haniyeh would win in a landslide with 58 percent.”
In the U.S. rallies and protests in support of Hamas and the Palestinians have been held in at least 16 major and smaller U.S. cities and at least five major universities across the nation. The tone of each of those protests was clearly antisemitic.
1When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you— 2and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. [a] Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. 3Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, 4for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the LORD ’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. 5This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles [b] and burn their idols in the fire.
6For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. 7The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.
10But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him. Deuteronomy 7:1-10
Union, Kentucky
27 October 2023