The Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority have come to an agreement on Palestinians who have jobs in Israel. Instead of their employers paying them in cash, Palestinian workers must now deposit the money in Palestinian banks. This agreement will affect up to 200,000 workers.

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In response to this, Palestinian laborers went on a one-day strike, claiming that the new policy is unfair and will make their pay subject to taxes and bank fees.

Reuters reported on a number of the striking Palestinians, with one saying, "They decided without consulting the workers' union. Either a worker agrees or he loses his work permit."

Another said, "We reject having our salaries transferred to Palestinian Authority banks because we are afraid of the future and there is a crisis of trust."

This lack of trust has been woefully underreported. Asset forfeiture is commonplace in governments around the world, but in most societies, there is usually a predicate, such as the commission of a crime. Palestinian workers, however, have no faith that the PA will wait for a specific excuse to seize their assets.

The institutional distrust the Palestinian people have for their leadership has a long history. For four generations, the Palestinian people have been used as pawns in their leaders' war with the Jewish state, often egged on by neighboring Arab countries. The current leader of the PA Mahmoud Abbas has been serving his four-year term since 2005. He has delayed every election that was supposed to be held. When offered a chance to create a state, he has consistently walked away from the table without a counteroffer when he bothered to negotiate at all.

Prior to Abbas was Yasser Arafat, who used his people as suicide bombers and terrorists in the first and second intifadas. He spent decades teaching successive generations of Palestinian youth that the true enemy was not his own selfish incompetence, but the evil Jew next door.

If anyone can see through these institutional lies, it's the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have an inside look at Israel every day. On average, these workers get paid twice as much as the average Palestinian worker inside Palestinian-controlled areas. Workers in Israel are treated with a modicum of respect, something their neighbors cannot say. They see Israeli Arabs treated with the same rights and privileges as Israeli Jews.

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When leftist movements like BDS have a modicum of success, the only ones who suffer are Palestinian laborers who work in Israel. If an Israeli business is forced to lay off employees because of pressure from the BDS movement, it's the Palestinian employees who are hit first.

This is exactly what happened with the company SodaStream in 2016. When it had to lay off employees due to declining sales caused by advocates of BDS, it was the 500 Palestinians out of 1,300 employees who lost their jobs. The remainder, who were almost evenly divided between Israeli Jews and Arabs, did not.

Did the PA do anything to help those who were fired? Of course not. Instead, it added them to the tens of thousands of other unemployed – the unemployment rate in PA-ruled areas is 26% – and exploited their pain for its own political purposes.

It is unsurprising that Palestinians who work in Israel do not trust the PA, and its latest policy highlights this fact. The Palestinian people have suffered under their leadership long enough, and giving that same leadership absolute control over the assets of the few who have managed to get a decent job in Israel has many of those workers losing sleep.

 Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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President Joe Biden has returned from the first Middle East trip of his presidency, and for the most part it was uneventful. While a few headlines were made by a fist bump with the Saudi Crown Prince and the lack of progress on the issue of oil exports, the most eye-opening part of the trip was Biden's insistence that the diplomacy of the 1990s is still viable today.

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Biden met with interim Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who is the leader of the center-left Yesh Atid party. Yet on issues regarding Iran and the Palestinian Authority, Lapid sounded far more like his predecessor Benjamin Netanyahu than former center-left Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert. But it is Barak and Olmert's conciliatory approach that Biden seemed to have been expecting.

Biden claimed that the best way to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon is diplomacy. While Biden was part of the Obama administration, which would have allowed Iran to build nuclear weapons without consequence, he now claims that Iran can never be allowed to do so. He demurred, however, when pushed on how to prevent such an eventuality.

Lapid had no such reservations. During a joint press conference with Biden, he was firm. "Words will not stop them, Mr. President," said Lapid. "Diplomacy will not stop them. The only thing that will stop Iran is knowing that … if they continue to develop their nuclear program, the free world will use force. The only way to stop them is to put a credible military threat on the table."

The prime minister added, "You have said many times, Mr. President, that big countries do not bluff. I completely agree. It should not be a bluff, but the real thing. The Iranian regime must know that if they continue to deceive the world, they will pay a heavy price."

Israel has never been shy about its willingness to use military force to protect itself against a nuclear threat. Back in 1981, it launched a daring mission that destroyed a nuclear facility in Iraq. In 2010, it became known that Israel had been working for years on a computer virus known as Stuxnet in order to digitally destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities. In 2018, the Mossad stole 110,000 documents detailing Iran's nuclear ambitions. So when Lapid vows to use force, he has precedents set by decades of Israeli policy behind him.

If Biden's mentality on Iran is a relic of 2013, his position on the Palestinians is two decades older than that. Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas, in year 17 of his four-year term, could never find former President Donald Trump's weak spot, so he looked for Biden's. He demanded that Biden unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital and called Israel an apartheid state. Biden didn't give in on those issues, but he did on others.

"Two states along the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps," said Biden, "remains the best way to achieve equal measures of security, prosperity, freedom and democracy for the Palestinians as well as Israelis." Biden also pledged $200 million to UNRWA and even visited eastern Jerusalem, the first sitting US president to do so. All Israeli flags were removed from his motorcade when he drove there, signaling to the PA that he is friendly towards their demand for a divided Jerusalem.

This is the diplomacy of a bygone era in Israel – the Oslo era. When the Oslo Accords were signed, there was hope that designating territories and granting legitimacy to the newly formed PA would lead to a reduction of terror attacks in Israel. Instead, the decade that followed Oslo had more terror attacks than those that preceded it.

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So, Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat a sweetheart deal, including eastern Jerusalem, 97% of Judea and Samaria and the right of return to thousands of Palestinians. Arafat responded by launching the second intifada. Ehud Olmert tried again with Abbas in 2008, and Abbas walked away without a counteroffer.

Biden knows this, yet he still pushes the same tired ideas and solutions that have failed over and over again. While Trump's "deal of the century" plan failed at launch, it was at least a different approach. Biden's approach is the same that has failed for 30 years. It is backward, tired, and unproductive. Par for the course for this administration.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) has taken to Twitter to announce that she will introduce a House resolution that calls for official recognition of the "Nakba," which she – like most Palestinian nationalists – describes as the "catastrophe" that occurred in 1948 when Israel demolished 400 Palestinian communities and made refugees out of 700,000 Palestinians. She frames this as an issue of human rights and justice, but in reality, it is an issue of ignorance of recent historical events in the region and the anti-Semites that prey upon it for personal gain.

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The resolution's supporters were the normal cadre of Israel-haters and anti-Semites – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Betty McCollum (D-Minn.), Marie Newman (D-Ill.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.). Most, if not all, of these co-sponsors have consistently sided against Israel, endorsed the BDS movement, labeled Israel an apartheid state and worked to dissolve the strong alliance between Israel and the United States. The resolution itself is a sophomoric diatribe filled with propaganda typical of both the Palestinian Authority and anti-Israel Jewish groups like J Street and IfNotNow. It lacks the context of the events that preceded and succeeded Israel's 1948 War of Independence and places all blame for the subsequent crises of the Palestinian people on their existential enemy – the Jews.

The phrase "Nakba" means "catastrophe" in Arabic. Tlaib describes it in the resolution as the "experience of uprooting, dispossession and refugeedom," which she alleges were caused by Israel. This, the resolution says, refers "not only to a historical event but to an ongoing process of Israel's expropriation of Palestinian land and its dispossession of the Palestinian people that continues to this day." An examination of the real story behind this "catastrophe," however, explains why the Palestinians are the only people in the history of the world to still be refugees four generations after they were displaced.

Prior to the 1947 UN partition plan, which sought to create two states – Jewish and Arab – in British Mandatory Palestine, anti-Semitic attacks in Europe and Russia forced thousands of Jews to emigrate to their historical homeland. Palestine, however, was not a sovereign state, but an area controlled by a number of empires for two millennia, most recently the Ottomans and then the British. In fact, prior to 1948, the last sovereign state in that land was called Judea, and it maintained its sovereignty for 102 years.

From the expulsion of the Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple until May 15, 1948, the land of Palestine was under the domination of no less than nine different imperial rulers, none of whom thought much of the ancient Jewish homeland. Indeed, the name "Palestine" itself was coined because the Romans wanted to add insult to injury. They renamed Judea after the historical enemies of the Jews – the Philistines.

In the time that led up to the establishment of the State of Israel, the army that would one day become the Israel Defense Forces prepared themselves for the invasion that they knew would come. The Arabs who lived in the area knew it would come as well, so they did what they were told to do – they got out of the way. The Palestinian refugee situation was a crisis of their own making, because they assumed that the Arab armies of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Egypt would wipe out all the Jews and they would return to their homes, now Jew-free.

They believed this because their leaders told them so over and over again. "We will smash the country with our guns and obliterate every place the Jews seek shelter in," said Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Saif. "The Arabs should conduct their wives and children to safe areas until the fighting has died down." The Jordanian newspaper Filastin admitted the same after the ceasefire that ended the war: "The Arab States encouraged the Palestine Arabs to leave their homes temporarily in order to be out of the way of the Arab invasion armies." It was the Arabs' failure to slaughter the Jews that the Palestinians came to call their "catastrophe." All Arabs that remained in Israel became citizens with full rights. Those who fled were left to the tender mercies of their new host countries.

After the war, the Arab refugees went to other Arab nations: 100,000 to Lebanon, 75,000 to Syria and 70,000 to Jordan. 280,000 went to the West Bank, which Jordan annexed, and 190,000 went to the Gaza Strip, over which Egypt maintained military control. Not one of these Arab nations resettled these people. At the same time, Arab nations expelled their Jewish populations in droves, without the pretext of war in their lands. Morocco expelled 260,000, Iraq expelled 129,000 and so on. This is not to mention the hundreds of thousands of European Jews who were displaced after the Holocaust. None of these people languished in camps and demanded to be returned to their homes. They made their way to Israel, where a nation in its infancy – and still reeling from an existential war – resettled them and gave them full rights as citizens.

The Arabs continued their effort to destroy Israel and told the refugees situated in their countries not to worry – once all the Jews are dead, you can go home. All of this was under the watchful eye of the United Nations, which created useless organizations to help facilitate the continued oppression of the Palestinian people by other Arab nations and their own leaders. When Israel won the Six-Day War, they did not conquer Palestinian lands in the West Bank and Gaza Strip – they conquered Jordanian and Egyptian lands that contained a Palestinian population that had languished in refugee camps for two decades. Unlike Jordan and Egypt, they did not annex this land and leave the refugees as second-class citizens.

The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) then chose to launch decades of terrorism against the Jewish people. Israel attempted peace with the PLO and the Palestinian Authority many times over the years. When land was offered, it was rejected and terrorist attacks were launched. When Israel left Gaza in 2005, it became a safe haven for Hamas and thousands of rocket attacks.

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The problems the Palestinian people face are numerous indeed. They lack resources, jobs, education and healthcare. This is not the fault of Israel. It is due to decades of exploitation by Arab nations that used them as political pawns until they realized that Israel isn't going anywhere. Now the Arab world is bored with the Palestinian "catastrophe" and has begun to sign peace agreements with Israel to ensure their survival against an emboldened Iran. Israel has become an economic and technological powerhouse with a military envied by almost every other country in the world. Yet the Palestinians are trapped in the past, and blame the Jews for the problems inflicted upon them by their own leaders.

Tlaib's parents emigrated to America and appear to have infused their daughter with the falsehood that all the problems faced by their people were the fault of the Jews. The resolution she has filed has nothing to do with facts, history or the correction of injustices. It's about the use of her position as a member of Congress to settle her vendetta against a people who didn't have the courtesy to allow themselves to be pushed into the Mediterranean Sea. Tlaib has chosen not to use her power and position to help the Palestinians, she uses them as a weapon against the Jewish state. In doing so, she is as bad – if not worse – than the nations that refused to help her great-grandparents after 1948, and her actions will ensure that the Palestinian people continue to live in abject poverty for generations to come.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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"That which stood for our ancestors applies to us as well. For it was not only one individual who stood up against us to destroy us. Rather, in every generation, they stand up against us to destroy us."

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These words, spoken by Jews worldwide at the Passover seder a few weeks ago, conjure up horrific imagery for anyone who knows Jewish history. The illustrated Katz Haggadah, for example, shows a haunting image of Abraham making a covenant with G-d, but in the smoke are images of all those who sought to destroy the Jewish people. It begins with the Egyptians and goes on to include the Babylonians, Romans, Crusaders, Cossacks, Nazis and Arabs.

In the next edition, they should add a group that strives to destroy the Jewish nation in this generation: The college leftists.

The mentality of the college leftists was perfectly articulated in an op-ed by the editorial board of The Harvard Crimson, Harvard's student newspaper, titled "​​In Support of Boycott, Divest, Sanction and a Free Palestine." With all the subtlety of a blunt ax, the editorial board adopts the Palestinian propaganda line that Israel is the equivalent of apartheid South Africa, and endorses those who want to see it destroyed. Whether they know it or not – and they ought to know better – the editors called for a second Holocaust.

The endorsement of BDS begins with a mea culpa for the supposed "past wrongs" of the Crimson editorial board – namely, a 2002 column titled "Do Not Divest From Israel" that rejected BDS. It is ironic that the editorial confessed how this shift took place: The board gave in to the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC). They rhapsodize, "PSC has hosted informational programming, organized weekly demonstrations of support through 'Keffiyeh Thursdays,' and even installed a colorful, multi-panel 'Wall of Resistance' in favor of Palestinian freedom and sovereignty."

The board goes out of its way to portray PSC as a benign organization, but the truth is far more sinister. The PSC is not "dedicated to supporting the Palestinian struggle for self-determination, justice and equality" as its mission statement claims. They are a hardline anti-Israel group that does not advocate for a Palestinian state but against a Jewish one.

For example, their blog and public statements are devoid of any mention of the words "Hamas," "Fatah," "Arafat," "Abbas" or "Palestinian Authority." According to the PSC, there is no governing body for the Palestinians, there are only the evil Israelis. Moreover, their aforementioned "Wall of Resistance" contained the word salad "Zionism Is Racism Settler Colonialism White Supremacy Apartheid." In other words, Zionism and, by extension, the state it founded, are everything that college leftists consider evil and must be destroyed. PSC appears to believe this with every fiber of their being.

This is the group that convinced the Crimson editorial board to endorse the BDS movement.

The Crimson's editorial chair Orlee Marini-Rapoport bragged about the editorial on Twitter, stating: "I am an Editorial Chair @thecrimson. I am also Jewish. Yesterday, the Board overturned a decades-old precedent; for the first time, we announced our support of BDS. I encourage you to read our editorial. I'm so proud to be part of this thoughtful group." But to be a thoughtful group, thinking is a prerequisite. It is clear that under the influence of the PSC, the board did not think. It simply regurgitated Palestinian propaganda.

The board also fails to distinguish what constitutes "occupied Palestine." In the editorial, they reference claims by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, both of which refer to Judea and Samaria (aka, the West Bank), Gaza and eastern Jerusalem as the "Occupied Palestinian Territories." That is bad enough, but there are strong indications that the board's definition of "occupied Palestine" is "from the river to the sea" – that is, the entire Jewish state. It is significant that, in the editorial, they defend people like Marc Lamont Hill, who have endorsed this slogan. In the editorial itself, in fact, the board links to a column about Hill, who lost his job after he said "free Palestine from the river to the sea," and claims that Hill was fired because he "endorse[d] Palestinian freedom," rather than because he endorsed genocide. The board, in other words, appears to make no distinction between Palestinian freedom and the extermination of millions of Jews.

Of course, the board tries to convince their readers that their endorsement of BDS is unrelated to antisemitism. "In the wake of accusations suggesting otherwise," they write, "we feel the need to assert that support for Palestinian liberation is not antisemitic." When the implication is that this "liberation" is from the yolk of evil, apartheid Jewish occupiers, however, more than a throwaway assertion is necessary to prove that they are, at the very least, not particularly fond of the Jews.

This is underlined by the lengthy conspiracy theory the board spins in order to claim that BDS is somehow suppressed by powerful unseen forces. They claim that anti-BDS actions are "extraordinary abuses" rather than legitimate political activism. These abuses include anti-BDS legislation that has passed in 26 states, which proves that "Israel remains America's favorite First Amendment blind spot." Not only does this extraordinary political power to silence dissent violate constitutional rights, but the private sector is endangered as well. The board states, "Companies that choose to boycott the Jewish state or otherwise support the pro-Palestine BDS movement face legal repercussions."

The reality is that the government has market power, and it is well within its rights when it chooses not to allow this market power to be used to the advantage of companies whose actions are appalling. Ironically, the Left is more than willing to endorse this principle when it is convenient for them. It is doubtful that any member of the Crimson editorial board shed a tear when, for example, numerous Democratic cities boycotted Chick-fil-A because the owner is pro-traditional marriage.

The editorial board concludes with the admission that they ignored any and all contrary opinions to their own. "In the past," they write, "our board was skeptical of the [BDS] movement (if not, generally speaking, of its goals), arguing that BDS as a whole did not 'get at the nuances and particularities of the Israel-Palestine conflict.' We regret and reject that view." They reject, in other words, the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is even slightly nuanced, and attack their predecessors because they failed to do the same. It appears that it was much simpler to declare that Israel is evil and the Palestinians are angelic. This is convenient, as it means they don't have to grapple with the fact that they have endorsed a movement that would be happy to see the Jews at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

We should not discount the threat that the Crimson's endorsement of BDS and its antisemitic ideology represents. For decades, it has been fashionable to dismiss the radicalization of college students as a mere passing phase. Once they graduate, it is believed, the students will mellow in the face of "the real world." This has not happened. For example, due to the infusion of radicalized college graduates, private corporations have become more and more radical in their political stances – such as in Big Tech and Hollywood. And whether we like it or not, the editorial board of the Crimson will be the industry leaders of tomorrow. Former Crimson staff members include Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, which has been known to ban opinions it deems "misinformation," and Nathan Blecharczyk, co-founder of Airbnb, which decided in May of 2019 to ban listings in the "Israel Occupied Territories."

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Crimson staff have also gone into government. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of Transportation (and presidential candidate) Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have all done so. And, of course, Crimson staffers have entered the media as well. The New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, CNN, MSNBC and many other legacy media outlets are filled with Crimson alums. Former CNN president Jeff Zucker once led the publication.

No one should expect the opinions expressed in the Crimson to stay there. Jew-hatred has gone mainstream because it wears the more acceptable face of Palestinian advocacy, and we must not ignore that hatred when it comes from a student newspaper. It must be confronted everywhere it raises its ugly head; because in every generation, it will.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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DMFI was founded in 2019 as a counterbalance to the shifting tides in the Democratic Party that sought to distance the political left from Israel. While the catalyst for their formation was the coronation of Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) as the Democrats' ideological thought leaders regarding Israel, they have also fought Trump's agenda tooth and nail. They have found a happy middle where they can maintain their support for Israel while attacking Trump, because that is what many Democrats do, as support for Israel has mostly been a bipartisan issue.

However, those days are numbered. Sen. Bernie Sanders is more anti-Israel than presidents Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter combined. Sanders has openly and on multiple occasions called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a racist. Sanders has promised the radically left anti-Israel group IfNotNow that he will end "the occupation" of Palestine (a fictional occupation of a fictional country).

Sanders has said on stage at the J Street policy conference that he would condition Israeli military aid on Israeli policy vis-à-vis the Palestinians, adding that "some of the 3.8 billion dollars [in aid] should go right now to humanitarian aid in Gaza." Sanders left out the part where Gaza is run by Hamas, which uses "humanitarian" aid to fund terrorist activities. Sanders is endorsed by the very people who DMFI opposes: Omar and Tlaib.

Last week, the left-wing site The Intercept said that a pro-Israel group was "helping fund anti-Bernie Sanders super PAC ads in Nevada." The ads were run by DMFI, which ran similar ads in Iowa and has spent 1.4 million dollars so far trying to ensure that Sanders isn't the nominee.

J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami issued a statement about the ad campaign. Demanding that the ads be removed, Ben-Ami defended Sanders and put the focus on Trump, claiming that DMFI "has no right to claim to speak for a 'Democratic majority' of pro-Israel Americans," and that ads against Sanders were "distracting from the absolute necessity of defeating Donald Trump."

DMFI responded to Ben-Ami's statement by saying that J Street is "protecting Senator Sanders" and that they "have problems with Senator Sanders's views on Israel and his refusal to disassociate himself from anti-Semitic statements made by individuals he appointed to official positions in his campaign."

They also claimed that "Senator Sanders will not be able to defeat Trump, and his nomination would put Democratic candidates at risk up and down the ballot and across the country."

While they stand so starkly contrasted to Trump, it is unclear exactly where center-left Democrats like DMFI stand on foreign policy regarding Israel.

Do they disapprove of Trump being the first sitting president to visit the Western Wall, the appointment of Nikki Haley to the United Nations, the moving of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, or Trumps "Peace and Prosperity" proposal? While they happily stand against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, are they also going to stand against Benny Gantz, Netanyahu's political rival, who shares many of the same policy views as Netanyahu regarding the Palestinians?

A Sanders nomination will put many Democrats to the test, but none more so than those that claim to be pro-Israel. Will they choose to side with their party, even when their party takes a radical approach to the Jewish state, or with their philosophy, which they have spent decades cultivating? If they choose the latter, there will be plenty on the Left that will attack and deride them for it, and if they choose the former, they will lose all credibility as a pro-Israel organization.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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"This makes no sense," Omar exclaimed on Twitter. "Sanctions are economic warfare. They have already caused medical shortages and countless deaths in Iran. You cannot claim to want deescalation and then announce new sanctions with no clear goal. This is not a measured response!"

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This was not the first time Omar has condemned US sanctions. When Trump threatened Turkey with sanctions in October, in response to Ankara's incursion into northern Syria, Omar referred to it as "a humanitarian and geopolitical disaster."

In January 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced sanctions on Venezuela in response to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro not respecting the results of the election and turning over power to Juan Guaidó. Omar tweeted in response that "Trump's new sanctions on Venezuela are nothing more than economic sabotage designed to force regime change by starving the very people we claim to be helping. … We should support dialogue, not a coup!"

So Omar openly sides with the dictator who stole an election and has destroyed his country and his people, but Trump is the bad guy.

Then there is her favorite target, Israel. Despite all the admonishments that sanctions are "economic warfare" that harms the people of a country, not the government, she has been a vocal proponent of the anti-Israel BDS movement. Even though she assured the Jewish voters in her district that she didn't support BDS because it was "not helpful in getting that two-state solution," she flip-flopped back to supporting BDS once elected.

Omar sponsored House Resolution 496, which is a pro-BDS resolution disguised as a free speech issue. This is important because of the response Omar gave when pressed on the difference between sanctions on Iran and BDS.

"The BDS movement is a movement that is driven by the people," Omar said when asked by a reporter. "The sanctions on Iran, are sanctions that are being placed to create maximum pressure by a government. That's very different."

However, as is clearly seen by Omar's own resolution, she wants the US government to exert maximum pressure on Israel. So either she's lying, or she forgot that she introduced such a resolution.

She is also either lying or forgetting BDS's own definition of itself. From the BDS website: "BDS aims to end international support for Israeli violations of international law by forcing companies, institutions and governments to change their policies."

"Forcing governments to change their policies" sounds a lot like a maximum pressure campaign that consists of economic warfare against citizens.

Finally, when questioned on Twitter last October about her selective support of sanctions, Omar replied: "Not all sanctions are alike, some sanctions economically devastate a country and ultimately only harm its citizens, I am never for those."

Which sanctions don't ultimately harm citizens? The purpose of sanctions is to incentivize citizens to pressure their own governments! Once again, Omar is either lying, or has no clue what she is talking about.

Ilhan Omar has a well-documented history of siding with despots and dictators and against Israel and America. She has been wrong on every foreign policy issue. Meanwhile, she sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. It's easy to call her anti-Semitic, anti-American and a detriment to our government and society. The hard part is influencing and educating the voters in her district so they vote her out.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org

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When Omar accuses Jewish lawmakers or pundits of siding with Israel, to the detriment of America, she accuses those Jews of dual loyalty. That smear has historical ramifications, as it was the excuse used for centuries in Europe and Russia to segregate the Jews into ghettos and attack them. Many countries would not allow Jews to become full citizens, when that is what they were.

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Ironically, Omar, who pushes for globalism and consistently derides American nationalism, is claiming that if you are pro-Israel, you are anti-America.

Trump, on the other hand, is wondering why American Jews don't love Israel more. The president, who clearly pushes a nationalist "America First" foreign policy, is not accusing American Jews of choosing Israel over America. Rather, he is recognizing that Israel is not in competition with America, and that their interests are aligned to such a degree that loving Israel should be a given.

This is no different from what Jewish children the world over are being taught every day. Millions of Jews have vowed that there will never be another Holocaust, because the Jews now have the means to protect themselves when others won't. Indeed, Israel's history is replete with examples of how it protects Jews around the world, and not just the ones that live within its borders.

Israel brought in and settled a million Jewish refugees in the first 10 years of its existence, while it was a fledgling, third-world nation.  Israel did the same with Russian Jews who managed to escape from the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s. In the mid-1980s, Israel conducted "Operation Moses," a covert evacuation of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, solely because they could not leave Jews to fend for themselves during a civil war in Sudan. Israel has a long and well-deserved track record of protecting Jews as well as it possibly can, regardless of where they live.

Where Jews live matters as well. The Jewish people have been in the Diaspora for millennia, and have consistently attempted to make the best of the situations they found themselves in. In all that time, there has been no better friend to the Jewish people than America. The religious freedom codified in America's Bill of Rights is something that no country before it was able to guarantee its Jewish citizens. World Jewry takes for granted today that equal rights and protections are granted to it. That those rights and protections exist today is due to American leadership.

American Jews do recognize this, and appreciate America. There is also appreciation for what Israel has been able to accomplish in the past century. These two things are not and cannot be mutually exclusive. America and Israel are allies, and share the common goals of democracy, freedom, and national identity. An integral part of the American national identity is the "American melting pot." Regardless of your background, an American is an American.

That does not mean you should ignore your background completely. If that were true, Rep. Omar couldn't trade on her Somali background, and Rep. Tlaib couldn't trade on her Palestinian one. Do they have "dual loyalty" to Somalia and the Palestinian territories? Anyone who would claim so would certainly be accused by them and their allies of the same bigotry.

The safety and security that Jews can feel around the world for the first time since the days of kings David and Solomon is due to the tireless efforts of the State of Israel. This is the feeling that Trump is attempting to tap into and encourage American Jews to appreciate. Omar is trying to ostracize American Jews by saying that they cannot truly be Americans if they have Israel's interests in mind. Trump is trying to embrace American Jews by encouraging appreciation for a common ally of America and the Jewish people. These are not the same thing.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The BDS movement is so ineffective at damaging the Israeli economy that it can more accurately be categorized as an anti-associated-with-Israel group, not an anti-Israel group. Every day, Israel-supporting Americans, now including singer Demi Lovato and the Portland Trailblazers basketball team, become the targets of the BDS movement's hate-filled agenda.

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Lovato, a Christian with Jewish ancestry, traveled to Israel in early October, where she was baptized in the Jordan River, visited the Western Wall, met with special-needs children and toured Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum. She posted pictures about these experiences to her 74 million Instagram followers.

She did not take a political position, meet with Israeli leaders or discuss regional issues. There are unconfirmed reports that she was paid approximately $150,000, partly by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, to take the trip in exchange for posting on Instagram.

For these actions, she was excoriated on social media. CodePink, a "women-led grassroots organization," claimed on Twitter that Lovato's actions were "unacceptable" and that she was "legitimizing apartheid." Lovato, whose career hinges on her likeability, rushed to apologize.

"I'm extremely frustrated. I accepted a free trip to Israel in exchange for a few posts," she wrote on Instagram. "No one told me there would be anything wrong with going or that I could possibly be offending anyone. With that being said, I'm sorry if I've hurt or offended anyone, that was not my intention. Sometimes people present you with opportunities and no one tells you the potential backlash you could face in return. This was meant to be a spiritual experience for me, NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT and now I realize it hurt people and for that I'm sorry. Sorry I'm not more educated, and sorry for thinking this trip was just a spiritual experience."

Lovato, like others before her, had suffered the wrath of the pro-BDS Left for her association with Israel. In 2017, Nick Cave received public criticism from fellow musicians Roger Waters and Brian Eno for scheduling two (sold out) concerts in Tel Aviv. In 2018, activists in New Zealand pressured American pop star Lorde into canceling her scheduled performance in Israel.

Indeed, praise for or association with Israel is a sure-fire way to show up on the radar of the militant anti-Israel BDS movement. Visits to Israel are not the only unforgivable sin, either – merely working with a company that sells to Israel is verboten.

A few weeks ago, for instance, it was reported that the Portland Trailblazers had disassociated from Oregon-based manufacturer Leupold & Stevens, which produces rifle scopes for the Israel Defense Forces. The team had partnered with the company as a sponsor with the aim of honoring US service members, as part of the "Hometown Hero" program. The partnership was widely criticized by BDS activists in Portland, the streets of which have been taken over multiple times by Antifa protesters.

The Trailblazers denied that the disassociation was related to BDS pressure, saying in a statement that "Leupold's sponsorship contract officially expired at the end of last season and Leupold & Stevens made the decision not to renew." It was not the conservative Right that scoffed at the Trailblazers' claim of innocence, but rather the socialist Left.

The Portland chapter of the Democrat Socialists of America tweeted a mocking reply to the Trailblazers statement, along with a victorious statement of their own.

"We are grateful for the hard work of the many community groups, activists, Blazers fans, and veterans who united around this important issue to stand up for Palestinian human rights," Portland DSA co-chair Olivia Katbi Smith said in a statement. "We are relieved that the Blazers have done the right thing and finally ended this completely unnecessary partnership with a company that has provided sniper scopes to a brutal occupying force."

This is not the DSA's only experience with the Trailblazers. They organized a boycott of the team's exhibition game against Maccabi Haifa, a visiting Israeli team. They proudly post a picture of their members holding a large banner outside the arena reading "Don't Play Apartheid." These incidents highlight the harsh realities of the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel BDS movement.

They cannot effectively target Israel itself, so they target anyone who dares associate with Israel, however remotely. Israel, thankfully, has not felt strong economic repercussions since the modern boycott movement was founded in 2005. Boasting an impressive 3.6% unemployment rate, the Start-Up Nation is fairing far better than its Palestinian neighbors in Judea and Samaria and Gaza.

When an Israeli company needs to cut costs to combat BDS, it is the Palestinian laborers who are affected. When an Israeli company does business with Americans, it is the American organization or individual that is targeted. This is the danger of the BDS movement, which claims to be tolerant and pro-Palestinian. It is not pro-Palestinian, it is anti-Israel. It is not tolerant, it is anti-Semitic.

The BDS movement takes any association with the Jewish state as an excuse to attack. Israel is unaffected because it will not bow to their pressure. Those in America should follow that example and be unapologetic in our support for the only free democracy in the Middle East.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Media outlets, anti-Israel organizations and leftist politicians have all falsely claimed that Israel was annexing the West Bank. Not only is this far from the truth, it highlights the fact that these groups are not pro-Palestinian, only anti-Israel.

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American Jewry is woefully misinformed about the issues of the Palestinian community. According to the popular narrative, the only thing in the way of Palestinian prosperity is Israel, which subjugates them with its racist policies, apartheid laws, and occupation. The best way to fight back is to boycott Israeli goods and demand that American policy towards Israel be radically altered.

Fighting back against this misinformation is Fuel for Truth, a nonprofit organization that holds programs in Boston, Miami, New York and Los Angeles to teach "Israel advocacy training and Jewish communal engagement for population segments unreached or underserved by traditional organizations and institutions."

Ron Wasserman, the organization's chairman, describes himself as "pro-Palestinian," but not in the same way that groups like Jewish Voice For Peace, IfNotNow, and others claim to be. He is actually looking for the Palestinians people to thrive, he says. When discussing these issues with people on the Left, he asks them, "How are you helping the Palestinians? How are you helping the Palestinians face the real issues they have every day?"

The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is, in effect, significantly more of a burden on the Palestinians than Israel is. Founded in 2005, BDS has done nothing but harm the Palestinian economy and people. As of 2018, Palestinians in Judea and Samaria have a 31% unemployment rate, while for those in Gaza the figure is 52%. Meanwhile, Israel boasts a 3.6% unemployment rate. This is because nobody but Israeli companies is willing to hire Palestinians.

"Who are the Palestinians going to do business with if they can't do business with Israel?" says Wasserman. "Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran? They want nothing to do with [the Palestinians]."

What about the occupation? According to the anti-Israel Left, the largest obstacle to a two-state solution are the Israeli settlements and Israeli military presence in Judea and Samaria. This is wrong on multiple accounts.

"From 1949 through 1967, there were no settlements, no occupation, and no peace," said Wasserman. "There is no occupation in Ramallah, Jenin, Tulkarm. There are specialized Israeli forces that go in when there's someone bad in there, but that's it. Israel ended its occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005."

Since Israel left the Gaza Strip, conditions have only gotten worse for the residents there.

"We saw it in American foreign policy when we left Iraq. When you create a vacuum in today's day and age, Iran will fill it the next day," said Wasserman, adding that only if he "hated the Palestinians with every bone in my body," he would advocate that Israel leave Judea and Samaria.

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who was recently denied entry to Israel due to her advocacy for BDS (which includes a House resolution which compares Israel to Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa), has claimed on Twitter that Israel's supposed "annexation" is "the nail in the coffin to a two-state solution or any peace deal."

IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace echo similar sentiments. The problem is, Netanyahu never said he was going to annex the Jordan Valley. Rather, he said that Israel was going to formalize sovereignty over the area, something that has such broad consensus in Israel that Blue and White (Netanyahu's main political opposition) claimed Netanyahu copied their policies. This move is just solidifying the fact that the Jordan Valley, along with the "consensus" settlements in Judea and Samaria, are off the table as bargaining chips.

There are real issues that Palestinians face that have nothing to do with Israel.

"The end of Hamas rule should be the number one priority of anyone claiming to be pro-Palestinian," said Wasserman. "Palestinians have no civil liberties, no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion."

The Palestinian Authority isn't much better; it doesn't want peace and refuses to come to the negotiating table.

"They refused to negotiate for eight years" during the Obama era, said Wasserman, and Obama was "the best friend the Palestinians could have hoped for."

Regarding the deals offered by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, "There was no counteroffer by the Palestinians. … What do they really want? Why are they not negotiating?"

Palestinian internal issues far outweigh their issues with Israel, which Wasserman classifies as "low or bottom of the list on issues [Palestinians] face."

These problems, however, are never discussed by supposed "pro-Palestinian" groups and activists. Searching IfNotNow's and Jewish Voice for Peace's Twitter accounts for terms like "economy," "unemployment" or "Hamas" is an exercise in futility if you are looking for Palestinian accountability for these problems. Every mention blames Israel and defends terrorism.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who like Omar was denied entry into Israel for her stance on BDS, is actually Palestinian American. Searching her Twitter accounts for any mention of "Hamas" or "Fatah," the terrorist groups that are keeping her family, friends and everyone else in the Palestinian territories in poverty, yields no results. She will not mention them. Searching for "Israel," however, yields endless criticism of the Jewish state, including blaming Israel for Palestinian violence.

These are the groups and people who are becoming increasingly influential on college campuses around the country. Their influence banks on the ignorance of students, who see a robust Israeli economy, a powerful Israeli military, poor Palestinians, and believe blindly the people who tell them Israel is to blame for Palestinians' problems.

These are the people who Fuel For Truth is attempting to educate.

"These people are not anti-Semites," said Wasserman, "they just identify with the underdog."

These students are being told that Israel is to blame for the problems of the Palestinians, so if they want to help the Palestinians they must attack Israel and its supporters, the American Jewish community. The sad reality is if Americans truly want to help the Palestinian people, there are no organizations or politicians on the American Left that are available for that cause.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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