In an editorial, Hudson County Republican Party Vice Chair of Communications Joshua Sotomayor-Einstein gives his two cents on why Jersey City’s flag raising ceremony last week perpetuated misinformation.
The Jersey City Palestine flag raising coverage engages in bigotry by adopting the extremist Hamas position that every time the Jews didn’t get thrown into the sea it was a catastrophe for the Arabs.
For example, the article states that the event highlighted “…Palestinians under Israeli occupation…” Who is the author saying is under occupation?
The over a million Israeli-Arabs that vote in Israel? Or the hundreds of thousands of Muslims who govern themselves in Israeli towns and in Israeli funded Islamic civil courts?
Might the author mean the Arabs of Judaea and Samaria (the disputed territories), who between 1949 and 1988 were citizens of Jordan (until Jordan revoked their citizenship), and have had their own government since the 1990’s Oslo Accords?
Next, the op-ed masquerading as news, states that the nakba is “the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’ that refers to the mass displacement of Palestinians beginning during the 1948 war with Israel.”
The author is pretending the 1948 Israeli War of Independence was a war of Israeli aggression, but the reality is that the Jewish community was attacked by the armies of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, along with volunteers from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, and local Arab militia.
The author also fails to mention, due to malice or ignorance, that the Jewish community had accepted every partition peace plan while the Arab community rejected them all.
More importantly, it is overlooked that the stated goal of the Arab forces was to “push the Jews into the sea” and that most of those descended of Arab refugees had ancestors who fled because they were told to evacuate the war zone by Arab authorities during their attempted ethnic cleansing of the Jews.
Moreover, the author regurgitating Hamas talking points ignores that beginning in the late 1940’s Jews from Arab nations (numbering around 800,000) were expelled, moved to Israel and live there to this day – not in refugee camps but as integrated citizens of the Jewish State.
The last example of editorializing in favor of the Hamas position is libeling the Israeli response to the terrorist attack on October 7,2023 as a “genocide” even though the population in Israel, Judaea and Samaria, and Gaza which identifies as Palestinian has grown since before war.
On that day, over 1,100 Israeli’s, Israeli-Arab and Jew, were murdered by Hamas and over 240 (Israeli-Arabs and Jews) were taken hostage.
Despite this, the author frames Israels response which targeted Hamas and could have ended if Hamas disarmed and returned the hostages immediately, as a genocide.
It is one thing for Hamas supporters to raise the flag (of a country which never existed even when Israel was under Muslim occupation for hundreds of years), it is another thing entirely for the author of a supposed news article to put forward Hamas talking points as a matter of fact.
Fortunately for all peace loving people around the world, the major players in the Arab-Muslim world have moved on from efforts to “push the Jews into the sea,” as the UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Somaliland, and more have overt and covert relations with Israel because they know Israel is there to stay.
Zio pig
Disgusting comment.
Israel aside, Palestinians were offered asylums in many places in 1970′ (Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon etc.) only to be kicked out for turning against governments there and trying to overthrow it to their liking.
If all you former boyfriends kicked you out, the problem may be with you, not them.
Then, there are rapes, robberies and anything in between. NJ stats are hidden by design, but we have Danish government tracking both Palestinians and descendants and publishing results. This gives us an idea of “diversity”. Just absolute numbers of over representation of hardened criminal Palestinians and their Middle East Muslim brothers are staggering, given that Denmark has about 1/3 lower population then NJ.
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/2059156745025421478
You can check for yourself:
https://www.statbank.dk/20338 (hint: to prevent deportations, Palestinians often claim stateless status, so after release from prison they get to stay for free!)
Now, they bringing ills of their society into our shores. Do we need it?
These sorts of comments are typical: somehow, racism is now accepted so long as that racism is anti-semitic. I find no flaw in this Op-Ed, except the debate between actual history (well recounted here) and revisionist history/propaganda (repeated constantly by certain electeds here in Hudson County and NYC) which this Op-Ed attempts to overcome.
It isn’t necessary to debate history and argue which version is true, because there are enough current facts available:
Israel is a “mostly free” country and it can certainly improve it’s freedoms. It is undeniable that Arab and Muslim citizens in Israel often face prejudice and systemic challenges. However, this is a struggle for equality that closely mirrors the historic and ongoing hurdles faced by minority communities here in the United States—a hallmark of a flawed but functioning democracy.
The solution to these imperfections is to demand that Israel lives up to its highest ideals. Israel should expand civil liberties and the continue to improve its society. The answer is certainly not the eradication of the state, nor its replacement by a regime that would inevitably be far less free.
Which model of Middle Eastern Country would you choose to replace Israel? There is simply no Arab or Muslim nation that affords its citizens the democratic rights, legal protections, and civil liberties found in Israel. One need only look to the remarkable achievements of Israeli Muslim women—many of whom are thriving as doctors, academics, and professionals—to see the profound difference between a nation that still has work to do, and nations where such fundamental freedoms simply do not exist.
Through its continuous contributions to global innovation, medicine, and humanitarian aid, Israel, a tiny country both in land area and population, consistently uplifts citizens everywhere, demonstrating that Israelis contribute an extraordinary amount of good to the world.
Ultimately, if we truly value liberty, human rights, and democratic progress, every freedom-loving American—and indeed, every freedom-loving person on Earth—should proudly call themselves a Zionist.
Ian:
Israel is not a temporarily embarrassed free democracy. It is an ethno states that allows its minorities to vote, but not to be more than 20% of its population, lest it lose its status as a Jewish state. What good is democracy if the voters consistently re-elect war mongers and genociders? This tiny little country has bombed more countries in the last 2 years than Iran has in its history.
Israel needs to experience a painful reckoning with its moral failures. That will happen not by cutting off military aid but imposing sanctions like we did on South Africa. I hope that one day, a state can exist in the levant that promotes peace. But Israel has never been that, despite what its immense marketing budget would have you believe.
Israel is the enemy of patriotic and peace loving Americans and I’m goddamned sick of sending our sons to die in wars fought for their interest (only naive people believe the oil lie….exxon bought from saddam and didn’t want the disruption of war) and I’m too poor to pay for another war on behalf of people who refer to me and my family as goy and call me racist for opposing their ethnic cleansing. From the bottom of my heart, FUCK ISRAEL.
Zionists really need to get a grip. So much, I mean SO MUCH in this piece is merely opinion and not factual and so much, I mean SO MUCH is presented as settled fact when it is decidedly NOT. It also does that offensive thing of conflating criticism of Israel or use of Palestinian terminology with support for Hamas, which is ludicrous.
To correct some of the craziness: To suggest Palestinians under Israeli occupation is “Hamas propaganda” is incorrect – The phrase Israeli occupation is widely used by: The United Nations, most international human rights organizations, many governments and much of the international law scholarship to describe Israel’s control over the West Bank since 1967.
Whether one prefers “disputed territories” instead of “occupied territories” is a political and legal disagreement, but the op-ed is inaccurate when it implies only extremists or Hamas use the term “occupation.”
It is also misleading for the writer to respond by pointing to Arab citizens of Israel. When people discuss “occupation,” they are generally referring to: the West Bank, East Jerusalem and sometimes Gaza (depending on the speaker’s legal interpretation) and not Arab citizens inside Israel proper. Best to dismiss the mislead as a strawman argument.
As for the Nakba: The statement that Nakba means “catastrophe” and refers to the mass displacement of Palestinians during the 1948 war is factually accurate.
“Nakba” is the standard Arabic term used by Palestinians and historians to describe the displacement and flight of roughly 700,000 Palestinians during and after the 1948 war.
Where the debate begins is: why they fled, how many were expelled, how many left voluntarily or under fear and how much responsibility belonged to Arab leaders vs Israeli/Jewish forces. The op-ed presents one side of the debate as if it was conclusively established. For example, when the author says:
“most … fled because they were told to evacuate”
…it is Zionist propaganda as that claim is heavily disputed by mainstream historians, including many Israeli historians. The historical record shows a mixture of causes including: expulsions by Israeli/Jewish forces, fear from fighting or massacre, collapse of Palestinian society and, in some cases, evacuation instructions from Arab leaders. Any serious historian does not reduce the refugee crisis to a single explanation.
Now as far as the author talking about “push the Jews into the sea” well, Arab leaders and militias absolutely used extreme anti-Jewish rhetoric in 1948, and some openly spoke about destroying the Jewish state. There is historical basis for saying many Arab forces opposed Jewish sovereignty and sought military victory over the new Israeli state.
However, the phrase “push the Jews into the sea” is often used today as a generalized slogan summarizing Arab hostility, even when not all historical actors literally used that exact phrase; and the op-ed uses it rhetorically to portray essentially all Palestinian narratives as genocidal or Hamas-aligned. That is silly and essentially a false oversimplification.
With that said, the section about Jewish refugees from Arab countries is substantially grounded in reality.
Roughly 800,000 Jews left or were expelled from Arab countries in the decades surrounding Israel’s creation. Many faced persecution, confiscation of property, discrimination, violence, or expulsion. That history is often underdiscussed in Western conversations about the conflict. However, the op-ed again uses this fact rhetorically as though the suffering of Jewish refugees somehow negates or invalidates Palestinian displacement. Historically, both refugee crises occurred.
Continuing, the writer says calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide” is false because the Palestinian population has grown over time and laughable.
I’m surprised that the Zionist author doesn’t understand that population growth alone does not settle whether genocide is occurring under international law. Genocide law focuses on intent and actions, not simply whether a population numerically increases. Presenting the accusation as inherently absurd or “Hamas propaganda” is the real propaganda.
Now to say the Palestinian flag is a flag of a country which never existed is beyond rhetorically misleading. It is true there was never a fully sovereign modern Palestinian state prior to Israel’s creation. But national identity does not depend on prior statehood. Many nations existed before independent states did. Palestinian national identity is real and widely recognized internationally, regardless of debates about statehood history.
To continue, the nonsense op-ed puts forward the inflammatory nonsense statement:
“Every time the Jews didn’t get thrown into the sea it was a catastrophe for the Arabs”
For Palestinians, the Nakba refers to: loss of homes and national trauma
You can acknowledge that Palestinians experienced catastrophe in 1948 without endorsing Hamas or supporting destruction of Israel…unless, of course, you are a Zionist propagandist.
The op-ed collapses all Palestinian historical grief into genocidal antisemitism, which is a crazy extremist Zionist interpretation, not an objective fact.
Now, to be fair – and there is a strong argument that this ridiculous op-ed doesn’t warrant an on-balance section but..
These points in the op-ed are largely true:
• Arab states invaded after Israel declared independence in 1948.
• Jewish leadership accepted the UN partition plan; Arab leadership rejected it.
• Hamas committed the October 7 attacks killing about 1,200 people and taking hostages (although how many were civilians is disputed by some.)
• Jews from Arab countries were displaced in large numbers.
• Some anti-Israel rhetoric historically has been openly eliminationist.
Still it is important to conclude by summing up what is misleading, exaggerated, presented too absolutely or straight up bigoted Zionist propaganda:
• Equating “occupation” language with Hamas extremism.
• Suggesting most Palestinian refugees simply left voluntarily because Arab leaders told them to.
• Treating all Nakba discourse as inherently antisemitic.
• Claiming Palestinian identity is illegitimate because there was no prior sovereign state.
• Framing anyone who uses the word “genocide” as repeating Hamas propaganda.
• Collapsing all Palestinian political expression into a desire to destroy Jews.
To be honest, I don’t know why Hudson County View would post something so factually inaccurate and bigoted.
I think we are missing some key points to even the discussion.
Was there a Balfour agreement, and what was its purpose?
Was there a bombing at the King David Hotel, and what was its mission?
Why was Yitzak Rabin murdered, and why?
We can have these debates and still be free of insults, I would hope.