{Originally posted to the author’s website, FirstOne Through}
The New York Times has a Jew problem, or more specifically, a huge problem with any Jews living in parts of the “Arab Middle East.”
In a March 8, 2018 article called “No Man’s Land: New U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem May Lie Partly Outside Israel,” the Times came up with a new term that was both meaningless and said much about how the liberal paper thinks of Jews living east of the 1949 Armistice Lines.
In describing the planned relocation of the U.S. embassy to an area in Jerusalem that possibly partially sat in the ‘No Man’s Land’ that existed between 1949 and 1967, the paper wrote:
“The dispute could turn the American ambassador, David M. Friedman, an avid supporter of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, into a new kind of diplomatic settler himself.”
That’s quite a phrase, “diplomatic settler.” It’s also completely nonsensical. U.S. ambassadors are U.S. citizens, not Israeli. How can an American be a settler? Simply by being Jewish?
There was a time that a “settler” meant any Israeli that moved into a new development over the Green Line in Judea & Samaria / the West Bank. The physical new town was known as a “settlement” and the inhabitants were known as “settlers.” The homes defined the people.
Over time, a pro-Palestinian narrative took hold in much of the world which inverted that formula. For them, the people (settlers) define the homes (settlements). Specifically, any Israeli Jew that lives over the invisible Green Line is known as a settler. (This is in sharp contrast to Israeli Muslims – like the thousands of Arabs in eastern Jerusalem that have taken Israeli citizenship – that are never considered “settlers.”) Presumably, the rationale for focusing on people is based on a very broad reading of Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that Israel’s policies enabling Jews to live in the land that it took from Jordan in 1967 is effectively a “transfer of population,” which runs counter to that international law.
But The New York Times moved the definition of a settler yet again, in a giant anti-Semitic leap.
For anti-Zionists like the New York Times, ANY Jew, regardless of citizenship should be considered a settler if they live east of the Green Line. Hence the U.S. ambassador to Israel will become a “diplomatic settler,” simply because he’s Jewish. If the U.S. Ambassador to Israel were Christian or Muslim or Buddhist or any other religion, presumably the diplomatic settler moniker wouldn’t stick.
This new approach could lead to all sorts of interesting titles.
- “Tourist Settler:” A foreign Jewish traveler visiting Bethlehem and staying overnight
- “Businessman Settler:” Any Jewish traveler doing business in Jericho who keeps an apartment in the city
- “Student Settler.” A foreign Jew studying in the West Bank
What would happen if the United States decided to recognize a State of Palestine along the lines agreed to thus far between the principles, in Gaza and Area A of the West Bank, and established a U.S. embassy in Bethlehem. If that U.S. ambassador to Palestine was Jewish, I guess the Times would also label him a Diplomatic Settler. Only a non-Jewish diplomat could avoid having such title, and not be branded a colonialist interloper.
It has long been clear that Palestinians are the most anti-Semitic people on the planet and that the leaders of the Palestinian Authority desire a new country free of any Israeli Jews. How refreshing to learn that the alt-left similarly endorses a completely Jew-free land. Even of American Jewish diplomats.