Persecution of Jews Now and Then

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

People want to free an imaginary country of Palestine which is only land named that by the Romans after 135 CE. Palestine is like Mesopotamia, an area, not a country.  So they want to free it from Jews who are there legally, lock stock and barrel with papers, mind you, and created their country of Israel on May 14, 1948-reviving it again after being there before 70 CE for thousands of years. 

 Our rabbis tell us their world was created 6,000 years ago which would be in our calendar 3975 BCE + 2025 CE and is reflected on our Jewish calendar to show this.  In about 200 more years we have our birthday of creation.  Israel's 1st king was Saul born c1040 BCE and King David was born in 1010 BCE, dying in 970 BCE, and on with our kings till 721 BCE.  Then Rome picked rulers.  

    Gazans attacking by burning people and homes, slaughtering first

I'll start with Now.  Our persecution showed up on October 7, 2023 when Hamas and civilians of Gaza attacked kibbutzim along their border.  Something had gone awry in the warning system and a celebration was taking place with young adults dancing with happiness in the field.  The state of Israel had turned over Gaza to Palestinians in a show of peace in 1994.  In 1993, as part of the Oslo Accords, Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) agreed upon an outline for the latter to begin independently governing the Palestinian territories. In 1994, Israel withdrew from Gaza City and Jericho, giving civilian and city functions to the PNA.In 2005, Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip by dismantling all 21 Israeli settlements there.                           

Arafat had been the Palestinian's leader.  Sharon formally announced the plan in his April 14, 2004, letter to U.S. President George W. Bush, stating that "there exists no Palestinian partner with whom to advance peacefully toward a settlement."  In about 5 minutes after pulling out, Palestinians were attacking Israel and have not stopped.

Throughout history from Hellenistic days through the Roman days to 70 CE, Israel had been attacked and destroyed with Jews persecuted, and taken as slaves. Then Christianity stepped in and took over, forcing Jews out of their countries.  Jews were treated with hostility and as 2nd class.  

At that point, Muslim countries were more in sympathy and gave them refuge, but kept most at a level of 2nd class as well.Throughout history, Jews have had to travel with their own ways of making a living (through education) (skills) that others didn't have, such as math used in trading and business.Pogroms were used against Jews, and then...the Nazi Holocaust.  The 1st world war ended and Jewish leadership saw that it was time to return to their homeland  because the Ottoman Empire had been the loser in this world war, and the country they ruled was up for grabs.  We're a people conditioned to be unwanted.  Even in Portland, Oregon in the 1950's there was anti-Semitism showing its ugly head in social areas and hiring areas for work.  Jews were barred from social clubs such as athletic clubs.  It hit the high school crowds even earlier. Parents passed the persecution acts onto their children.   

Why is it I only see, such words as no persecution of Muslims but not of Jews?  Is it not happening today?  Anti-Semitism was taken as a subject to end by Biden but didn't get anywhere, and now Trump has taken it as one of his jobs to work on, and he's doing something about it. Anti-Semitism is so bad today that's it's almost as bad as it was in Germany in the 1930's, seen much more in the New York area than in Portland to my knowledge. 

There are about 14 million Jews in the world of which about 6 million live in Israel. In the USA they are 2% of the population.  World-wide, we are 0.02% of the population.  More than 24.1% of the world's population is Muslim, with an estimated total of approximately 1.9 billion. Muslims are the majority in 49 countries, they speak hundreds of languages and come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In 2025, the estimated Muslim population in the United States is around 4.45 million, representing approximately 1.34% of the total US population, just a little less than the Jewish population.   The Holocaust from 1937 to 1945 wiped out 6 million of us Jews.  If Palestine were to gain full recognition as a state, it would likely become the 50th or 51st country with a Muslim-majority population, depending on how territories like West Bank and Gaza Strip are counted.  

Israel is our only Jewish majority country, created for just that, a people without any country.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world#:~:text=The%20following%20nineteen

%20Muslim%2Dmajority,United%20Arab%20Emirates

T

hat one-third of American Jews have been the target of antisemitism in the past year should raise red flags for every American and our leaders.”

Iran's Big Fear is Facebook

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                    

                                                          Mark Zuckerberg

Social media is a big threat to the power of Iran.  This is why they have blocked test messaging service called Whatsapp, a new button to push on cell phones.  Iran's excuse for doing this is that Mark Zuckerberg, facebook's CEO and founder, is an AMERICAN ZIONIST.

 Zionism is a theory, plan or movement for setting up a Jewish national or religious community in Palestine according to Webster's Dictionary.  The word was coined in 1893.  Theodor Herzl, the newspaperman from Austria started it with the first Zionist Congress in 1897, a movement to get Jews to move back to the Land of Israel.  We are still a people or nation and most of us do not want to assimilate by religion or culture with other people but wish to retain our identity as a national community.  Whether we do it consciously or unconsciously, we have been treated as so; different, not accepted in the group until recently in the USA.

 That happened already.  It's a done deal.  The League of Nations voted for the Jewish National Home and it was created all legal through the United Nations.  The world reps voted and passed it.  Israel will be 66 years old next week.  I feel that Israel has every right to exist.  I even lived there from 1980 to the end of 1985 teaching English in Safed.  I'm a Zionist.  Even so, 5 minutes after their birth was announced on the radio, Jews were attacked by the Arabs, and so it's been going on for 66 years now.  Nevertheless Israel has grown and developed.  It is a creative country and has invented so many things that they share with the world.  I'm so proud to be a Zionist and to hold dual citizenship!
                                                                 

 Facebook bought this mobile messaging service in February 2014 for $19 billion and cash and stock.  Whatsapp was created in 2009 by Jan Koum and Brian Acton.
                                                                               

As for Zuckerberg, he is Jewish.  That's it.  Nobody knows how he feels about Israel. It just accidentally happens that he was born on Israel's birthday of May 14th, only Israel is 36 years older than he is.  That doesn't make him a Zionist but it is remarkable!  Mark is very intelligent, and attended Harvard U. He was a billionaire by the time he was 23 years old.  Today he's worth $25.3 billion dollars.  He's now married.

   Jews are not sheep that follow one opinion.  Each person has their own idea about things and acts accordingly, so just because he's Jewish tells me nothing about his political views, only that he believes in one G-d and if he ever attends anything religious, it probably will be a synagogue.  I only wish that we all felt Zionistic about Israel which I do.  I hope he does likewise.  In the USA, we have no way of knowing such things and like it that way.  We don't have cards with our religion stamped on them or our political views unless we carry our voting card showing if we're Democrats or Republicans.  Our passports don't relate any such information.  Why?  It's never been necessary.  We haven't had internal strife calling for such steps to be taken.  

What Iran doesn't want for their citizens is information other than what they print in Iran.  Facebook and Twitter are officially blocked in Iran, though a few people do manage  know how to get around in the Internet.  It's laughable, because Rouhani has accounts in both places, no doubt using it to spy on the world consensus about foreign and domestic matters.  What he reads he dares not allow his people to read.
                                                                         

Iran's Supreme leader, (sounds like g-d) Ali Khamenei saw the power of information coming from social media in 2009 in their so called "Green Revolution."  With cell phones in their hands, thousands of Iranians went into the streets to protest the re-election of their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  They realized that the elections were rigged, so held mass demonstrations throughout Iran, but were stopped with rifles.  Neda Agha Soltan, a beautiful Iranian lady,

 was shot right away just for being in the crowd.  Protest leaders are still under house arrest and the "Green Movement' has been broken apart by" crackdowns and intimidation."
                                                                                   

The way President Rouhani got elected this time was to promise to fix the economy, and improve their relations with the West and to promote greater freedoms.   Out of the contenders for the position, he's the one I also picked.  Think of it, to have more freedom.  Americans have every freedom imaginable.  In fact, we worry about losing our freedoms because of terrorism causing us to allow the government to have more freedom in snooping into our affairs.  Now we're between the devil and the deep blue sea.  It not a good position to be in as we've had lots of pride in having the most freedoms on this planet.  To protect ourselves, we have allowed the government new freedoms on our freedom of speech which involves phone conversations.  Cell phone conversations are being recorded and we don't know who has been caught in the web of secrecy.   Most of us are not worried if we're not doing anything wrong.

Iran is brainwashing its people by keeping them in the dark.  They're only hearing one side of the political agenda.  That should never happen to a country.  It's what we must watch out for, too.  There should be freedom of speech on our own news media and not put down stations like Fox News because they share a non-liberal viewpoint of politics.  Only if someone comes out and tells downright lies should they be stopped, and that's where Iran fills the bill.  No doubt that's what they are afraid of.  Social media such as facebook will expose their people to their lies.

This happened in Germany in the 1930's.  The value of their currency went down to just about nothing.  People were using wheelbarrows instead of billfolds to carry their paper currency to buy a loaf of bread.  Our country of the USA has had this happen, too, as recently as 2007, but never that extreme.  It's when people get itchy and start looking for scapegoats to blame matters on.

This is the beauty of living in a civilized world with 7 billion people.  Out of all our inhabitants, there are many ideas floating around that our simple little brain alone doesn't think of.  It's good to have differences of opinions. The USA has 316,148,990 people.   Out of many, one can come to the forefront and be used to improve living standards for many.  Iran has about 76,923,300 people.  Surely they all aren't thinking the same thoughts all the time.  China's population is 1,236,344,631.  Israel has 6,000,000 Jews and 1.7 million Arabs, totaling about 8,000,000.

 Facebook by September 30, 2012 had 937,407,180 subscribers.  Mark Zuckerberg was lucky to be living in the USA to come up with such an idea.  He would have enjoyed the same freedom of starting up such an enterprise in Israel as well.  I personally value the friends I have on facebook immensely.  My life is much fuller and my concept of people from other countries has changed for the better from my contacts and with what I have learned.  It's too bad that Iranians do not enjoy these same freedoms.  I doubt if Syrians have such freedoms as outside contact with people, either.  I wonder if any of them can have pen pals such as I did in pre-computer days of the 1940s?  Ugh, facebook is so much easier than that!

Resource:  http://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-bans-whatsapp-citing-zionist-owner-zuckerberg/
https://www.census.gov/popclock/
Fox News covering above
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/wpc.php?utm_expid=4939992-7.scuhn054Q5WXvFD9uRG9Xw.2&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
http://www.internetworldstats.com/facebook.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
Webster's 7th New Collegiate Dictionarycopyright 1971
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Neda_Agha-Soltan