The founder of If Americans Knew (IAK), Alison Weir, seems to have busied herself and her readers with the business of thousands of Jewish teens celebrating each other and the progress, compassion and accomplishments of their ancestral homeland. Weir’s piece, “3,000 teens attending BBYO Convention that Propagandizes Them on Israel,” mischaracterizes Israel and BBYO, the largest global pluralistic Jewish youth movement.
Tablet Magazine’s, Yair Rosenberg, captures Weir’s character succinctly in his article, “Stanford Professor Recommends Anti-Semitic Website to Readers, Then Kind of Takes it Back.” The list of grievances against her is so horrific, that even the Anti-Zionist group JVP, has formalized “an internal policy not to work with her.”
Weir expresses concern for phantom indoctrination with her BBYO hit piece, as if it’s news that Jewish teens are celebrating Israel. Among many holes, her article references an erroneous ethnic cleansing accusation from “Israel’s founding war.” She fails to mention that the residing Jews peacefully accepted a sliver of land in 1948 (previously controlled by Britain who controlled it after the Ottomans) when the rest of the land went to the Arabs (becoming Jordan). Also absent in her accusation is that the Arab armies, surrounding the fledgling country, started that war and that the newly formed Jordan expelled all Jews from Judea and Samaria (renaming it the West Bank). They destroyed over 50 synagogues while also illegally overtaking East Jerusalem. They never offered it to the Palestinians – displaced from the war they started.
Weir’s article implies that these teens, who are learning, bonding and collaborating on how they can make a better world, undergo some form of indoctrination. Yet, she seems to have failed reporting genuine indoctrination that is concerning.
Her IAK site wasted no pixels reporting that last spring, the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia had children perform songs and poems whose lyrics included, “[w]e will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque.” Weir’s site also didn’t report that American Muslim children in Houston were encouraged to show allegiance to the Iranian dictator Khamenei by singing, “Allah Akbar! Khamenei is our Leader! . . . We are your followers, we are your soldiers, and together we can all be your power.” This is the same Khamenei who abuses his own people, supports Hamas and Bashar al-Assad, funded the Houthis who overthrew the democratically elected government of Yemen and calls for the destruction of Israel and America.
Antisemites often parade the numbers of injuries and deaths of Palestinians against the fewer casualties of Israelis, as Weir does on her IAK homepage. It’s not just her BBYO piece that is full of deception. Missing from her first three homepage charts is the simple explanation that the Israelis use shelter and weapons to protect their people while Hamas uses their people to protect their weapons. Leaders within Hamas have boasted that children are part of their human shield. Sure, this video is over a decade old, but nothing in the ideology has changed as this recent article from the Jerusalem Post illustrates. Weir’s next homepage chart addresses the first year when the Palestinians got no aid from the United States. She doesn’t explain that in 2018, the U.S. Congress passed the Taylor Force Act, named in honor of an American man brutally killed by a Palestinian terrorist, which puts a halt on the United State’s previous generosity to the Palestinians until the PA stops paying them to kill people inside Israel.
Weir astutely observes in her next graph, on her homepage that, “Israel has been targeted by at least 77 UN resolutions and the Palestinians have been targeted by 1.” How crazy is that? I’ll take it further. In 2019, the UN singled out Israel for 18 resolutions. You know who was targeted for just one resolution each, then? Iran, Syria and North Korea – countries who oppress, abuse and kill their own citizens. What to expect with the members who’ve been serving on the UN Human Rights Council.
Antisemitism doesn’t just hurt Jews – of all ages. It harms anyone being abused by people who benefit from the smoke and mirror technique employed by people like Alison Weir.
Faith Quintero is the author of Loaded Blessings, a family saga that alternates between Inquisition era Spain and modern-day Israel. It is among the Federalist’s top books of 2019 list.
