This week’s Torah portion begins with Sarah being buried in a cave and ends with Rebecca entering Sarah’s tent.
The cave is permanent, a place for the dead. The tent is temporary, a place for the living. Together, they establish two foundations of Judaism: a homeland and a people.
After the death of Sarah, Abraham purchases the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron to bury her. Despite God’s promise of the Land of Israel, Abraham’s first recorded family property is a burial place. It anchors his family permanently to a particular piece of land, where generations will return to bury and remember their ancestors.
Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs
Rebecca makes the opposite journey. She leaves her birthplace, choosing to join Isaac and enter Sarah’s tent. According to the Midrash, the Shabbat light that burned from week to week, the blessing in the bread and the divine presence that had disappeared with Sarah’s death all return with Rebecca.
The cave preserves Sarah’s memory. The tent restores her way of life.
Jewish law teaches Lo’eg LaRash, that we refrain from displaying certain mitzvot before the dead because they can no longer perform them. We honor the dead by respecting what they have lost. We honor their lives by continuing what they began.
That is the paradox of the cave and the tent. The cave will remain in place for thousands of years, but no mitzvot can be performed by those buried within it. The tent can be dismantled tomorrow, yet the faith, traditions and values practiced inside can endure for generations.
We discussed the Five Israels this week: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel, the State of Israel, its government and its policies. Chayei Sarah establishes the first two, well before Jacob/Israel was born, and there was a Jewish kingdom or modern state. Judaism is rooted in a particular land, but its survival depends on a people who carry its practices and beliefs wherever they go.
Perhaps that is why a portion beginning with Sarah’s death is called Chayei Sarah, the Life of Sarah. In her passing she firmly established the Jewish family in the holy land forever, and her daughter-in-law continued her family and traditions for generations, wherever they would travel.
There is an expression in Hebrew “od avenu chai” that the Jewish patriarchs still live. It is lifted from the story of Joseph who asked his brothers whether their father Israel was still alive. We should consider that Sarah is the one whose life set the the course for the Jewish family.
Today, we refer to the “Land of Israel” and the “Children of Israel” because that was when the family became a nation. But at its core, the Jewish people have always been a family anchored in the land and traditions set out by the matriarch Sarah.
The self-described “pro-Israel” organization endorsed more than 200 congressional candidates in the 2026 midterms, raised over $13 million and projects a 98% victory rate. Its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, declared that J Street had become the center of Democratic politics on Israel.
The election results tell a larger story about how far that center has moved, and the role a progressive Jewish organization has played in legitimizing increasingly hostile positions toward Israel within the Democratic Party.
When Genocide Crossed the Line
In January 2024, J Street withdrew its endorsement of Congressman Jamaal Bowman following growing disagreements over his rhetoric, including accusations that Israel was committing genocide and his praise of controversial anti-Israel commentator Norman Finkelstein. Ben-Ami declared “When the rhetoric, the framing and the approach go too far, that’s where we are going to hold our line.”
No longer.
In November 2025, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution titled Recognizing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, calling on the United States to officially recognize that Israel had committed “genocide.” Ten original cosponsors appeared among J Street’s successful 2026 endorsees:
Becca Balint — Vermont
André Carson — Indiana
Greg Casar — Texas
Hank Johnson — Georgia
Pramila Jayapal — Washington
Ro Khanna — California
Jim McGovern — Massachusetts
Mark Pocan — Wisconsin
Delia Ramirez — Illinois
Lateefah Simon — California
In less than three years, language that helped cost one politician J Street’s support had become acceptable among its endorsed candidates.
Beyond Genocide
The change extends beyond one accusation.
Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal called Israel a “racist state” in 2023. Congressman Ro Khanna and Congresswoman Delia Ramirez were among the politicians who formally sponsored the genocide resolution, while Khanna has also criticized Israeli rule in the West Bank as “apartheid.”
Their congressional votes reveal additional differences over America’s relationship with Israel.
On April 20, 2024, thirty-seven House Democrats voted to provide military assistance to Ukraine while opposing a separate assistance package for Israel. J Street-endorsed politicians André Carson, Greg Casar, Pramila Jayapal, Ro Khanna, Mark Pocan and Delia Ramirez were among them.
On October 25, 2023, the House passed a resolution condemning Hamas’s October 7 massacre and affirming American support for Israel by a vote of 412–10. Carson and Ramirez voted against it, while Jayapal and Casar merely voted present. Curiously, J Street supported that resolution and subsequently endorsed politicians who declined to vote for it.
The widening range of accepted positions also includes economic boycotts. J Street officially opposes the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement but supports targeted import bans and sanctions involving Jews and Jewish businesses from Judea and Samaria. In September 2026, it welcomed such restrictions and urged similar American measures.
This has been a trend for years. Several endorsed politicians, including Carson, Jayapal and Pocan, voted against a 2019 congressional resolution opposing BDS.
J Street’s endorsements now accommodate accusations of genocide and apartheid, opposition to military assistance and a wider range of positions supporting economic pressure on Israel.
Moving the Political Center
J Street’s endorsements offer something an explicitly anti-Israel organization cannot: political cover from an organization identifying itself as progressive, Jewish and pro-Israel. That validation gives Democratic politicians room to advance positions once considered outside of liberal pro-Israel boundaries.
This unquestionably harms the State of Israel. It has also increasingly created a cleft inside the American Jewish community.
J Street may claim to be “the [new] center of the Democratic Party’s approach to Israel and Palestine,” but it has become a fringe extremist group among pro-Israel Americans.
Israel is routinely accused of maintaining a privileged Jewish class over Palestinian Arabs. Yet its latest election exposes a different system of institutionalized inequality: those who fight and die for the country shoulder burdens that other citizens are largely spared.
After three years of war on multiple fronts, Israelis awarded 19 Knesset seats to Israeli Arab parties and 13 to ultra-Orthodox parties. Together, more than one-quarter of Israel’s parliament now represents communities whose members overwhelmingly do not serve in the military, as Israeli Arabs are generally exempt from conscription, while ultra-Orthodox Jewish men have historically enjoyed widespread draft deferments and exemptions.
Israeli soldiers gather at Yad Va’Shem in Jerusalem, Israel’s memorial to the Holocaust (photo: First One Through)
Other Israelis must leave their families, careers and studies to defend the country. They risk injury, trauma and death. Meanwhile, fellow citizens enjoy the protection of that same military without comparable obligations.
Israel has created two classes of citizenship when it comes to national defense: those expected to sacrifice and those largely exempt from sacrifice.
Those who serve must defend a democracy in which others can exercise political power to preserve their exemption from serving.
An Israeli soldier, cellphone and gun in hand, rides the train to Tel Aviv (photo: First One Through)
The irony is that military exemption can also be a lifelong economic disadvantage. Military service is one of Israel’s great social and economic integrators, building professional networks, leadership skills, technological expertise and lifelong relationships. Research has documented significant employment benefits from service.
The same communities spared the risks of military service often miss its economic and social rewards. Israel’s unequal service system simultaneously concentrates military sacrifice and perpetuates economic separation. Israeli Arabs and Ultra Orthodox Jew are poorer than the secular country, in general.
Universal national service, whether military or meaningful civilian service, would do more than strengthen the military. It would bring communities together, expand economic opportunity and restore the principle that citizenship carries obligations as well as rights.
Israel’s divide is not between religions or races but between those who serve and those who don’t, the secular and the religious.
Palestinian lawyer Raji Sourani is a celebrated figure in the international human rights community. His collection of honors spans more than three decades.
Before 2001:
1991: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, United States
1996: French Republic Human Rights Prize
Since 2001:
2002: Bruno Kreisky Human Rights Prize, Austria, awarded to his organization
2003: International Service Human Rights Award, United Kingdom
2013: Right Livelihood Award, Sweden
2026: International Hrant Dink Award, Turkey
2026: Jesús Vicente Chamorro Human Rights Award, Spain
French Consul General in Jerusalem Rene Troccaz decorates Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani with his county’s National Order of Merit, at the French Institute in Gaza City, on July 7, 2021. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
Sourani founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza in 1995. His work challenging Israeli authorities and pursuing international legal action has made him an influential voice in human rights circles. In 2024, he joined the legal effort supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
But his organization’s embrace of the genocide accusation began more than two decades before the Gaza war.
In 1975, the United Nations declared Zionism a form of racism. The resolution was repealed in 1991, but the accusation resurfaced in a more sweeping form at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.
The conference’s NGO Forum adopted a declaration accusing Israel of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. It portrayed genocide and ethnic cleansing not merely as military crimes, but as instruments for preserving an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority.
The accusation was not that Israel was committing genocide but was committed to genocide – in September 2001 – just one week before jihadists attacked the United States.
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, refused to endorse the declaration. She called its genocide language unacceptable and hurtful. PCHR demanded her resignation.
Its director was Raji Sourani.
Despite his invective that Israel is inherently an apartheid regime committed to genocide, the international recognition of Sourani and his organization continued. Austria and the United Kingdom were the first two honor this vilifier of Israel in 2002 and 2003.
Then there was a noticeable pause for a decade when Sweden awarded him the equivalent to a runner-up to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. Then this year, 2026, the Hrant Dink Foundation in Turkey recognized Sourani, followed by an award from Spain’s Progressive Union of Prosecutors.
Sourani’s effort to smear Israel as a genocidal operation has been 25 years in the making. What began as “Zionism is racism” at the UN has evolved into “Israel is genocide,” reaching beyond the Global South to progressive Jews in the Global North and helping inspire a new generation of anti-Israel activists.
Every November 2, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, condemns the 1917 Balfour Declaration as Britain’s “colonial promise” of a Jewish homeland in another people’s land.
Modern media offer another version of the Promised Land story, portraying Jews in Judea and Samaria as religious extremists seeking to fulfill a divine promise and establish a “Greater Israel.” In September, Al Jazeera described young Jewish women in the West Bank as pursuing the “so-called Promised Land” through territorial expansion. The Wall Street Journal similarly reported on violent Jews who regarded the territory as their divine birthright, so needn’t follow man-made laws.
Jews are cast both as messianic lunatics and colonial tools.
For the Palestinian Authority, Britain replaces God as the source of the promise. Contemporary reporting instead portrays Jews in Judea and Samaria as seeking to seize by themselves territory promised by God. One story invokes colonialism, the other religious zealotry. Both portray Jews as outsiders seeking land granted by someone other than local Arabs.
The word promised suggests a benefactor, a recipient and something yet to be delivered. That framing obscures the fundamental relationship between Jews, Judaism and the Land of Israel.
Britain could endorse a political homeland, but it could neither create nor define the Jewish people’s relationship with the land. When the League of Nations incorporated the Balfour commitment of a national home for Jews into the Palestine Mandate in 1922, it expressly recognized the Jewish people’s historical connection to Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting such national home there.
Reconstituting, not inventing.
Yet even the Mandate’s recognition of a historical connection falls short. Many peoples have ancestral homelands. The Land of Israel is not simply where Jews once lived.
As explored in our earlier article, Judaism Is an Ancient Folk Religion, Jews are not merely followers of a universal faith like Christianity or Islam. They are a people whose religion developed around a particular land. That land is embedded in Jewish law, language, calendar, prayers and identity. Exile dispersed the people without removing the land from their religion.
Jewish house from the Second Temple period in Old City of Jerusalem, Israel (photo: First One Through)
Nor does Judaism divide the land according to modern political borders. Hebron, Bethlehem and Shiloh in Judea and Samaria are as integral to Jewish sacred geography as Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias.
The biblical promise remains central to Jewish religious tradition, but it is not the source of Jewish peoplehood. A secular Jew can reject belief in God while remaining part of a people whose civilization is inseparable from the Land of Israel.
Palestinian Arabs portray Jewish attachment to the land as a product of British colonialism, while contemporary media often portray it as a religious zealotry to acquire territory. Both falsely turn something embedded in Jewish identity into something Jews are seeking to obtain.
The Land of Israel is neither past nor future for Jews but integral, outside of time. It was never a gift of Britain nor the United Nations but an eternal promise from God to Jews. The lies promoted by the Arab world that Judaism is not connected to the Land of Israel and that Jews are interlopers is not just antisemitic but turns the Jewish God into a European Lord, a further desecration of Judaism.
“Israel’s only existed since 1948,” declared political streamer Hasan Piker during a June 2026 interview on The Breakfast Club, explaining that Palestine had existed for far longer.
That’s moronic.
Piker was comparing a modern sovereign country with an ancient geographic designation. By that logic, Greece is younger than ancient Greek civilization, and Italy has existed for only 165 years.
The confusion arises because Israel is not simply a modern country. It is also a people, a land, a government with a collection of policies. These five meanings are related but profoundly different. Switching between them can erase thousands of years of Jewish history, turn criticism of a government into condemnation of a people, and make Jews appear to be foreigners in their ancestral homeland.
The Tower of David in the Old City of Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
The Five Israels
The People of Israel, or Children of Israel (Bnei Yisrael or Am Yisrael), are the Jewish people, whose name derives from the biblical patriarch Jacob, renamed Israel. The people existed thousands of years before the modern country bearing their name.
The Land of Israel, Eretz Yisrael, is the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, where ancient Israelite and Jewish kingdoms existed, Jerusalem became the center of Jewish religious and national life, and Judaism developed. It is core element of the Jewish people and Judaism.
The State of Israel, Medinat Yisrael, is the modern sovereign country established in 1948, nearly two thousand years after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.
The Government of Israel consists of the political leaders who govern the country. Governments change through elections, coalitions collapse, and prime ministers come and go.
The Policies of Israel are the decisions those governments make concerning security, diplomacy, immigration and other matters. They can be supported, opposed, modified or reversed.
These five meanings move from the enduring identity of a people and their homeland to the changing decisions of political leaders. Confusing them produces arguments that can sound reasonable at first blush while being historically and logically indefensible.
Making Jews Newcomers to Their Own Homeland
Piker’s comparison illustrates the problem.
The name “Palestine” has been used for centuries, including under Roman, Byzantine, Islamic, Ottoman and British rule. But the existence of an old geographic designation does not establish the existence of a sovereign Palestinian Arab country throughout those centuries. More specifically, no such Palestine has ever existed. If it had, it would not have needed to declare itself a country in November 1988.
1660 map of “Palestina Siue Terrae Sancta Descriptio” by Jan Jansson. It is flanked by pictures of the life of the Jewish prophet Moses
The modern State of Israel was established in 1948. The People of Israel and their connection to the Land of Israel existed thousands of years earlier. Ancient Israelite kingdoms, Jewish religious institutions and Jerusalem’s central place in Jewish life preceded both Christianity and Islam.
The sleight of hand is simple. Compare the modern State of Israel with the historical land called Palestine, and Israel suddenly appears young while Palestine appears ancient. Then treat those dates as proof that Palestinian Arabs are indigenous and Jews are foreign colonizers. Jewish history disappears through a quick change in definitions. A complete lie appears logical.
Judaism Is a Religion of a Particular Land
Part of the confusion comes from a misunderstanding of Judaism itself.
Christianity and Islam, which together account for more than half the world’s population, are universal religions. They have sacred places, including Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Mecca, but their adherents are not collectively defined as one ancestral nation awaiting restoration to a particular homeland.
Judaism is both a religion and the national tradition of a people whose history, laws and identity are deeply rooted in the Land of Israel.
God’s covenant with Abraham includes the promise of that land to Isaac, Jacob and their descendants. The Exodus from Egypt is a journey toward it as are later prophets discussing Jewish return from diaspora. Many commandments in the Torah concern its agriculture, harvests and religious obligations. Jerusalem and the Temple became the center of Jewish worship.
Even after the destruction of the Temple and the dispersal of much of the Jewish population, the connection endured. Jews continue to pray toward Jerusalem, mourn the Temple’s destruction, celebrate holidays tied to the agricultural seasons of the Land of Israel, and conclude the Passover Seder with the hope of being in Jerusalem the following year.
Christians do not need to live in Bethlehem to fulfill their identity as Christians. Muslims do not need to live in Mecca to fulfill their identity as Muslims. Jews do not need to live in Israel to be Jews, either. But Jews have a diaspora; Christians and Muslims do not because Judaism is a particular land-based religion.
Zionism did not invent the Jewish attachment to the land in the nineteenth century. It was a modern political movement seeking to restore Jewish national sovereignty in the ancestral homeland. Similarly, Jews did not become connected to Israel because a country was established in 1948. The country was established in a land to which Jews had been connected for thousands of years.
From Criticizing Policies to Denying a People’s History
The same confusion that distorts history also distorts contemporary political debate.
Someone may criticize an Israeli military operation or decision by a prime minister. That is criticism of government policy. But the argument can morph: Israel’s government becomes “genocidal”; Israel itself is declared illegitimate; Zionism becomes inherently evil and racist. Finally, the Jewish people’s connection and rights in their ancestral homeland is rejected.
That’s a preposterous slide from natural criticism to antisemitism.
Consider someone who objects to Israeli Jews living in Judea and Samaria / the West Bank. That is a dispute over policy and territory. But when the argument becomes that Jews are foreign colonizers with no legitimate claim to any part of the land, the discussion has moved from settlements to Jewish history and Judaism itself.
One can criticize a policy without denying a people’s history, oppose a government without opposing the country, and defend Jewish national rights without endorsing every action taken in their name.
When Israel Becomes a Substitute for Jews
The most dangerous shift occurs when Israel stops referring to a government or country and becomes a substitute for the Jewish people.
A Jewish student in New York is not the Israeli government. A synagogue in London is not an Israeli military installation. A Jewish business in Paris is not responsible for decisions made in Jerusalem.
Yet Jews around the world are confronted over policies they did not create, governments they did not elect and military operations they did not authorize. Jewish institutions become targets of protests ostensibly directed at a foreign government. Jews are expected to disavow Israel to establish their own moral legitimacy.
Antisemitism can hide inside this ambiguity. A speaker claims to be criticizing government conduct while advancing accusations against Jewish collective identity. The word remains the same even as its target changes.
Israel
The People of Israel are ancient and their bond to the Land of Israel is ancient. Those are facts not subject to debate or approval.
The State of Israel is modern, and its government and policies belong to the present. They are political beings and entities like others and subject to scrutiny in the same manner of others. No more, no less.
New York voters went to the polls on November 3, 2026, and delivered another sweeping victory to the Democratic Party.
Governor Kathy Hochul won reelection. Democrats retained control of both houses of the state legislature, while candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America won additional seats in Congress and Albany.
The Democratic dominance extends to local government. In White Plains, the capital of Westchester County, the mayor and all six Common Council members are Democrats. In the rest of Westchester, Democrats hold 15 of 17 county legislative seats and the county executive’s office. Statewide, Democrats run the largest ten cities, control the governorship, both legislative chambers, both U.S. Senate seats and most of the congressional delegation.
Twenty years ago, New York had competitive two-party government. Today, Democrats dominate virtually every level of government, while democratic socialists increasingly challenge the party establishment.
What has this political transformation delivered, and where will the 2026 election take the state next?
Twenty Years of Political Transformation
In 2006, Republican George Pataki was governor of New York. Republicans controlled the State Senate, Democrats controlled the Assembly, and Michael Bloomberg, elected mayor of New York City as a Republican, was serving his second term.
Divided government required negotiation and compromise. Republicans offered an alternative to Democratic leadership. No longer.
That year, Democrat Eliot Spitzer won the governorship, ending 12 years of Republican control. In 2018, Democrats captured the State Senate, giving the party unified control of state government beginning in 2019.
Another transformation was already underway.
In 2018, democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated Congressman Joe Crowley, one of the most powerful establishment Democrats in Congress. Her victory demonstrated that socialists could defeat entrenched Democrats in districts where winning the party primary effectively guaranteed election.
In 2025, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary and went on to win the general election.
The 2026 elections extended that transformation. DSA-backed Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier won congressional seats after defeating establishment Democrats in their primaries. Socialist-backed candidates also won additional seats in the State Assembly and Senate.
Political Transformation Became Public Policy
New York’s changing political leadership was accompanied by a substantial shift in government policy.
In 2006, the state’s minimum wage was $6.75 an hour. By 2026, it had reached $17 in New York City, Westchester and Long Island. The state’s highest marginal personal income-tax rate rose from 6.85% to 10.9%, excluding additional New York City income taxes.
New York expanded abortion rights, allowing abortions after 24 weeks to the moment of birth. The state legalized recreational marijuana, eliminated cash bail for many criminal offenses, strengthened tenant protections, expanded paid family leave and adopted ambitious climate mandates which contributed to rising electricity prices. It also imposed additional regulations on employers, landlords and businesses.
These changes were largely enacted by establishment Democrats, not democratic socialists. Yet the DSA’s growing influence suggests that the party’s internal opposition considers two decades of progressive legislation insufficient and wants to expand government’s role further.
Spending More, Learning Less
Public education provides one of the clearest measures of government performance.
New York public schools
2005–06
Latest
Students enrolled
2.82 million
2.53 million
Annual spending per student
$15,240
$31,130
Fourth-grade mathematics score
238
234
Eighth-grade mathematics score
280
271
Spending figures compare fiscal 2006 with fiscal 2024 in nominal dollars. Enrollment and academic assessment years differ slightly. Mathematics scores are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
New York more than doubled annual spending per student, an increase substantially exceeding inflation, while enrollment fell approximately 10% and mathematics performance declined. The state now spends more per student than any other without producing superior academic outcomes.
Higher Costs and Greater Dependence
New York collects more state and local taxes per resident than any other state. Housing remains extraordinarily expensive, and homeownership is increasingly difficult for families facing high property prices, property taxes and living expenses.
The strain is visible in migration statistics.
In 2024, approximately 415,000 New Yorkers moved to other states, while roughly 285,000 Americans moved into New York from elsewhere in the country. The result was a net domestic loss of approximately 130,000 residents.
New York also relies heavily on high-income taxpayers, many of whom have the financial means to relocate. Their departures could place increasing pressure on the state’s ability to finance its commitments.
Those commitments are substantial. In February 2025, approximately 6.9 million New Yorkers, or 35% of the state’s population, were enrolled in Medicaid. Total Medicaid spending reached approximately $115.6 billion in state fiscal year 2025, including federal funding.
Medicaid and school aid have gone from 38.3% of the state’s budget to 50% over the past twenty years. It is going to continue to grow because of the leftward movemovement of government, squeezing out economic development, infrastructure and public safety.
The continued departures of residents and businesses will accelerate the pain.
A Change in Direction or an Acceleration?
The 2026 election did not produce a change in direction. It strengthened a political movement seeking to accelerate the state’s existing left-wing policies.
Higher spending requires greater revenues. Higher taxes and living costs may encourage more residents and businesses with the means to relocate to leave. Those remaining may become increasingly dependent on public assistance, requiring still more government spending.
The political cycle could reinforce the economic one. As the electorate changes, candidates promising expanded public programs may become more influential, while those advocating lower spending and taxes struggle to gain traction.
New York may be entering a political and economic cycle in which disappointing results produce demands for more of the same policies, while the residents most capable of financing them increasingly choose to live elsewhere.
The devil does not wear horns, a red cape and carry a pitchfork. That would make him far too easy to recognize.
In his 1942 book The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis imagined a senior demon, Screwtape, instructing his nephew Wormwood on how to corrupt an ordinary man. The secret was not some spectacular act of evil, but a succession of seemingly harmless compromises.
“Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Lewis was particularly perceptive about politics. Screwtape advised Wormwood to encourage either extreme patriotism or extreme pacifism. The ideology was unimportant. What mattered was making political allegiance more important than moral conviction.
“Once you have made the World an end, and faith a means, you have almost won your man.”
Lewis wasn’t warning that people would choose the wrong political ideology. He was warning that they would make their ideology the measure of right and wrong.
In 2026, Screwtape might find his work considerably easier.
Consider Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed. The winning smiles, easy confidence and appealing promises of affordable housing, healthcare and social justice. Their supporters feel they are participating in something noble, standing up for the poor and vulnerable, making the world a better place.
But what happens when the people delivering that appealing message embrace allies who traffic in antisemitism and use such language themselves?
In Michigan, El-Sayed campaigned with Hasan Piker, whose statements about Jews have drawn widespread condemnation. Cenk Uygur’s Rebellion PAC subsequently promoted an advertisement blaming American support for Israel for rising grocery prices and other economic hardships. Democratic Congresswoman Haley Stevens called the advertisement antisemitic and demanded that El-Sayed condemn it.
El-Sayed said the advertisement was produced independently of his campaign and that he disagreed with its contents. But when Stevens continued pressing the issue, she was told to stay away from campaign events. She ultimately endorsed Republican Mike Rogers.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called her decision a ““despicable betrayal,” and other Democrats joined the denunciations. The political establishment was more interested in punishing Stevens for breaking party ranks than confronting antisemitism.
That is precisely the danger Lewis identified.
First, supporters overlook objectionable rhetoric because they believe in the larger cause. Then they defend the politicians who tolerate it. Eventually, they attack the people who refuse to make the same exceptions.
Each compromise makes the next one easier.
This is not simply the familiar horseshoe theory, in which the far left and far right meet at the extremes. Tucker Carlson and Hasan Piker occupy different political worlds, yet both have promoted troubling rhetoric about Jews and become mouthpieces for El-Sayed. Lewis understood the deeper problem: political allegiance can corrupt moral judgment from either direction.
And here is where his story takes on a new dimension in 2026.
In The Screwtape Letters, Wormwood was assigned to corrupt one man. Today, political movements and social media can turn individual moral compromise into the mass propagation of moral compromise. Supporters rationalize objectionable rhetoric, persuade others to accept it and reward those who join them. Each newly persuaded follower can recruit thousands more.
Evil no longer advances one conscience at a time. It multiplies.
Lewis’s Patient ultimately escaped the demons. But in today’s politics, the danger is that the Patient never realizes he has become Wormwood himself.
When you support a Nazi, you are not clean when leaving the polling station. “Allegiance to party” has a ring of Nazi Germany for a reason.
Smiling Democratic politicians rally behind Abdul El-Sayed after fellow Democrat Haley Stevens endorses Republican opponent for Senate because El-Sayed’s campaign was awash in public antisemitism
In 1942, as Nazi Germany was systematically murdering Europe’s Jews, C. S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters. Four years later, with the horrors of the Holocaust exposed, George Orwell published Politics and the English Language.
Both men had witnessed the rise of totalitarianism and the extraordinary power of evil. Years of propaganda, normalized antisemitism and progressively discriminatory laws had helped prepare the ground for the unthinkable.
Both recognized a powerful weapon in that transformation: language.
Lewis imagined a senior demon, Screwtape, instructing his nephew on how to corrupt an ordinary man. His advice was simple: “Jargon, not argument, is your best ally.”
Argument invited people to consider whether something was true. Jargon supplied conclusions without requiring evidence, allowing people to accept ideas without examining them.
Orwell understood the other side of the process. Political language, he wrote, could be used “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” He took this further: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
Orwell understood how language could disguise evil. Lewis understood how jargon could stop people from looking beneath the disguise. Together, they described how people could gradually surrender independent judgment without realizing it.
Consider how the vocabulary surrounding Jews and Israel has evolved.
Jews, historically portrayed as secretly wealthy and powerful, are again described through their supposed influence and financial clout. Zionists become a sinister political force rather than supporters of Jewish national self-determination. Israelis become settler-colonists, their very presence treated as an offense. Violence against them becomes resistance, while intifada is presented as merely shaking off oppression, obscuring its history of suicide bombings and terrorist attacks.
Democratic Socialists of America group for Palestinian Arabs decides that no “settler” can be considered a “civilian” and can therefore not legally defend themselves from “resistance groups deploying violence to liberate themselves”
Each expression changes the moral framework. Jews become manipulators. Israelis become intruders. Their attackers become freedom fighters.
Universities gave these interpretations intellectual standing through theories of settler-colonialism, oppression and decolonization. The United Nations lent political authority to similar narratives, declaring Zionism a form of racism in 1975, a resolution it revoked in 1991. Academic discussions, international resolutions and media coverage reinforced one another, lending repeated characterizations the appearance of established truth.
The language appeared in ordinary journalism as well.
In 2021, The New York Times described a “powerful Orthodox Jewish community.” In 2022, its coverage of congressional redistricting again emphasized Jewish “power,” clout and influence. Both stories revived an old association between Jews, money and political control without explicitly arguing that Jews controlled anything.
The same technique could reshape perceptions of violence.
In May 2019, the Times described a Palestinian Arab sniper attack that wounded two Israelis as “a violent but localized expression of Palestinian impatience with Israel’s failure to alleviate dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.” A terrorist attack was transformed into an expression of impatience, while Israel’s supposed failure to address humanitarian conditions became the explanation for violence directed against Israelis. Absolution via inversion.
As I wrote at the time: “So sublime, you swallowed it whole and didn’t choke on it.” The justification was embedded in the sentence without ever needing to be argued.
By October 7, 2023, the vocabulary was firmly established.
When Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdered civilians, committed sexual violence and took hostages into Gaza, some activists and commentators immediately reached for the familiar language of “resistance,” “liberation” and “decolonization.” This was the lexicon of the Ivy League: rape could be rationalized as resistance; murder could be understood as liberation; and the victims could be recast as colonizers.
April 2022October 2023
The atrocities should have challenged the assumptions. Instead, the lexicon already had declared the victim and oppressor.
What Lewis and Orwell understood was that the most powerful narrative is not the one that wins an argument. It is the one that makes the argument unnecessary.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer called Congresswoman Haley Stevens’ endorsement of Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race a “despicable betrayal.” Stevens refused to support Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed after he campaigned with Hasan Piker, a streamer who has spread antisemitic rhetoric, including comparing a heavily Jewish Michigan suburb to a KKK neighborhood.
Antisemitic influencer Hasan Piker campaigning with Abdul El Sayed
Stevens also condemned an antisemitic advertisement produced by Cenk Uygur’s Rebellion PAC that blamed Americans’ grocery bills on Israel and falsely suggested that American taxpayers finance Israeli health care. El-Sayed’s campaign disclaimed responsibility for the ad without condemning its message.
Schumer supported Stevens in the Democratic primary but rallied behind El-Sayed after his victory. Now he attacks Stevens for putting her principles ahead of party loyalty.
Don’t be angry at Schumer. He’s just doing his job – the real job that is not discussed in polite company.
Schumer’s business is electing Democrats, protecting Democratic seats and building a Democratic majority. He tells Jewish voters that he stands with them and New Yorkers that he fights for their interests. But when those interests collide with those of the Democratic Party, his priorities become clear. His loyalty is to his party. Voters are the means by which he keeps it in power.
NY Senator Chuck Schumer
By way of comparison, consider Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Weingarten speaks constantly about children and education. But she doesn’t run a children’s advocacy organization but an enormous and powerful teachers union. Her job is to protect teachers, increase their compensation and defend their working conditions. When the interests of teachers and students align, everyone benefits. When they conflict, nobody should be surprised which side she takes.
The problem isn’t that Weingarten advocates for teachers. It’s that she presents their interests as though they are necessarily the interests of children. They are not.
New York City public schools spend roughly $34,700 per student annually, yet only about half of students in grades three through eight demonstrate proficiency in reading and 57% in mathematics. A recent New York Post investigation revealed that 99.6% of students were promoted in the 2024–25 school year, despite enormous gaps in academic achievement.
Teachers find it easier to promote students rather than educate them. Parents receive reassuring report cards while children are denied the skills they need to succeed. Teachers get little pushback and the union protects their failures.
Don’t be angry at Weingarten for protecting incompetent teachers; that’s part of her job. Be angry at her for failing to educate millions of kids and denying them skills for the future.
The same applies to Schumer.
The Democratic Party has increasingly accommodated the Democratic Socialists of America and politicians aligned with its ideology, even as their positions clash with those of traditional Democrats. Schumer’s embrace of El-Sayed illustrates a party establishment willing to tolerate troubling political associations to preserve its coalition.
The handling of President Joe Biden’s decline exposed another failure. Democratic leaders defended his fitness for office while concerns mounted, prioritizing their political interests over a candid accounting of the president’s condition. Only his disastrous 2024 debate made the issue impossible to avoid.
Protecting the party has taken precedence over the nation’s leadership, diminishing public trust and leaving America more vulnerable. Joe Biden, Abdul El Sayed, teachers unions. They are all part of the rot of power and party loyalty over principles and patriotism.
Whatever Haley Stevens other political calculations, she refused to place party loyalty above her objections to El-Sayed’s antisemitic campaign. Schumer called that a betrayal because, from his perspective, it was. A betrayal of HIS job as a political hack.
But betrayal of a political party is not necessarily betrayal of the public.
Schumer’s success in electing Democrats is not the same as making Americans safer and more prosperous. Weingarten’s success in winning better contracts for teachers is not the same as educating children.
There is no question that America becomes weaker when its leaders protect political power rather than confront failure, and when voters reward loyalty instead of demanding results that you care about.
Schumer knows whom he serves. Weingarten knows whom she serves.
The question is whether voters and parents understand that they are not necessarily the ones being served despite the smooth talk and lies they are fed.
