On October 23, 2026, gunmen opened fire on Christian mourners attending a funeral at St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church in Karak, Jordan. Nine people were killed and 40 wounded.
The interior of a Greek Orthodox church is seen through a shattered window hours after gunmen opened fire during a funeral, in Hamoud village, in Jordan’s Karak governorate, October 23, 2026. (AP Photo)
Jordanian authorities described the massacre as terrorism. Government spokesman Mohammad Momani attributed it to extremist takfiri ideology, associated with jihadist terrorist groups such as ISIS. The attackers’ identities and organizational affiliations remained unconfirmed.
Al Jazeera published three articles about the attack on October 23–24. It acknowledged that Jordanian authorities called the massacre terrorism, but did not explicitly describe the attackers as jihadists. Instead, its coverage repeatedly emphasized Jordan’s tradition of Muslim-Christian “coexistence,” including the possibility that the community would emerge even stronger.
And then Al Jazeera turned its attention to Israel. In its October 23 report, Al Jazeera introduced this claim:
“For years, King Abdullah has been a vocal critic of Israel’s systemic attacks against religious sites in occupied Palestinian territory.”
Israel had no reported connection to the massacre. Yet Al Jazeera found a way to bring Israel into the story.
Al Jazeera is funded by Qatar, which has hosted US-designated terrorist group Hamas leaders for years and provided billions of dollars in assistance to Hamas-governed Gaza. Qatar is also the largest reported foreign source of gifts and contracts to American universities, accounting for approximately $8.8 billion cumulatively, including more than $1.1 billion in 2025 alone.
Qatar pours billions into American universities, finances Al Jazeera and hosts Hamas leaders. Al Jazeera’s coverage whitewashes jihadi terrorism and redirects attention from Islamist extremism toward Israel. Another example of the insidious jihad killing Christians and Jews, being exported from the Middle East.
While Americans argue over Gaza, Beijing is watching Taiwan.
China wants to dominate Asia, control waterways carrying trillions of dollars in commerce, and bring Taiwan under its rule. Standing in its way is potentially the United States.
So as America commits military resources to Middle Eastern conflicts and Americans increasingly question their country’s overseas role, China is pursuing two opportunities: expanding its power abroad and exploiting political divisions inside America.
The Trillion-Dollar Prize
Taiwan produces much of the world’s most advanced semiconductors. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, approximately $2.45 trillion in goods passed through the Taiwan Strait in 2022, representing more than one-fifth of global maritime trade.
Bloomberg Economics estimated that a major war involving China and the United States could cost the global economy approximately $10.6 trillion in its first year, equivalent to 9.6% of global GDP. The modeled losses include 6.6% of American GDP and 11% of China’s. A Chinese blockade could reduce global GDP by approximately 5%. The consequences would reach American retirement accounts, employment, manufacturing, automobiles and everyday consumer prices.
Beijing has steadily increased military exercises, maritime patrols and operations around Taiwan and the South China Sea. China seeks the ability to impose its will on Taiwan while limiting American intervention.
China Sees an Opening
On October 7, 2023, Hamas invaded Israel, murdering approximately 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages. The ensuing war drew American aircraft carriers, missile-defense systems, intelligence resources and diplomatic attention into successive confrontations involving Gaza, Lebanon, Iran and the Houthis.
Within weeks, foreign-policy researchers identified the opportunity that Beijing will exploit.
On November 9, 2023, Emil Avdaliani of the Stimson Center published For China and Russia, the Gaza War May Be a Blessing in Disguise. He explained that the wars in Gaza and Ukraine interfered with America’s strategic focus on the Indo-Pacific, giving China greater freedom to maneuver and time to prepare for competition over Taiwan.
He compared the opportunity to the years following September 11, when American attention was consumed by the wars on terrorism. The Gaza conflict also threatened the proposed India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor, a potential competitor to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Two weeks after the Hamas attack, Ahmed Aboudouh of Chatham House published China’s Approach to the War in Gaza Is Not Anti-Israel. It’s Designed to Contain the US.
Aboudouh described Beijing’s posture as anti-Western neutrality. China avoided condemning Hamas’s atrocities while criticizing Israel and portraying America as a destabilizing force. Beijing was using sympathy for Palestinians to undermine American credibility, cultivate support among developing countries and strengthen its diplomatic position on Taiwan and Xinjiang.
Beijing also maintains an enormous economic relationship with Iran.
In April 2026, the U.S. Treasury Department reported that China purchased approximately 90% of Iran’s oil exports. The U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission estimated that Chinese purchases generated approximately $31.2 billion in Iranian oil revenue in 2025.
Those revenues support the Iranian government, whose military establishment finances and arms Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. Iran’s regional activities repeatedly demand American military resources and diplomatic attention.
China receives Iranian oil while Tehran’s confrontations with America complicate Washington’s ability to concentrate on Asia.
China’s American Information Campaign
China’s efforts to exploit the conflict have also reached American audiences.
In June 2024, Google’s Threat Analysis Group documented DRAGONBRIDGE, also known as Spamouflage, a vast online influence operation linked to the People’s Republic of China.
The network distributed videos, fabricated news-style broadcasts and social-media comments attacking American democracy and exploiting domestic controversies.
One of its targets was the American campus protests over Gaza.
Beginning in May 2024, Chinese-linked accounts circulated English-language material portraying American police actions against pro-Palestinian demonstrators as evidence of Western hypocrisy. The messaging contrasted the treatment of campus protesters with American support for demonstrations in Hong Kong.
The same network criticized American involvement in Ukraine and depicted American democracy as dysfunctional.
Google disrupted more than 10,000 instances of DRAGONBRIDGE activity across its platforms in the first quarter of 2024. During the first nine months of 2024, Google also terminated more than 22,000 YouTube channels linked to Chinese coordinated influence operations.
Although investigators found limited genuine audience engagement, the volume of fabricated content demonstrated Beijing’s capacity to manufacture political messaging and distribute it across thousands of accounts.
Follow the Money
An August 2023 New York Times investigation uncovered a sprawling financial network associated with Neville Roy Singham, an American technology entrepreneur living in Shanghai, with approximately $278 million in reported financial flows attributed to his broader network. Major organizations associated with the network include the People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, International People’s Assembly, CODEPINK and affiliated activist and media operations. These organizations have helped organize anti-Israel demonstrations, promote political campaigns and advance positions frequently aligned with Chinese Communist Party interests. The Times also documented Singham’s financial and operational connections to Chinese propaganda organizations. A July 2025 George Washington University study examined overlapping financial relationships, organizational cooperation and ideological alignment involving Singham-linked organizations and groups associated with Shut It Down for Palestine. The $278 million represents broader network financial flows rather than verified direct funding of each organization.
The People’s Forum’s organizing activities became visible immediately after October 7. It co-organized a Times Square demonstration the following day, helped mobilize the November 4 march in Washington, and joined the nationwide Shut It Down for Palestine campaign. On April 29, 2024, more than 100 activists, including Columbia protesters, reportedly gathered at its Manhattan headquarters, where executive director Manolo De Los Santos urged them to “give Joe Biden a hot summer.” These events demonstrate the organization’s participation in street demonstrations and campus-related organizing, alongside a much broader student-led protest movement.
Beyond activist organizations, Chinese government agencies, companies and associated entities have developed financial relationships with American universities, policy institutions, media organizations and Washington lobbying firms.
U.S. Department of Education disclosures identify approximately $4.9 billion in Chinese-source gifts and contracts across roughly 8,000 transactions, making China the second-largest reported foreign funding source. These relationships reach institutions responsible for educating future American leaders and developing advanced technologies. The funding includes research, education and commercial arrangements, while its scale raises questions about academic independence, research security and foreign influence.
Chinese financial relationships have also reached American think tanks and policy institutes, where donor disclosures are less comprehensive and researchers help shape congressional testimony, national security debates and foreign-policy recommendations.
China’s presence in Washington is more directly measurable. According to OpenSecrets, Chinese government and other China-related foreign principals accounted for approximately $563 million in registered foreign-agent spending from 2016 through 2025, including approximately $453 million attributed to the Chinese government. Much of this money supported Chinese state-media operations, while other expenditures financed lobbying and public relations. U.S. Justice Department records, for example, document the Chinese Embassy’s engagement of Squire Patton Boggs to advise on congressional legislation, defense appropriations and other matters before Congress. Chinese-owned companies have separately spent millions lobbying over trade, technology restrictions and federal regulation.
From Gaza to Taiwan: The Same Organizations
CODEPINK‘s activism extends far beyond opposition to Israel. Its China Is Not Our Enemy campaign opposes American military preparations in Asia and criticizes U.S. support for Taiwan. Following Nancy Pelosi’s 2022 visit, CODEPINK characterized the trip as a dangerous escalation. Its Reject the US Militarism in the Pacific campaign challenges American military infrastructure and partnerships involving Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Guam and Australia.
The ANSWER Coalition similarly opposes American military expansion in the Pacific, including military bases and exercises involving Okinawa and South Korea. Both organizations describe their positions as opposition to militarization and overseas intervention.
The overlap is striking. Organizations mobilizing against American support for Israel also oppose military commitments and partnerships central to American deterrence in Asia. Beijing has its own reasons for welcoming those positions: weakening America’s regional alliances would make coercion of Taiwan easier. The alignment of these policy positions is documented; whether Chinese funding or direction caused them is a separate question.
The Real Strategic Contest
American deterrence around Taiwan depends on naval forces, regional bases, military cooperation with Japan and the Philippines, defense spending and the political willingness to confront Chinese coercion.
China’s military buildup raises the cost of American intervention around Taiwan. Its influence operations exploit the political divisions that could make such intervention harder to sustain. Meanwhile, conflicts involving Iran and its proxies continue to consume American resources and attention.
A Taiwan war could destroy $10.6 trillion in global economic output in its first year. China’s disclosed financial relationships with American institutions and media operations amount to billions of dollars across multiple years, much of it spent on activities unrelated to political influence. Even a relatively small, effective influence campaign could matter enormously if it altered America’s willingness to defend Taiwan.
For a few billion dollars spent influencing Americans to be anti-Israel and pro-Iran, China is targeting several TRILLIONS of dollars in Asia.
Sources
Stimson Center — For China and Russia, the Gaza War May Be a Blessing in Disguise, November 2023.
Chatham House — China’s Approach to the War in Gaza Is Not Anti-Israel. It’s Designed to Contain the US, October 2023.
U.S. Treasury Department, April 2026, reporting on China’s purchases of Iranian oil.
U.S.–China Economic and Security Review Commission, March 2026, research on Iranian oil revenues.
Google Threat Analysis Group, June 2024, research on DRAGONBRIDGE.
Google congressional testimony, 2024, coordinated Chinese influence operations.
George Washington University Program on Extremism — CCP Influence in U.S. Pro-Palestinian Activism, July 2025.
The New York Times — A Global Web of Chinese Propaganda Leads to a U.S. Tech Mogul, August 2023.
CODEPINK — China Is Not Our Enemy.
CODEPINK — Reject the US Militarism in the Pacific.
ANSWER Coalition — Islanders Unite to Resist a New Pacific War.
Center for Strategic and International Studies — Taiwan Strait maritime trade research.
Bloomberg Economics — The $10 Trillion Fight: Modeling a US-China War Over Taiwan, February 2026.
Congressional Research Service — Section 117 of the Higher Education Act: Reporting of Foreign Gifts and Contracts, March 2026.
OpenSecrets — Foreign Lobby Watch, 2016–2025.
U.S. Department of Justice — FARA semiannual reports, including Squire Patton Boggs’ representation of the Chinese Embassy.
Harvard/University of Connecticut Crowd Counting Consortium — U.S. protest and campus encampment data, 2023–2024.
The People’s Forum — October 2023 statements and protest mobilization announcements.
Reporting on the People’s Forum’s April 29, 2024 organizing meeting in Manhattan.
A child unwraps a chocolate bar, takes a bite, and discovers something delicious made in Israel. Show them “Product of Israel” on the wrapper. If it has Hebrew lettering, point that out too. It’s a happy way to make Israel familiar: a place where people make things we enjoy.
Put a small sign by the bowl: “Israeli-made treats – shared with pride.” Kids can take home a new favorite.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) asks candidates it endorses to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. Anti-Israel positions are also gaining ground among some Democratic candidates and officials.
We are not interested and will have none of it.
Order an Israeli-made treat for your candy bowl, then share this post with friends, family, and neighborhood groups. Every order adds demand for Israeli producers; many bowls make that support visible across the neighborhood.
Let Israel be the place behind the treat they remember.
Two Israeli soldiers were killed by Palestinian terrorists near Hebron on Friday. Staff Sergeant Ron Yonatan Roytman, 23, and Sergeant Yuval Shai Svilem, 20, were killed, and three other soldiers wounded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a major operation in the Hebron neighborhood from which the attackers came. Soldiers would search homes, confiscate weapons and demolish terrorist infrastructure, repeating the model employed in Jenin and Tulkarm.
What exactly had Israel uncovered in those Palestinian cities?
In Jenin, Israeli soldiers reported discovering more than 100 explosive devices in just two days, along with a weapons-manufacturing workshop and a command center containing materials for making bombs. Explosives were even found hidden inside a washing machine.
In Tulkarm, soldiers found a weapons storage facility containing approximately 100 pipe bombs, eight additional explosive devices and equipment for detonating explosives. They discovered a drone-production laboratory and another bomb-making facility. Some 45 explosive devices had been planted beneath roads to attack Israeli soldiers and vehicles.
Across the broader northern West Bank operation, the Israeli military reported seizing more than 1,300 weapons and destroying over 50 terrorist infrastructure sites.
And how did the New York Times describe these discoveries?
Following Netanyahu’s announcement, the newspaper characterized Israel’s earlier operations in Jenin and Tulkarm as a massive crackdown, emphasizing that tens of thousands of Palestinians had been displaced, homes demolished and roads torn apart. It compared the destruction to Gaza, adding that the Israeli military said it was targeting militants.
The weapons factories, drone laboratories and explosives caches disappeared from its account when it was providing context to that specific account.
New York Times claims that Israeli military simply displaced people and ripped up roads without discussing the enormous weapons the IDF cleared out WHEN SPECIFICALLY GIVING CONTEXT TO THAT OPERATION
The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, offered an even more extraordinary account of Friday’s shooting. Its headline declared, “Preliminary reports of two Palestinians killed by Israeli gunfire in Hebron.”
The article described Israeli forces opening fire on “two young Palestinians,” causing them to fall to the ground. It omitted the two Israeli soldiers killed in the attack and the gunfire reportedly initiated by the Palestinians.
Two Palestinian gunmen who killed Israeli soldiers became two young Palestinians shot by Israeli forces.
According to Palestinian Authority media, Israelis shot and killed “two young Palestinians” without stating that they were armed and killed Israelis first
WAFA turned Palestinian gunmen who killed Israeli soldiers into victims of Israeli gunfire. The New York Times turned the dismantling of terrorist weapons factories into seemingly senseless destruction of Palestinian neighborhoods.
Different newspapers. The same distortion: remove the Palestinian terrorism, and Israel becomes the aggressor.
The Torah moves from humanity’s failed attempt to make a name for itself at Babel to God’s promise to make Abraham’s name great. Between these two visions of greatness lies the foundation of Jewish peoplehood.
In last week’s portion, the people of Babel gather to build a great city and tower, united by a common language and ambition. They declare, “Let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4). God disperses them across the earth, dividing humanity into different peoples and languages.
Gustave Dore’s Tower of Babel
Immediately afterward, in this week’s portion, Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1–17:27), God calls upon Abraham and promises, “I will make your name great” (Genesis 12:2). The same Hebrew word, shem, meaning “name,” connects the two stories. At Babel, humanity seeks greatness for itself. Abraham is promised greatness through a mission that will benefit others:
“And all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you” (Genesis 12:3).
That mission begins with a journey to a particular land. God commands Abraham to leave his birthplace and his father’s house and travel to the land that He will show him. Abraham journeys through Shechem, Bethel and Hebron, places that remain central to Jewish history nearly 4,000 years later. God promises the land to his descendants, establishing the foundations of Jewish peoplehood through geography, ancestry and covenant.
These foundations shape Jewish life across the centuries. The Jewish calendar follows the agricultural seasons of Israel, prayers turn toward Jerusalem, and the pilgrimage festivals call Jews to appear before God at the place of His choosing, ultimately Jerusalem. The land remains central to Jewish identity even during centuries of exile, preserved through ritual, language, memory and the longing to return.
Jerusalem at dawn (photo: First One Through)
The Torah presents a vision of humanity in which a particular people, rooted in a particular land and bound by a covenant, carries a mission extending to the entire world. Jewish distinctiveness becomes a source of universal blessing.
For thousands of years, Jews have carried this dual obligation: preserving their own peoplehood while contributing to the wider world. Yet today, Jews are increasingly told that acceptance into movements proclaiming universal justice requires abandoning their attachment to Israel. Jewish peoplehood is reduced to a religious preference, while the essential character of Judaism as a land-based religion is dismissed as a political invention. Even some Jews adopt this framework, treating the abandonment of Jewish national identity as evidence of moral enlightenment.
Lech Lecha teaches that Jewish identity and universal responsibility are intertwined. The covenant connects Jews to their ancestors, their land and one another, providing the foundation from which their obligations to humanity extend.
The Torah’s promise of blessing to all humanity begins with a particular people, a particular land and an enduring covenant. Those demanding that Jews surrender these foundations in the name of universal justice are asking them to abandon the very mission through which Abraham was called to bless the world. Their vision leads back to Babel: an impressive structure, a polished veneer of unity, and a common project built in defiance of God.
Gaza’s daily reported fatalities plunged by more than 90% following the October 2025 ceasefire, falling from over 90 per day during intense fighting in July to roughly four during much of 2026. Meanwhile, adult men’s share of newly identified fatalities climbed from 42% to over 63%, although they represented just 24.4% of Gaza’s population. Hamas combatants likely accounted for a substantial portion of those deaths. These extraordinary shifts tell a story buried beneath three years of cumulative death toll headlines.
For three years, Gaza’s death toll has dominated headlines. The number rises, newspapers report the latest milestone, politicians condemn Israel, and the world is reminded of the mounting casualties.
Yet the underlying data tell a story that has received remarkably little attention.
Gaza’s Ministry of Health under the direction of Hamas publishes detailed fatality figures, reproduced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Those figures reveal dramatic changes in who was dying, how frequently deaths were being reported, and how the cumulative death toll was being assembled.
Together, they offer a very different perspective on the progression of Israel’s military campaign.
The Remarkable Shift Toward Adult Men
Before the war, children represented approximately 47% of Gaza’s population. Adult men ages 18–59 accounted for just 24.4%, adult women 23.9%, and the elderly 4.8%.
The composition of reported fatalities changed substantially as the war progressed.
Among deaths newly identified between April and October 2024, adult men accounted for 42%, children 34.4%, and adult women 14.1%. By July–October 2025, adult men’s share had risen to 59.5%, while children’s share had fallen to 25.1% and adult women’s share to just 9.9%.
Adult men were therefore accounting for nearly two and a half times their proportion of Gaza’s population, while women and children represented substantially smaller shares of fatalities than their respective population shares.
The pattern continued after the October 2025 ceasefire. Among 1,076 fatalities verified by the UN Human Rights Office through July 2026, 63.4% were men, 24.9% children and 11.7% women. The UN’s categories differ from the earlier Ministry of Health breakdown, but the disproportionate representation of men remains striking.
Hamas combatants are overwhelmingly adult men. The growing concentration of fatalities among this demographic is consistent with Israeli forces increasingly engaging combatants as they gained control of the battlefield and improved their ability to identify and target Hamas and other terrorist group’s positions.
From More Than 90 Deaths a Day to Fewer Than Five
The changes in the daily death toll are equally dramatic.
During the first eleven months of the war, Gaza reported an average of approximately 124 fatalities per day. Following the January 2025 ceasefire, the rate declined sharply before rising again when major military operations resumed in March.
During intense fighting in July 2025, the Ministry of Health reported more than 90 deaths per day. Following the October 2025 ceasefire, that figure collapsed. By September 16–23, 2026, just 24 fatalities were reported over seven days, an average of 3.4 per day. That represents a decline of more than 96% compared with the July 2025 reporting interval.
The numbers demonstrate how dramatically the intensity of military operations affected fatalities. They also reveal how misleading it can be to treat Gaza’s cumulative death toll as though it describes an unchanging level of violence.
The Death Toll Includes Deaths From Earlier Years
Another remarkable feature of Gaza’s reported death toll is how many fatalities are being added retrospectively.
Hamas’s Ministry of Health continues identifying bodies, reconciling records and approving deaths that occurred in earlier periods. Those deaths enter the cumulative total when they are registered, regardless of when or how they occurred. In several 2026 reporting periods, retrospective registrations accounted for the majority of additions to the published total.
Between September 16 and 23, for example, 24 fatalities were reported for the period while another 85 earlier deaths were added after their identification details were approved. Retrospective registrations therefore represented 78% of the combined increase.
That distinction is almost entirely lost when the media simply announces another increase in Gaza’s cumulative death toll.
What the Numbers Say About Israel’s Campaign
The world has spent three years judging Israel’s military campaign largely through a steadily increasing cumulative death toll. Yet the underlying statistics reveal a campaign whose reported fatality patterns changed dramatically.
As Israeli forces gained control of the battlefield, adult men accounted for an increasingly disproportionate share of identified fatalities. Women and children represented progressively smaller shares, well below their proportions of Gaza’s population.
These patterns are consistent with a military increasingly able to distinguish and target Hamas combatants. They challenge the portrayal of a campaign conducted without regard for the distinction between fighters and civilians.
Meanwhile, the reported daily death rate has collapsed, and much of the recent growth in the cumulative total during selected periods has come from deaths registered long after they occurred.
The accusation of indiscriminate slaughter collapses when looking into the data. The numbers have been available. The story they tell has largely gone unread.
Sources: Gaza Ministry of Health fatality figures published by UN OCHA; Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2023 population estimates; UN Human Rights Office verified-fatality reporting. Demographic identification cohorts and UN-verified post-ceasefire deaths use different methodologies and should not be interpreted as directly comparable measures of battlefield fatalities.
Pal-Awda is organizing a protest in Riverdale, Bronx, on October 24 to stop what it calls the sale of “stolen Palestinian land.” Its target is a Jewish real estate event organized by My Israel Home.
The accusation is enormous. The evidence is missing.
The protesters identify no stolen property, no dispossessed owner, no fraudulent deed and no evidence that anyone offering a home for sale acquired it unlawfully. They simply declare the land stolen and demand that the sale be stopped.
And what exactly makes a privately owned home “Palestinian land”?
There has never been an independent sovereign country called Palestine. Even if there had been, that would establish nothing about ownership of a particular house.
Imagine a homeowner in Dallas selling a house to someone from Los Angeles. Protesters descend on the transaction, shouting, “Stop the sale of stolen Dallas land!”
Stolen from whom? The homeowner? The city? Everyone who ever lived in Dallas?
Dallas describes an actual place. It does not own every home within its boundaries. A homeowner can sell to another person, regardless of where the buyer was born or lives.
The same is true in Judea and Samaria. Land owned by an Arab is the property of that owner, just as land owned by a Jew is the property of that owner. Lawful ownership can change hands. A property’s location or the ethnicity of its former owner establishes neither permanent ownership nor theft.
Pal-Awda previously celebrated forcing a Jewish gathering out of Queens. It targeted an event at a synagogue in Manhattan. Now it is targeting Riverdale, seeking to stop Jewish families from gathering to consider buying homes in Israel.
“It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events. We need to make them scared! We need to make them scared! We need to make them scared.” – people at PAL-Awda protest in front of a synagogue event helping Jews move to Israel in November 2025
Congressman Ritchie Torres, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson and Council Member Eric Dinowitz condemned the campaign in a joint statement, calling it “an attack on Jewish New Yorkers” and declaring that “the Bronx will not tolerate it.”
The campaign has a documented pattern: targeting Jewish real estate gatherings, pressuring venues and celebrating when Jewish events are driven out of New York City. And this is in regards to ALL of Israel, as Pal-Awda has condemned all Jews making aliyah regardless of where they intend to live.
“Settler, settler, go back home, Palestine is ours alone!” – PAL-Awda’s Instagram
The protesters have identified no stolen home. But they have identified their target: Jews.
Simply allowing the event to take place is an inadequate response. The entire Riverdale community – Jewish and non-Jewish alike – should stand together in visible opposition to those who gather to harass and intimidate Jewish homebuyers. Elected officials who condemn antisemitism in statements should stand alongside the people being targeted.
Antisemites should never be allowed to decide where Jews can gather, where they can buy homes or whether they can live openly as Jews. Riverdale should make that unmistakably clear.
More than 100 Jews gathered in Brooklyn this month to plan a network of anti-Zionist synagogues, schools and summer camps. The emerging Jewish Diaspora Movement brought together people associated with Jewish Currents, Rabbis for Ceasefire, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) and the American Council for Judaism. Rabbi Alissa Wise, formerly of Jewish Voice for Peace, is among its founders. Discussions included plans for a Jewish day school in Boston in 2029.
The gathering is part of a broader effort to reshape what future generations of American Jews learn about their religion, history and relationship to Israel.
The “intellectual” groundwork is expanding. Temple University professor emerita Carolyn Karcher’s Reclaiming Judaism from Zionism, featuring 47 Jewish contributors, includes a guide encouraging readers to bring anti-Zionist arguments into synagogues and families. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Benjamin Moser’s Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History profiles twelve Jewish opponents of Zionism, placing their dissent within a longer Jewish intellectual tradition.
Jewish opposition to modern Zionism has a history. Jewish attachment to the Land of Israel has a far longer one.
Judaism is an ancient, land-based religion. Abraham traveled to Canaan. The Israelites returned from Egypt. Jerusalem became the center of Jewish worship. The Torah commanded pilgrimage to Jerusalem three times annually, during Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. For millennia, Jews have prayed toward Jerusalem, mourned the destruction of its Temple and concluded the Passover Seder with the aspiration of returning there.
Opposing modern Jewish statehood is a political or theological position. Denying the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the Land of Israel is a historical falsehood. The distinction matters because Judaism’s scriptures, laws, holidays and prayers are rooted in a particular people and their ancestral homeland.
A Jew may reject God, violate Shabbat, oppose circumcision or denounce Israel and remain Jewish. Jewish belonging encompasses believers and atheists, the observant and secular, Zionists and anti-Zionists.
A Jew can reject a teaching of Judaism and remain Jewish. But that does not transform the rejection into a teaching of Judaism.
A Jew who eats ham makes a personal choice. A rabbi who certifies ham as kosher betrays the trust of Jews who rely on that certification to observe their religion. Similarly, a Jewish school that teaches children to deny their ancestral connection to Israel betrays the trust of parents who expect it to transmit Jewish history and tradition faithfully.
Jews who disagree with established organizations are free to create alternatives reflecting their beliefs. Existing institutions have the same right to preserve their missions. The Jewish identity of an institution’s founders establishes its origins. Its teachings and conduct determine whether it deserves the community’s trust.
Rabbi Brant Rosen, founder of the anti-Zionist congregation Tzedek Chicago, described his community as “consciously not an inclusive community.” His congregation establishes boundaries around its beliefs. Yet Open Hillel challenges Hillel’s restrictions on sponsoring organizations that advocate boycotts of Israel or reject its legitimacy as a Jewish state.
Hillel welcomes Jews across denominations, levels of observance and political beliefs while maintaining a mission that includes strengthening Jewish connections to Israel. Anti-Zionist congregations defend their own ideological boundaries while demanding that Hillel loosen its own. BDS supporters advocate withholding institutional support from organizations whose values they oppose, yet object when Jewish institutions apply similar standards to BDS.
At Emory Hillel, Rabbi Nikki Golomb was dismissed in August, weeks after beginning her position. She attributes the decision to her fiancé’s fierce criticism of Israel; Hillels of Georgia disputes that account, citing concerns about transparency and alignment with its mission. Golomb was affiliated with Rabbis for Ceasefire, founded by Alissa Wise. Whatever the disputed circumstances, Hillel has the right to expect its religious educators to uphold its mission.
Jewish disagreement has produced competing religious movements and institutions for centuries. But religious harm occurs when an institution entrusted with Jewish education misrepresents foundational elements of Jewish history or tradition. A school that teaches children to deny the Jewish people’s connection to Israel can legitimately have its claim to teach authentic Judaism challenged by the broader Jewish community. Opposition to modern Jewish sovereignty alone does not establish that denial.
Physical harm presents a separate and more urgent threshold. Organization that campaign to deprive threatened Jewish schools or synagogues of reasonable security protections, or to deny Israeli civilians protection against attack – like JVP, JFERJ, IfNotNow NYC and the American Council for Judaism – know that they expose Jewish lives to danger. The Jewish community has the right to challenge such conduct, withdraw communal recognition and support, and defend institutions that faithfully serve their missions.
Jewish Voice for Peace is against defensive weapons for Israel
Every Jew belongs to the Jewish people. Every institution founded by Jews does not automatically speak for Judaism. And when an institution uses the Jewish name to falsify Jewish history, betray Jewish trust or endanger Jewish lives, the Jewish community has a responsibility to confront it.
On February 20, 1939, more than 20,000 Americans packed Madison Square Garden beneath enormous swastikas, American flags and a portrait of George Washington. The German American Bund called its rally “Free America,” while its leader, Fritz Kuhn (1896–1951), promoted Nazi ideology, denounced Jewish influence and envisioned a radically different American society.
The crowd looked admiringly toward Hitler’s Germany, but its ambitions were directed toward America.
Crowd at Madison Square Garden allied with Nazi Germany, February 1939
On October 17, 2026, France erupted in demonstrations over living costs, public services and economic inequality. Rioters burned vehicles, looted businesses and attacked public buildings. In Paris, protesters climbed the monument to Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, and raised the French tricolor alongside a Palestinian flag.
The grievances were French. The revolutionary symbolism was international.
A Palestinian flag at a demonstration about Gaza represents a foreign cause. At a demonstration about French economic policy, it suggests something more: a foreign struggle adopted as a symbol of domestic upheaval.
Across different eras and ideologies, foreign struggles have supplied the symbols for movements seeking to remake their own countries.
A Generation Looking for a Different Future
Revolutionary politics becomes attractive when people lose faith in their institutions and their prospects for a better life.
The Great Depression shattered economic security for millions of Americans. The German American Bund exploited the resulting insecurity, offering national renewal, authoritarian certainty and enemies to blame for the country’s troubles.
Nearly a century later, Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign mobilized younger Americans disillusioned with an establishment they believed protected wealthy donors and political insiders. Revelations about Democratic National Committee favoritism toward Hillary Clinton reinforced those suspicions, while subsequent political upheaval deepened distrust of established leadership.
COVID disrupted education and livelihoods, inflation and housing costs eroded economic opportunity, and artificial intelligence raised fears about the future of employment. The concealment of Biden’s decline and Harris’s selection without a new nationwide primary reinforced perceptions of political decisions controlled by insiders. Harvard’s 2026 Youth Poll found that only 15% of young Americans trusted the federal government.
For people who believe established institutions protect the wealthy and powerful while their own opportunities diminish, promises to redistribute wealth, ownership and political authority become increasingly attractive. That dissatisfaction is producing electoral victories.
The Revolution Enters City Hall
The Democratic Socialists of America have translated economic frustration into electoral power, most visibly through Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 election as mayor of New York City.
Celebrating his victory, the DSA described a defeat for billionaires, corporations and the Democratic Party establishment. Its agenda connected housing, public transportation, childcare, policing and for some bizarre non-local reason, “Palestinian liberation,” within a campaign for what the organization explicitly called a “political revolution.”
The DSA advocates public ownership of major industries, higher taxes on wealth, stronger tenant protections and a larger government role in housing and essential services. These proposals would change who owns economic resources, who makes investment decisions and how much authority government exercises over everyday life.
The movement also reaches younger Americans through influential online broadcasters. Hasan Piker, one of the most prominent socialist commentators on the internet, combines criticism of American capitalism with outspoken support for Palestinian Arab violence. He promoted Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign, hosted him on his livestream and appeared at campaign events. In April 2026, Piker extended his electoral involvement to Michigan, campaigning alongside Abdul El-Sayed in his U.S. Senate race.
Anti-Israel influencers of the alt-left Mehdi Hasan, Hasan Piker and Jamaal Bowman celebrate Zohran Mandani’s victory for NYC mayor in November 2025
The revolution has an economic program, a political organization, influential broadcasters and elected officials. It also has a flag.
Why Palestine Became the Revolutionary Symbol
Palestine offers a ready-made narrative for movements organized around the struggle between privilege and liberation. The popular revolutionary image casts wealthy, technologically advanced, Western-backed White Israelis against poorer, brown Palestinians fighting dispossession. That imagery translates readily into American arguments about racial inequality, colonialism, policing and economic power.
The narrative fictionalizes history and present. Jews are indigenous to Israel, and its “white” Ashkenazi population is less than one-third of the Israeli population. But Israel’s prosperity makes the image of privileged rulers and dispossessed subjects politically compelling.
Representative Rashida Tlaib and former Ohio state senator Nina Turner made the domestic connection explicit in their 2024 essay Black Liberation and Palestinian Liberation Are Interconnected, linking Detroit, Cleveland and Gaza through a common struggle against injustice. Others have done the same like CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill back in 2015.
The anti-Israel organization Within Our Lifetime has combined “Globalize the Intifada” with slogans including “Land Back,” “Kill Capitalism” and “Defund the Police.” The vocabulary connects Palestinian nationalism with American disputes over property, policing and political authority.
On October 8, 2023, one day after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians, demonstrators gathered beneath Palestinian flags in Times Square. A speaker mocked the victims of the Nova music festival, while protesters chanted slogans including “Resistance is justified” and “Globalize the intifada.”
The latter slogan called for extending a Palestinian Arab slaughter beyond its original geography, invoking a violent history which included suicide bombings and attacks on civilians.
Across Western democracies, Palestine has become more than a foreign policy cause for many revolutionary activists. It offers a common identity for movements seeking substantial changes to established economic and political institutions.
Canary Mission video on the socialist-jihadi alliance coming for the United States
The Old Accusation Returns
Every revolutionary narrative needs an explanation for why some people possess wealth and power while others struggle. When that explanation turns into a search for a privileged group supposedly responsible for everyone else’s suffering, an ancient accusation becomes available: Jews control the system.
The German American Bund accused Jews of exercising illegitimate influence over American finance, politics and public opinion. Father Charles Coughlin (1891–1979) brought similar conspiracies into millions of American homes through radio, presenting Jewish power as an explanation for the economic suffering of ordinary Americans.
The accusation survives across otherwise opposing political camps. On the far right, Nick Fuentes promotes conspiracies about Jewish control of American institutions. In entertainment, Ye has accused Jewish executives of controlling and exploiting Black performers. In a different context, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten described American Jews in 2021 as part of the “ownership class,” arguing that Jews were keeping minorities down.
The danger intensifies when the language of liberation is used to excuse violence against people assigned to the category of oppressor.
“No Kings Rally and March” in Chicago on June 14, 2025 featured Palestinian flags and call for “Revolution” (Photo by The TRiiBE)
Following October 7, Cornell professor Russell Rickford described Hamas’s breach of the Gaza barrier as “exhilarating.” CAIR executive director Nihad Awad invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s observation about riots on the morning of the massacre and later expressed happiness that Palestinians had broken through the barrier.
The consequences of importing a foreign conflict into American life became terrifyingly tangible in March 2026, when an attacker drove a vehicle carrying incendiary materials into Temple Israel in suburban Detroit while children and adults were inside. Abdul El-Sayed, then campaigning for the United States Senate, condemned the attack but also discussed the attacker’s family losses in Lebanon, explaining that “hurt people hurt people.”
The attacker brought a foreign war to an American synagogue. The political explanation brought the grievances of that war into the response. The victims were Americans, including children gathered in a place of worship who had nothing to do with a war thousands of miles away, yet the socialist-revolutionary lens pivoted longingly to the attacker.
The Stakes Extend Beyond Jews
The German American Bund’s vision in 1939 threatened far more than America’s Jews. Its members admired an authoritarian foreign power and sought to transform the political and social character of their own country.
Today’s movements pursue different visions through different means, including democratic elections. Their ambitions to change ownership, wealth distribution, policing, education and government authority will shape the lives of Americans far beyond those attending demonstrations.
Jews have particular reason to recognize the danger when political movements portray them as privileged beneficiaries of an unjust system. History has shown how readily that accusation becomes collective blame. But the consequences of sweeping transformations of political and economic power extend far beyond the Jewish community. Jews will suffer twice – first as Jews and then as Americans – regardless of whether they refer to themselves as American Jews or Jewish Americans.
The revolution is local. It waves a foreign flag. And the country it seeks to remake is our own.
Understanding Judaism as the ancestral religion of a people changes the entire debate over Zionism, indigeneity and colonialism.
Everyone wants to define antisemitism and Zionism. Jewish organizations, politicians and academics spend enormous energy debating these terms, convinced that better definitions will produce greater understanding.
Yet they overlook a more fundamental question: What is Judaism?
The conventional answer, that Judaism is one of the world’s three great monotheistic religions, is technically correct but profoundly misleading.
Christianity and Islam are universal religions, with messages directed toward humanity and traditions of bringing the world into their faiths. Their religious communities transcend ancestry and geography, helping explain why each has spread across continents and attracted more than two billion adherents.
Judaism, meanwhile, has approximately 15 million people after more than three thousand years. It has survived empires, expulsions, massacres, forced conversions and genocide, yet remains extraordinarily small.
The three religions are grouped together because of their historical and theological connections. Jesus was Jewish, forever connecting Christianity to the Jewish people. Islam incorporates Abraham, Moses and other biblical figures into its tradition. Both transformed elements of Judaism’s religious inheritance into universal faiths. The historical irony is that the world subsequently began interpreting Judaism through the framework of its successors, making the original religion appear to be the peculiar exception.
Jewish religious leaders often explain the difference by describing Judaism as a particularist rather than universalist form of monotheism. Jews have a special covenant with God, while humanity can live righteously without becoming Jewish. Judaism generally does not seek converts.
But particularism merely modifies the conventional classification. There is a more fundamental distinction: Judaism is an ancient tribal folk religion, or more precisely, an indigenous ethnoreligious tradition.
Jonah is thrown Overboard by Fishermen, by Dirck Barendsz (1534-1592). The people on the boat were much like Jonah, each praying to their respective deity.
Consider the Yazidis, a small ethnoreligious community whose ancestral homeland lies in northern Mesopotamia and whose sacred sanctuary at Lalish remains central to their identity despite centuries of persecution. Or the roughly one million Māori of New Zealand, whose understanding of ancestry, tribal identity and sacred geography binds people to the land of their forebears. The world readily recognizes that these peoples’ relationships with their ancestral lands are embedded in their identities.
Judaism belongs in this same family of land-rooted traditions.
The Torah itself reveals the difference. It begins with the creation of humanity but quickly narrows to the story of one family, its descendants, its covenant, its laws and its promised land. Genesis traces a family. Exodus describes the formation of a nation. Numbers organizes that nation into tribes. Deuteronomy prepares it to reenter its ancestral homeland.
The Torah is sacred scripture, but it is also the founding history and constitution of a people. Jews call themselves Am Yisrael, the People of Israel, carrying the name given to Jacob, ancestor of the twelve tribes, thousands of years before the establishment of the modern state.
The Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs is over 3,000 years old, located in Hebron. It is the only burial site of any religion to have six of its founders at a single location, mostly because they are of a single family. The other founding mother, Rachel, is buried roughly 14 miles away in Bethlehem.
Even conversion reflects this understanding. A person converting to Judaism joins the Jewish people, assuming the obligations and identity of the community. Ruth’s famous declaration captures the union: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” The people come first in the sentence.
Most revealing is how thoroughly Judaism is rooted in the physical land of Israel.
Jewish law governs the cultivation, harvesting and distribution of produce grown there. The sabbatical year requires the land itself to rest, shmita. The Temple in Jerusalem was the center of national worship. And the Torah commands Jewish males to appear before God at the designated sanctuary three times annually, for Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot.
Sign in field in Israel – “here we observe shmita (resting the field every seventh year” (photo: First One Through)
Consider the extraordinary geographic assumption: Three times every year, Jewish men were commanded to journey to the national sanctuary, eventually established in Jerusalem. These commandments were written for a world of footpaths, centuries before mechanized transportation. The Torah envisioned a people living within reach of a common sacred center, cultivating the same land and celebrating its agricultural seasons.
Judaism was conceived as the religion of a people living in the land of Israel. Its commandments were embedded in the soil, seasons, cities and sacred places of that homeland. Its God was universal, but its religious civilization was profoundly local.
The destruction of Jewish sovereignty and the dispersal of much of the population forced that land-based religion to adapt. Jewish communities developed religious institutions and practices that could survive thousands of miles from Jerusalem, and without a Temple. Yet the homeland remained central to their prayers, calendar, holidays and collective memory.
Jews continued living in Israel under successive foreign rulers, while communities in Poland, Yemen, Ethiopia and Iraq preserved the same ancestral orientation. A Jew could speak another language, adopt different customs or even reject belief in God and remain part of Am Yisrael.
For Christianity and Islam, the faithful carry their religion wherever they go. For Jews, wherever they went, their religion carried them back to Israel.
Thousands of Jews at the Western Wall Plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem on Passover, unable to ascend to the Temple Mount
The consequences of misunderstanding this relationship are visible today on the Temple Mount.
Imagine the United Nations defending a prohibition on Lakota Sioux praying in the Black Hills because American ultranationalists threatened violence if they approached Mount Rushmore. The world would be outraged. The Black Hills are sacred ancestral territory, and Mount Rushmore was carved into that landscape following the conquest and dispossession of indigenous peoples.
Yet UN bodies have defended the Temple Mount “status quo,” under which Jewish prayer is forbidden, and have labeled Jewish religious activity there as “provocative.” The First and Second Temples stood on that mountain, the center of ancient Jewish national and religious life. Jews have prayed toward Jerusalem for two thousand years. It is the holiest location to only one religion: Judaism.
But the threat of jihadi violence has become a justification for limiting the religious rights of an indigenous people rather than confronting those threatening them. Political sovereignty and religious structures have changed repeatedly, but the Jewish ancestral attachment endures.
This same failure to understand Jewish indigeneity distorts the contemporary debate over Zionism and colonialism.
Modern political Zionism emerged in the nineteenth century, but the Jewish relationship to Zion began thousands of years earlier. Zionism gave modern political expression to the aspiration of an ancient people to restore national life in its ancestral homeland.
Colonialism generally describes the expansion of power by outsiders who establish control over another territory and its inhabitants. European colonial enterprises extended the authority of distant imperial capitals into foreign lands.
But how can a people be considered foreign colonizers in the very land at the center of their religion? How can their return be understood through the framework of European imperial expansion when their prayers, festivals, laws and sacred geography have been tied to that land for thousands of years? If the Māori were expelled from New Zealand for hundreds of years, would their return be labeled imperialism or colonialism?
To call Jews foreign colonizers in the center of their own ancient folk religion is to misunderstand the very nature Judaism.
