Muslim – Muslim Wars

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When Iran attacks neighboring countries, many observers react with confusion.

How could the Islamic Republic of Iran strike Muslim countries, they ask?

The question reflects a misunderstanding. Throughout modern Middle Eastern history, many of the region’s bloodiest conflicts have been Muslims fighting other Muslims. The idea of a unified “Muslim world” standing together against outsiders is largely a Western illusion.

Reality has always been far messier.

Muslims Fighting Muslims

One of the deadliest wars in the modern Middle East was the Iran–Iraq War. From 1980 to 1988, two Muslim-majority states fought a brutal conflict that killed hundreds of thousands and wounded millions. Both sides invoked Islam. It did nothing to prevent the slaughter.

More recently, the Syrian civil war has killed roughly 500,000 people, most of them Muslims, as factions divided along sectarian and political lines tore the country apart.

But these are far from isolated examples. Modern history is filled with wars in which Muslims killed other Muslims on a massive scale.

Major Muslim-vs-Muslim Conflicts

  • Iran–Iraq War (1980–1988)
    ~500,000–1,000,000 killed
    Shia Iran vs Sunni-led Iraq in one of the deadliest wars in modern Middle Eastern history.
  • Syrian Civil War (2011–present)
    ~500,000+ killed
    Assad regime, Sunni rebel groups, ISIS, and other militias fighting largely Muslim populations.
  • Yemen Civil War (2014–present)
    ~350,000+ killed (including famine and disease tied to the war)
    Iranian-backed Houthis vs Saudi-backed Yemeni government.
  • Sudan / Darfur conflicts (2003–present phases)
    ~300,000+ killed
    Fighting largely between Muslim militias and factions within Sudan.
  • ISIS war in Iraq and Syria (2013–2019)
    ~200,000+ killed
    ISIS fighting governments and populations that were overwhelmingly Muslim.
  • Algerian Civil War (1991–2002)
    ~150,000–200,000 killed
    Islamist insurgents vs Algerian government.
  • Iraq sectarian civil war (2006–2008 peak)
    ~100,000–200,000 killed
    Sunni and Shia militias fighting for control after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
  • Black September in Jordan (1970–1971)
    ~3,000–10,000 killed
    Jordanian army crushing Palestinian militant groups operating inside Jordan.
  • Hamas–Fatah conflict (2006–2007)
    ~600–1,000 killed
    Palestinian factions fighting for control of Gaza.

Together, these conflicts account for millions of deaths, overwhelmingly among Muslims themselves.

Members of ISIS about to burn Jordanian to death in a cage

Palestinians Killing Palestinians; Israel Arabs Killing Israeli Arabs

Even movements that claim to represent a single people often turn their guns inward.

In 2007, Hamas violently seized Gaza from Fatah, executing rivals and throwing some from rooftops in a bloody Palestinian power struggle.

The same pattern appears inside Israel.

Most Israeli Arabs who die from violence are killed by other Israeli Arabs, usually in criminal or clan disputes rather than in conflict with Jews.

Internal violence, not confrontation with Israel, accounts for the majority of these deaths.

Power Over Solidarity

Western observers often assume shared religion should produce political unity.

But the Middle East repeatedly shows otherwise.

Persians compete with Arabs.
Arabs compete with Turks.
Sunni compete with Shia.

Power, rivalry, and survival drive politics far more than religious solidarity.

A Familiar Pattern

Seen in this context, Iran attacking Muslim countries is not surprising.

It follows a long-standing regional pattern: Muslim states and factions frequently fight one another.

The Middle East’s wars are not unique. They follow the same rule that has governed politics everywhere:

Nations and movements fight for power and dominance—even when they share the same faith.

The United Nations Prioritizes “Islamophobia” Over All Religious Persecution

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In 2022, the United Nations created the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, observed each year on March 15.

The date commemorates the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand, where worshippers were murdered during a terrorist attack in 2019.

Hatred directed at any religious community deserves condemnation. But the decision raises an uncomfortable question: why is Islam the only religion granted a dedicated global day to combat hatred?

Islam is hardly a marginal faith. With roughly two billion followers, it is one of the largest and fastest-growing religions in the world and the majority religion across dozens of countries stretching from North Africa through the Middle East and into Asia. Within the UN itself it is represented by a powerful diplomatic coalition, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, a bloc of 57 states that frequently coordinates its positions inside the General Assembly.

Yet Islam is the only religion singled out for a specific UN observance addressing prejudice against its followers.

Other religious communities facing persistent hatred receive no comparable recognition.

There is no UN day dedicated specifically to combating antisemitism today, despite the fact that Jews are the most frequently targeted religious minorities per capita in many countries. While the UN does observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day each January to commemorate the genocide of Jews during The Holocaust, that observance focuses on crimes committed eighty years ago. There is no equivalent UN day focused on antisemitism in the present.

Nor is there an observance addressing anti-Christian persecution, even though research by organizations such as Open Doors and studies by Pew Research Center consistently show that Christians face some of the largest levels of religious persecution globally in absolute numbers.

The UN does maintain a broader commemoration—the International Day Commemorating Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief—but that observance focuses on victims after violence occurs, not on confronting the ideologies that fuel it.

Except in one case: Islam.

The religion which dominates the countries where Christians are most persecuted, including: Somalia, Libya, Eritrea, Yemen, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan and Iran.

Violence the UN Does Not Mark

The choice of March 15 highlights another inconsistency.

Deadly attacks on synagogues have occurred repeatedly in recent years.

In 2018, eleven Jews were murdered in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history. In Germany, a terrorist attempted to massacre Jews during Yom Kippur in the Halle synagogue shooting.

And in October 2025, a Jewish man was fatally stabbed outside a synagogue in Manchester, England, in an attack carried out on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism, when Jews gather in synagogues around the world for prayer and reflection.

Synagogues across Europe and North America have repeatedly been targets of shootings, stabbings, and attempted massacres.

Yet no comparable United Nations observance exists dedicated specifically to combating antisemitism tied to those attacks.

If the UN can create a global day tied to violence against mosques, why has it never created one tied to attacks on synagogues?

Politics Behind the Principle

The explanation lies less in theology than in politics.

For decades the powerful Organization of Islamic Cooperation has used its diplomatic weight to advance religious protection initiatives inside the UN system. Beginning in the late 1990s, the bloc pushed resolutions condemning what it called the “defamation of religions,” efforts widely understood as attempts to restrict criticism of Islam.

Western democracies resisted those proposals on free-speech grounds, and by around 2010 the campaign stalled.

So the strategy evolved.

Instead of defending religion from criticism, the focus shifted toward defending believers from discrimination under the banner of Islamophobia.

Opposing the initiative could now be portrayed as defending prejudice against Muslims, even if the broader debate still involved questions of speech, ideology, and religious critique.

In 2022 the effort succeeded with the creation of the UN’s International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

When Institutions Reflect Power

The episode reveals something fundamental about how the modern UN operates.

The organization does not function as a neutral body weighing global injustices. It functions as a political arena shaped by large voting blocs.

In the General Assembly—where every state has one vote regardless of size or political system—coordinated coalitions wield enormous influence. The 57 countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation represent a significant force in that system, often aligned with broader coalitions such as the Non-Aligned Movement.

Together these alliances can shape the symbolic agenda of the institution. They determine what the United Nations chooses to highlight and what it chooses not to see.

A Test of Moral Consistency

The United Nations was founded after World War II to defend universal human rights. But institutions derive legitimacy not only from their ideals, but from their consistency.

When some hatreds receive global recognition, others historical remembrance, and still others little acknowledgement at all, the institution begins to reflect political influence more than universal principle.

Combating religious hatred is a noble goal. But when that effort becomes selective, it reveals the farce and the forces controlling the United Nations.

When Jews Are Attacked, The New York Times Worries About Jihadists

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A man attempted to massacre Jews at a synagogue and preschool in Michigan.

He drove a truck into the building, fired a rifle, and carried explosives and gasoline. Inside were more than a hundred children and staff. Only the quick response of security guards prevented what could have been a mass slaughter of Jewish children.

That should have been the story.

Instead, in its coverage of the attack, The New York Times quickly shifted the emotional center somewhere else. The paper highlighted concern that Muslims or members of the local Arab community had “anxiety,” worried they might face might face “blowback” after the attack.

Pause for a moment and consider the moral inversion.

A man tries to murder Jewish children in a synagogue, and the newspaper of record worries about the social consequences for people who share the attacker’s background, and “communities everywhere.. confronting rising hate.”

Would this framing appear in any other circumstance?

If a white nationalist attempted to burn down a Black church, would the central concern in the article be whether white Americans might face uncomfortable scrutiny?

If a neo-Nazi attacked a mosque, would journalists pivot immediately to the anxiety of Christians worried about backlash?

Of course not.

The victims would be the story. The ideology behind the violence would be examined directly and without hesitation.

But when Jews are attacked – especially by jihadists – the narrative too often drifts away from them.

The Reality the Coverage Avoids

There is another uncomfortable fact that often disappears in these discussions.

In the United States, Jewish institutions have repeatedly been targets of ideological violence.

Synagogues, kosher markets, Jewish schools, and community centers have been attacked by extremists motivated by antisemitism and/or jihadist ideology.

The list is tragically familiar:

  • the Tree of Life synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh
  • the Poway synagogue shooting
  • the Jersey City kosher market attack
  • the Colleyville synagogue hostage crisis

Across Europe the pattern is even clearer: the Toulouse Jewish school massacre, the Hyper Cacher supermarket attack in Paris, and numerous synagogue shootings and plots across the continent have been by jihadists.

Yet the reverse pattern is almost nonexistent.

There is no recurring history in the United States of Jews entering mosques to massacre Muslims, no wave of Jewish attackers targeting Muslim schools or grocery stores.

The asymmetry matters.

Jewish institutions build security fences, hire armed guards, and train for active shooters not because of paranoia, but because experience has taught them they are frequent targets.

The Michigan synagogue had security for exactly this reason.

Without it, the story might have been hundreds of funerals.

A Pattern of Moral Softening

The New York Times’ framing of the Michigan attack fits a broader pattern that has become increasingly visible in recent years.

When jihadist-inspired violence occurs, the language often softens. Motives become vague. Ideology dissolves into references to “grievances,” “tensions,” or the emotional distress of communities associated with the attacker.

Select context is provided for the perpetrator that make him appear a victim, such as mourning the loss of family members in the Middle East, without sharing that those family members were members of jihadi terrorist groups.

This is no longer news but distortion.

Journalism is supposed to clarify reality, not obscure it. When coverage instinctively protects the social sensitivities of the attacker’s community while barely dwelling on the intended victims, it creates a moral fog.

No serious observer believes entire communities are responsible for the crimes of individuals. That principle should remain unquestioned.

But shifting sympathy away from the Jewish victims of an attack to the jihadi attacker is a failure to report the truth clearly for the purpose of a twisted narrative. One that continues to put the most attacked minority-minority in the crosshairs while falsely painting their most frequent attackers as the ones needing sympathy.

The Mirror Nations Refuse to Face

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This week’s parsha, Vayakhel, introduces one of the Torah’s most overlooked symbols: mirrors. The bronze basin used by the priests in the Mishkan was fashioned from the mirrors donated by Israelite women. Before performing sacred service, the priests had to wash there as a ritual reminder that moral authority begins with reflection.

Rashi (1040-1105) says these mirrors carried a deeper story. They were not instruments of vanity. In Egypt, when slavery crushed hope and dignity, the women used those mirrors to encourage their husbands and restore their spirit, and thereby build families that would become the nation of Israel. What appeared to be self-reflection was in fact an act of national responsibility.

Now Moses was about to reject them [mirrors] since they were made to pander to their vanity, but the Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, “Accept them; these are dearer to Me than all the other contributions, because through them the women reared those huge hosts in Egypt!” For when their husbands were tired through the crushing labor they used to bring them food and drink and induced them to eat. Then they would take the mirrors, and each gazed at herself in her mirror together with her husband, saying endearingly to him, “See, I am handsomer than you!” Thus they awakened their husbands’ affection and subsequently became the mothers of many children, – Rashi on Exodus 38:8

Egyptian copper mirror

The Torah’s insight is timeless: using a mirror as a tool for the greater good. Individuals often avoid doing so. Nations, virtually never.

Spain today offers a vivid example of what happens when a country replaces the mirror with a flattering portrait of itself.

Spain presents itself as a moral voice on the international stage, particularly when it comes to Israel. Spanish officials speak the language of humanitarian principle and international law, portraying their stance as the product of ethical clarity.

But when viewed through the mirror the Torah describes, Spain’s posture looks far less like moral leadership and far more like moral performance.

The issue is not disagreement with Israeli policy. Democracies criticize one another all the time. The issue is the enormous gap between Spain’s self-image and its conduct. Spain condemns Israel in sweeping moral terms while maintaining quiet relationships with regimes like the Islamic Republic of Iran whose human rights records make Israel’s conflicts look restrained by comparison. It speaks loudly about justice in the Middle East while applying far less scrutiny elsewhere.

The mirror reveals something uncomfortable: a country congratulating itself for moral courage while directing its harshest condemnation toward the world’s only Jewish state.

This pattern does not arise in a vacuum. Spain’s relationship with Jews carries a long and painful history, culminating in the Alhambra Decree. The ease with which moral outrage is directed toward Jews while harsher regimes escape similar condemnation raises an uncomfortable question about whether some old instincts still linger beneath the surface.

The mirrors of Vayakhel represent the opposite instinct. The women of Israel used mirrors not to flatter themselves but to build a future. Their reflection demanded responsibility, not self-congratulation. That is why those mirrors became the basin in which priests purified themselves before entering sacred service.

The Torah’s message is simple: before claiming moral authority, look honestly into the mirror.

Spain seems to have replaced the mirror with a portrait of itself as a defender of justice. But to many observers the reflection looks different: moral preening, selective outrage, and criticism of the Jewish state so disproportionate that it begins to resemble something older and much uglier.

The basin in the Mishkan stood at the entrance to sacred service. Every priest had to wash there before speaking in the name of holiness.

Nations should consider doing the same.

The Losers’ Echo of the Six Day War

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When armies lose wars, the battlefield does not always disappear. It often moves to softer targets.

That is what happened after the Six-Day War, when Israel delivered a devastating defeat to the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In six days, territories changed hands, military reputations collapsed, and the promise that Israel would soon be destroyed evaporated.

The defeat reverberated far beyond the battlefield. It humiliated governments across the Arab world and shattered the image of inevitable victory that had surrounded the campaign against Israel.

But the war did not end. It simply changed form.

In the years that followed, militant organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Black September Organization exported the conflict around the world.

The targets were no longer Israeli armies; they were civilians.

Airplanes became battlegrounds. Diplomats became targets. Jewish institutions across the diaspora suddenly found themselves on the front lines of a war being fought thousands of miles away.

The Munich massacre shocked the world when Israeli athletes were murdered at the Olympic Games by Palestinian Arab terrorists. It demonstrated that the battlefield could be moved to the most international stage imaginable.

Another defining moment came with the Entebbe hijacking, when Palestinian terrorists seized an Air France flight and diverted it to Uganda. There, Jewish and Israeli passengers were separated from the others and held hostage in an old airport terminal. The episode ended with a daring Israeli rescue, but the hijacking revealed something chilling: Jews anywhere could be turned into targets for a war militants could not win against Israel itself.

Synagogues and Jewish community centers were attacked in cities far removed from the Middle East battlefield. Rome. Athens. Istanbul. Hezbollah and Iran were often behind the atrocities.

These were not military targets. They were chosen precisely because they were vulnerable.

The message was unmistakable: if Israel could not be defeated in the Middle East, Jews everywhere would become targets.

Today there are worrying signs that the same pattern may be returning.

Iran and its regional network of militias face mounting military pressure from Israel and the United States. When regimes and movements cannot confront stronger armies directly, history shows they often search for targets they can reach more easily.

Recent intelligence chatter has suggested that Iran may have issued signals intended to activate sleeper operatives abroad. Western security services have increased monitoring of potential networks across North America, Europe, and Australia. Whether these warnings prove accurate or not, the concern reflects a familiar strategic logic: when the battlefield is lost in one region, pressure is applied elsewhere.

As the United States becomes the central military opponent of Iran, American Jews may face the threat most acutely.

Extremist movements have repeatedly treated Jewish communities abroad as symbolic stand ins for Israel and its allies. When Israel gains the upper hand militarily, Jews in distant cities have often become the targets that terrorists believe they can reach.

This time the danger may be compounded by a new environment.

Terror no longer requires direct command structures. Groups such as Islamic State pioneered a model of “inspiration terrorism,” where individuals absorb propaganda online and act independently without formal membership or training, such as happened this week in New York City.

At the same time, a troubling ideological convergence has taken shape in parts of Western society. Radical Islamist movements and segments of the revolutionary left increasingly share a political vocabulary built around anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and the demonization of Israel. In that narrative, Israel becomes the embodiment of oppression. Jews are portrayed as agents of imperial power rather than a people with a three thousand year connection to their homeland.

When those ideas spread through social media, activist networks, and even parts of the educational system, hostility toward Israel can easily spill over into hostility toward Jews themselves.

The result is combustible.

A generation is growing up hearing that violence against Israel is “resistance,” that Jews represent colonial domination, and that the conflict is part of a global struggle against oppression.

History shows where that logic can lead.

If history is echoing once again, the streets of Western cities may soon remind us of a grim truth: the losers of wars do not always accept defeat.

We are witnessing the next phase of the War on Zionists.

Related:

Genocidal Jihadists Come For ‘Soft Targets’ (September 2024)

Politicians In Their Own Words: Why We Don’t Support Defending Jews (January 2022)

Spain Breaks With Israel, Not Washington

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In a sharp escalation of transatlantic tension, Donald Trump threatened to cut off trade with Spain, accusing Madrid of refusing to support operations against Iran and failing to meet its defense obligations within NATO.

Spain rejected the criticism, citing sovereignty and international law and refusing to allow U.S. forces to use Spanish bases in operations tied to the Iran conflict.

Yet at the same time Madrid made a different diplomatic move. Spain permanently withdrew its ambassador from Israel, citing the widening regional war.

The contrast is striking.

The military campaign against Iran has been led by the United States, with Israel acting alongside it. If participation in that conflict justified downgrading diplomatic relations, the same logic would apply first to Washington, yet Spain withdrew no ambassador from the United States.

Even after Trump threatened sweeping trade retaliation, Madrid left its diplomatic posture toward Washington unchanged.

Instead, the rupture fell on Israel alone.

The reason is not difficult to see. Confronting the United States carries consequences. The American economy dwarfs Spain’s, and Washington anchors the NATO security system protecting Europe. Spain benefits from that umbrella while contributing among the lowest shares of national income to defense within the alliance.

Angering Washington carries risk. Angering Israel carries almost none.

Spain frames its decision as moral protest. But if war with Iran is the offense, the United States leads it. If regional escalation is the concern, Spain still maintains diplomatic relations with Iran itself, the leading state sponsor of terrorism.

If Spain were to look in the mirror, what would it see? A principled stand against war? That is the language Madrid uses.

But the reflection suggests something else. Spain keeps its ambassador in Washington, maintains relations with Tehran, and breaks with Jerusalem — the smallest actor in the conflict.

Spain is a nation of nearly fifty million compared to Israel, a country of ten million, a small state surrounded by hundreds of millions of Muslims where hostility toward Israel goes back to the Jewish State’s reestablishment.

That asymmetry will not go unnoticed in Washington or among Israel’s allies. Spain already faces pressure to increase its NATO defense spending. If Madrid is willing to rupture relations with Israel over the Iran war while maintaining relations with Iran itself, the contradiction may soon move from rhetoric to diplomacy.

The question could become blunt:
restore normal relations with Israel, end trade with Iran, and meet NATO defense commitments — or risk losing the security umbrella Spain depends on.

A nation looking honestly in the mirror might call that geopolitics. Or antisemitism.

The Speed of Anger and the Slow Work of Trust

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Anger seems to travel faster than love.

Are we entering a world where the outrageous spreads faster than the beautiful? Where algorithms reward anger more than humor and shouting carries farther than laughter?

These questions feel new. The forces behind them are not.

Human beings have long been drawn to danger more than calm. Psychologists call this “negativity bias.” In a landmark paper, psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and his colleagues summarized it simply: bad is stronger than good. Negative events imprint themselves more deeply than positive ones. We notice threats faster than beauty.

For most of human history this instinct helped us survive. Ignoring a sunset had no consequence. Ignoring danger could be fatal.

Technology did not create our darker impulses. It simply gave them speed. In the digital age that ancient instinct has found a powerful amplifier.

The platforms that shape modern conversation—Meta Platforms, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok—are built to maximize engagement. Their algorithms reward what provokes reaction. Anger drives comments. Outrage produces shares. Conflict spreads faster than reflection.

Researchers studying millions of posts have found a consistent pattern: anger spreads more quickly than joy. The algorithms did not invent hatred. They simply discovered how easily it travels.

Another force quietly reinforces the cycle: incentive. In a fragile and uncertain economy, the fastest path to attention, influence, and sometimes income often runs through the anger storm of social media. Outrage attracts followers. Followers attract status and advertising. The system rewards those who inflame rather than those who illuminate.

The result is a distortion of public life. Rage becomes highly visible while ordinary decency remains largely unseen.

Martin Luther King Jr. captured the difference between what spreads easily and what sustains a society. “Hatred paralyzes life,” he wrote in Strength to Love. “Love releases it. Hatred confuses life. Love harmonizes it.”

Yet the digital public square increasingly rewards the paralysis.

Elie Wiesel warned of a deeper danger: “The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.”

In the endless scroll of online outrage, indifference becomes hatred’s silent partner. Cruelty becomes spectacle. People react and move on.

History suggests that hatred has always been loud but rarely durable.

During the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln asked a question that still resonates: “Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?”

The Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn offered a similar warning: “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.”

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks expressed the same moral challenge in modern terms:
“The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.”

Such insights are uncomfortable in a digital culture that constantly divides humanity into enemies and allies.

The deeper problem today may not be that hatred is stronger than love. It may simply be that hatred is easier to distribute, easier to amplify, and increasingly profitable.

Algorithms reward immediate reaction. Beauty requires attention. Humor requires context. Reflection requires time. Outrage requires only a spark.

The digital public square begins to resemble a hall of mirrors.
The loudest voices dominate the room while the quiet majority disappears from view. It becomes easy to believe that everyone is screaming.

Tristan Tate and Andrew Tate in 2023.Credit : AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda

But outside the algorithmic storm the world still runs on cooperation. Families care for one another. Strangers help strangers. People build communities, businesses, schools, and hospitals together every day.

If hatred truly governed human behavior, civilization would collapse within weeks.

The danger is not that hate is winning. The danger is that the systems we built to connect the world reward the worst parts of human nature.

And at the very moment those systems amplify anger, the qualities that restrain anger may be weakening.

The path away from hatred has always depended on patience and trust. Both are under strain.

Technology has shortened attention spans and conditioned us to expect immediate satisfaction. Judgments are rendered in seconds. The slow work of understanding struggles to survive in an environment built for speed.

Trust is also eroding. Artificial intelligence can generate images, voices, and entire narratives that blur the line between the real and the fabricated. As that line fades, people begin to doubt what they see.

A society without patience reacts before thinking.
A society without trust suspects everything.

That makes this a particularly delicate moment. The engines distributing information reward outrage, the incentives encourage it, and the habits that resist it grow weaker at the same time.

The critical question of the day is whether we will recognize that danger in time.

Jihadi-washing and the Ideology the Times Won’t Name

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A bombing attempt near Gracie Mansion followed a pattern Americans have seen before: young men radicalized online, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and attempting violence in the name of jihad.

But if you read the The New York Times, you might never notice the pattern at all.

Two men were charged after attempting the ISIS-inspired bombing near Gracie Mansion. Prosecutors say the suspects pledged allegiance to ISIS and threw improvised explosive devices toward a protest crowd and police. The bombs failed to detonate, but the casualties could have been catastrophic. The bombing suspects were 18-year-old Emir Balat, a high school student, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19.

The plot followed a model ISIS has promoted for years: radicalize individuals already living in Western societies and encourage them to strike where they live. No training camps. No command structure. Just ideology delivered through propaganda, social media and Muslim countries money in American schools.

America has already seen the results.

In 2015, a radicalized couple carried out the San Bernardino attack. Syed Rizwan Farook was 28 and Tashfeen Malik was 29.

In 2016, Omar Mateen, 29, murdered forty nine people in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando while declaring loyalty to ISIS.

In 2017, Sayfullo Saipov, also 29, drove a rented truck onto the Hudson River bike path in Manhattan in the 2017 New York City truck attack, killing eight people and leaving a note pledging allegiance to ISIS.

This pattern is not accidental. ISIS propaganda deliberately targets young Muslims in their late teens and twenties, the age when identity and grievance can be shaped by ideology. The strategy is not to import terrorists into the West. It is to cultivate them here.

Yet when the New York Times recently referenced the Hudson River attack, it described it simply as “a terrorist driving a truck killed eight people.”

The ideology behind the attack vanished from the story.

When the ideology behind violence disappears, the violence itself begins to look random. But it is not random. It is ideological.

The same pattern of New York Times’ language appears elsewhere.

After the October 7 massacre carried out by Hamas, the New York Times described social media posts celebrating the attack as being “supportive of the Palestinian cause.” One of the examples involved Rama Duwaji, the wife of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani, who had liked posts praising the attack shortly after it occurred. At the time, Duwaji was 26 years old.

October 7 was a terrorist assault in which more than a thousand Israelis were murdered and civilians were kidnapped. Describing celebration of that massacre as support for a “cause” transforms the event itself, and radical jihadi terrorism disappears.

ISIS and Hamas operate in different places and pursue different strategies, but they draw from the same radical Islamist narrative that frames Jews as enemies and violence as religious duty.

Online, that narrative increasingly reaches the same audience: young people in Western societies, including young Muslims searching for identity and purpose.

In New York the consequences are already visible. According to the New York City Police Department, Jews consistently account for the largest share of hate crime victims in the city, far out of proportion to their share of the population.

We now face two related problems.

First, there is an ideology problem. Radical Islamist movements openly encourage violence against Western societies and portray Jews as enemies in a religious struggle.

Second, there is a sanitization problem. When that ideology is softened, blurred, or renamed as a “cause,” the public cannot see the pattern.

San Bernardino.
Orlando.
The Hudson River bike path.
Bombing attempt near Gracie Mansion.
Young people celebrating Muslim massacres of Jews.

A sick 60% of Americans aged 18-24 polled said the October 7 massacre was “justified,” 50% support Hamas, and 51% said Israel should end and be handed to Hamas

Different attacks with the same ideological current reaching the same young audience, and pointing toward the same enemies.

The violence makes headlines yet the ideology poisoning western youth is being whitewashed. That is jihadi-washing, and it endangers us all.

Perhaps It Is Time to Ask Israel What Two States Look Like

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For decades the international community has insisted it already knew what a two-state solution should look like. The United Nations drew the parameters. Diplomats repeated the formula. Conferences were held. Resolutions were passed.

And tens of thousands of people died.

The problem may not be the idea of two states. The problem may be that the plan was written without the participation of the country expected to live beside that second state, after countless wars waged to eliminate it.

Israel accepted the concept of two states repeatedly. The Arab world rejected it outright in 1947 and chose war instead. For decades the objective was not coexistence but the elimination of the Jewish state “in any part of Palestine.“

Only much later did some Palestinian leaders begin to speak about accepting two states. Even then the proposal contained a remarkable asymmetry: Arabs could potentially live in both Israel and a future Palestinian state while Jews would be barred from living in Palestine. Even under these terms, acceptance amongst the stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) remained partial and fragile. Large segments of Palestinian society continued to reject the legitimacy of Israel itself.

War therefore continued.

The deeper flaw lay in the diplomatic architecture. The UN framework repeatedly demanded territorial concessions from Israel while simultaneously challenging the basic elements of Israeli sovereignty. The proposed Palestinian state would claim rights that no other neighboring state claims over another country, including constraints on Israel’s control over borders and immigration.

The Oslo Accords attempted to move the process forward through gradual autonomy. Palestinians gained control of Gaza, Area A of the West Bank, and some control in Area B. These territories were meant to become the early foundations of Palestinian self-governance and peaceful coexistence.

Instead they became platforms for continued war. Rockets came from Gaza. Terror networks operated openly in areas under Palestinian control. October 7 was simply the most brutal expression of a reality that had been building for years.

After October 7 it is difficult to imagine any Israeli government accepting the same international blueprint that guided diplomacy for the past thirty years.

Which raises a simple question that has never been asked: What would a two state solution designed by Israel actually look like?

For decades the world has demanded that Israel accept a state designed by others. When Israel raised concerns about security, sovereignty, or enforcement, those concerns were treated as obstacles to peace rather than as conditions necessary to achieve it.

Perhaps the time has come to reverse the process.

Instead of repeating a diplomatic formula that has failed repeatedly, the international community could ask Israel to define the conditions under which it could realistically accept a Palestinian state. Security arrangements, borders, governance standards, demilitarization, and phased recognition could all become part of a framework designed around coexistence rather than wishful thinking.

Whether the SAPs are willing to accept such conditions is a separate matter. Neither side ever fully accepted the UN blueprint. But continuing to impose a model that both parties reject has already produced decades of bloodshed.

Hashmonaim and separation barrier
Hashmonaim and separation barrier

The first fruits of Oslo were rotten. Continuing to plant the same tree will not produce a different harvest.

If the world truly wants two states living in peace, it may finally be time to ask the state expected to survive beside that new second state what peace actually requires.

The New York Times Calls the Massacre of Jews a “Cause”

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Words matter. Especially when a newspaper chooses them carefully.

In a recent article, The New York Times wrote that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s wife, Ms. Duwaji had “liked Instagram posts supportive of the Palestinian cause immediately after the attacks,” referring to October 7.

Read that sentence again.

October 7 was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas terrorists murdered about 1,200 people, raped women, burned families alive, and kidnapped 251 civilians.

Yet approval of posts celebrating that moment is described by the Times as support for a cause.

A cause sounds political. Principled. Even noble.

But immediately after October 7 the images circulating online were not debates about borders or statehood. They were videos of murdered Israelis, kidnapped civilians, and triumphant Hamas fighters.

Calling appreciation of those posts “support for the Palestinian cause” launders the meaning of the act. The language turns approval of atrocities into activism. And it did the spin repeatedly.

Then the article pivots.

The Times raises concerns about a Jewish congressman from New York because his wife had “liked or reposted” posts from right wing accounts that some people considered hateful or insensitive.

So approval of posts DIRECTLY ABOUT a terrorist massacre is softened, while a Jewish public official becomes controversial through a chain of ASSOCIATIONS.

One situation involves praise for the moment Jews were slaughtered. The other involves subjective offense. Yet the newspaper treats them as comparable.

And this pattern did not begin here.

For years the Times has regularly described Israel’s elected government as “the most right wing in its history,” a political judgment embedded in news reporting. At the same time, the paper often avoids stating a simple fact: Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.

So the judgmental language is applied freely to Israel and the factual label is avoided for Hamas.

Frighteningly, the framing has sunk even lower. The New York Times has moved from absolving terrorists to sanctifying the antisemitic genocidal terror itself as a “cause.”

It is a moral inversion that reflects a deeper rot in how the story is being told.

And it arrives at a moment when hostility toward Jews is rising once again across the world, seemingly with the endorsement of The New York Times.