Cornell’s Socialist Revolution and Its Jewish Students

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There is something rotten in Ithaca.

In October 2023, Cornell professor Russell Rickford described Hamas’s massacre of Israelis as “exhilarating” and “energizing.” Weeks later, a Cornell student threatened to shoot Jewish students, rape Jewish women and murder Jewish babies. Three years later, Rickford remains on the faculty, socialist organizations have gained political influence across campus, and anti-Israel activists have transformed Cornell’s student government and political culture.

A speaker addresses a crowd at a protest, with a banner in the background reading 'ANTI-ZIONISM IS NOT ANTI-SEMITISM'.
Cornell Professor celebrated the October 7 massacre of 1,200 in Israel

Cornell’s socialist revolution has unfolded alongside a disturbing deterioration in the environment for Jewish students. Organizations promoting socialism and campaigning against Israel have become political partners, winning elections, organizing demonstrations and challenging the university’s institutional relationships with Israel.

Rickford’s October 2023 remarks were captured on video just days after Hamas terrorists murdered, raped and kidnapped Israelis. Jewish students questioned whether they could safely express opposing views in his classroom. Cornellians for Israel president Zoe Bernstein and Hillel executive vice president Simone Shteingart publicly challenged his remarks. Rickford apologized, took a leave of absence and eventually returned to teaching, including a course titled Socialism in America.

Within weeks, Cornell student Patrick Dai threatened to attack the university’s kosher dining hall, shoot Jewish students, rape Jewish women and murder Jewish babies. The threats terrified Cornell’s Jewish community, prompting a police investigation. Dai was arrested, pleaded guilty and sentenced to federal prison.

Mugshot of a young man with glasses, wearing a plain white t-shirt, looking directly at the camera.
Cornell student Patrick Dai

Cornell’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter lists more than 300 members in the university’s student organization directory. One Cornell organizer advanced to national YDSA leadership, while another won election to Ithaca’s Common Council.

YDSA increasingly works alongside Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace and Cornell Progressives. Their joint campaigns seek divestment from weapons manufacturers, opposition to Israeli institutions and an end to Cornell’s relationship with Israel’s Technion. The broader Coalition for Mutual Liberation has claimed participation by more than 40 campus and community organizations.

The transformation is particularly striking when measured against Cornell’s recent history.

In 2014, Cornell’s Student Assembly voted 15–8–1 to table an Israel divestment resolution. A decade later, nearly 70% of participating undergraduates supported a divestment referendum. Graduate students approved another referendum in 2025. By 2026, every Student Assembly candidate jointly endorsed by SJP, YDSA and Cornell Progressives had won.

That political ascent was accompanied by increasingly confrontational activism. Protesters established encampments, disrupted a career fair involving defense contractors and interrupted an appearance by former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni. Cornell imposed disciplinary sanctions and temporarily suspended SJP before reinstating it under conditions.

The Anti-Defamation League assigned Cornell a C in its 2026 campus antisemitism report card.

The relationship between socialism and anti-Zionism became especially visible in September 2026, when Hasan Piker addressed approximately 450 students inside Cornell’s Sage Chapel at an event involving YDSA and other anti-Israel organizations.

Piker had previously declared that Hamas was a thousand times better than Israel. When challenged about that comparison on Pod Save America, he responded, “I stand by that.”

At Cornell, Piker celebrated socialist electoral victories, including the rise of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and joined a chant of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Event poster announcing Hasan's talk at Cornell on September 24, from 6:30 to 7:30 pm at Sage Chapel, sponsored by student organizations.

Governor Hochul sits on Cornell’s Board of Trustees by virtue of her office. Together, the university’s leadership and trustees bear responsibility for protecting the freedom of political expression while ensuring that Jewish students can participate in university life without intimidation.

Cornell has spent three years demonstrating how much ideological extremism its academic culture can accommodate. A professor celebrated the slaughter of Israelis. A student threatened to murder Jews. Socialist and anti-Israel organizations expanded their political influence, and a speaker who publicly stood by his favorable comparison of Hamas to Israel was welcomed into Sage Chapel.

Cornell’s Jewish students have watched this transformation from the receiving end of threats and intimidation.

Cornell has decided to shut down fraternity events and parties for the rest of the year after a suit alleging gang rape at a fraternity in 2024 came to public attention. Will the school take similar action against the socialism and anti-Israel clubs?

Sign reading 'FRAT CULTURE IS RAPE CULTURE' held up during a protest.

Why Latin America’s Conservatives Are Choosing Jerusalem

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Four Latin American countries have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, all headed by conservative presidents. Argentina’s Javier Milei wants to be next, and Brazil’s conservative opposition has promised to follow. A new political map of Latin America is emerging, and Jerusalem sits at its center.

Colombia became the latest country to join this movement in October 2026, following Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay. The pattern is unmistakable: conservative governments are embracing Israel and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, while much of the Latin American left increasingly identifies with the Palestinian cause and opposition to the Jewish state.

Colombia offers the clearest illustration of this ideological divide. Left-wing President Gustavo Petro severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 2024, halted coal exports and embraced international efforts to isolate the Jewish state. His conservative successor, Abelardo de la Espriella, reversed course, restored relations and opened an embassy in Jerusalem.

The same country, the same Israel, the same Jerusalem. A different president and an entirely different worldview.

For Latin America’s conservatives, Israel represents national sovereignty, religious heritage, technological achievement, military strength and partnership with the United States. For much of the Latin American left, Israel is viewed through the language of colonialism, Palestinian dispossession and opposition to American influence.

Religion reinforces this divide. Guatemala and Honduras have substantial evangelical Christian populations whose attachment to Israel is rooted in biblical belief. Conservative movements throughout Latin America increasingly draw support from these communities, for whom Jerusalem is central to Jewish history and Christian faith.

Christian pilgrims enter the Old City of Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate during Easter, 2017 (photo: First One Through)

Argentina’s Javier Milei has become its most enthusiastic champion. In April 2026, Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the Isaac Accords, a framework intended to strengthen Israel’s political, economic and security relationships across Latin America.

The name carries deliberate biblical symbolism. The Abraham Accords brought Israel together with Arab nations through the shared heritage of Abraham. Isaac, Abraham’s son, represents the continuation of God’s covenant through Jacob, whose name became Israel. Where the Abraham Accords emphasize common ancestry between Jews and Arabs, the Isaac Accords invoke the particular biblical heritage of Israel and its connection to nations identifying with Judeo-Christian civilization.

Milei has committed more than speeches to this vision, directing his $1 million Genesis Prize award toward establishing an organization to advance the initiative. Legislators from across Latin America have already gathered to promote stronger relations with Israel, combat antisemitism and encourage additional embassy relocations.

The movement also has a powerful strategic adversary: Iran.

Iranian-backed terrorism has already devastated Jewish communities in Latin America. Argentina suffered the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 people. Argentine authorities have attributed both attacks to Hezbollah and Iran.

The Isaac Accords seek cooperation against Iranian terrorist networks, antisemitism, drug trafficking and transnational criminal organizations. Israel offers intelligence capabilities, cybersecurity expertise, military technology and experience confronting Iranian proxies. Latin American governments offer regional partnerships capable of disrupting hostile networks operating across the Western Hemisphere.

Jerusalem thus becomes both a declaration of political identity and the gateway to a broader security alliance.

The next major test comes in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been among Israel’s harshest regional critics, while his conservative challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, has promised to relocate Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem. Their October 25 presidential runoff could determine whether the region’s largest economy joins this emerging alignment.

Flávio Bolsonaro, candidate for President of Brazil

There are vulnerabilities. Paraguay moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, reversed the decision months later under a new president, and restored it in 2024. Diplomatic commitments can change with elections. The Isaac Accords seek to build deeper economic, security and institutional relationships capable of surviving those political shifts.

The Abraham Accords brought Israel closer to the Arab world. The Isaac Accords seek to bring Latin America closer to Israel. Conservative presidents are leading that transformation, turning recognition of Jerusalem into a declaration of political identity, shared heritage and strategic allegiance.

Jerusalem has become a dividing line in Latin America’s ideological struggle, and its conservatives are choosing sides.

Democratic Politicians Readying for Jerusalem’s Jews To Get 20 Years in Prison

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Imagine three American Jews participating in their cultural heritage: one American Jew buys an apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City, and hires an Israeli contractor to repair the roof and renovate the kitchen. Another American contributes to archaeological excavations uncovering ancient Jewish Jerusalem, say in Ir David. A third donates to rebuilding a synagogue destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948.

Rebuilding the Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Jordanian army when it illegally seized the city in 1949 (photo: First One Through 2023)

Under legislation sponsored by 54 congressional Democrats, each may face federal prosecution, a million-dollar fine or even 20 years in prison.

Congressman Joaquin Castro’s Stop the Settlements Act, H.R. 10642, reaches far beyond stopping new Israeli housing construction in disputed territories. It authorizes sanctions against foreign persons involved in the financing, planning, construction, expansion or maintenance of Israeli settlements or outposts, subject to certain determinations.

This is not legislation targeting building a new neighborhood in the middle of the West Bank. It targets even maintaining what already exists, even in cities with thousands of years of Jewish history and presence. Democrats in Congress have chosen language broad enough to raise questions about the ordinary upkeep of Jewish communities.

The bill repeatedly refers to “settlements” in the “West Bank and Gaza.” It never explicitly states whether eastern Jerusalem including the Old City is included.

Palestinians claim “East Jerusalem,” part of a divided city that existed as a result of the 1948-9 war, which lasted for 18 years until 1967, as part of their future state. Israel considers united Jerusalem its capital, including the Old City.

Congress knows these competing positions. Congress knows that the Jewish Quarter contains homes and synagogues predating Israel’s establishment in 1948. Yet 54 Democrats have attached their names to legislation without clarifying whether these historic Jewish neighborhoods fall within its reach. Deliberately.

Consider the consequences. A future Democratic president may decide to state that “East Jerusalem” actually exists and that it is part of the West Bank. The activities described above become a crime.

An American buys an apartment in the Jewish Quarter, where Jews lived for centuries before Jordan expelled its Jewish residents in 1948. He hires an Israeli company to restore the property. If an American administration classifies the Old City as a settlement (at least, any location where a Jew buys land) and sanctions that company for its broader construction or maintenance activities, paying the contractor could become a federal offense.

Now consider Ir David, the City of David, where archaeological excavations uncover the streets, structures and artifacts of ancient Jerusalem. An American donor might contribute money to uncover archaeological remains. But if the recipient organization were sanctioned, that donation could become prohibited.

Ir David excavations unearthing Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple. (photo: First One Through July 2024)

The ramification would be to halt Jews from connecting to their past and only enable Arabs to excavate or destroy Jewish history.

Then there is Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue. Built in 1877 in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, the synagogue was destroyed during Jordan’s conquest of the Old City in 1948. Its reconstruction restores a Jewish house of worship that existed generations before Israel recaptured the Old City in 1967.

Could the organization rebuilding it be sanctioned for construction or maintenance in territory an administration considers a settlement? In addition to being obtuse about Jerusalem, the bill contains no express exemption for historic synagogues, religious restoration or Jewish institutions predating 1948.

Domes of the Tiferet Yisrael (top center) and Hurva Synagogues (above right) return to the Old City skyline (photo: First One Through November 2025)

The legislation invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Willful violations of applicable prohibitions can carry criminal fines of up to $1 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years. Civil penalties may apply even without criminal intent.

If an administration designates locations in Jerusalem’s Old City, an American could potentially be barred from ordering a handmade menorah or other merchandise produced there for shipment to the United States.

Castro says his legislation is intended to stop settlement expansion and Palestinian dispossession. Yet its language raises questions about the Old City of Jerusalem, the maintenance of existing homes, archaeological preservation, religious reconstruction and ordinary commercial activity.

Despite the language, the self-declared “pro-Israel” group J Street has endorsed it.

Fifty-four Democrats have attached their names to legislation that could reach into the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. And the list of Democratic co-sponsors and anti-Israel alt-left Jewish groups supporting it continues to grow.

Turning Deep Blue New York, Purple

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The Democratic Socialists of America have discovered that the shortest path to socialist political power runs through the Democratic Party’s safest districts. Their ambitions extend beyond winning elections. They seek to transform American capitalism, foreign policy and the Democratic Party itself.

DSA’s National Political Committee celebrated Chris Rabb‘s congressional primary victory in Philadelphia as a win in “the deepest blue Democratic district in the country.” In districts where the Democratic primary effectively determines the general election, a disciplined socialist organization can acquire political power using electoral majorities built by generations of traditional Democrats. Rabb said of his win ““that the era of establishment politics is coming to an end.”

DSA is remarkably candid about its objectives. Its National Electoral Commission advocates building an independent mass socialist party with a program that will allow the working class to “end capitalism.” Nationally endorsed candidates must support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. DSA leader Sydney Carlson-White celebrated Rabb’s victory as “bringing an anti-Zionist, anti-AIPAC, anti-capitalist voice into Congress in the bluest district in the United States.”

Rabb’s backers included:

  • Democratic Socialists of America
  • Working Families Party
  • Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
  • Hasan Piker

Hasan Piker, the influential socialist commentator who campaigns alongside many DSA candidates, is explicit about the political strategy. Describing the Democratic Party, he declared, “That’s a weak party. That’s a party that you can seize. That’s a party that you can take advantage of.“

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani demonstrates how far that movement has advanced. His victory brought a democratic socialist into one of America’s most prominent political offices, while DSA-backed candidates subsequently defeated established Democrats in congressional primaries.

DSA-backed Zohran Mamdani went on to win deep blue New York City’s mayoral race

The Democratic Party provides the ballot line and historically loyal electorate. DSA supplies the candidates, volunteers and ideological discipline.

In New York, Governor Kathy Hochul faces Republican Bruce Blakeman. Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than two to one, and Hochul entered October with a substantial polling advantage. Mamdani has endorsed her, as have various far-left politicians including Rep. Nydia Velázquez, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Can the Democratic Party continue accommodating an organized socialist movement committed to ending capitalism and advancing anti-Zionism while assuming that traditional Democrats will continue delivering overwhelming electoral majorities?

NY Governor Kathy Hochul with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani

A narrowing Democratic margin could send a powerful signal that the party’s safest territory is becoming more competitive. The political consequences could extend beyond one election, influencing candidate recruitment, party alliances and the willingness of Democratic leaders to accommodate DSA’s agenda.

DSA has made its intentions unmistakable. Piker has described a party ripe for seizure. The movement has demonstrated that it can defeat Democratic incumbents and turn those victories into growing political power.

Jews in New York have historically voted Democrat by wide numbers are turning to Republicans due to the al-left seizure of the party

Moderate Democratic politician will tell you in confidence in private: New York Democrats should vote for moderate politicians in the primaries and for Republicans in the general election to turn New York purple, to create a wall against the tide of vile hatred stemming from the far-left flank taking over the party.

Related:

The DSA Is Systematically Coming For Zionist Jews (August 2023)

It’s Time to Study Jihadi Hate

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Universities have spent decades developing sophisticated tools for understanding hatred.

Researchers study antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, white supremacy and neo-Nazism. They examine how people come to view another group as inferior or threatening, how prejudice spreads through institutions and communities, how propaganda turns stereotypes into dehumanization, and when hatred crosses into violence.

Other scholars have spent decades studying terrorism. START at the University of Maryland, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, King’s College London’s International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, RAND, CSIS and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism have examined jihadist organizations, recruitment, radicalization, propaganda and violence in extraordinary detail.

Cover of CTC Sentinel, July 2020, featuring an article on the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in West Africa, with an image of armed individuals in a desert landscape.
West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center (CTC)

Put the two disciplines in the same room.

Give them ISIS propaganda and ask the questions hate scholars routinely ask about neo-Nazis: Who is inferior? Who is dangerous? Who belongs? Who must submit or leave? Who may be killed? What ideology makes those conclusions seem morally permissible?

“under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.” – Hamas foundational charter, Article 6

“Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions – Islam, Christianity and Judaism – to coexist in peace and quiet with each other. Peace and quiet would not be possible except under the wing of Islam.” – Hamas foundational charter, Article 31

The resulting field would not study Islam. It would study jihadi hate.

The Missing Research Question

Consider what researchers already know.

ISIS classified Yazidis as polytheists, Shiites as apostates and Christians as a subordinate religious population. Al-Qaeda invoked “Jews and Crusaders.” ISIS murdered Coptic Christians while explicitly identifying them by religion. Boko Haram has attacked churches and Christian communities while also slaughtering Muslims who reject its ideology.

Infographic detailing mass-casualty terrorist attacks since 2001, ordered by number of victims, with statistics on various attacks globally.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum concluded that ISIS committed atrocities “in accordance with its extremist religious ideology,” deliberately targeting groups according to identity.

That is terrorism. But it is also something else.

When neo-Nazis create a hierarchy of human beings, researchers study supremacism. When Jews are characterized collectively as dangerous, researchers study antisemitism. When Muslims are demonized because they are Muslim, researchers study Islamophobia.

So study the jihadist hierarchy with the same intellectual tools.

What Would Jihadi Hate Studies Examine?

The field should begin with primary sources rather than assumptions about Islam.

A group of children sitting in a line on the ground, focused on reading books. One child in the foreground holds an open book, reciting, while others around him are also engaged in reading.
Somalia has few children attending school. Those that do often attend jihadi schools of hatred until age 15 when they are sent to military training to combat “infidels”

Researchers could build a database of jihadist sermons, manifestos, videos, school materials, recruitment literature and governing documents from ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, al-Shabaab and other organizations. CTC has begun to compile jihadi materials against “the Jewish-Crusaders alliance” regarding “Palestine.” Each could be coded for how it describes Christians, Jews, Yazidis, Hindus, Shiites, secular Muslims, atheists and alleged apostates.

Then ask measurable questions.

How frequently are particular populations portrayed as enemies? When does theological disagreement become dehumanization? How is takfir used to turn another Muslim into a legitimate target? Which doctrines justify unequal treatment rather than violence? Which arguments make the leap from discrimination to expulsion, enslavement or murder?

Most importantly: Which ideas actually predict violence?

Two Islamists slit the throat of an 86-year old priest in France in 2016

Compare Supremacisms Without Equating Them

Researchers should also compare jihadist propaganda with other supremacist ideologies—not because neo-Nazism and jihadism are identical, but because comparison is how scholarship discovers recurring mechanisms.

Take a neo-Nazi manifesto and an ISIS publication and ask identical questions.

Who supposedly corrupted society? Who caused the community’s humiliation? Who is portrayed as secretly powerful? Who contaminates the ideal society? What glorious past must be restored? What future order is promised? When does collective blame become permission for violence?

Jihadists kill people around Spain

The answers will differ enormously. The mechanisms may not. That could tell us something important about hatred itself.

What This Field Must Not Become

This study should not be about Islam but a particular strain of Islamic extremism. It should study an identifiable phenomenon: the process by which particular extremist interpretations construct religious hierarchies, turn out-groups into enemies and authorize violence against them.

And Muslims should be central to the research because jihadist hatred is frequently directed at Muslims themselves. Fondapol found that almost 89 percent of Islamist-terrorism deaths occurred in Muslim-majority countries. Shiites, alleged apostates, insufficiently observant Muslims and Muslims who resist jihadist organizations have all been targets.

A group of people performing in a dramatic reenactment, with one individual on the ground appearing to be in distress, while others express emotions of sorrow and anger in a public setting.
Muslim woman killed by fellow Muslims in Afghanistan after people claimed she had torn a Koran

Studying jihadi hate would therefore not be a project against Muslims. Much of it would be a project about understanding the ideologies killing them.

Where Should This Research Live?

The logical home is a university, jointly situated between existing terrorism and hate-studies programs.

START already possesses terrorism data and expertise. George Washington studies global jihadism and antisemitism. UCLA has built an Initiative to Study Hate. Other universities maintain centers studying genocide, religious persecution and radicalization.

“86 events (12.3%) in the school-based violence T2V data were also categorized as terrorism or premeditated hate crime, indicating they were
ideologically motivated.” – START Plots Targeting Schools

The expertise already exists. What is missing is the bridge.

Bring together terrorism researchers, historians, psychologists, quantitative social scientists, genocide scholars and specialists in Islamic theology and languages. Muslim scholars could be indispensable – not as political cover, but because distinguishing mainstream Islamic traditions from jihadist interpretations requires serious theological and linguistic expertise.

Funding should likewise be diversified and transparent, avoiding dependence upon any government, religious community or advocacy constituency with an obvious stake in the findings.

Then publish data rather than slogans.

Phone call from Gazan to parents gleefully telling them how he killed Jews with his bare hands

The Test for Hate Studies

If scholars have developed tools that explain how white supremacists turn racial hierarchy into violence, those tools should at least be tested against a movement that turns religious hierarchy into violence.

Perhaps they will reveal profound differences. Perhaps they will uncover common mechanisms: humiliation, collective guilt, conspiracy, purity, dehumanization and dreams of restoring a lost social order.

Either result would advance knowledge, and with it, possible remedies.

We do not need another institution to tell us that jihadists kill people. We need scholarship explaining how an evil ideology teaches people whom they are obligated to hate – and when that hatred becomes permission to kill.

Seeing Good and Taking It: From Eden to the Flood

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God, Eve, and the corrupt rulers of Noah’s generation all do the same thing. They see something good and take it. One act establishes paradise. Another brings expulsion. The third precedes the destruction of humanity. How can the same sequence of actions produce such different judgments?

The Hebrew repeats a striking pattern: va’yar (saw), tov (good), and va’yikach (took). The words recur across the opening chapters of Genesis, but the morality of taking changes dramatically.

God surveys His creation and sees that it is tov me’od, very good (Genesis 1:31). He then takes Adam and places him in the Garden of Eden (2:15), providing him with a home, sustenance, and responsibility. Rashi (1040-1105), citing the Midrash, explains that God took Adam with pleasant words, persuading him to enter. The Creator uses His authority over what He made to benefit another.

Eve follows the same linguistic pattern, this time within a single verse. She sees that the tree is tov, good for food, and takes its fruit (3:6). Eve did not create the tree but was a beneficiary of God’s extraordinary generosity, permitted to eat from virtually every tree in Eden. The one she chose was expressly forbidden.

The third instance appears just before the Flood. The Bnei HaElohim see that the daughters of man are tovot, beautiful, and take wives from whomever they choose (6:2). Rashi identifies these men as rulers and judges, while Ramban (1194-1270) describes their taking as coercive. Men entrusted with authority use their power to seize women they neither created nor had any inherent right to possess.

The progression is from creator to recipient to appropriator. God sees goodness in what He created. Eve sees goodness in what she was given to enjoy, subject to a boundary. The rulers see goodness in other human beings and treat their desires as sufficient authority to possess them.

The contrast between God’s taking and that of the rulers is especially revealing. God, while possessing ultimate authority, persuades Adam with pleasant words. Men with limited authority, compel. They exercise the prerogatives of a creator over people they did not create.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) understood that desire is natural, while virtue requires knowing when and how to satisfy it. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) insisted that human beings must never be treated merely as instruments for another’s desires. Wanting something good is neither inherently virtuous nor sinful. The moral question is whether we have the right to take it, whether permission has been granted or withheld, and what our taking means for others.

God grants humanity dominion over creation in Genesis 1:28. By Genesis 6, powerful men have effectively extended that dominion to other human beings. What began as stewardship of creation has become domination of people. The earth is filled with hamas, violence and injustice, and the Flood follows.

A white marble sculpture depicting a male figure with wings embracing a female figure, both in a dynamic pose suggesting movement and passion.
The Sons of God Saw the Daughters of Men That They Were Fair, by Daniel Chester French (1850-1931), modeled by 1918, carved 1923

God sees goodness in what He created and takes to give. Eve sees goodness in what she was given and takes what was forbidden. The rulers see goodness in other human beings and take whomever they please.

Va’yar. Tov. Va’yikach. Saw. Good. Took.

The Hebrew remains nearly identical. The morality changes completely.

The road from Eden to the Flood begins when people confuse the goodness of what they see with their entitlement to take it for themselves.

The Countries Paying for Palestinian Children Aren’t Having Their Own

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For decades, the world has been told that Palestinians live under conditions of extraordinary deprivation. Yet before October 7, 2023, several important demographic and social indicators told a very different story.

In 2022, the West Bank and Gaza had a fertility rate of approximately 3.4 children per woman. Among countries with fertility rates above three, the Palestinian territories also reported relatively high life expectancy, low infant mortality and exceptionally high adult literacy.

Uniquely among its Arab peers. Only Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (neither Arab) among high fertility countries, have quality of life statistics remotely close to Palestinian Arabs.

A colorful table ranking high-fertility countries by life expectancy in 2022, displaying columns for country name, fertility rate, infant mortality, life expectancy, adult literacy rate, and highlighting values with color coding.

Palestinian Arab adult literacy was 98%. Infant mortality was far below that of many other high-fertility populations. Reported life expectancy was in the mid-70s, although estimates vary by source.

These were meaningful achievements, particularly in a region marked by conflict, poverty and political instability. They reflected billions of dollars of investment in education, extensive public health and educational services.

These incredible quality of life statistics came principally from the charity of western countries. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Norway, Ireland and other countries have provided extensive financial assistance to Palestinian Arabs, both directly and through international institutions such as UNRWA.

Yet these charitable countries face an entirely different demographic reality.

In 2022, fertility in Norway was approximately 1.4 children per woman. Ireland and Germany were around 1.5. Japan approximately 1.3, and the United States around 1.7. All were below the roughly 2.1 births per woman associated with long-term population replacement in low-mortality societies.

The Palestinian territories, meanwhile, averaged approximately 3.4.

So the countries financing Palestinian schools, hospitals and social services were experiencing declining birth rates and aging populations at home. And their taxpayers were helping support a population having roughly twice as many children per woman as their own societies.

And despite the western generosity and much better quality of life than surrounding Arabs, these same Palestinians decided to launch a genocidal war against Israel and destroy the world that Europeans and Americans financed.

A person in military attire holding a firearm while walking on a path surrounded by trees and buildings.
Member of Gazan terrorist group during massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023

The uncomfortable question for international donors is whether charity to a people who prioritize destroying their neighbor over building a society is logical. Or moral.

Norway, Ireland, Germany and Japan cannot purchase peace simply by financing another generation’s schools and hospitals.

A society’s children deserve more than the opportunity to survive infancy, learn to read and live long lives. They deserve leaders who will not gamble away those achievements in war, and an ideology that values coexistence with a Jewish State.

Related:

“Deformity in Palestinian Culture” Is A Permanent Feature (August 2023)

J Street’s Blindness to Hamas Is Moral Cowardice

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J Street calls itself “pro-Israel and pro-peace.” Apparently, that requires pretending Hamas has no agency nor role in the conflict.

In a Facebook post marking the anniversary of the Gaza ceasefire, J Street laments displaced Palestinians, continuing deaths, stalled reconstruction and the absence of a new Palestinian government. It then delivers its indictment:

“We cannot claim to stand for Israel’s future while looking away as its government denies Palestinians the possibility of one.”

A social media post from J Street discussing the ongoing struggles of Israelis and Palestinians, emphasizing unfulfilled hopes for peace and the plight of displaced families in Gaza.

Notice who is missing from this account of Gaza’s future: Hamas.

Hamas launched the October 7 massacre. Hamas continues to maintain an armed organization. Hamas has resisted surrendering its weapons and relinquishing military control. Yet in J Street’s telling, the obstacle to peace is Israel’s government.

Hamas becomes a passive spectator to its own war. Palestinians become people without political leadership or responsibility. Israel alone possesses agency, and therefore Israel alone receives blame.

J Street knows better. Its own policy analyses acknowledge Hamas’s continued armed presence and the necessity of disarmament. Yet when communicating with its Facebook audience, those inconvenient facts disappear.

J Street claims to be pro-Israel and pro-peace while treating Hamas as an innocent bystander and Israel as the sole villain. That is more than intellectual dishonesty. It is moral cowardice masquerading as moral clarity.

HISTORICAL ECHO

We have seen this in Jewish history before – those in leadership positions enabling the mob rather than confronting depravity.

In the wilderness, Aaron fashioned a Golden Calf rather than confront a crowd demanding an idol. Today, condemning Israel has become a new Golden Calf, an act of public devotion that substitutes fashionable outrage for moral judgment. J Street, which claims to speak for Jewish values and Israel’s future, should recognize the biblical warning. Instead, it leads and joins the worshippers, sacrificing moral clarity on the altar of popular approval.

A dramatic historical painting depicting a crowd worshipping a golden calf, with individuals in ancient attire engaging in fervent celebration. The scene includes a central figure presenting offerings to the calf, surrounded by onlookers expressing various emotions.

Israel is a Palestinian Arab Child MAKER

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Before the October 7, 2023 Gazan massacre of Israelis and the subsequent war in Gaza, Palestinian Arabs enjoyed one of the most favorable combinations of high fertility and low childhood mortality in the surrounding Arab world.

Typically, wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have few children and lower infant mortality, defined as a child dying before five years old. Poorer countries and those in conflict have more children and higher infant mortality, like Yemen, Iraq and Syria.

Yet in 2022, Palestinian women had approximately 3.6 children each, while the under-five mortality rate in the West Bank and Gaza was roughly 14 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Compare that with Syria, where approximately 21 children per 1,000 died before their fifth birthday. In Iraq, the figure was 23. In Yemen, 41. The difference was enormous. West Bank and Gaza Arabs were much closer to the exceptional high fertility and low infant mortality rates of Israel.

A chart illustrating under-five mortality rates relative to fertility rates for various countries near Israel in 2022, highlighting Israel and the West Bank and Gaza's lower-than-expected child mortality despite higher fertility.

If one were to expand the regional focus to Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti, one would see an even more dramatic gap – Sudan (4.38; 51.7), Ethiopia (4.2; 46.5), Eritrea (3.79; 36.6) and Djibouti (2.7; 51.9). On the other extreme for wealthy Gulf states are UAE (1.15; 5.3) and Qatar (1.74; 6.1).

Applying Syria’s childhood mortality rate to approximately 144,000 Palestinian births in 2022 would imply roughly 950 additional deaths before age five. Iraq’s rate would imply another 1,300 deaths compared with the Palestinian rate. Yemen’s would imply nearly 3,900 additional deaths.

Extend those differences illustratively across 20 annual birth cohorts, assuming similar numbers of births and mortality differences, and the results are striking: approximately 19,000 additional Palestinian childhood survivors compared with Syria’s rate, 26,500 compared with Iraq’s, and 78,000 compared with Yemen’s. Using the same methodology for Sudan or Djibouti would result in nearly 110,000 Palestinian Arabs childhood deaths.

The Palestinian territories benefited from robust vaccination programs, maternal healthcare, hospitals, and medical services developed over decades, including services provided through United Nations and Palestinian institutions, international organizations, and cooperation with Israel.

Despite the incremental 19,000 to 110,000 young Palestinian Arabs alive today because of healthcare investment and coordination with Israel, anti-Israel organizations have been accusing Israel of pursuing a “genocide” and the destruction of the Palestinian population. These figures illustrate the precise opposite. Israel is a Palestinian Arab child MAKER.

The demographic record deserves to be confronted: Palestinian Arabs were raising large families, with child survival outcomes that compared extremely favorably with much of the neighboring Arab world.

Ramifications: A World of Muslims and “Non-Muslims”

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The parade of international dignitaries has left New York City. The various leaders from the free and non-free world came to speak at the United Nations General Assembly as they do every September.

They left behind the smell of an organism rotting.

The global agency has long had a history of inept bureaucracy. That is, and likely will always be, a defining characteristic of thousands of politicians and diplomats from so many cultures and philosophies convening together. Arguably, its inability to do anything should be viewed as a protective relief, not failure.

The problem I see is well beyond the simmering war between the Global South and the Global North, where regions are competing for a greater share of economic and political power. That is politics on a grand scale.

The rot is stemming from an institution that is increasingly dividing the world between Muslims and “non-Muslims.”

  • Azerbaijan has Muslim and “non-Muslim” communities
  • The UN presses whether Kuwait is “abolishing all legal provisions that discriminate against non-Muslim women”
  • Iraq law states clearly that “No Muslim woman may marry a non-Muslim man.”
  • The UN notes how Malaysia has different laws for non-Muslims
  • The UN asked the Maldives whether it has repealed laws preventing non-Muslims from becoming citizens
  • Pakistan sets laws for non-Muslims
  • The UN questions whether Qatar continues to have different laws for non-Muslims
  • UN report on Somalia: “Non-Muslims report that they cannot practise their religions openly.”
  • United Arab Emirates has a federal law “regulating places of worship for non-Muslims”

The list goes on.

Farkhunda Malikzada (actually a Muslim woman) was beaten and lynched in Afghanistan in 2015, falsely accused of burning a Koran. In the aftermath of Malikzada’s lynching, a number of Muslim clerics and Afghan government officials stated that she had desecrated Islam in order to gain American citizenship.

Leaders of the United Nations agencies similarly use the divide:

No other religion has such frequent use at the United Nations. Try to find “non-Christian”, “non-Hindu” or any other division of people and law and you will find barely a handful.

Priyantha Kumara, a Sri Lankan Buddhist living in Pakistan, was accused of blasphemy and a mob beat him to death and set his body on fire in 2021

RAMIFICATIONS

The prevalence of the term “non-Muslims” does several things at once. It places Muslims at the center of the religious world, elevates Islam as the dominant religious reference point, and erases everyone else into a single category of “other.” Christians, Baha’is, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists and countless other religious communities lose their distinct identities, histories and belief systems. They become defined solely by what they are not: Muslim.

This linguistic centering of Islam is a subtle form of Islamic supremacy. The steady repetition of “non-Muslim” is a form of colonizing the mind, conditioning people to see Islam as the standard against which all other faiths are measured. Language shapes assumptions, and repetition makes those assumptions seem natural. Eventually, a religious hierarchy becomes so embedded in everyday vocabulary that people cease to notice it.

The distance between the polite bureaucratic term “non-Muslim” and the radical Islamist characterization of others as “infidels” is smaller than it first appears. The words carry different meanings and implications, but both can frame humanity around a single religious dividing line: those who belong to Islam and those who do not. For radicals who seek Islamic domination, that division is foundational.

The United Nations was established to recognize the equal dignity of all peoples. Yet its own vocabulary repeatedly places one religion at the center and relegates the rest of humanity to the margins.

The United Nations is subtly surrendering the world’s religions to Islam. Right in front of us.