The United Nations Secretary-General issued a statement yesterday condemning Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut.
That was expected.
What was remarkable was his explanation.
Guterres wrote that the strikes occurred “despite the ceasefire” and at a moment when the United States and Iran were expected to reach an agreement that would “pave the way to a peaceful resolution of this conflict.” He then added that “this conflict is having a devastating impact on the world’s economy.”
The statement raises an obvious question: what do his comments have to do with Israel and Hezbollah?
The negotiations were between the United States and Iran. Israel was not a participant. Israel did not negotiate the terms. Israel did not sign the agreement. American officials themselves stated that Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon was not a condition of the deal.
Yet Guterres presented Israel’s actions as though they were undermining an agreement to which Israel was never a party.
The logic becomes even stranger when he turns to the economy.
The conflict affecting global markets is not the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The economic concern revolves around the American war with Iran which threatens energy supplies and disrupts shipping routes. Markets do not react because Hezbollah fires rockets into northern Israel or because Israel strikes Hezbollah positions in Beirut.
But in the Secretary-General’s telling, Israel is the root cause.
A Hezbollah-Israel clash suddenly becomes a threat to the world economy. A U.S.-Iran negotiation suddenly becomes Israel’s responsibility. An agreement Israel never joined suddenly becomes grounds to condemn Israel.
This is absurd.
But it is a continuation of the farce that is the United Nations.
The UN Secretary General is so obsessed with vilifying Israel and getting the world to join in, that he manufactures reasons that are devoid of any logic.
They are Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Bedouin, and others. They are children going to school, parents going to work, soldiers defending their country, and grandparents hoping to see their families thrive. Like people everywhere, they seek safety, opportunity, dignity, and peace.
Those aspirations should not be controversial.
Yet few nations are asked to justify their existence as frequently as Israel.
That is why the phrase “Let Israel Live” matters.
At its most basic level, it is an affirmation of a simple principle: a people has the right to live in security in its homeland. Israeli children should not grow up under the threat of rockets, missiles, terrorism, kidnappings, or calls for their destruction. Families should not have to wonder whether a bus ride, a concert, or a holiday celebration will become the target of violence.
In October 2003 – well before there was a blockade of Gaza – 89% of Palestinian Arabs supported killing Jewish civilians in the West Bank and Gaza; 54% supported killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. Gazans were much more blood-thirsty than West Bank Arabs.
Security is not a privilege. It is a right.
To say “Let Israel Live” is to recognize that Israelis are human beings rather than symbols in a political debate. Discussions about Israel often revolve around governments, borders, diplomacy, and conflict. Lost in those discussions are the millions of ordinary people whose lives are directly affected by them.
The phrase carries an even deeper meaning for the Jewish people.
For centuries, Jews lived at the mercy of rulers, empires, and majorities. Again and again they were expelled, persecuted, or denied the ability to determine their own future. Israel represents the restoration of Jewish self-determination in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people.
To say “Let Israel Live” is therefore not merely a statement about physical security. It is an affirmation that the Jewish people, like all peoples, possess the right to govern themselves and shape their own destiny.
The phrase “Let Israel Live” asks for nothing extraordinary.
It asks that Israel be granted what every people seeks for itself: the right to live, the right to flourish, and the right to exist in peace.
On the evening of June 16, 2017, 23-year-old Border Police officer Hadas Malka was standing guard near Jerusalem’s Damascus Gate, one of the busiest entrances to the Old City.
Before the night was over, she would be dead.
Border Police officer Hadas Malka, who was killed on June 16, 2017, in a stabbing attack near Damascus Gate in Jerusalem
Three Palestinian terrorists from villages near Ramallah launched coordinated attacks using knives and firearms. As officers responded, one of the attackers rushed Malka and stabbed her repeatedly. Four others were wounded before security forces killed the terrorists.
Malka, from Ashdod, died of her injuries shortly afterward.
What followed made the attack unusual even by the standards of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
ISIS claimed responsibility.
“lions of the caliphate carried out a blessed operation in the city of Jerusalem.” –ISIS
“The three hero martyrs who executed the Jerusalem operation have no connection to Daesh [ISIS], they are affiliated with the [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine] and Hamas,” Hamas official Izzat El-Reshiq tweeted.
The argument was never about the murder itself. It was about who deserved recognition for carrying it out.
For many outside the Middle East, ISIS represents a uniquely dangerous form of extremism. Yet in Jerusalem that night, the distinction mattered little to the victim. Whether carried out in the name of ISIS, Hamas, or the PFLP, the result was the same: a young policewoman was murdered while protecting the public.
The attack came years before October 7, but it reflected a pattern that long predates both events. Terrorist groups may differ in ideology, tactics, and leadership. Their rivalry often centers on who can claim the mantle of “resistance” and the vile prestige that follows a successful attack.
On June 16, 2017, that competition played out in plain sight.
A young Israeli officer lay dead. Three terrorist organizations wanted the world to know the attack belonged to them.
I took this photograph at the 9/11 memorial in Westchester the morning after the Knicks’ victory. Above the memorial, two airplane contrails crossed in the sky. For a moment, the come from behind basketball victories and terrorist tragedies made time collapse. The memory of loss, the joy of victory, and the story of New York itself all appeared in a single frame.
No city I know lives more intensely between triumph and tragedy.
This is the city that stood at the center of the world, nearly went bankrupt, reinvented itself, endured the horror of September 11th, and somehow found a way to rise again. It is a place of breathtaking architecture, relentless ambition, and an economy that continues to attract dreamers from every corner of the globe.
It is also a city of contradictions. A city capable of extraordinary tolerance and extraordinary intolerance. A city that nurtured one of the greatest Jewish communities in history, yet today struggles with normalized antisemitism many thought belonged to the past. A city whose institutions remain among the world’s finest, yet whose values are constantly being tested.
For much of my life, I thought Sinatra’s line—“If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”—meant New York was the ultimate destination. The summit. The place where success itself was measured.
Standing beneath this memorial, I wondered whether I had misunderstood the lyric.
Maybe New York’s greatest lesson is not that it’s the “top of the heap.” Maybe its lesson is resilience.
To make it in New York is to learn how to navigate uncertainty. To endure setbacks. To celebrate victories without believing they will last forever, and to face disappointments without believing they are permanent. The city rises, falls, and rises again. So do the people who call it home.
And if you learn to survive the waves here, you will never fear the next horizon.
The Palestinian Authority has announced plans to transform Solomon’s Pools, between Bethlehem and Efrat, into a major Palestinian tourist, cultural, and religious destination. The project includes a mosque, tourism infrastructure, educational programs, international advocacy campaigns, and efforts to preserve what officials describe as the site’s historical and demographic character.
The irony is hard to miss.
Solomon’s Pools are among the most important surviving engineering works of ancient Judea. Built during the Second Temple period, the reservoirs and aqueducts supplied water to Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple. Their existence is evidence of the Jewish civilization that built and governed Jerusalem over two thousand years ago, that grew the city towards the end of the Second Temple period to approximately 50,0000 people.
Mazar, A.A. 2002. Survey of the aqueducts to Israel. In The Aqueducts of Israel, ed. Amit D., Patrich J., and Hirschfeld Y., 212–244.
Without Jewish Jerusalem, there would be no Solomon’s Pools.
Yet Palestinian officials speak of preserving the site’s historical character while proposing changes that have no connection to the history that made the site significant.
If the goal is to preserve the site’s historical character, why alter it?
If the goal is to protect its demographic character, what demographic character existed when the reservoirs were built?
The people who built Solomon’s Pools were Jews. The reservoirs were built to serve a Jewish capital. The aqueducts carried water to the Jewish Temple. The site’s significance is inseparable from ancient Jewish Jerusalem.
Solomon’s Pools c. 1890
So why place a mosque at a reservoir built by Jews to serve Jewish Jerusalem while claiming to preserve its historical character?
The answer appears in the language of the project itself. Officials speak of strengthening Palestinian presence, reinforcing Palestinian identity, and mobilizing international support for Palestinian claims.
This is not preservation. This is a battle of historical replacement.
A generation from now, visitors may encounter a mosque, Palestinian tourism facilities, and Palestinian historical narratives. What may become increasingly distant is the reason the site exists at all: it was built by Jews to serve Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people.
“We know that the prime Zionist goal is emptying this land of its Christians and Muslims. They [the Jews] don’t want anyone here other than themselves. The Christians before the Muslims, because the Christians were here on this land before the Muslims… the Christian is the brother of the Muslim. They celebrate together, suffer together, live together, work together, and fight together against their enemy, because we have been the owners of this land since this land’s existence… We will remain in this land forever, while the attackers [the Jews] have no place in Jerusalem and no place here.” – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas March 2023
That is how historical replacement works. The monument is not destroyed. The identity of its builders is replaced.
Solomon’s Pools stand as evidence of Jewish statehood, Jewish engineering, and Jewish life in the land of Israel long before the rise of Christianity, Islam, or modern Palestinian nationalism.
Solomon’s Pools is located off Road 60, between Efrat and Bethlehem
Palestinians nationalism is being built on erasing Jewish history and heritage. Today, it is clearly evident at Solomon’s Pools.
“Now the days were the days of the first ripe grapes” (Numbers 13:20).
At first glance, the verse appears to be little more than a calendar note. The spies entered Canaan during harvest season. Naturally they found grapes.
But the Torah rarely includes details without purpose.
The Israelites had spent generations hearing about a land flowing with milk and honey. They stood at the threshold of that promise. The spies were being sent to verify it. They entered the land at the very moment when its abundance would be on full display. The nation was waiting for proof.
And the spies returned carrying exactly that proof: an enormous cluster of grapes from the Valley of Eshkol.
Panel showing two Israelite spies carrying enormous grapes from map by Jan Jansson, 1631
Yet the sages make a curious observation. According to Sotah 34a, the ten spies who delivered the negative report carried the produce. Joshua and Caleb carried nothing.
Why not?
The question becomes even more intriguing when we remember that this is not the first time representatives of the tribes returned carrying evidence.
Centuries earlier, Joseph’s brothers returned to Jacob with Joseph’s coat dipped in blood. They never explicitly claimed Joseph was dead. They simply presented the evidence and allowed Jacob to reach the conclusion they intended.
Perhaps the spies were doing something similar.
We often read the giant cluster of grapes as proof of the goodness of the land. But what if that was not how the spies intended it to be understood?
The Torah’s report moves almost seamlessly from the fruit to the inhabitants:
“Indeed it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Nevertheless, the people who dwell in the land are strong…” (Numbers 13:27-28)
Look at these grapes, the spies may have been saying. Ordinary men do not live in a place that produces fruit like this. The same land that yields giant grapes yields giant warriors.
Seen this way, the grapes were not simply a sample of the harvest. They were evidence enlisted in support of a conclusion they sought to impart: fear.
This possibility sheds new light on the teaching in Sotah. If the fruit was being used to support the spies’ narrative, Joshua and Caleb’s refusal to carry it becomes understandable. They were not rejecting the grapes. They were rejecting the interpretation attached to them.
The parallel to Joseph’s coat becomes even deeper when we consider who these men were.
Joshua descended from Joseph through Ephraim. Caleb descended from Judah. The descendants of Joseph and Judah became the two spies who stood apart from the majority.
Joseph’s brothers brought a coat. The spies brought grapes. Neither group needed to invent evidence. The objects were real. What mattered was the narrative attached to them.
The brothers used a coat to tell a story about Joseph. The spies used grapes to tell a story about the Land. In both cases, the evidence itself did not contain the conclusion. The conclusion came from those presenting it.
Perhaps that is the deeper lesson connecting these two stories. Facts matter, but facts rarely arrive without interpretation. The same coat could become evidence of tragedy or merely separation. The same cluster of grapes could become evidence of giants or evidence of God’s promise.
The challenge is not simply to examine the evidence before us. It is to recognize the narrative that accompanies it and to ask whether the story being told is the only one the evidence supports.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently declared that he supports “a monopoly on weapons by the Lebanese Government.”
He is right.
No sovereign state can exist when an organization maintains its own army outside central government control. Hezbollah may hold seats in parliament and participate in Lebanese politics, but that does not give it the right to possess an independent military force and wage war outside the direction of the government.
The obvious question is why the Secretary-General does not apply the same principle to Gaza.
If Lebanon requires a state monopoly on force, then so does any future Palestinian state. Hamas must be disarmed. There is no path to peace while an independent army remains outside governmental authority.
Yet the United Nations does not say so. Instead, it issues endless calls for ceasefires, negotiations, and diplomacy while avoiding the central reality that an armed movement dedicated to Israel’s destruction cannot simultaneously be the foundation for coexistence.
That double standard helps sustain the current conflict. Israelis and Gazans continue to suffer while international institutions refuse to confront the most basic requirement for ending the war.
But today’s war is not the real danger.
The real danger is what comes next.
Every major Palestinian poll points in the same direction. Palestinians are increasingly likely to hand control of the Palestinian Authority itself to Hamas or leaders who share Hamas’s objectives.
The result will not be a Palestinian Authority that replaces Hamas but Hamas becoming the Palestinian Authority.
At that point, Hamas will no longer be an armed movement operating from Gaza. It will be the internationally recognized government of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. Its army will no longer be described as a militia but the armed forces of Palestine, internationally recognized, and still committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.
If so, the suffering of Israelis and Gazans today will pale in comparison to the conflict that follows.
Difficult situations are sometimes referred to as being between a rock and a hard place. The popular Palestinian terrorist group places the Middle East between a double standard and a destructive standard.
When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attacked Israel this week, most English-language reports focused on his accusations of genocide, his attacks on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his warnings about regional instability.
But Arabic and Turkish media focused on a different line.
According to Turkey’s own state-run Anadolu Agency, Erdoğan declared:
“We know very well what the ultimate objective of the delusions of the Promised Land is, and God willing, we will never allow it.”
It is a line he has used for years. It’s a headline phrase across the Arab world. Al Jazeera highlighted it. Egypt’s Al-Ahram highlighted it. Al-Quds Al-Arabi highlighted it. He uses it as a charge that Israel is coming for Turkey itself.
Yet the English-language media ignored it.
That omission matters because Erdoğan was no longer criticizing Israeli policy. He was ridiculing a foundational Jewish belief.
The Promised Land is not a policy of Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not a platform of the Israeli government. It is a central element of Jewish faith, history, and identity dating back more than three thousand years. It appears throughout the Hebrew Bible and has been part of Jewish religious life through centuries of exile.
Calling that belief a “delusion” is no different than mocking Christian belief in the Resurrection or Muslim belief in the divine revelation of the Quran.
There is a word for dismissing the core religious beliefs of Jews as uniquely illegitimate: antisemitism.
Yet English-language audiences were shielded from that reality. Readers were told Erdoğan was criticizing Israel. They were not told he was deriding one of Judaism’s foundational beliefs. That this is a Muslim war against the Jews.
For years, Western audiences have been told that criticism of Israel must be distinguished from hostility toward Jews. But when a foreign leader publicly mocks a core tenet of Judaism and the press translates it into a story solely about Israeli policy, the distinction is being used in reverse. Anti-Jewish rhetoric is sanitized and repackaged as ordinary criticism of Israel.
Arabic readers saw what Erdoğan actually chose to emphasize. English readers did not, guided on a narrow path to direct the public.
A text message arrived from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asking for money.
The appeal struck her familiar tone of class warfare.
“I don’t spend hours every day calling wealthy people to ask them for money,” she wrote. “No call time with wealthy donors or billionaires.” Instead, she said, her campaign is powered by “regular people giving what they can.”
The imagery is deliberate: a grassroots insurgent taking on powerful interests.
The reality is that that Ocasio-Cortez is so 2018. Today, she has become one of the most powerful fundraising forces in American politics.
According to campaign finance disclosures, she has raised roughly $27.5 million this election cycle—more than the two largest Republican House fundraisers combined. Nearly 88% of that money came from outside New York. Even the portion of her fundraising that comes from larger individual donors totals roughly $8.4 million, a figure that by itself would rank among the strongest fundraising efforts in New York politics.
Those are not the numbers of a beleaguered local fighter. They are the numbers of the richest campaign in the nation.
The irony becomes even sharper later in the appeal. Ocasio-Cortez warns supporters that one of her primary opponent is “a former Wall Street banker.”
The phrase is meant to tell readers everything they need to know: Wall Street. Banker. Establishment.
But AOC is the money. She’s the power in politics. She’s the institutional heavyweight.
That is what makes the fundraising appeal so jarring. Millions of Americans are struggling with rent, mortgages, groceries, tuition, insurance bills, and credit-card debt. Yet the wealthiest campaign in Congress continues to ask ordinary people for another $5, pretending that it’s the underdog.
The Tikvah Society recently gathered in lower Manhattan to celebrate America’s 250th birthday and make the Jewish case for American exceptionalism.
It was an impressive gathering. Jonathan Silver moderated a conversation between Ruth Wisse, Bret Stephens, and Eric Cohen. Yet as the evening unfolded, a question lingered:
Who was missing?
Not from the audience, but from the conversation itself.
The answer matters because the people in the room represent a remarkably small slice of both America and American Jewry. Jews comprise roughly 6 million people in a nation of 330 million (1.8%). Within American Jewry, the Modern Orthodox and strongly Zionist non-Orthodox communities that dominate much of American Jewish intellectual life represent only a fraction of the next generation. And the attendees represented the most engaged of that small sliver.
The setting itself made the omission more striking. The discussion took place in the very neighborhood where some of the foundational events of the American Republic unfolded. Within walking distance stand the sites of Washington’s inauguration, the first Congress, and the earliest experiments in American self-government. Yet for an event dedicated to celebrating America, surprisingly little attention was paid to the place itself.
American flags on Fifth Avenue (photo: First One Through)
Instead, the conversation focused on the future of Jews, universities, religion, and politics.
The panelists disagreed on important questions. Wisse argued that Jewish unity is not paramount if unity comes at the expense of conviction: better a smaller community of committed Jews than a larger one saturated in ambivalence. Stephens returned to a theme he has emphasized before: stop obsessing over the haters and invest in Jewish education. Cohen broadened the argument, suggesting that both Jewish and Christian religious education are essential to strengthening America itself. The country’s experiment with secularism, he argued, has weakened the civic and moral foundations on which the Republic depends.
Jonathan Silver, Eric Cohen, Bret Stephens and Ruth Wisse address audience at Tikvah Society event on June 9, 2026 in New York City (photo: First One Through)
Both Stephens and Cohen spoke favorably about Chabad. It is not difficult to see why. Chabad has become one of the few institutions capable of reaching Jews across virtually every level of observance. The Rebbe’s army continues to grow because it understands something many institutions have forgotten: people are attracted to confidence, purpose, and personal relationships. Tikvah has absorbed this – it is curious how it plans on applying it.
Education
The discussion of education was compelling. Nothing is more important than good teachers, and few things are more destructive than bad ones. The panelists lamented the continuing flow of Jewish philanthropy into institutions such as Columbia University, where many faculty members and students openly disparage Zionism, America, and increasingly Jews themselves.
Yet the evening largely avoided a more uncomfortable reality.
In the greater New York area, roughly 490,000 Jewish students attend K-12 schools. Only about 40,000 (8.2%) are found in the Modern Orthodox and Zionist day-school ecosystem (“The 8%”) that forms the backbone of many organizations such as Tikvah. The largest and fastest-growing populations are elsewhere. The majority remain in public and secular schools. Even more significant is the extraordinary growth of Chassidic and Yeshivish communities, which now educate approximately 145,000 students (“30% and Growing”).
Those numbers matter.
Ultra-Orthodox
A strategy centered solely on strengthening the already committed may preserve one segment of Jewish life. It does not answer the larger demographic question facing American Jewry. The central challenge is will Tikvah and “The 8%” engage the overwhelming majority of Jewish children who are either in public schools or in the rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox world.
The same demographic blind spot appeared later in the discussion. Cohen argued that religious Jews and religious Christians should work more closely together to defend the values that built America. There is logic to that argument. Tikvah itself appears to be moving in that direction through its decision to award its Herzl Prize to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, one of Israel’s most outspoken Christian supporters.
Yet there is a striking irony here. As Jewish leaders search for allies among millions of religious Christians, they overlook the “30% and Growing” communities. Leaders commend Chabad for successful outreach to the secular but don’t consider building bridges to the Chasidic and Yeshivish communities, and engaging the majority of students in public and secular schools.
Public Schools
The challenge facing American Jewry is therefore not simply how to build alliances with Christians who share Jewish concerns. It is also how to build relationships among Jews whose lives increasingly unfold in separate educational, cultural, and social worlds.
The same issue applies to America’s educational crisis. If America is worth saving, public schools matter. Any serious defense of American exceptionalism must include an effort to improve the institutions educating most American children. Reforming public education should not be viewed as somebody else’s problem. It is central to the future of both America and American Jewry.
American Jews need to become highly engaged in local school boards. They need to help moderate and defend the institutions form the worst influences which are overwhelming America’s public schools, poisoning America’s future. The evening was silent on this crucial point.
Universities
The conversation about universities also requires greater precision.
Harvard is not a monolith. Columbia is not a monolith. Administrations, trustees, faculty, students, and donors often have different interests and agendas. Too often Jewish philanthropists write nine-figure checks in exchange for buildings bearing their names. It is a poor investment.
The activists and professors who dominate many campuses are not impressed by another Jewish donor’s name on a wall. In some cases, they actively mock the very people who funded the buildings in which they teach.
A better approach would be to invest in people rather than structures: scholars, faculty, teachers, fellowships, civic education programs, and scholarships for students committed to the values that made America successful. Buildings create monuments. Educators create generations.
Area
Tikvah Approach
Reality
Better Tactic
Ultra-Orthodox
Ignore. Focus on Christian groups
Fastest growing population
Engage, perhaps via important issues for both like public funding for religious schools
Public Schools
Unaddressed
Largest current segment
Engage school boards
Universities
Don’t fund or send students / make new ones
Still prevalent and dominant
Redirect contributions
Perhaps the most important lesson from the evening is that preserving American exceptionalism requires more than celebrating it.
American exceptionalism was never simply a belief that America was superior. At its best, it reflected an understanding that liberty is fragile and must be constantly renewed by citizens willing to sacrifice for something larger than themselves.
The people gathered in that room care deeply about America and about the future of the Jewish people. Their commitment is admirable. But commitment alone is not enough. The arithmetic cannot be ignored.
A movement centered on “The 8%” in a community of 1.8% of Americans (0.15%) cannot secure the future.
The challenge is larger than preserving one vision of Jewish life. It is rebuilding the institutions that form Americans in the first place: families, schools, synagogues, churches, civic organizations, and local communities. That is where outreach to BOTH Christian and Ultra-Orthodox groups matters.
And that work begins with Humble Faith. Humble faith built the America being celebrated in lower Manhattan. Humble faith may also be the only way to bridge the growing divides within the Jewish community itself. As we search for a better America, American Jews may first need to rediscover one another.
First One Through 