Monthly Archives: January 2026

The Myth of Pocketbooks

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The United Nations has chosen the wrong enemy.

António Guterres wants the world to believe that peace can be engineered with a spreadsheet — that inequality is the disease, redistribution the cure, and justice a matter of financial rearrangement. In his January 15 address, he warned that concentrated wealth corrupts institutions and that most low-development countries are in conflict. The implication is unmistakable: balance the books and peace will follow.

“The top 1 per cent holds 43 per cent of global financial assets.  And last year alone, the richest 500 individuals added $2.2 trillion to their fortunes.

Increasingly, we see a world where the ultra-wealthiest and the companies they control are calling the shots like never before — wielding outsized influence over economies, information, and even the rules that govern us all.

When a handful of individuals can bend global narratives, sway elections, or dictate the terms of public debate, we are not just facing inequality — we are facing the corruption of institutions and our shared values.” – UNSG Antonio Guterres

But choosing the wrong enemy guarantees the wrong war.

Because evil is not an accounting problem.

The UN’s failure begins in its diagnosis. It treats terrorism as a social pathology when it is, in fact, an ideological one.

Terrorism is not born in empty wallets. It is born in minds captured by belief.

Two decades of research have demolished the claim that poverty causes terror. Terrorists are rarely the poorest of the poor. They are often educated, middle-class, and technically trained — the engineers of jihad, the lawyers of holy war. The suicide bomber is seldom starving. He is convinced.

If poverty produced terrorism, the poorest societies would be its factories. They are not. Many desperately poor states remain largely untouched by global jihad, while terror movements arise from politically radicalized societies with functioning middle classes and ideological incubators.

What correlates with terrorism is not poverty, but ideas combined with power: religious absolutism, revolutionary nationalism, grievance cultures, and failed identity — not failed GDP.

Arab girls at the Dalal Mughrabi High School for Girls, named after a terrorist who killed dozens of Israelis, including 13 school children

This is not an academic distinction. It is the fault line between clarity and catastrophe.

If money could defeat jihad, Gaza would be the proof. It is not — it is the refutation.

Gaza has received billions in international aid. What emerged was not prosperity, but the most elaborate terrorist war machine ever embedded in a civilian population: tunnels beneath hospitals, command bunkers under schools, rockets from playgrounds, children trained for martyrdom.

This was not a failure of funding. It was the success of ideology. And the UN instigates that very ideology claiming that Israel should have no sovereign control of who enters its country, and specifically that almost every Arab living in Gaza will move into Israel with UN support.

“We are totally committed in the cause of peace in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan and far beyond.” – UNSG Antonio Guterres

Hamas did not build tunnels because Gazans were poor. Hamas built tunnels because its charter demands Israel’s destruction, because martyrdom is sacred, because jihad is identity. Money did not create this worldview — it merely financed its execution.

You can flood a society with aid, but if its governing ideology is annihilationist, all you finance is a more capable war machine.

Once the UN misdiagnoses ideology as economics, the next failure becomes inevitable.

For decades, it has constructed and sustained a grievance system around the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) that functions symbiotically with jihadist aims. Through its agencies and resolutions, it has promised millions of SAPs who have never lived in Israel that they will one day “return” en masse into Israel — effectively proposing Israel’s demographic erasure through mass population transfer via international decree.

No state can survive if an external body claims authority over who may enter it and redefine its citizenship from the outside. Yet the UN has made this assault on sovereignty a central plank of its Palestine policy — while calling it “humanitarian.”

Through UNRWA’s unique multigenerational refugee status, displacement becomes inherited identity rather than a temporary humanitarian condition. Grievance becomes doctrine. Statelessness becomes culture. A territorial dispute becomes a perpetual weapon.

And then the UN asks for more money to sustain it.

Why does the UN persist in this inversion?

Because it refuses to judge belief systems.

It will not confront jihad as an ideology.
It will not describe Islamic terrorism as such.
It will not wade into cultural or civilizational dynamics because it sees itself as a neutral global body.

But neutrality toward ideology does not produce peace. It produces permission.

And because the UN will not fight belief systems, it substitutes economics.

It reframes terror as inequality.
It reframes jihad as deprivation.
It reframes mass murder as misallocated capital.

In doing so, it becomes part of a broader machinery seeking to shift wealth and power from the Global North to the Global South — not merely for development, but as moral rebalancing, regardless of whether this addresses the real drivers of violence.

Redistribution becomes its ritual response whenever violence erupts.

Which means: more authority, more money, more relevance for the UN.

This is not accidental. It is institutional self-preservation dressed as virtue.

So the world is invited to believe the problem is billionaires rather than beheaders. That terror is born from inequality rather than indoctrination. That peace will come from redistribution rather than defeating enemies.

Evil is not a pocketbook problem.
It is an ideology.

And no amount of redistribution will make a death cult lay down its weapons.

Bernie Sanders and the Antisemitism in People Capitalism

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Capitalism disciplines hatred only where it can still touch it. Where contracts exist, behavior can be checked. Where they don’t, mobs rule.

Kanye West (Ye) didn’t begin by attacking Jews. He began by denigrating Black people—calling slavery a “choice,” sneering at collective memory, mocking historical suffering. The reaction was outrage softened by indulgence. He was criticized, contextualized, excused. His Black identity functioned as camouflage. The lesson was clear: you could insult your own people and still be protected.

So Ye escalated. Antisemitism offered a bigger payoff—more visibility, more fear, more leverage. It worked until money intervened.

When Adidas cut him loose, the spell broke. Capitalism finally touched him and apologies followed—not from moral awakening, but because the incentive structure flipped.

This is often cited as proof that “the system works.” It doesn’t—at least not anymore.

Ye performing

Capitalism disciplines behavior only where value is concentrated. Ye had a centralized choke point: Adidas. Today’s antisemitism largely does not. It thrives where contracts don’t exist, boards don’t answer, and outrage itself is the reward.

That vacuum has produced a new Ye-like template: antizionist Jews who denigrate Jews. They celebrate October 7. They call Israelis “Nazis.” They launder moral inversion through identity—and are absolved because of it. Jewishness becomes armor, converting bigotry into “bravery,” hatred into “critique,” massacre into “context.” The uglier the claim, the louder the ovation.

Poorly named “Jewish Voice for Peace” partners with terrorist-supporting group Samidoun

The center of gravity is social media—especially TikTok—where attention replaces contracts, outrage outperforms restraint, and individuals have nothing material to lose. There is no Adidas-scale counterparty. Condemnation becomes fuel. Challenge confirms righteousness.

This is where the political story locks in and takes flight.

For years, the far left has discredited institutions under the banner of “corporate Democrats.” At the Democratic Socialists of America’s 2025 convention, a delegate said it plainly: the movement should organize people “that the corporate Democrats and Republicans have abandoned for dead.” In this frame, institutions aren’t imperfect—they’re illegitimate. Friction isn’t restraint—it’s oppression.

On the ground, the rhetoric sharpens. New York councilmember Alexa Avilés urged activists to “root out ‘corporate Democrats’ backed by AIPAC,” recasting pro-Israel Democrats as bought and disposable. Structural critique becomes moral license. Identity becomes proof. Mobs become “the people.”

DSA’s Alexa Aviles

Far-left media and politicians amplify the message—outlets like The Young Turks and figures such as Jamaal Bowman. They know that institutions impose friction > Friction slows mobs > Mobs hate friction. So the institutions must be delegitimized—and the most extreme voices elevated.

The Young Turks coin a term and come for “Corporate Democrats”

This is sold as empowerment. In reality, it is power to the algorithm. Algorithms reward the loudest, angriest, least accountable claims. In that environment, antisemitism doesn’t just survive; it thrives. Jews are too small a minority to outvote a mob optimized for rage.

The reality is that capitalism was never the moral engine here, but it was sometimes a brake. Contracts could snap shut and money could impose limits. When those limits vanish—when speech floats free of consequence and identity shields cruelty—nothing restrains the mob.

Ye was stopped because capitalism still touched him when he crossed from trashing Blacks to bashing Jews.

The antizionist Jewish influencers celebrating October 7 are not stopped because nothing touches them. In People Capitalism, attention is the asset, outrage is the yield, and antisemitism is rewarded, and boosted on a litter—especially when Jews attack Jews.

Every such system needs a moral absolver.

That role is played by Bernie Sanders—the mob’s messiah. He doesn’t organize the mob; he legitimizes it by claiming it isn’t radical, reframing rage as righteousness by declaring institutions corrupt, restraint oppressive, and “corporate Democrats” illegitimate. His function isn’t governance. It’s permission to come for mainstream Democrats and other Jews.

Sen. Bernie Sanders swears in DSA’s Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City

This is the final logic of People Capitalism:

  • markets once imposed limits; crowds impose none.
  • institutions once punished bigotry; mobs reward it.

When the people become the market, antisemitism becomes a ladder—
and the mob’s messiah has sanctified the climb.

Expendable Civilians: the Warning Signs in 2026

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Modern conflict is collapsing into a single, repeatable failure mode: when armed power replaces legitimacy, civilian life becomes expendable—and the international system normalizes the outcome rather than correcting it.

From Syria to Yemen, from the Gaza Strip to Somalia and Sudan, different wars follow the same script. Flags and slogans change; outcomes do not. Cities empty, economies collapse, millions flee, and societies become permanent humanitarian wards while armed elites persist.

The mechanics of collapse

Across all five regions, the structure repeats with grim consistency. Power flows from weapons rather than consent, with ideology serving as authority instead of constraining it. Civilians become leverage—through hunger, displacement, and terror—while the outside world manages suffering rather than ending the conditions that cause it.

These dynamics differ in context and scale. They converge in result.

Different conflicts, identical results

Syria survives by sacrificing its cities and people.
Yemen turns famine into strategy in a proxy war.
Gaza shows armed rule embedded among civilians, shifting the cost of war onto the population.
Somalia normalizes permanent instability under jihadist entrenchment.
Sudan mirrors the same logic through rival armed elites hollowing out cities and driving mass displacement.

The human outcome is uniform.

A shared demographic reality

Each of these societies is overwhelmingly Muslim-majority— above 90 percent. This matters for clarity. These disasters do not arise from religious diversity or minority rule. They unfold in largely homogeneous societies where armed authority crowds out the chance for peaceful legitimate governance. Shared faith does not restrain violence. Only accountable institutions do—and they are absent across all five.

Two warnings for 2026

First: recognition divorced from reality.
The push to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state reflects a dangerous inversion. Recognition is meant to affirm effective governance, restraint of armed actors, and protection of civilians. Gaza demonstrates the opposite. Armed rule persists, civilians absorb the cost, and failure deepens. Recognition under these conditions elevates symbolism over survival and legitimizes collapse.

Second: repression without war.
In Iran, an ideological regime in power since 1979 faces economic decline and eroding legitimacy. The response has been internal violence—security forces firing on civilians, mass arrests, repression replacing consent. Iran shows the same pattern without a battlefield: when legitimacy collapses, violence becomes governance.

The United Nations: institutionalizing failure

The United Nations was founded to prevent this exact depravity. Eighty years on, it increasingly fosters it.

The UN grants equal procedural authority—votes, committee chairs, agenda control—to entities regardless of whether they govern responsibly or sacrifice their populations. Collapse carries no institutional penalty. In January 2026, the UN Security Council, the highest body at the UN, handed the gavel to Somalia, a state unable to protect its citizens or control its territory. Committee chairs shape agendas, manage debate, and mute scrutiny. The signal was unmistakable: mass failure has no consequence.

Somalia assumes head of UN Security Council in January 2026

This structure protects actors who weaponize civilians, including groups like Hamas, while rewarding states that export instability. Humanitarian agencies attempt to save lives on the ground, but UN governance shields the forces that endanger them. Through regional rotation, states implicated in mass civilian harm routinely gain seats, votes, and leadership roles across UN committees—including those charged with protecting human rights—without meeting any threshold of civilian protection.

Entities that systematically sacrifice civilians should lose voting rights and committee authority until they demonstrate basic standards of governance and restraint. Without consequences, international law becomes theater and failure becomes permanent.

The verdict

Syria, Yemen, Gaza, Somalia, Sudan—and the trajectory now visible in Iran—show what follows when sovereignty outweighs civilian life and armed power is indulged as politics. By preserving authority for collapsing entities, the United Nations has become part of the problem it was created to solve.

Civilian survival and protection must be the minimum requirement for legitimacy. If the UN cannot reform to enforce that standard INTERNALLY, then eighty years after its founding, it stands as a faint shadow of its founding principles at best, and an enabler of mass atrocities at worst.

UNRWA’s Jerusalem Exception

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Every UN humanitarian agency coordinates with the authority that governs where it operates—except in Jerusalem. That exception is not a footnote. It is the story. And it exposes a mandate failure driven by politics, not humanitarian necessity.

UNRWA holds that humanitarian work requires coordination with governing authorities. In practice, it does so almost everywhere: with Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the Palestinian Authority—and even with Hamas in Gaza, despite Hamas’s terrorist designation by the United States, the EU, the UK, and others.

In Jerusalem alone, UNRWA refuses to coordinate with Israel, the authority exercising full municipal, policing, and regulatory control over the city.

Call it “coordination for access” if you like. It is still coordination. And municipal coordination is not a sovereignty concession (if one believes that Israel does not have sovereignty over eastern Jerusalem despite annexing it in 1980); it is a humanitarian necessity.

How the Facilities Came to Exist

UNRWA’s Jerusalem facilities were established between 1949 and 1967, when Jordan seized and annexed the eastern half of the city in a move not recognized by the UN or the international community. UNRWA nonetheless coordinated with the Hashemite authorities to build schools, clinics, and service centers—because humanitarian work requires coordination with whoever governs in fact.

That history matters. UNRWA’s Jerusalem footprint exists specifically because it once coordinated with an unrecognized occupier.

UNRWA offices in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)

The Reversal

In 1967, Jordan entered the war, violated the armistice, and lost control of Jerusalem. Israel assumed governance and unified the city. Palestinian Arab residents became permanent residents with access to Israeli courts, healthcare, municipal services, and the right to apply for citizenship.

At that point, UNRWA reversed its logic. Where it coordinated with Jordan despite non-recognition, it now refuses to coordinate with Israel—by labeling eastern Jerusalem “occupied Palestinian territory,” theoretically negating its obligation to work with Israel.

That label sits uneasily with the UN’s own history. The 1947 Partition Plan never intended Jerusalem—east or west—to belong to an Arab state. The city was designated a corpus separatum, an internationally administered entity. Jerusalem was never meant to be Arab sovereign territory.

The contours of “Corpus Separatum” (in pink) in the United Nations 1947 Partition Plan stretched over Greater Bethlehem and Greater Jerusalem, marking the region as an international Holy Basin to be administered by the UN

An Outlier by Design

UNRWA’s mandate emphasizes cooperation with local authorities to ensure access, security, and civilian protection. That cooperation exists everywhere except Jerusalem. UNRWA coordinates with armed groups and unrecognized authorities elsewhere, yet refuses coordination with the governing authority in the city where coordination is most essential.

Refusing to coordinate with the authority responsible for public safety is not neutrality. It is an affirmative political act—one that inverts humanitarian logic by privileging narrative over civilian protection. UN immunity exists to facilitate coordination, not to replace it.

Continuity of Care—and the Standoff

Israel has enacted laws to shutter UNRWA offices in Jerusalem. UNRWA refuses to comply, invoking immunity and operating facilities largely outside municipal oversight. The confrontation exists because UNRWA chose inconsistency in the one city where consistency matters most.

“The UNRWA Jerusalem Health Centre, which serves hundreds of Palestine refugee patients every day is, for most of them, their only possibility of having access to primary healthcare….
These [Israeli] measures are a violation of the inviolability of United Nations premises and an obstacle to the implementation of the clear mandate of the General Assembly for UNRWA’s continued operations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” – UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres January 15, 2026

The closure of UNRWA offices in Jerusalem would not create a humanitarian vacuum. Education, healthcare, and social services are already provided through municipal systems, national institutions, other UN bodies, and a dense NGO network operating in the city. What would end is not care delivery, but UNRWA’s parallel governance model.

Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem rely daily on municipal emergency services, hospitals, and courts. UNRWA’s non-coordination removes the safety mechanisms coordination is meant to provide—for civilians, staff, students, and patients alike.

The Reckoning

UNRWA coordinated with Jordan when Jordan’s rule was unrecognized. It coordinates with Hamas despite terrorist designations. Yet it refuses to coordinate with Israel while Israel governs the city, extends legal status to its Arab residents, and has a network of service providers which can easily replace UNRWA in Jerusalem.

That is not humanitarian principle. It is selective politics.

Consistency is the minimum requirement of a mandate.
A mandate that works everywhere but Jerusalem is not a mandate—it is a message, and it is that UNRWA is not a humanitarian organization.

UNRWA remains a rusty tool of the 1947 Partition Plan which insists that holy sites in Jerusalem never fall under Jewish rule.

Call Out Antisemitism. Period.

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New York Governor Kathy Hochul delivered her State of the State address on January 13, 2026. In her prepared remarks, she condemned antisemitism and Islamophobia in the same breath, as if they were parallel crises in New York. They are not.

“In 2026, we’ll take new steps to protect our houses of worship against the rising tide of Antisemitism and Islamophobia.” – NY Gov. Kathy Hochul

In 2025, antisemitic attacks in New York City were over ten times more frequent than attacks against Muslims. That is not a nuance. It is the entire story. When one form of hatred overwhelms all others by orders of magnitude, collapsing them into a single moral gesture is not fairness—it is evasion.

Worse, “Islamophobia” is now routinely invoked as a political shield, not a measured diagnosis. It is wheeled out whenever radical Islamic antisemitism becomes too obvious to ignore, functioning as a way to halt scrutiny. Name the attackers. Name the ideology. Name the chants. The response is immediate: Islamophobia.

Today’s antisemitism is not abstract, historical, or evenly distributed across society. It is being driven openly and energetically by Islamist movements and their Western enablers, celebrated in the streets and sanitized as “anti-Zionism.”

Leadership requires prioritization. Data requires honesty. And moral clarity requires the courage to say that when Jews are being attacked ten times more than anyone else, they do not need their suffering balanced away.

False symmetry is not inclusion.
It is worse than cowardice.
It is vulgar absolution.

When Terror Is Rebranded as “Tension”

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The most consequential move in the New York Times coverage was quiet. It described Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s response to pro-Hamas chants as an effort to avoid inflaming “tensions on either side of the Israel–Gaza war.” The language sounded responsible. It also erased the central reality.

The New York Times is attempting to allay fears of Jewish New Yorkers but softening image of extremist mayor Zohran Mamdani on January 17, 2026

There were no equivalent sides involved. One group openly chanted support for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization responsible for mass murder, rape, kidnapping, and calls for genocide. The other side was a Jewish community standing outside its own synagogue, defending it from terrorist sympathizers.

That location matters. This did not unfold at City Hall or on a random street corner. It took place in front of a synagogue. For Jews, synagogues are communal sanctuaries, not neutral backdrops for geopolitical theater. Geography conveys intent. Bringing terror slogans to a Jewish house of worship transforms speech into targeting.

The New York Times chose to smooth this away. By framing the episode as “tension on either side,” it recast explicit support for Hamas as a legitimate pole of community expression. The chant was softened. The targeting dissolved into abstraction. Readers were reassured that calm was being preserved with statements such as “Mr. Mamdani’s team repeatedly debated the wording and fairness of the language,” as if a group chanting for the genocide of Jews required “fairness.”

This is how extremism gets normalized. When terror advocacy demands careful calibration rather than moral clarity, the boundary quietly shifts. Such framing would collapse instantly if crowds praised ISIS outside a mosque or neo-Nazis gathered at a Black church.

Protesters understand what editors seem determined to whitewash: location is the message. No amount of “Palestine-washing” can absolve the antisemitism in the Times coverage.

Reassurance purchased at the cost of truth carries consequences. It teaches extremists that intimidation can be reframed as passion and that targeted terror speech will be treated as just another civic grievance. That does not cool tensions. It redraws the line of what is acceptable.

Ending Evil Is Not Revenge

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Pharaoh stood unmoved as the Nile turned to blood.
Life-giving water became useless overnight, and the system held.
That moment captured the moral reality of the Exodus.

The plagues were not revenge. They were not emotional retaliation for suffering already endured. And they were not even, in the narrow sense, punishment for evil deeds. They were something far more deliberate: the dismantling of a system that could not be allowed to continue.

That distinction matters—then and now.

Revenge, Punishment, and Dismantlement

Revenge is backward-looking. It seeks emotional satisfaction for injury.
Punishment is judicial. It assigns guilt and imposes consequences.
Dismantlement is future-oriented. It exists to make continued evil impossible.

The plagues fit only the third category.

They were announced in advance. They escalated slowly. It wasn’t rage. It didn’t aim at humiliation. The Torah goes out of its way to show a paced methodology.

Even “punishment” does not fully explain what happens. Punishment targets perpetrators. The plagues targeted foundations: economy, theology, nature, and political myth. The Nile, the body, the sky—everything Egypt relied on to project permanence was stripped away piece by piece.

Why? Because slavery was not a policy failure within Egypt.
It was Egypt.

You cannot reform a system built on domination. You cannot shame it. You cannot negotiate it out of existence. You have to break the assumptions that make it feel eternal.

That is what the plagues did. They delivered a message: “You are not absolute—and the time for evil has ended.”

The Same Moral Error Reappears Today

That same confusion appears again in the way Israel’s war in Gaza is discussed.

Since October 7, critics have insisted that Israel is acting out of revenge, wounded pride, or collective punishment. That reading repeats the same error people make about the plagues: it projects human emotion onto a campaign that is structural in nature.

If Israel were seeking revenge, Gaza would already be erased.
If this were punishment, the war would end with confessions and symbolic justice.

Neither is happening.

Israel is trying to end a war by dismantling the system that made it inevitable.

Hamas is not a fringe militia. It is the elected majority of the Palestinian parliament and ruling authority in Gaza. It is immensely popular. Over years, it constructed a comprehensive war society: tunnels beneath homes, schools, and mosques; civilian infrastructure fused with military command; education and media organized around eradication; international aid converted into weapons. Violence was not a breakdown. It was the operating principle.

As in Egypt, brutality was not an abuse within the system.
It was the system.

You cannot coexist with that indefinitely. You cannot contain it forever. You cannot pause it and hope it reforms while leaving its foundations intact.

Why Ending the System Is Not Cruelty

Calls for ceasefire without dismantlement may sound compassionate but mirror Pharaoh’s promises: temporary relief with permanent structures preserved. The Torah teaches us to distrust that move. Pauses without transformation merely reset the cycle.

Israel’s campaign is not about humiliation. It is about limits. No governing authority may embed genocide into its ideology. No regime gains immunity by hiding behind civilians. No society organized around death gets an unlimited future.

Ending such a system is not revenge.
It is moral necessity.

The Critical and Ignored Lessons From the Most Important Poll in the Middle East 

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The near-term ramifications of Hamas’s war against Israel are being crystalized. Hamas’s leadership is decimated and Gaza is in ruins. The political-terrorist group’s allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Yemen have been dealt severe blows, perhaps fatal for some. Hamas’s cheerleaders in the Global North are the only ones to have gathered momentum, particularly in Australia and the United States where hunting season for Jews has a seemingly open permit.

To gain insight for the next tactical steps, world leaders are looking at the current situation and polls since October 7, 2023 and have drafted proposals and taken initial actions: The United Kingdom and Canada recognized a Palestinian State. The U.S.’s Trump administration put forward a plan for Gaza which would include a new governing entity. The West hopes that the targeted assaults and murder of Jews will peter out along with the end of war. And the United Nations keeps playing the same tune about supporting UNRWA.

These are bad decisions and conclusions, made on faulty assumptions.

There is an organization that has been polling Palestinian Arabs for decades, called the Palestinian Center for POLICY and SURVEY RESEARCH (PCPSR). It conducted a poll of Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, just before the Hamas-led war, from September 28 to October 8, 2023. Because of the war, the results did not get published until June 26, 2024, and the world was too focused on the war to pay it any attention. It is deeply unfortunate, and it is required reading to help chart a better future for the region.

To start with the poll’s conclusions:

  • A large percentage of Palestinian Arabs have wanted to leave Gaza and the West Bank for years, not from the current destruction
  • Arabs are fed up with their own government – Hamas and the Palestinian Authority – much more than Israeli “occupation”
  • Canada is viewed much like Qatar for Gazans, a sympathetic haven

Palestinian Arabs Wanted to Emigrate Before the War

According to PCPSR, whether in October 2023 or November 2021, roughly 33% of Gazans and 20% of West Bank Arabs wanted to leave the region.

Men below age 30 make up the vast majority of those seeking to emigrate. As opposed to Gaza where both educated and uneducated people want to leave, it is the educated West Bank population that wants to move away. Among those wishing to leave, many would not vote in Palestinian elections, or if they would, they would sooner vote for third parties over Fatah or Hamas.

Palestinian Leadership is the Curse, More than Israel

The number one reason for wanting to leave was economic conditions by a far margin. Reasons two and three were political reasons and educational opportunities. “Security reasons” came in fourth, with only 7% of Gazans focused on security; 12% overall. Corruption, religious reasons and to reunite with family rounded out the poll.

Canada as a Beacon

Turkey and Germany were the two most favorite destinations, especially for Gazans. Very few Gazans (3%) considered the United States, while West Bank Arabs put it as the number one choice (17%), likely seeking advanced degrees at left-wing universities. What is remarkable, is more of the Stateless Arabs (SAPs) would prefer going to Canada (11%) than Qatar (9%), the wealthy Muslim Arab nation that is a main sponsor of Hamas.

Honest Takeaways

These pre-war results leads to some basic and critical conclusions.

  • Complete Overhaul of Palestinian leadership, not just in Gaza

The desire of Arabs to leave was evident across both Gaza and the West Bank for many years. This was not a reaction to bombing or siege; it was a verdict on governance.

Hamas in Gaza rules through repression, diversion of aid, and religious militarism. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank offers corruption, authoritarianism, and political stagnation. Together they have produced a society with no credible economic horizon, no accountable leadership, and no peaceful mechanism for change.

While a new entity is needed to administer Gaza, that role should be akin to a Chief Operating Officer overseeing construction. The Palestinian Authority itself needs to be gutted and rebuilt as it is a corrupt, unpopular and ineffective entity.

  • The United Nations Must Withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank

In its desire to create a Palestinian state, the U.N. has stripped the titular heads of Palestine of any responsibility. The UN protects Hamas despite its savagery. It props up the Palestinian Authority despite its rampant corruption. Palestinian leadership is a bed of paper scorpions.

The UN must withdraw from Gaza and the West Bank and allow local authorities to build a functioning leadership team.

  • The West Should Rescind Recognition of Palestine

There is no functioning Palestinian government and therefore no basic standard to recognize a Palestinian State. The United Kingdom, Australia and others should withdraw their recognition and make it conditional on building governing institutions that can lead and make peace with the Jewish State next door.

  • Reeducation in the West

The massacre did not arise from a sudden spike in pressure. It emerged from long-standing internal failure. Hamas chose atrocity because it couldn’t commit a complete genocide of Jews so exploited its own population to be fodder for Israel.

Western audiences were then handed a familiar script, complete with pictures. But the data taken just before the massacre tells a different story—one far more consequential. What is being taught in western public schools is divorced from reality and feeds global and local antisemitism.

  • Oh No, Canada

While the fears of antisemitism are focused on the United States and Australia because of recent attacks on Jews, Canada is in the hearts and minds of Palestinian Arabs seeking a warm diaspora community. Perhaps it started a decade ago under Justin Trudeau who followed U.S.’s President Barack Obama to embrace the Palestinian cause and Iranian regime over Israel. Perhaps it is because of the welcome mat for extremists groups like Samidoun. Or perhaps it is the perception that the heckler’s veto is fair game, and can run Jewish families off Canadian streets.

Whatever the inspiration, Canada is widely perceived as permissive, ideologically indulgent, and administratively porous—an attractive environment for “political activism” untethered from civic responsibility. It is a ticking time bomb.

The poll of Palestinian Arabs on the eve of the October 7 war reveals deeper truths than surface shots of leveled homes. The PCPSR findings point to a single truth: the Palestinian problem is fundamentally internal.

Ending Israeli control over territory without dismantling corrupt and extremist institutions will not deliver prosperity or peace. Statehood layered on top of dysfunction will harden it. And exporting populations shaped by jihadist rule into permissive Western societies without serious screening and integration, risks importing instability rather than relieving it.

Archaeology of Daily Life: Mikva’ot and Jewish Indigeneity in the Land the UN Calls “Occupied”

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Modern political language compresses history into slogans. The United Nations speaks of “occupied Palestinian territory,” which it insists be Jew-free. The “pro-Palestinian” movements echo false claims of Jewish colonialism, as if Jews are newcomers.

Archaeology answers differently—through the infrastructure of everyday life.

Across Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Galilee, ancient mikva’ot—Jewish ritual immersion baths—appear in homes, villages, farms, and neighborhoods. They date from the First Temple and Second Temple periods and into the Mishnaic era. Their construction follows strict Jewish law. Their distribution tracks permanent settlement. Their purpose is singular: Jews lived here as a rooted society, organizing life around inherited religious practice.

This is not an argument from ideology. It is a statement of fact.

Jerusalem—Including the East: A City Immersed

Jerusalem contains the highest concentration of ancient mikva’ot anywhere in the world, with hundreds surrounding the Jewish Temple Mount as people immersed themselves before entering. In the City of David—today known as Silwan, a village established by Yementite Jews in the 19th century—dozens of ritual baths are embedded in residential quarters dated from the 1st century BCE to 70 CE. North and east of the later city walls, mikva’ot appear in neighborhoods now called Shuafat and Sheikh Jarrah, including the Shimon HaTzadik complex. The ancient mikvahs are also found to the west and south.

Mikvah under the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem

Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron, summarizing decades of excavation, write:

“The widespread distribution of ritual baths in and around Jerusalem reflects strict observance of Jewish purity laws as part of everyday life.”

These installations predate Islam by centuries. They show a city whose rhythm followed Jewish law across its full geographic footprint—west and east alike.

Judea: Bethlehem, Jericho, Hebron, and the Southern Hills

South of Jerusalem, the Judean Hills—now routinely labeled “occupied”—were a Jewish heartland in antiquity. Around Bethlehem, archaeological surveys identify rock-hewn mikva’ot associated with agricultural estates and villages from the Hasmonean and Herodian periods. Comparable installations appear near Hebron and Tekoa.

Mikvah in Jericho

Boaz Zissu’s regional studies conclude:

“Ritual baths, agricultural installations, and burial caves indicate dense Jewish settlement throughout the Judean Hills during the Second Temple period.”

These were family communities organized around Jewish practice, embedded in the land over generations.

Samaria: Villages of Law and Land

In Samaria—today’s northern “West Bank”—mikva’ot appear in rural villages and estates tied to farming and household life. Near Shiloh, stepped pools carved into limestone meet halakhic requirements and date to the late Second Temple period.

These finds demonstrate continuity between biblical Israelite centers and later Jewish communities. They record a population living according to inherited law, rooted to fields and seasons, long before later demographic changes.

What Mikva’ot Prove

Mikva’ot appear only where Jewish law structured daily behavior. They require permanence, planning, and communal norms. They cluster where families lived and expected their children to live.

Plotted together, they form a map that predates:

  • Arabic language in the region
  • Creation of Islam
  • Medieval and modern political boundaries

They belong to a Jewish civilization indigenous to the land for centuries before the Arab conquests of the seventh century.

Conclusion

International bodies can rename the land and activists can repeat slander but archaeology restores history to human scale. Mikva’ot record where Jews prepared for worship, marriage, birth, and community life. They mark neighborhoods, not narratives.

Across all of Jerusalem and through Judea and Samaria, these ritual baths establish a simple historical truth: Jews are indigenous to this land, and their daily life shaped it long before later conquests and long before modern politics.

Does Civilization Deserve A Robust Moderate Defense

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The world likes to pretend it is debating policy. In many ways, it is actually debating whether civilization itself deserves defense—whether restraint remains a virtue or has become a liability.

That choice is one individuals are weighing, and on a macro scale, it now runs through the United Nations, through the rhetoric of reform and revolution, and through a relentless fixation on one small country—Israel—which has been made the moral test case for the survival of a rules-based order.

An Ancient Conflict, Restated

In 1944 as World War II raged, Reinhold Niebuhr described the permanent struggle of politics in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. The children of light believe in higher law, institutions, and restraint and try to build a just civilization. The children of darkness believe power is the only reality. They understand fear, pride, resentment—and how to use them.

Niebuhr’s delivered an unsentimental warning: civilization fails not because darkness appears, but because light refuses to learn how aggressively darkness operates.

As Portrayed Today in the Arts

That moral tension is dramatized—accidentally, but perfectly—in Game of Thrones.

Petyr Baelish (“Littlefinger”) believes nothing is sacred. Institutions are illusions; morality is theater. When order breaks, the ambitious climb. His worldview that “Chaos is a ladder” is not poetry—it is strategy. He does not want to fix the system. He wants to use its collapse to gain power.

Opposite him stands Varys, who believes in “the realm”—stability, continuity, restraint. Varys is not innocent. He lies and plots as much as Littlefinger. But he does so defensively, to preserve something larger than himself. Chaos, to him, is not liberation; it is mass suffering.

“Chaos isn’t a pit. Chaos is a ladder. Many who try to climb it fail and never get to try again. The fall breaks them.
And some are given a chance to climb. They refuse, they cling to the realm or the gods or love. Illusions. Only the ladder is real. The climb is all there is.”- Littlefinger

This is the argument now playing out on the world stage.

The United Nations and the “Age of Chaos”

In September 2025, Antonio Guterres warned that the world had entered an “Age of Chaos,” where multilateralism failed repeatedly. His message was neither complacent nor revolutionary. The post-1945 order, he acknowledged, was built by Western powers and often abused. It needs reform and broader inclusion. But it must be preserved.

Guterres is a modern Varys: clear-eyed about corruption, fearful of what replaces restraint. The tragedy is that he delivers this warning while presiding over an institution that enables the very chaos he names, and where lies and bias are systemic.

The UN’s Open Hostility to Israel

No clearer example exists than the United Nations open hostility to Israel.

One empirical anchor suffices: the UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council have passed more condemnatory resolutions against Israel than against all other countries combined, including regimes responsible for mass atrocities. The Human Rights Council even maintains a permanent agenda item singling out Israel alone.

The most damaging legal symbol of this hostility is UN Security Council Resolution 2334. Its failures are distinct—and profound:

  • Moral failure: It erases Jewish indigeneity and recasts Jewish self-determination as a moral crime.
  • Legal failure: It treats 1949 armistice lines as borders, declares “flagrant violation” absent negotiations, and invents a categorical illegality applied nowhere else.
  • Institutional failure: It weaponizes international law through selective enforcement, degrading the credibility of law itself.

UNSC 2334 is not merely flawed. It is structurally antisemitic, legally incoherent, and corrosive to the rules it claims to uphold. Any serious effort to defend and remake the UN must begin by rejecting and discarding UNSC 2334—not as a political concession, but as a moral necessity. No legitimate order can be rebuilt on a prominent pernicious lie.

The Global South’s Demand—and the Line It Cannot Cross

The Global South is right about one thing: the UN reflects a Global North power structure frozen in time. Representation must change. Influence must broaden. That reckoning is overdue.

But reform cannot be purchased by sacrificing the most vulnerable and attacked minority on earth.

Using Israel as the symbol of colonial evil is not reform; it is delegitimization by fiction. It turns history upside down, rebrands violence as virtue, and tells Jews that their survival is negotiable. Israel is targeted not because it is uniquely guilty, but because it is symbolically central.

Israel has become the ladder.

Modern Littlefingers

This logic spans ideologies.

On the left, movements such as the Democratic Socialists of America argue that markets, property, and liberal institutions are inherently illegitimate—delegitimize first, rebuild later. On the right, Donald Trump treats international norms as inconveniences, speaking casually about seizing Venezuelan oil and replacing rules with deals.

They oppose each other rhetorically, but share a premise: restraint is weakness; destruction is honesty. Chaos creates leverage.

They are modern Littlefingers.

The Failure of Passive Moderation

Between these forces stand moderates who see hypocrisy, feel exhaustion, and withdraw in disgust. That retreat feels virtuous. It is not.

As David Brooks argues by drawing on Niebuhr, moderation without courage becomes complicity. When decent people refuse to defend flawed institutions, they leave the field to those who understand power best.

Niebuhr’s answer was not extremism, but what he called “a sublime madness in the soul”—a fierce commitment to liberal institutions precisely because they restrain human savagery. The children of light must learn the wisdom of the serpent without inheriting its malice.

An Ancient Return—and a Choice

Modern politics, which prides itself on being post-religious, has returned to the oldest moral frame: absolute light versus absolute darkness. One side is pure; the other illegitimate. Violence becomes cleansing; institutions corrupt by definition. This language was written two thousand years ago in the land of Israel and discovered in caves as the Jewish State was being reestablished. And now that rebirthed country is being falsely accused of embodying the darkness.

The Scroll of the War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness

The choice before us is not between justice and injustice. It is between reform and rupture.

  • Children of light today defend law and restraint aggressively while reforming them honestly.
  • Children of darkness weaponize grievance and moral absolutism to climb amid collapse.

Defending and remaking the UN must start with basic truths: reject antisemitic falsehoods, discard UNSC 2334, and pursue inclusion without scapegoats. Multipolarity cannot be built on moral nihilism. Reform cannot be purchased with lies.

The reckoning Niebuhr warned of is here. The ladder is already standing and it is being climbed by both right and left. Civilization survives only if those who believe in it act—clearly, courageously, and now.