Author Archives: First.One.Through

Read Bin Laden. Don’t Whitewash What He Said.

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The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History has a good rule for teaching history: let students read primary sources.

So when it teaches September 11, students can encounter Osama bin Laden in his own words. That should make the origins of 9/11 unusually difficult to sanitize.

Bin Laden’s 1996 document was a Declaration of Jihad Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Mosques. Its principal immediate grievance was the presence of American forces in Saudi Arabia, home to Mecca and Medina. He condemned the Saudi government for permitting what he called an army of “infidels” into land containing Islam’s holiest places and called on Muslims to drive them out.

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission described the document plainly. Bin Laden objected to “an army of infidels in a land with the sites most sacred to Islam.” He saw himself as following in the footsteps of the Prophet and organizing a new kind of war against America.

This was not simply a dispute over where the Pentagon stationed troops. Their being non-Muslims was central to the offense.

He became even more clear about his objection in his 1998 fatwa, written with Ayman al-Zawahiri under the banner of the “International Islamic Front for Jihad on the Jews and Crusaders.“

Not Israelis. Not Americans. Not NATO.

Jews and Crusaders.

The declaration said Muslims should kill Americans, including civilians, wherever they could be found.

“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy mosque [Mecca] from their grip, and in order for their armies to move out of all the lands of Islam, defeated and unable to threaten any Muslim. This is in accordance with the words of Almighty Allah, “and fight the pagans all together as they fight you all together,” and “fight them until there is no more tumult or oppression, and there prevail justice and faith in Allah.”” – 1998 Fatwa

Then came the jihadi terrorist attacks of September 11.

That is where Gilder Lehrman’s lesson becomes peculiar.

Its current historical background accurately identifies al-Qaeda as an “international terrorist group.” But its explanation of bin Laden’s motivation says he “claimed that he was defending Islam” before quickly translating the dispute into political language: “He blamed the United States for supporting Israel and oppressing Muslims around the world.” It adds his opposition to American support for governments such as the Saudi monarchy.

It never uses the word “jihad” a single time, even when Bin Laden’s own 1996 and 1998 declarations both use “jihad” in the titles. The narrative is recast as a political dispute rather than a religious holy war.

The American presence in Saudi Arabia wasn’t objectionable to bin Laden merely because he disliked an American military deployment. His declaration treated an army of infidels in Islam’s sacred land as an offense demanding jihad.

His organization didn’t subsequently call itself the International Front Against American Middle East Policy. It invoked Jews and Crusaders – both words never used in the GLI lesson plan.

The curriculum directs students toward questions about American foreign policy. Its broader narrative proceeds rapidly from the attacks to American intelligence failures, the Patriot Act, surveillance, Guantánamo Bay, civil-liberties concerns, anti-Muslim discrimination, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those are all legitimate subjects in a history of the War on Terror, AFTER 9/11.

But before asking about American actions after September 11, students should understand why 19 men believed murdering thousands of civilians was righteous in the first place. It does not require blaming Islam or all Muslims for September 11.

The distinction is straightforward: Islam is not al-Qaeda, and Muslims are not responsible for al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda is a jihadist movement whose leaders explicitly justify their violence in religious terms.

There is another revealing asymmetry.

Gilder Lehrman makes sure students learn that hate crimes and discrimination against Muslim Americans increased after September 11. That belongs in the history. President George W. Bush’s insistence that America’s enemy was terrorism rather than Islam belongs there too.

But if prejudice against a religious group after the attack deserves explicit attention, surely the religious ideology of the men who carried it out deserves the same scrutiny.

Imagine reading a Declaration of Jihad filled with God, Islam, infidels, sacred territory and martyrdom—and being trained to search everywhere except religion for the explanation.

On September 11, 2022, only three American embassies in the Middle East posted commentary about the horrific jihadi attacks in the United States in 2001 – Israel, Egypt and Yemen – seemingly trying to avoid upsetting the Muslim majority countries

Gilder Lehrman’s great educational principle is that students should encounter history through original documents rather than having someone else tell them what happened. But here, the documents are presented and then the lesson redirects students toward American foreign policy and the subsequent War on Terror. It shifts the center of the 9/11 story from genocidal jihadists murdering thousands of innocent Americans to Muslims suffering from American policies, wars, discrimination and backlash.

That is an extraordinary inversion. And an insult to thousands of Americans who were murdered.

The Audience Has Changed

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On May 21, 2025, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim walked out of a reception at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. They were young Israeli Embassy employees and a couple. Lischinsky had bought a ring and planned to propose.

Alas, Elias Rodriguez, a pro-Palestinian anarchist, fired approximately 20 rounds at the couple shouting “free Palestine.” Inside the museum afterward, he allegedly said, “I did it for Palestine. I did it for Gaza.”

Rodriguez had brought an explanation with him.

His manifesto, Explication, dated the previous day, defended the “morality of armed demonstration.” He wrote that he had considered such violence justified during the 2014 Gaza war, but understood that most Americans then would have found it “illegible” and “insane.”

By 2025, he believed America was different. “I am glad that today at least there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane thing to do.”

In his mind, the violence had not changed. The audience had.

Rodriguez described armed action as “theater and spectacle.” He had watched enormous demonstrations against Israel, accusations of genocide become commonplace and supporters of Israel portrayed as complicit in mass killing. Yet, he complained, “the rhetoric has not amounted to much.”

The violence would be the spectacle. The manifesto would tell the audience how to read it.

Especially because of the timing: May 20, 2025.

Rodriguez penned his manifesto on the same day that UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher told the BBC that 14,000 babies in Gaza would die within 48 hours unless aid reached them.

The claim was completely false. The comment was a distorted derivative of a report that approximately 14,000 cases of severe acute malnutrition among young children might occur over the next year. And he placed all of the blame on Israel.

The accusation spread quickly. That afternoon, CAIR issued a call for action after the UN said 14,000 Palestinian babies could die under what CAIR called Israel’s “forced starvation campaign.” Genocide supplied the larger charge.

Shortly before his murder the next day, Lischinsky reportedly shared criticism of Fletcher’s claim that called it a “blood libel.” The blood libel was much more than a charge of accusing Jews of killing children; it gave license to an audience to kill Jews in their defense.

Rodriguez had another word for encouraging the crowds to murder: Legible.

And he was right.

Eleven days later, in Boulder, Colorado, prosecutors say a man attacked a peaceful gathering supporting Israeli hostages with Molotov cocktails while shouting “Free Palestine.” One victim died.

In August 2026, popular pro-Palestinian podcaster Hasan Piker said that if American Jews continued publicly associating themselves with Israel, “eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the State of Israel, mind you, but against American Jews.” Keep associating with those falsely accused of genocide, and people will come for you.

Anger and frustration are being harnessed through podcasts and manifestos to inflame passions and violence. The audience is all too happy to join the spectacle these days.

Because the violence is legible.

So crowds cheer on the killer of a United Healthcare executive, gunned down in the streets. They listen to their alt-left congressman shout on the streets that the rape of Jewish women never happened, to turn the victims into aggressors. They watch an Ariane Grande video of a frustrated musician cutting old white men to pieces to rapture and applause.

Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan at the alt-left Zohran Mamdani NYC mayoral victory party with Hasan Piker and Jamaal Bowman, November 2025. (start at 52:00)

Legible.

Once upon a time – say 2010 – the mass murder by an angry person was viewed through a lens of pity and disbelief. What did we do as a society that enabled isolation and frustration to turn into heinous violence? Pearl Jam’s Jeremy is a cry out of pain – for the victims and the shooter. There are no winners, just anguish.

No longer. The audience has changed. We revel in the spectacle. If the dead are cast as privileged and powerful, part of a caste that keeps people down, the revolution will celebrate the rolled heads.

More, they will want to participate.

There has always been violence, assassinations and terrorism. But we are no longer appalled universally, only selectively. The crowds have read the jihadi-socialist manifestos and they appallingly read “sane.” LEGIBLE.

James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute, spoke to the United Nations in June 2023 – months before the October 7 massacre of Israelis by Gazans – and bemoaned “that a recent poll shows a majority of Palestinians rejecting moderate leadership, despairing of peaceful change and now favouring armed struggle? That tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture is the result of the continued brutality of the occupation.” He warned that the mob – his own people – had become so twisted that they were itching for Jewish blood.

That same deformity showed itself on American university campuses right after October 7. It has continued to spread outward to American streets as false charges of genocide and mass starvation make the violence “the only sane thing to do.“

And it is no longer just the alt-left drowning in the empathy swamp. All of those little screens that we carry every waking second make us an addicted audience, barraged by posts and podcasts, amplified by bots and armies of American foes. We listen to idiots and lies openly and frequently, and have lost our moral compass in the process.

We have reached a point where the reluctant assassin may become more willing to join the anarchy, believing the crowd might finally understand and appreciate mass murder as a noble cause, rather than a heinous crime.

We have crossed the tipping point of moral collapse. Sensing the panic, we point a finger at artificial intelligence as the problem, willfully blind that the toxin is already in the bloodstream. AI is just an accelerant, not the root of the sickness.

We are entering a new year in the Jewish calendar. As we read from the special Rosh Hashanah prayer book and ask God to have mercy on humanity, consider how many people have internalized very different – and deeply evil – texts and messages. Pray that the sound of the shofar will not only reach Heaven, but awaken the audience on earth from the hypnotic spell that has deformed their moral judgment.

Related:

The End of Old Politics: Attention Has Replaced Trust (August 2026)

Normalized Violence (April 2026)

The Broke-n Generation (December 2024)

The Asynchronous Audience At Jihadists’ Auto-da-Fe (November 2023)

Britain’s Only Acceptable Ethnic Cleansing

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Britain is suddenly alarmed about supposed “ethnic cleansing” in the West Bank.

The British government warns that Israeli policies could force Palestinian Arabs from parts of Judea and Samaria. It is sanctioning Israelis, condemning “settlements” and portraying demographic change in territory claimed by Palestinians as a grave moral offense.

Britain has seen ethnic cleansing in this territory before. Its reaction was very different.

In 1948, The Kingdom of Transjordan crossed the Jordan River and conquered Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. It then destroyed and expelled the Jewish communities that had lived across the territory. The ancient Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City was emptied of its Jews. Jews were then barred from their holiest sites, as synagogues were destroyed or desecrated.

Interior view of a ruined building with crumbling walls and debris, featuring an archway and a soldier standing amidst the ruins.
Jordanian soldiers destroyed the Hurva Synagogue in 1949

The result was remarkably complete: the territory Jordan occupied was ethnically cleansed of Jews. And less than two years later, Britain formally recognized Jordan’s union with the territory it had invaded and conquered, one of the only countries in the world to do so.

Jordan then made the demographic principle explicit. Its 1954 nationality law extended Jordanian nationality to former Palestinian citizens residing in the kingdom while expressly carving out “the Jews.”

Jordan expelled and excluded the Jews in its holy land, and Britain’s response was recognition.

In 2005, Britain would celebrate again, this time in Gaza.

Israel decided to dismantle every Jewish community in the Gaza Strip. Israeli soldiers physically removed roughly 8,000 Jews from their homes and twenty-one Jewish communities disappeared. A Jew-free Gaza emerged.

Britain did not describe this as ethnic cleansing. Prime Minister Tony Blair praised Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s “courage” and offered Britain’s “full support” for the withdrawal. His foreign secretary called it a hugely significant step toward peace.

Now consider 2026.

Britain warns against the possible displacement of Palestinian Arabs from Area C of the West Bank, territory that has remained under Israeli civil and security control under the Oslo framework pending a final agreement. It speaks of forcible displacement, imposes sanctions and treats the prospect of Palestinian Arabs losing their communities as intolerable.

The moral principle sounds admirable. It would be more convincing if Britain had ever applied it equally to Jews in the region.

When some Palestinian Arabs might be displaced from territory it hopes to use in a future Palestinian state, Britain suddenly discovers that removing a particular ethnic population from its homes is beyond the pale. Instead, England demands that the region be ethnically cleansed – of Jews – citing the antisemitic UN Security Council Resolution 2334.

There is a British consistency here: ethnic cleansing is only appropriate when Jews are removed.

For generations, British policy has treated the removal of Jews from disputed territory as compatible with peace. A Palestinian Gaza without Jews was progress. A Jordanian West Bank without Jews was acceptable. A future Palestinian state is still routinely imagined as a place where Jewish communities cannot remain.

Only the possibility of some Arab relocation produces moral outrage.

That exposes the deeper problem with the diplomatic vocabulary surrounding the conflict. “Two states” has quietly come to mean one multicultural Jewish state containing a large Arab minority alongside one Palestinian state expected to contain no Jews. One and one-half states for Arabs; half a state for Jews.

England understands the ethnic cleansing of Jews – it did it itself in 1290 – the only minority group to ever be expelled from the country. It seems to continue to only have a taste for that kind of hatred and ethnic cleansing, including in the Jewish homeland.

The Temple Mount Status Quo Is Being Rewritten

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The Palestinian Authority has declared the Temple Mount — the holiest site in Judaism — the “exclusive right of Muslims.”

That is not the historic status quo. It is an attempt to rewrite it.

After Israel took control of Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967, day-to-day religious administration of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif remained with the Islamic Waqf, while Israel retained responsibility for security and substantial control over access. The Waqf permitted Muslims to pray on the Mount, while non-Muslims could visit, prayer was restricted.

The arrangement governed administration, access and worship. It did not declare the Temple Mount the exclusive possession or religious entitlement of Muslims.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate crossed that line explicitly on September 6. It condemned Jews conducting “Talmudic rituals and prayers” as attempts to “alter its religious character,” declared the entire 144-dunam compound the “exclusive right of Muslims” and warned against changing its “identity.”

Those words matter.

Waqf administration is one thing. Restrictions on Jewish prayer are another. Declaring the site itself the “exclusive right” of Muslims is something else entirely.

The status quo regulates what Jews may do there. It never determined what the place is.

The First and Second Jewish Temples stood on the Temple Mount. Jewish prayer has faced Jerusalem for millennia. Jewish liturgy, mourning and hopes for redemption are bound to it. Many observant Jews have historically declined to walk upon portions of the Mount precisely because they consider the ground too holy to enter without the required ritual purity.

For some Jews, not ascending is itself an expression of the Mount’s extraordinary Jewish sanctity.

That makes the new language especially provocative. Jews visiting Judaism’s holiest place become “settlers” conducting “incursions.” Jewish prayer becomes threatening “Talmudic rituals.” A restriction accepted to preserve religious peace is transformed into evidence that Jewish religious expression does not belong there at all.

Jewish restraint was supposed to preserve coexistence. It cannot become a permission slip for Jewish erasure.

The international reaction sharpens that dynamic. The United Nations itself has called upon the parties to refrain from “provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric,” especially in places of “religious and cultural sensitivity.” In the very next paragraph, it demanded that Jerusalem’s historic status quo be respected “in word and practice” and urged “all sides” to halt provocations and incitement at the holy sites.

By the UN’s own standard, words can threaten the status quo. Yet when an official Palestinian governmental authority declares Judaism’s holiest site the “exclusive right of Muslims,” it is greeted with a silent nod of approval.

And this occurs as the anti-Israel horde discusses so-called “Jewish supremacy.” Zohran Mamdani has attacked privileging one religion over another (meaning Jews over Muslims). Hasan Piker denounces “ethnoreligious supremacist values.” At the Jewish Temple Mount, the principle stripped of abstraction: one religion claiming exclusive entitlement to the holiest site of another.

And that raises a more fundamental question about the status quo itself.

Perhaps placing religious administration of a multi-faith holy site exclusively in the hands of one of the religions claiming it was always structurally unstable.

The Waqf is not a neutral administrator. It is an Islamic religious institution representing one faith at a site sacred to several. That arrangement can function while custodianship means administration. It becomes difficult to justify when the authority entrusted with the site participates in or endorses a doctrine that denies another faith any legitimate claim to it.

The test should be remarkably simple: Can the authorities administering the Temple Mount state unambiguously that it is Judaism’s holiest site?

Acknowledging that fact surrenders nothing about Islam’s attachment to Al-Aqsa. But an administrator that cannot acknowledge the most basic religious identity of the people whose holiest site it administers has a profound conflict with the responsibilities of custodianship.

If the Waqf and Jordan cannot pass that test, their fitness to exercise exclusive administration should be questioned.

The logical alternative is administration by a political authority obligated to protect multiple religions rather than a religious authority representing one of them. Israel already bears responsibility for security at the compound and exercises substantial control over access. Any new arrangement would have to fully protect Muslim worship and Islamic holy places while recognizing rather than suppressing the religious attachments of others.

The status quo was built on the assumption that Islamic administration could coexist with Jewish restraint. The assertion of “Muslim exclusivity” is breaking that bargain.

If the Waqf cannot acknowledge Judaism at Judaism’s holiest site, it should no longer be entrusted to administer it.

Related:

US Embassy In Israel Only Invites Muslims To US To Study (September 2023)

Trump Stopped Treating “Terrorist” as a Synonym for “Jihadist”

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The United States has maintained an official list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations since 1997. After September 11, that list increasingly became a catalogue of jihadist groups: al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, Boko Haram, ISIS-K, ISIS-West Africa, JNIM, Hizbul Mujahideen, the Islamic Jihad Union and the Haqqani Network.

By George W. Bush’s second term, every organization he designated that remains on the list today was Islamist. Roughly 91% of Barack Obama’s first-term additions were Islamist, as were nearly all of his second-term additions. Every surviving FTO designated during Donald Trump’s first term was Islamist.

Then the designations nearly stopped.

Joe Biden added just four organizations that remain designated today, all during 2021: two ISIS affiliates in Africa and two Colombian FARC splinter groups.

Trump returned to office and immediately took the list somewhere else. On his first day back, he initiated a process to designate international cartels and transnational criminal organizations as FTOs. A month later, the Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Gulf Cartel, Cartel del Noreste, La Nueva Familia Michoacana, Carteles Unidos, MS-13 and Tren de Aragua were added.

The terrorist list was heading south of the border.

AdministrationCurrent FTOs originally designated during termIslamistIslamist share
Clinton II15747%
George W. Bush I12867%
George W. Bush II33100%
Obama I111091%
Obama II1211–1292–100%
Trump I1010100%
Biden4250%
Trump II*25312%

*Through September 2026. Counts reflect organizations currently designated as FTOs and assign each to the presidential term of its original designation. Organizations subsequently removed from the list are excluded.

The numbers reveal two abrupt breaks. Biden’s four years produced only four surviving additions, all during his first year. Trump II has already produced 25 – more than Obama over two full terms – while the Islamist share has collapsed from 100% during Trump’s first term to 12% during his second.

The explanation lies partly 2,000 miles south of Washington, DC.

The Biden years brought close to an open border policy for America’s southern border. Behind the millions of encounters stood another problem: criminal organizations controlling routes north, smuggling people and narcotics, collecting payments and using violence to protect their territory and businesses.

Trump returned treating that infrastructure as a national-security threat.

His January 20, 2025 order described cartels as using assassination, terror and brute force to control illegal traffic across the southern border. That same day, he declared a national emergency there and directed the government to target cartels, foreign gangs, smugglers and trafficking networks.

“It is the policy of the United States to ensure the total elimination of these organizations’ presence in the United States and their ability to threaten the territory, safety, and security of the United States through their extraterritorial command-and-control structures, thereby protecting the American people and the territorial integrity of the United States.” – President Trump order on making cartels specially designated terrorist organizations

A month later, eight of them were FTOs.

That sequence helps explain one of the stranger contradictions surrounding Trump. He is frequently portrayed as a president whose terrorism policies are particularly focused on Muslims, yet his second administration has directed the FTO machinery overwhelmingly toward non-Islamist organizations in Latin America and elsewhere.

President Donald Trump signs order making drug cartels in Latin America FTOs

The geography of American counterterrorism has moved.

After September 11, Washington looked thousands of miles east for foreign organizations threatening Americans. But the border crisis forced attention south, where cartels and gangs profit from the movement of people, drugs and money toward the United States.

For years, the border debate concentrated on the person arriving: who should enter, who qualifies for asylum and who should be removed. Trump’s FTO policy moves the focus farther upstream, toward the organizations controlling the routes that bring them there.

After September 11, America built an enormous counterterrorism apparatus to pursue foreign organizations threatening Americans from the other side of the world.

Trump is increasingly turning that apparatus toward the ones operating on America’s doorstep.

Names and Narrative: Terrorist and Genocide

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Hamas has been a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization since 1997, when the list was first developed. On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attackers invaded Israel, deliberately murdered civilians and kidnapped over 250 people.

It was designated terrorists committing terrorism.

Yet “terrorist” became a troublesome word for mainstream media and alt-left politicians.

The Associated Press advises journalists to describe specific acts and generally attribute the terms terrorism and terrorist to people or organizations, rather than independently apply them. Amnesty International has gone further, explaining that it generally avoids the terms because they lack an agreed legal definition and carry strong political and emotional connotations.

That restraint evaporates around “genocide.”

Genocide is the more demanding accusation. Death, destruction and even war crimes do not establish it. The Genocide Convention requires the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group as such. Israel emphatically denies that intent, maintaining that it went to war to defeat Hamas – the terrorists which had committed mass terrorism – and recover its hostages, not destroy Palestinian Arabs.

Amnesty nevertheless declares that Israel is committing genocide. The same organization that will not call Hamas a terrorist organization after its deliberate slaughter and kidnapping of civilians has no hesitation resolving the vastly more difficult question of Israeli intent.

Progressive politicians follow the same linguistic path. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) was accusing Israel of genocide within weeks of October 7 and later called Benjamin Netanyahu a “genocidal maniac.” Zohran Mamdani repeatedly describes the October 7 massacre as a “horrific war crime” rather than a terrorist act, while calling Israel’s war “genocide” and Netanyahu the “architect of a horrific genocide.”

The burden of proof has been turned upside down.

Calling October 7 terrorism requires looking simply at what Hamas did: a designated terrorist organization deliberately murdered and kidnapped civilians for political and ideological purposes. It is plainly terrorism.

Calling Israel’s war genocide requires establishing why Israel fought it: that its actual intent was to destroy Palestinian Arabs as a people rather than defeat Hamas in a defensive war.

Yet the first conclusion is treated as dangerously judgmental while the second is repeated as established fact.

Mehdi Hasan offered an almost grotesque demonstration this week while attacking a New York Times essay by Gazan Palestinian Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib urging Palestinians to resist Hamas. Hasan called people sharing the essay “pro-genocide people,” Israel “the genocidaire,” the essay “a pro genocide piece” and the war “this current genocide.”

Hasan suffers a genocide stutter.

He cannot bring himself to say clearly and unambiguously that Hamas is a terrorist group and committed a heinous terrorist act, but cannot get the word “genocide” out of his mouth as he tries to hypnotize viewers into believing the unbelievable about Israel.

And the accusation does not remain attached to Israel’s government. Once genocide becomes the premise, anyone defending Israel can become pro-genocide. Even a Palestinian Arab arguing that his own people must resist Hamas can produce a pro-genocide piece for the obsessive compulsive stutterer.

That is how a defamatory vocabulary spreads.

Genocide is among the gravest accusations that can be made against a people or state. Repeating it as established fact without establishing the specific intent the crime requires does more than distort a war. It tells millions of people that Israel is deliberately destroying Palestinian Arabs and that those who defend Israel are defending that destruction.

That is an incendiary allegation in a world where Jews and Israelis are already threatened and attacked over Gaza.

Meanwhile, terrorist is handled delicately when describing the organization that deliberately slaughtered civilians on October 7 in the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.

The asymmetry is morally grotesque. Hasan, Tlaib, Mamdani are trafficking in the asymmetry of whataboutery as a heinous veneer to protect antisemitic terrorists, plain and simple.

Names and Narrative: Antisemitism And Islamophobia

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We have a strange vocabulary for hatred.

Fear of Muslims is called Islamophobia. Hatred of Jews is called antisemitism.

One word announces fear (phobia) while the other focuses on hatred (anti).

Graffiti in London, England blames Jews on the September 11 terrorist attack that was committed by jihadi terrorists, in December 2019 during Hanukkah, or perhaps that terrorism was coming for Jews

Yet much of antisemitism has always been built on fear: fear of Jewish money, Jewish influence, Jewish intelligence, Jewish loyalty, Jewish networks, Jewish control. The classic antisemite does not merely dislike Jews. He believes Jews possess too much power and have things that do not rightfully belong to them.

That makes antisemitism, in a very literal sense, a phobia.

And comparing it with Islamophobia reveals something important about how the two prejudices work.

In Whole or Part

There are roughly 2 billion Muslims in the world and radical jihadists constitute a tiny fraction of them. Yet that fringe has caused extraordinary damage. Nineteen radical Islamic hijackers carried out September 11. ISIS murdered thousands and terrorized millions while representing a small share of the world’s Muslims.

That creates a fear rooted in uncertainty. The danger from jihadists is real; Islamophobia spreads that danger to innocent non-jihadi Muslims.

Antisemitism runs in the opposite direction.

There are only about 15 million Jews in the world. Their tiny numbers become part of the conspiracy. Jews constitute a fraction of one percent of humanity, yet Jews have achieved prominence in business, finance, academia, science, politics, media and culture.

The antisemite sees those accomplishments and converts disproportionate success into disproportionate power. Individual Jews disappear. There is only the Jews, a coordinated power.

Zero Sum Grievance Versus Sporadic Safety

There is a crucial difference between the fears.

Islamophobia begins with the violent actions of some Muslims and enlarges the circle of suspicion. Even the person consumed by fear of jihadism understands that every Muslim cannot be a jihadist. But the Muslim stranger becomes frightening because he might belong to the dangerous subset. There could be an attack at discrete moments in time.

Fear of Jews is about undeserved and evil coordinated power. It has an economic component which makes the fear especially combustible: Jews have something at the expense of others. The view of a zero sum game is that the Jewish power comes at the expense of your power; their wealth is taken from your wealth. If someone believes Jews control banks, corporations, universities, governments or the media, almost any personal grievance can acquire a Jewish culprit.

Movement

That difference in the fears makes its spread very distinct. Those disillusioned with their status in life can find a scapegoat in Jews. Poor or lost a job? Probably the fault of the Jews. Your favorite politician lost? Probably Jewish money and influence. Your culture going in a direction you don’t like? Jews control the media and Hollywood. Don’t have a functioning country? Must be the fault of the Jews.

Antisemitism takes fear and a zero-sum philosophy and allows it to travel to the corners of the world which don’t even have Jews. It is inherently portable.

But Islamophobia is a localized fear. It is not within your mind about everything that makes you upset; it is a tangible fear of your physical safety. It has an address.

Consequent Actions of Antisemitism and Islamophobia

With such orientation, the vectors to attack Jews become multiple. Remove them from positions of power: vote them out of office, get them off boards of directors, expunge them from teaching positions. Make it impossible for them to live nearby through banning kosher meat, circumcision, an eruv. Cast their lobbying group as uniquely nefarious compared to vastly larger and more powerful non-Jewish lobbying groups.

The Islamophobes’ battle against Muslims is not removal of a handful of people but placing a barrier from admitting billions of people. Limit immigration from Muslim-majority countries. Block mosques or Islamic centers from being built in the community. Keep the tsunami at bay before they overwhelm.

Between Fear and Hate

We readily describe fear surrounding Muslims with a word ending in phobia. It inherently carries the meaning “irrational.” There really is no reason to fear Muslims is the embedded argument – despite the global terrorism committed by jihadi terrorists. The language tells us that one’s fear is really a bias.

Antisemitism runs in a different direction.

There have been centuries obsessed with Jewish power, Jewish influence, Jewish wealth, Jewish loyalty and Jewish control without putting fear anywhere in its name. Doing so gives the hatred the comfort of being rational. There are data points – there’s a wealthy Jewish man! – and the cascade of evil thoughts that he must be responsible for anything wrong in your life is not a crazy leap but an endorsed component of a corroding society. The cure for this toxin is being promoted by teachers’ unions and radical politicians: that Jews must be stripped of any wealth, possessions, title, honor or business and their inherently illegal items given to victims of preference.

“Islamophobia” tells us to stop the irrational fear which leads us to hateful actions; “Antisemitism” is wired as an accelerant in a society whose foundation is grievance and victimhood.

We are arriving at the 25th anniversary of the September 11 jihadi attacks on the United States and subsequent War on Terror. It was a battle against the radical Islamic terrorist group al Qaeda, and the various sister organizations such as the Taliban, ISIS and Boko Haram to different extents.

We are also coming to the third anniversary of the October 7 jihadi massacre in Israel and its subsequent multi-front war with the Islamic Republic of Iran and its various proxies of Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas.

Lost in these anniversaries and large military battles against global jihadism is the softer war of words. Of civilian fear and hatred taking place on city streets and school campuses. Of the vastly disproportionate attacks on Jews than on Muslims in the English-speaking world.

There is no quick fix to stopping the torrent of attacks on Jews. But perhaps it is time to change the English term for Jew hatred to something like “Jewphobia” which forces people to confront their hatred as both irrational and anchored in fear. And then maybe the United Nations would finally recognize it the way it has elevated the less common “Islamophobia,” encourage governments and institutions to fight the scourge, as well as confront its own deep hostility for Jews around the world.

When the Covenant Changes Tense

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For most of the Torah, the covenant looks backward.

God remembers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Their children inherit promises made before they were born. The land before them was promised to their fathers.

Jewish history begins with memory.

Then, near the end of the Torah, the direction reverses.

Moses gathers the people on the edge of the Land of Israel and tells them:

“Not with you alone do I make this covenant… but with those who are standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with those who are not here with us today.” (Deuteronomy 29:13–14)

The covenant changes tense. Until now, we are bound to people who came before us. Now people who do not yet exist are bound to us.

A Jewish father blesses his son at the Kotel in Jerusalem, as he puts on tefillin for the first time (photo: FirstOneThrough)

Abraham enters a covenant whose fulfillment he will never see. Generations later, his descendants stand together and accept a covenant for generations they will never see.

Genesis says: You are here because of those who came before you.
Nitzavim says: Those who come after you are part of what you do here.

And connecting them is the land.

Almost immediately after extending the covenant to generations yet unborn, Moses foretells that the Jewish people will be scattered among the nations. Then God will gather them and “bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it.” (Deuteronomy 30:5)

The land comes from the fathers.
The covenant passes to the children.
Exile comes between them.
And still the chain holds.

It is a story that cannot begin at a convenient modern date. Jews do not suddenly appear in Europe, in Israel in 1948, or Jerusalem in 1967. Nitzavim describes a people moving through time, bound backward to its ancestors and forward to its descendants, with the land running through it all.

The New York Times Has Some Questions for the Jews

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The New York Times wants to know what New York Jews think about Israel.

Its new questionnaire asks Jewish New Yorkers whether they think about Israel more since October 7. Whether their opinion of Israel has changed. Whether they call themselves Zionists. Whether they have become more vocal or politically active.

The frame is revealing.

The Times wants to know how Israel has changed the Jews.

It does not ask whether October 7 changed their opinion of Hamas.

Did the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israelis change their understanding of the conflict? Did years of Israelis held hostage in Gaza change it? What have they learned about Hamas, its genocidal antisemitic foundational charter, Palestinian politics or jihadist movements committed to Israel’s destruction?

Those questions aren’t there.

Neither is another actor in the past three years: the New York Times.

Has its coverage changed your trust in the newspaper? Do you believe its reporting on Israel and Gaza has been fair? Has its treatment of antisemitism changed your relationship with the paper? Has its language surrounding “genocide”, “occupation” and “resistance” changed how you understand the conflict or how you perceive of the media?

The newspaper wants to know what changed the Jews without asking whether the newspaper helped change them.

Then there is the matter of which Jews.

The questionnaire asks whether you are a Jewish New Yorker. It does not ask whether you are 22 or 72. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or secular. Democrat, Republican or independent. Progressive, moderate or conservative. Those differences may explain the answers, as discussed in many other polls.

More important, this is an open call published by the New York Times. It is not a random survey of New York Jews. For years, parts of the Jewish community have fought bitterly with the paper over its coverage of Israel and antisemitism. Many longtime Jewish readers have publicly canceled their subscriptions over that coverage. Thousands more privately.

The Jews most alienated by the Times may also be the least likely to see its callout, trust its reporter or volunteer their thoughts. Jews comfortable with the newspaper and its worldview may be more inclined to respond, biasing the poll results. It could collect hundreds of responses showing its Jewish respondents moving away from Israel without knowing whether the Jews moved or its sample did.

Then comes the missing questionnaire.

Where are the questions for Arab and Muslim New Yorkers?

Did October 7 change your opinion of Hamas? Do you consider Hamas a terrorist organization? Do you believe Jews are entitled to national self-determination? Should Jews be allowed to freely access and pray at their holiest site? Should Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups surrender their weapons? Has your opinion of Israel changed? Of Jews?

Those answers would tell New Yorkers quite a lot too.

And the timing is particularly ugly.

Hasan Piker has recently been asking his own version of precisely this question: How attached are American Jews to Israel?

Piker has called Israel “Jewish ISIS” and previously said Hamas was “a thousand times better” than Israel. More recently, he warned that if American Jews continue presenting themselves as deeply invested in Israel, eventually someone may take action against American Jews rather than Israel.

That is antisemitism dressed up as a warning.

And now the New York Times arrives with a questionnaire measuring whether Jewish New Yorkers still call themselves Zionists and whether their feelings about Israel have changed.

The disturbing convergence is the question itself: How attached are the Jews to Israel now? The New York Times wants to know. Millions of antisemites that follow Piker want to know.

ACTION ITEM

So answer the poll. But not their questions.

Tell the Times exactly how October 7 changed your thinking.

Tell it what you think about Hamas. Tell it what you have learned about jihadism, hostage-taking and fighters operating among civilians. Tell it whether Palestinian Arabs support for the October 7 massacre and Hamas have changed your understanding of the conflict.

Then tell it about the New York Times.

Tell it whether its coverage has increased or destroyed your trust in the newspaper—its language, its emphasis, its omissions, its telling of the Jihadi-Israel conflict.

Hasan Piker and The New York Times are polling Jews for their attachment towards Israel. Tell them what you think of the global jihad sweeping the world.

The Met Announces the Anna Wintour Center for Antisemitic Excellence

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A satire.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has canceled its planned 2027 exhibition honoring John Galliano, after people objected to the museum bestowing one of its highest honors on a designer convicted of an antisemitic hate crime.

The Met has promised a replacement. And to go bigger.

Instead of John Galliano, the Costume Institute will honor Kanye West. It is an inspired substitution. Kanye is enormously influential in fashion, globally famous and has expressed considerably more recent thoughts about Hitler and Jews. He brings the Met’s original concept fully into the 21st century.

But fashion is only one artistic medium. The Met will establish the Anna Wintour Center for Antisemitic Excellence, celebrating achievement across the arts, literature, media and public life.

Roger Waters will anchor the music galleries and show clips of “Protocols of the Elders of Zion, The Musical.” Inflatable pigs adorned with Jewish stars will be available for purchase in the gift shop.

The children’s wing will celebrate Roald Dahl. Parents can walk their children through an oversized exhibit of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda and James and the Giant Peach, followed by an interactive display of Dahl’s thoughts about Jews.

The Met’s new Film Department will honor Mel Gibson, ensuring his legacy.

The American Wing will have a permanent exhibit for Henry Ford. Many of the automobiles will remain in Detroit, but the Met will showcase Ford’s other publishing achievement, The International Jew, allowing visitors to explore how an industrial genius helped mass-produce something besides automobiles.

Contemporary media deserves its own galleries.

  • Candace Owens can become Director of Jewish Studies.
  • Tucker Carlson can chair the Department of Contextualization.
  • Nick Fuentes can lead Emerging Voices, introducing younger audiences to one of civilization’s oldest traditions.

Institutional leadership should reflect the museum’s expanded mission.

Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has been asked to join the Board’s Committee on Jewish Community Relations.

The Met should also dramatically expand accessibility.

All United Nations personnel receive complimentary membership. Security Council members receive Patron status. UN Human Rights Council members enter through a dedicated express lane.

And the Met needs an international partner for 2027. Fortunately, Iran has experience.

In 2006, Tehran hosted its Holocaust-denial conference. Two decades later, the Islamic Republic can bring the concept to New York as a special Met partnership: ERASURE: Reimagining Holocaust Memory Presented in partnership with the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Anna Wintour Center for Antisemitic Excellence.

Vogue will commemorate each new addition to the Met lineup with a full spread in every international edition. Antisemitism, after all, should never be allowed to suffer from poor distribution.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani cheered the latest Met and Vogue moves and is considering making attendance to the museum mandatory for all public school students.

John Galliano was still disappointed about being canceled but was thrilled to see how the Met stepped up with counter-measures. He has moved on. He is pushing Britain and France to move past their memories of World War II, and reimagine their police uniforms to echo the outfits donned by the military of Nazi Germany.

Related:

Eyal Gilad Naftali Klinghoffer. The new Blood Libel. (June 2014)