Mark Medoff titled his play Children of a Lesser God to expose the way society infantilized the deaf, treating them as incomplete people. The phrase still burns because it names the humiliation: being allowed to exist but denied equal dignity.
That is precisely the status of Jews on the Temple Mount. The holiest place in Judaism, the very ground of the First and Second Temples, the site of the binding of Isaac. Yet Jews are barred from uttering a prayer there. Visitors, reluctantly and barely; worshipers, never. The “status quo” enforced by the Jordanian Waqf with United Nations’ support dictates that Jews must keep their mouths shut.
It is a civic cruelty disguised as compromise. Jews are told they may stand in the place of their ancestors, but only as tourists in a museum, not as children before God. Muslims pray freely on the Mount by the millions, but Jews are gagged at their own holiest site. That is not neutrality — it is Islamic Imperialism.
The excuses are familiar: security, stability, avoiding unrest. But those words simply sanctify discrimination as pragmatism. As every Jew is expelled for moving lips in silent prayer, the world is reminded: some children are still treated as children of a “lesser” god.
At the very moment Jews prayed in synagogues over Rosh Hashanah 5786 in September 2025, reading the story of Abraham binding Isaac on the Temple Mount and repeatedly praying for a complete Jerusalem, the Islamic world – from as far away as Pakistan and Indonesia – made demands of the United States that it would ensure that Israel maintains the “status quo” on the Mount. The despicable continued humiliation of Jews was essential for them even under the guise of stopping the Hamas war. Even above “humanitarian aid to Gaza.”
Islamic world makes demands on the United States to stop the war – and Jews attempting to pray at their holiest location
International diplomacy has institutionalized the humiliation of Jews. The so-called status quo is nothing but a permanent statement of inequality.
Medoff’s play forced audiences to confront a society that silenced the deaf. The Temple Mount forces us to confront a world that silences Jews. While both are intolerable, the latter is demanded at the anti-Jewish United Nations.
Words earn their meaning in how they are used. When a slogan is repeatedly screamed as an incitement to burn, stab, gun down, and terrorize people because of who they are or whom they support, it ceases to be mere rhetoric. It becomes a battle cry — and its meaning is what the battle cry does.
We have painful, recent proof of the sickness. In several separate, well-documented attacks in the United States, suspects shouted “Free Palestine” while carrying out murderous attacks. Investigations and prosecutions have treated these shouts not as abstract political slogans but as part of a violent intent to harm people identified as Jewish, Zionist, or supporters of Israel.
Man shoots people, killing one in New Hampshire yelling “Free Palestine”
When the slogan is used repeatedly for arson, firebombs, knives and bullets, its practical meaning is indisputable: it is a call for violence against Jews and Israel supporters. Institutions that track antisemitic violence warn that normalizing chants tied to violence contributes directly to more attacks. We see that “Free Palestine” is a call to murder.
Man burns people alive, killing one in Boulder, CO, shouting “Free Palestine”
That ugly truth cannot be dressed up in euphemisms or by pleading free-speech. “Free Palestine” is the current moment’s “Allahu Akbar,” the chant of radical jihadists intent on killing “infidels.” For the assailants, today’s infidels are Jews and Israel supporters.
Couple killed in Washington, DC by man yelling “Free Palestine”
It begs the question of what a “Free Palestine” means when used so frequently in murderous rampages. Are there zealots killing because they want a peaceful Palestine, or is it more likely that they seek a Palestine that is free to kill Jews the way thousands of Gazans did on October 7, 2023?
Man tries to kill Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family on Passover over “Palestine”
The one area that became a “Free Palestine” was Gaza when Israel left the region in 2005. Within a year, the political-terrorist group Hamas won 58% of the Palestinian parliament election and a year later took over Gaza. In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre in Israel, 72% of Palestinian Arabs supported the attack and the majority still want Hamas to rule according to Palestinian polls.
“Free Palestine” means death to Israel supporters outside of Israel, and death to Jews inside of Israel. Knowing this, are western countries recognizing a Palestinian State to both get a more proportionate death toll in the war and to kill more Jews in their own countries?
Palestinian terrorism has gone global. The question is whether the Palestinian Authority’s “Martyr’s Fund” start to pay killers of Israel supporters globally (as predicted on these pages in August 2023).
The late comedian George Carlin had a famous routine about “the seven words you can’t say on television.” It was funny because everyone knew the words, and everyone knew the absurdity of pretending they didn’t exist. Then came cable television — HBO, Showtime, and the rest — and suddenly those words were everywhere. What once felt taboo became common, even boring.
So it is with the language used against Israel.
In 1991, after intense U.S. diplomatic pressure, the United Nations revoked its infamous “Zionism is racism” resolution. For a moment, it seemed like the libel had been buried. There was hope that the relentless delegitimization campaign against Israel would fade, that the language of hate would finally be retired.
But in 2001, just days before the jihadist terror attacks of September 11, the Durban Conference in South Africa blew the doors wide open again. A coalition of NGOs issued a statement accusing Israel of no fewer than five of the gravest crimes known to humanity:
Apartheid
Genocide
Ethnic cleansing
Racism
Crimes against humanity
This wasn’t fringe rhetoric. It was delivered under the UN umbrella, with global media present. Durban made it “respectable” to say the unsayable — and to say it loudly.
Since then, those accusations have seeped into mainstream discourse. Palestinian “human rights” groups echo the smears repeatedly. They are repeated on college campuses, in international tribunals, in op-eds from major newspapers, and by activists on social media. What was once a shocking smear has become routine — as casual as an f-bomb on late-night cable TV.
Graffiti that Israel is committing “Genocide” in Venice, August 2025
Durban didn’t just make it acceptable to slander Israel — it made it obligatory for the “serious” activist class. To not accuse Israel of apartheid or genocide – and now especially after Israel’s defensive war against Gaza – is to risk being called naive, a sellout, or worse. The same way edgy comics feel compelled to swear to prove they’re authentic, self-styled “human rights defenders” now compete over who can level the most outrageous accusation against the Jewish state.
The world has gone from debating Israel’s policies to cheering on its demonization. The libels have become cultural wallpaper — so constant that people stop noticing they’re lies. Durban didn’t merely open the floodgates. It built a sewer main, hooked it up to the global conversation, and has been pumping raw hate through it ever since — with the United Nations playing plumber, making sure the pipes never run dry.
The medieval accusation of Jews poisoning wells has been updated: now the “poison” is alleged genocide, apartheid, and crimes against humanity — and once again, the world is drinking it without question.
In an astonishing development, a majority of U.S. Senate Democrats voted to withhold “offensive weapons” from Israel. It was a symbolic vote — the measure failed with Republicans opposing the bill — but the message is clear: Israel may block rockets but not destroy the launchers. Defense in this new moral order means absorbing blows gracefully, not ending the threat.
At the same time, France — home to the third-largest Jewish population in the world — announced it will recognize a State of Palestine without requiring demilitarization. Paris is prepared to bless a future Palestine that could legally import tanks, rockets, and drones — even as its largest faction, Hamas, wages a genocidal war.
The Illusion of Morality
This is not a call for peace but a demand that Israel remain permanently in the center of the bullseye. Washington Democrats and European leaders want to look moral by limiting “excessive force,” but they are scripting a world where Jews may bleed — just not too much at once.
Recognizing a Palestinian state without disarming it legitimizes Hamas’s war aim. It signals that mass murder, hostage-taking, and open calls for Israel’s destruction do not block your path to statehood — they accelerate it. That is appeasement, not diplomacy.
Hamas kidnapping Israeli women on October 7, 2023
The Right to Finish the Fight
Israel was built on thousands of years of history, and the vow “never again.” That means more than survival — it means the right to end the threat. Defensive weapons stop today’s rockets; offensive weapons prevent tomorrow’s.
If Democrats in Washington vote to deny Israel offensive weapons, and if Paris recognizes an armed Palestine, the message is the same: the Jewish state must fight forever.
True peace will not come from tying Israel’s hands — it will come from removing those committed to its destruction and extinguishing their dream.
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There are contests in which people do not simply want to beat their opponents but to so thoroughly dominate them that the opponent never dares to rise again. In sports, the knockout punch sends a boxer down and the victor up the rankings and into bigger purses. In war, nations aim not just to win but to deter future attacks.
But there is such a thing as “overwinning” — appearing so dominant that it does a disservice to the victor’s own long-term cause.
The Historical Lesson: Versailles
Many historians argue that France and its allies so humiliated Germany at the end of World War I that they guaranteed the next war. The Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of territory, imposed crushing reparations, and forbade them from rebuilding their military. Rather than simply deterring aggression, it created a nation humiliated and seething for revenge.
Instead of permanent peace, Versailles delivered two decades of festering resentment and, ultimately, World War II.
The Modern Parallel: Politics
Overwinning plays out in politics as well. Consider the Democratic primary in New York’s 16th District in 2024. Jamaal Bowman was a polarizing, unpopular incumbent facing a strong challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who had deep local support. Latimer was likely to win on his own — but AIPAC decided to spend a reported $20 million to ensure Bowman’s defeat.
The message was not just about removing Bowman; it was a flex. It told every other member of Congress: oppose us and we will spend you into political oblivion. It told donors: your money buys results.
But in doing so, AIPAC risked looking like a bludgeon rather than a scalpel. It gave critics a perfect narrative — that elections can be bought — and turned a local race into a national referendum on outside influence. Instead of simply retiring an unpopular incumbent, AIPAC risked martyring him.
The race became a rallying cry for left-wing radicals to claim that “AIPAC and their right-wing billionaires” were buying elections, and not about the disgraceful track record of Bowman
Netanyahu and the World’s Judgment
Israel faces a similar dilemma. After Hamas’s barbaric October 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “total victory” to “destroy Hamas.” The Israeli Defense Forces have pounded Gaza, killing thousands of Hamas fighters and dismantling its command structure. Militarily, the campaign has been successful.
But “overwinning” here carries a different risk — alienating allies. Every bombed-out building and civilian casualty is broadcast globally. Allies that initially backed Israel’s right to self-defense have begun to call for restraint. What began as a just war risks being reframed as collective punishment.
Israel’s goal is security, not global isolation, especially amongst key allies. Overwinning could leave the country victorious on the battlefield but embattled diplomatically — pressured by allies, condemned in international forums, and stripped of the legitimacy it needs to deter future threats.
The Lesson: Win, But Don’t Become the Villain
Overwinning can turn clean victories into Pyrrhic ones. When the punishment becomes the story, the victor risks losing the moral high ground — and with it, the support of allies, donors, and history itself.
The job is to win, not to look like a bully. Versailles turned victors into jailers and fueled the next world war. AIPAC’s $20 million victory made a single congressional seat a national controversy. And if Israel destroys Hamas but is seen as destroying Gaza itself, it may win the war and lose the world.
True victory must be measured beyond the battlefield, especially when that war is basically won.
Ki Teitzei’s Call for Dignity vs. Hamas’ Celebration of Desecration
Parshat Ki Teitzei commands something extraordinary:
“If any party is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale the body on a stake, you must not let the corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury it the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to G-d: you shall not defile the land that your G-d is giving you to possess.” – Deuteronomy 21:22-23
Even the guilty must not be left hanging overnight. The Torah demands swiftness in burial, even for one who deserved execution.
The biblical commentator Rashi (1040-1105) spells out the reason: “a degradation of the Divine King, for man is made in His image.” Since man is made in the image of G-d, it would be an insult to G-d to continue to embarrass the dead, even one who deserved capital punishment. The focus should be about restoring public order and nothing more.
Hamas: Desecration as Policy
Contrast that to Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas. On October 7, terrorists not only murdered, but dragged Jewish bodies through the streets of Gaza, spat on them, and beat them before crowdscheering “Allahu Akhbar” – G-d is Great. Their deaths became props for Hamas’ theatre of hate.
Hamas took the dead and mutilated body of German-Israeli Shani Louk to Gaza, where the crowds spat on her body and beat her. Her head was later chopped off.
To this day, Hamas holds the bodies of Israeli hostages, denying their families the ability to bury them, to say Kaddish, to mourn. It is deliberate, drawn-out torture.
The Law of Nations Agrees
This is not only a biblical imperative — it is a universal one. Article 17 of the Geneva Convention states plainly “Parties to the conflict shall ensure that the dead are honorably interred… and that their graves respected and properly maintained.”
Even in war, even between enemies, the dead are to be treated with dignity.
Hamas has made clear it recognizes no such obligation. It does not simply kill — it advertises cruelty, turning murder into propaganda and humiliation into spectacle.
The Moral Divide
Ki Teitzei calls us to a higher standard. To quickly bury even the criminal, to shield the image of G-d from public shame. The radical Islamist group calls its people to something else entirely: to spit, to drag, to desecrate. To turn death into a carnival. Jews believe sanctifying G-d means sanctifying the human body, even a murderer. Fanatical jihadists believe that Gd wants the community to mock the dead, even a female dancer.
This is not just a fight over land. It is a war between those who sanctify life — even those they must punish — and those who have turned death into a brand identity.
The choice before the world could not be clearer: stand with those who respect the divine image, even in death — or with those who trample it.
Imagine someone telling the Jews of Europe in 1935: accept the butchering and burning of six million of your people, and in exchange, you will once more gain sovereignty in your promised land. Would world Jewry have accepted such a bargain? Unlikely. In Judaism, the value of life as supreme trumps all—perhaps even over the divine inheritance of the Land of Israel itself.
That is why Jews do not take pride in the defenseless millions murdered in the Holocaust. They mourn them, honor their memory, and vow “never again.” The lesson is not that Jewish blood must be spilled for redemption, but that Jewish life is sacred and must be protected at all costs.
This moral foundation has been a hallmark of Jewish thought for millennia. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 4:5) teaches that “whoever saves a life saves the world.” Zionism, too, was never about blood sacrifice but about safeguarding Jewish existence and ensuring dignity, freedom, and self-determination. The rebirth of Israel is framed as a triumph of survival, not of slaughter.
Yet for Palestinian Arabs, the moral calculus is inverted. Martyrdom is not mourned but celebrated. “Glory to the martyrs,” they shout, glorifying not only the dead but the genocidal jihadists of Hamas who carried out the October 7 massacre of unarmed Jews. Streets, schools, and summer camps are named for suicide bombers and killers. Death in the service of destroying Jews is not a tragedy but an achievement.
Columbia University placard of “Glory to the Martyrs”
This glorification of death is not limited to fringe radicals. The majority of Gazans have always supported slaughtering Jewish civilians in Israel. Yasser Arafat, the father of the Palestinian national movement, repeatedly praised the “martyrs” who died attacking Israelis, insisting that “our blood is cheap compared to the goal [Jerusalem].” His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, continues the same practice. He honors terrorists killed while attacking Israelis, declaring that “we bless every drop of blood that has been spilled for Jerusalem.” The Palestinian Authority, under Abbas, even pays stipends to the families of those who die murdering Jews—the so-called “martyrs’ fund.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas blesses blood “spilled for Jerusalem”
The same ethos echoed recently in the United States. At the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Michigan in August 2025, the crowd erupted in cheers for Gaza. Lameess Mahanna, sporting a shirt of the Palestine Youth Movement—employed at Columbia University—declared that the end of Israel would be “justice.” (1:35:00) She closed her remarks by leading the audience in a chant: “Say it clear and say it loud: Gaza, you make us proud!”
If Gaza, in her telling, is suffering a “genocide,” how can its dead make her and the thousands who echoed her cry, “proud?” The answer is chilling: because human life is secondary. For her, for Hamas, for the Palestinian leadership stretching from Arafat to Abbas, and from Gaza to Detroit, “justice” is not measured in lives saved, but in Israel’s disappearance. Every dead body is not a tragedy but a step toward their perverted form of “justice:” erasing the Jewish state and replacing it with Arab Muslim rule.
This is the precise inverse of the Jewish ideal. Jews mourn their murdered; Palestinians exalt theirs. Jews sanctify life; Hamas sanctifies death. Jews seek peace with dignity; Palestinian leaders glorify death as the path to victory. The Jewish lesson of the Holocaust is the necessity of Jewish strength to prevent further massacres. The Palestinian lesson of their own history is that more massacres are required for them to have “dignity.”
Which brings us to the central question: can two peoples animated by such irreconcilable values ever truly coexist? One side views life as sacred above all else. The other views life as expendable, even desirable, when spent in the service of destroying its cohabitants.
Coexistence demands a shared commitment to life. Without that, “peace” is a dangerous mirage—a prelude to slaughter, the ultimate source of perverted pride.
“The recent fighting and grave risk of further aggravation in an already brutal and deadly conflict raise severe protection concerns, amid a pervasive culture of impunity for human rights violations.” – Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, June 2024
“The RSF and its allied militias have also committed other war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include widespread sexual and gender-based violence, rape, sexual slavery, abduction, and recruitment and use of children in hostilities. The RSF and its allied militias have also systematically engaged in pillage and looting. They have further committed large-scale attacks based on intersecting ethnicity and gender grounds, especially against the Masalit community in El Geneina, including killings, torture, rape, and other forms of sexual violence, amounting to persecution.” – Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for the Sudan, October 2024
“Famine is present in Darfur. Conflict is increasing. Children are targeted. Girls and women are subject to rape. And the whole landscape is one of destruction, and, we say, criminality. ” – ICC Prosecutor Karim A.A. Khan, January 2025
” I have now concluded that members of the RSF and allied militias have committed genocide in Sudan.” – US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, January 2025
With an estimated 150,000 people dead and some 12 million displaced, the conflict has paralysed Africa’s third-largest country. A catastrophic famine is ravaging the more remote areas, while a nightmare of sexual violence persists for women and girls across the country. – OCHA, April 2025
The numbers are staggering: as many as 150,000 people killed, millions displaced, thousands of women and children raped, villages in Darfur wiped off the map. It has been called “ethnic cleansing,” “genocide” in a land beset with “rape and sexual slavery” and “famine.” Children are dying daily, with half of El Fasher’s trapped population under five.
And yet — the streets of London, Paris, New York are quiet. No bridges are blocked. No university campuses are occupied. No faculty letters demand boycotts of Sudanese products.
The UN and Campus Activists Save Their Fury for Israel
When the UN convenes emergency sessions, it is rarely for Sudan. In 2024, the UN General Assembly passed 15 resolutions against Israel — and only seven against all other countries combined. The Human Rights Council maintains a permanent agenda item (Item 7) targeting only Israel.
On campus, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) calls for “globalizing the intifada” and promotes BDS campaigns to cut economic, cultural, and academic ties with Israel. Faculty petitions accuse Israel of “genocide” while ignoring the UN’s own genocide determinations in Sudan.
The fake narrative is fixed: Israel is a “settler-colonial outpost,” a European implant, a Western beachhead in the Middle East. This is not merely bad history — it is a deliberate attempt to erase Jewish indigeneity and delegitimize Israel’s right to exist.
Limited travel and lack of burial space has led to burials expanding from existing graveyard perimeters to the city roads. (photo: Giles Clarke for OCHA)
Erasing History as Antisemitic Strategy
“Israel’s pattern of practice of dispossession and expansion of settlements dating back to its establishment as a settler colonial state in 1948 has been found to be illegal under international law.” – NY CUNY vote on BDS Divestment, June 2024 (Passed)
This framing is an antisemitic dog whistle: it rebrands Jews as foreign European invaders in their ancestral homeland, turning their self-defense into imperial conquest. It ignores that more than half of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi expelled from Arab and Muslim lands. It recasts Israel’s rebirth — championed by the same UN that voted for partition in 1947 — as a sin that must be repented by dismantling the Jewish state.
The Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism is attempting to move Israel Studies in universities out of the Jewish Studies department and into Colonial Studies, both attempting to sever Jews from the land of Israel, as well as mark Zionism as a point of European imperialism.
This helps explain why so many are silent about Sudan or Syria. Those wars do not serve the European imperialism narrative, a war between the Global South and Global North. They do not produce graffiti that says “globalize the intifada” or “river to the sea.”
Israel is Vulnerable
“They can crush the flowers, but they cannot delay the springtime.” MIT vote on BDS, September 2024 (passed)
Israel is a small democracy, one that can be pressured and condemned without risk. Many seem to feel the UN’s vote to create Israel in 1947 was a mistake that must be corrected. The endless parade of UN resolutions, the obsessive focus of NGOs, and the boycotts pushed by activists reveal a not-so-hidden goal: not to protect Gazans, but to destroy Israel.
When Hamas butchered 1,200 Israelis on October 7 — burning families alive, gang-raping women, kidnapping children — the global street roared. Not in sympathy, but in accusation. The protests called Israel “the real terrorist” and demanded its isolation. When Israel finally defended itself, the outrage multiplied.
Meanwhile, Sudan burns — and the world yawns.
Mohamed Maysara, 2, cries at the Al-Buluk Hospital in Omdurman. He was there to receive treatment for malnourishment (photo: Giles Clarke)
A Moral Compass Pointed the Wrong Way
The world has turned its outrage into a weapon, aimed squarely at the one Jewish state. Genocide in Sudan, mustard gas in Syria, mass killings in Yemen — they elicit murmurs. But Israel’s attempt to dismantle a terror army that openly calls for its annihilation provokes riots, boycotts, and international tribunals.
This is not human rights activism but a global campaign to strip Jews of sovereignty. And it is why the contrast between Sudan’s silence and Gaza’s deafening clamor is not just hypocrisy — it is proof of a deeper animus that cannot be explained by compassion. It is the validation and desired implementation of Hamas’s genocidal charter.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics in the U.S. Senate. Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, he has pursued a campaign that reframes Israel not as a besieged ally but as a war criminal state, worthy of sanction and censure. His playbook has five coordinated elements: a starvation narrative, a focus on Christian persecution, a drive to restrict U.S. arms, an effort to criminalize Israeli “settlers,” and to demonize the Israeli government while legitimizing the Palestinian Authority.
What began as fringe rhetoric has steadily migrated into the Democratic mainstream. In Washington’s political war over Israel, Van Hollen has positioned himself as the lead general, and he is increasingly turning to enact laws to enforce his worldview.
The Starvation Narrative
The turning point came in February 2024, when Van Hollen escalated from criticism to criminalization.
On February 13, 2024, he declared on the Senate floor:
“Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”
Just two weeks later, his office issued a statement reinforcing the charge:
“People are starving in Gaza. And civilians are dying every day. There is no excuse for this situation.”
At the time – just weeks into Gaza’s war on Israel – few international observers had made such claims. By labeling Israel’s blockade as “deliberate starvation,” Van Hollen provided the framework for others to follow. Within months, humanitarian agencies, U.N. officials, and fellow senators adopted the same language.
Christian Persecution: Expanding the Field of Victims
On trips to the region in June 2024 and August 2025, Van Hollen, joined by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) made highly publicized visits with Christian patriarchs in Jerusalem. They highlighted declining Christian communities and implied Israeli responsibility for their plight.
The narrative was selective: minimizing Hamas’s role and Palestinian Authority corruption while amplifying claims that Israel’s policies drove Christians from the Holy Land. Slowly, this angle began echoing in European diplomacy and American church politics. Van Hollen helped mainstream it.
Restricting U.S. Arms
Beyond rhetoric, Van Hollen has worked to curtail U.S. arms transfers to Israel. He joined resolutions to block certain sales, pushed for GAO investigations into Israel’s use of U.S. weapons, and demanded conditioning assistance on humanitarian compliance.
By mid-2025, other Democrats had joined him, showing his success in normalizing the once-fringe notion that America should starve Israel of weapons in the midst of its war for survival.
Criminalizing Settlers: From Rhetoric to Sanctions
Van Hollen has also targeted Israeli settlers, pressing for visa bans, sanctions, and financial restrictions.
In November 2024, nearly 90 Democrats, led by Van Hollen, urged Biden to impose sanctions on Israeli ministers tied to settler violence. In August 2025, he worked with Senator Peter Welch on a sanctions bill, declaring:
“The Netanyahu Government – driven by racist extremists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir – continues to fuel settler violence and support the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. The United States must not turn a blind eye to these acts.”
The progression from criticisms to sanctions is becoming a hallmark of his activities.
Boycotting Netanyahu, Embracing Abbas
The hypocrisy of Van Hollen’s diplomacy was laid bare in July 2024, when Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. Van Hollen loudly boycotted the speech, denouncing Netanyahu’s government as extremist and refusing to “be a rubber stamp” for what he called a “political prop.”
Yet, just weeks earlier in Ramallah, Van Hollen had gladly sat down with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—a man who: wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial; maintains laws banning the sale of land to Jews, punishable by imprisonment or death; and funds stipends to terrorists’ families under the “Pay for Slay” program.
This willingness to shun Israel’s elected leader while legitimizing Abbas exposes Van Hollen’s double standard. The boycott was staged as a moral stand, yet his embrace of Abbas—authoritarian, corrupt, and antisemitic—revealed a deeper hostility directed not at extremism but at Israel itself.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on a August 2025 trip to the region in which he does not meet any Israeli officials (photo from WAFA)
The Legal Framework: Turning Criticism into Punishment
Van Hollen’s strategy is deeper than speeches. He has worked to institutionalize anti-Israel positions into binding U.S. law:
Leahy Laws & Foreign Assistance Act: He invoked these statutes in May 2025 to argue that Israel’s restrictions on aid are a “commission of gross violations of human rights” which would trigger U.S. legal violations.
GAO Investigations: He formally requested audits to prove U.S. complicity, aiming to tie Israel’s actions to American liability.
Codifying Executive Orders: By reintroducing sanctions legislation in 2025, Van Hollen sought to ensure that settler bans would not depend on a future president’s discretion but become permanent U.S. law.
This layering of legal levers shows the depth of his campaign. Van Hollen is not merely criticizing Israel. He is trying to build the legal scaffolding that forces America to punish it.
Summary
Van Hollen as a multi-front war on Israel:
Starvation narrative → turned humanitarian debates into accusations of Israeli war crimes.
Christian persecution → expanded moral indictments beyond Palestinian Arabs.
Arms restrictions → reframed U.S. support as conditional.
Settler criminalization → sought to enshrine punitive measures into U.S. law.
Boycott of Netanyahu, embrace of Abbas → pivot America’s ally from Israel to the Palestinians.
Each step has nudged Democrats further away from the historic bipartisan consensus supporting Israel, tarring the Jewish State as racist and criminal, and unworthy of support.
Mark Mellman of Democratic Majority for Israel – a longtime Van Hollen fan – bemoaned and warned about the “deleterious consequences of his [Van Hollen’s] actions,” as he watched the Democratic party follow Van Hollen’s lead. It has not slowed the senator down.
Chris Van Hollen has become the lead general in mainstreaming anti-Israel narratives and a Democratic political war against Israel—a campaign whose consequences extend from Washington to Jerusalem, and into the very legitimacy of Jewish life in the Holy Land.
In a bold step to preserve humanity’s “most fragile treasures,” UNESCO voted to add the Hamas Charter to its list of endangered cultural artifacts. The decision came during the organization’s annual heritage summit, which initially convened to safeguard vanishing African oral traditions, disappearing tribal instruments, and lost languages. But the spotlight quickly shifted after the State of Palestine—recognized as a full UNESCO member—submitted the 1988 Hamas Charter as a candidate for protection.
Delegates debated the proposal with solemn reverence, as though they were discussing ancient scrolls or fragile clay tablets. “This is not merely a document,” intoned one UNESCO official, “it is a vibrant example of humanity’s enduring talent for mixing medieval theology, paranoid conspiracy, and genocidal intent into a single cultural artifact.”
Hamas, which currently holds 58% of the Palestinian parliament and continues to govern Gaza with an iron fist wrapped in a prayer shawl, celebrated the recognition. “We thank UNESCO for finally appreciating the poetic quality of our prose,” said one Hamas spokesperson, pointing to passages citing Jews as orchestrators of every global evil, from wars to stock market crashes. “It is art. Dark, sinister art, but art nonetheless.”
The Islamic Republic of Iran, a member of UNESCO with a keen eye for heritage preservation, reportedly helped prepare the submission. Delegates noted the Persian calligraphy used in the cover page of the proposal as “an exquisite touch of cultural diplomacy.”
Critics, however, were less charitable. Human rights groups asked why UNESCO would protect a text calling for the eradication of an entire people while ignoring actual endangered communities being eradicated in real time. UNESCO officials brushed off such concerns. “Our mission is not to judge,” said one diplomat. “If we can safeguard Stonehenge, we can safeguard Stone Age thinking.”
The vote passed overwhelmingly, though with several European countries abstaining in embarrassment. The document will now be digitally preserved and inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register, alongside such treasures as the Magna Carta, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
As the session closed, one delegate mused: “Perhaps one day humanity will look back on this charter the way it looks at medieval torture devices—an artifact of cruelty, once revered, now displayed in a museum of shame.”
For now, however, UNESCO has declared the Hamas Charter an endangered cultural jewel which must be preserved. Its continued existence may be a threat to peace, but, as the organization reminded the world, “heritage must be protected, even when it is heritage of hate.”
First One Through 