The tragic farce of modern human rights discourse reached a grotesque milestone. According to the defenders of Palestinian “human rights,” Israel should not be allowed to defend itself—even when civilians are under direct rocket fire from foes eager to destroy the Jewish State.
Francesca Albanese, the UN’s so-called “Special Rapporteur on Palestine,” brazenly declared that Israel, as an “occupying power,” has no right to self-defense. In Albanese’s warped worldview, a Jew in Israel has no right to life.
Albanese claims that Israel cannot defend itself from Hamas, the popular and dominant Palestinian political party and ruling power in Gaza.
This is policy for many. When the U.S. House of Representatives recently voted to fund Iron Dome, a purely defensive missile shield that intercepts rockets aimed at Israeli civilians, a coalition of radicals opposed it. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Marjorie Taylor Greene— antisemitic-bedfellows —voted against the funding.
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez voted for the funding, the backlash from anti-Israel radicals was immediate. Vandals defaced her headquarters. They threatened her life. “How dare she support saving Jewish lives?” was the clear message, sprayed in graffiti.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez office vandalized after voting to fund Israel’s missile defense system
At Rutgers University, Noura Erakat, a Palestinian professor decried Iron Dome, essentially arguing that protecting Israeli civilians is an act of war. The Democratic Socialists of America demanded that Israel be isolated while defending itself in a multifront war. And many echoed the ridiculous claim that it is unjust for Israelis to have bomb shelters when Gazans do not—ignoring that Hamas has built hundreds of kilometers of military tunnels, used exclusively to shield terrorists and smuggle weapons, while civilians are left to die on purpose, to feed propaganda.
The global double standard is grotesque: Israel must accept rocket fire, massacres, and kidnappings—and not respond. Not defend. If it does, it is called an aggressor hell-bent on genocide. No country on Earth is asked to withhold defending its citizens.
The latest iteration of perverse Palestinian “human rights” demands that Jews die quietly, with neither fight nor protest. Palestinian “dignity” demands that Arabs stand atop Jewish graves, personal and physical manifestations mirroring the Islamic mosques sitting atop the Jewish Temples. Just as the world believes Jews should be silent at their holiest site, Jews must die quietly in their holy land.
When “human rights” for a particular group demands the sacrifice of another, basic moral math needs to be applied. When the perversion infects United Nations and U.S. government officials calling to strip and bind Jews in the Middle East, the terrifying equation yields a final solution.
That has been the rallying cry of Hamas since its inception. It was not a metaphor or rhetorical flourish. It was a strategic doctrine and a religious creed. Victory would mean the destruction of Israel and the establishment of a devout Islamic state “from the river to the sea.” Martyrdom meant dying in pursuit of that cause — not just willingly, but eagerly.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas made its major play for victory. Thousands of militants and civilians from Gaza poured into Israel, raping, torturing, and slaughtering Jews in a pogrom of medieval barbarism. They hoped the spectacle would provoke a regional war — Hezbollah from the north, Iran from afar, Arab street uprisings across the Middle East. They imagined a domino collapse of the Jewish State.
It did not play out according to the preferred plan.
Hezbollah has been badly bruised. Iran has been humiliated. The IDF shattered Hamas leadership and destroyed its terror tunnels. The remaining Hamas fighters are mostly hiding — or dead or captured. Gaza’s infrastructure, above and below ground, is rubble.
Which leaves plan B: martyrdom.
Not just for themselves — many of whom will choose death over surrender — but for the people of Gaza whom they have indoctrinated for two decades. From kindergartens to mosques, from textbooks to television, they taught Palestinians that death for Allah is better than life without “liberation.” That there is nobility in dying while killing Jews.
Over 20,000 Hamas fighters are dead. There are almost twice that number of dead civilians. Entire neighborhoods in Gaza are leveled. Tunnels, schools, hospitals are gone.
That’s not failure for Hamas. That’s evidence that the campaign for martyrdom worked. Every dead Gazan is a stepping stone to paradise. Every civilian loss is a propaganda weapon. Hamas always calculated that if they couldn’t beat Israel in battle, they could win in death.
And it’s working.
Around the world, nations are blaming Israel for a “power vacuum” in Gaza — as if Hamas’s evil leadership was a success story over seventeen years. They demand “reconstruction” — as if Gaza was a victim of a natural disaster and not a self-inflicted holy war launched atop a powder keg. The idea that Gazans were brainwashed into seeking martyrdom is dismissed as Islamophobic. The western mind cannot comprehend that death is an accepted goal, not a consequence.
New York Times article blaming Israel for Hamas’s refusal to surrender
In the West, every death is a tragedy. But in Gaza under Hamas, it is currency. Suicide bombers once strapped explosives to their chests. Now, the entire Strip has been strapped into a suicide vest, and the detonator pressed.
This isn’t suicide-by-cop. It’s martyrdom-by-genocide — a warped campaign in which Hamas initiated all-out war against a vastly superior enemy, knowing full well the toll. And the more people die, the more it fuels the narrative they’ve crafted: that they are eternal victims, even while firing rockets from hospitals and launching ambushes from schools.
It is cruel. It is evil. And it is successful.
Because the more Gazans die, the more the world turns on Israel. The more Israel defends itself and fights to return its hostages, the more it is blamed for the destruction of Gaza. The West is so allergic to the idea of mass death as a chosen outcome that it must assign blame elsewhere.
So Hamas continues to fight, not to win, but to die. And in death, they declare success because the narrative of the Global South has been successfully instilled into consciousness of the Global North for the past decade. The insidious jihad has now reached peak toxicity.
“Victory or Martyrdom.”
A true defeat of Hamas – in which it gets neither victory nor martyrdom – would be for it to surrender. To hand over its weapons. To leave the Strip and be stripped of mention on any building, square or monument. To be vacated from government, military and textbooks.
That is precisely what Hamas is avoiding at all cost. It will not hand over the hostages and lay down its weapons. It will fight until every child in Gaza is dead rather than concede defeat. And the majority of Gazans continue to back that plan, even as recently as a May 2025 PCPSR poll.
The world refuses to admit the reality and prefers to blame Israel for the continued deaths rather than pressure Gazans to stand down. Without a Hamas concession, there is really no “day after.” The war will continue. Deaths will fill the pages of the next chapter.
Israel has denied Gazans the victory of victory and the world is enabling the victory of martyrdom.
All because the West cannot comprehend the mindset of psychopaths and remains blind to the mainstreamed antisemitism in their midst.
ACTION ITEM
Post on social media that the Gazan dead are not only victims of Hamas’s war but Hamas’s education. No such society is deserving of sovereignty.
There are two wars taking place in Gaza: one is a textbook definition of a genocidal war while the other is a reluctant war of ethnic cleansing.
While critics of the Jewish State hurl the term “genocide” as a weapon, a blood libel designed to strip Israel of its legitimacy, it is an inversion: it is Hamas and only Hamas that is engaged in a genocide.
Hamas’s 1988 foundational charter is not a vague political platform. It is an open call to murder Jews. Article 7 quotes an Islamic hadith that urges Muslims to kill Jews wherever they find them. Article 13 states that “initiatives and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement.” Peace is forbidden. Coexistence is a crime.
And the Palestinian people did not reject this vision; they embraced it. In 2005, they elected Mahmoud Abbas as president — a man who wrote his doctoral thesis denying the Holocaust. In 2006, they voted Hamas into power, giving the genocidal group 58% of the parliament. These were not fringe votes. These were popular, democratic choices made in full view of Hamas’s open ideology.
Then came October 7, 2023.
In the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas — the ruling government of Gaza — unleashed its long-promised war of annihilation. They murdered 1,200 people, from babies in cribs to elderly women in wheelchairs. They burned families alive, filmed their atrocities, and broadcast their bloodlust to the world. The Palestinian street erupted in celebration. Polls showed 75% of Palestinian Arabs supporting the massacre of Jews.
This was not a surprise. This was fulfillment. A generation raised on genocidal propaganda in schools, mosques, and television carried out what they had been taught. They were not rebelling against Hamas — they were Hamas. Thousands of Gazans participated in the October 7 slaughter.
Israel, faced with an existential threat, responded. It had tried the diplomatic route. It had withdrawn from Gaza in 2005. It had allowed billions of dollars in humanitarian aid to flow into the Strip. It had mostly tolerated rocket fire and bus bombings and flaming kites with modest responses. But after October 7, there was no possibility of a tepid response with a group with an increasing capacity to carry out its genocidal intent.
Israel launched a war of necessity — a war to end the Hamas threat once and for all. The goal was not genocide, but defense. Not extermination, but eradication of a terrorist force.
But the nature of this war is highly complex. Hamas does not engage Israel’s army on an open battlefield but underneath hospitals, mosques and homes. It warehouses missiles in schools and launches them from playgrounds. There is no ability to eliminate the terrorists without severe destruction to dual-use civilian-military infrastructure and significant collateral damage.
And that looks a lot like ethnic cleansing.
Gaza ruins
Ethnic cleansing refers to the forced removal of an ethnic or religious group from a territory. And yes, it is possible that the outcome of Israel’s war will be a Gaza without many Palestinian Arabs. Gaza cannot be rebuilt atop terrorist tunnels and booby traps. The terrorist enclave that Gazans built since 2007 cannot remain nor be replicated.
It has long been a sign of instilled antisemitism that the United Nations has accused Israel of genocide, at least as far back as 2013, as a mask for Palestinian Arabs genocidal intentions. It is a classic form of the adage “the best defense is a good offense,” accusing Israel of the crimes of Palestinian Arabs, forcing Israel into a defensive posture, both militarily and politically.
But it is another level of tragic irony that in this defensive war, Israel is open to the accusation of ethnic cleansing.
No nation on earth has faced the choices Israel faces. No other country is expected to coexist with a neighbor whose elected leaders seek its annihilation. No one wants to see civilian suffering but Israel has tried every alternative — and the price has always been paid in Jewish blood.
The world is watching a premeditated war of genocide – which it enabled and encouraged through the United Nations’ statements and actions – be defeated by a small, determined country. The contours of that victory may appear to the casual viewer as ethnic cleansing, and will certainly be marketed as such by Israel haters, as a cruel collective punishment against civilians and so-called “refugees.”
The Global North will consider “ethnic cleansing” as the lesser charge relative to the smear of “genocide” long advanced by the Global South. Will the resulting actions encourage and enable the next genocidal war against the Jewish State remains to be seen.
The United Nations Security Council is comprised of five permanent members (P5) and ten elected members (E10) who try to pass resolutions to promote global and regional peace and cooperation. It fails repeatedly regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict as it prioritizes protecting the political-terrorist group Hamas above all else.
On June 4, 2025, E10 put forward a draft resolution which “demand[ed] an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza; the immediate, dignified, and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups; and the immediate and unconditional lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into the territory.”
The acting US Representative Dorothy Shea vetoed the draft resolution saying “US opposition to this resolution should come as no surprise – it is unacceptable for what it does say, it is unacceptable for what it does not say, and it is unacceptable for the manner in which it has been advanced. The United States has been clear: we would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza.” She added “We cannot allow the Security Council to award Hamas’ intransigence. Hamas and other terrorists must have no future in Gaza. As Secretary [Marco] Rubio has said: ‘If an ember survives, it will spark again into a fire’.”
Knowing that the United States would use its veto right to reject the resolution, one is left with two conclusions: the rest of the Security Council wanted the US to veto the resolution, or they care more about protecting Hamas than civilians in Gaza.
Perhaps the fourteen UNSC countries want Israel to continue the war but want to placate their pro-Palestinian constituents, appearing to support Gazans while knowing that no relief would happen until Hamas is defeated. Maybe the countries want Israel and the United States to both look isolated – the “little Satan” and “Big Satan” as the Islamic Republic of Iran calls them – hoping to curry favor among the Global South, with 80% of the world’s population.
Either way, the world cannot really believe there is a genocide happening in Gaza, if the path to a ceasefire was simply adding two lines calling for Hamas to surrender.
As the war from Gaza continues to take its devastating toll on everyone involved, the road to peace remains blocked by a singular, stubborn obstacle: Hamas. The group’s leadership refuses to accept ceasefires not out of strength, but from the conviction that they can endure, rearm, and fight again. The violence will not end as long as Hamas is allowed to believe it has a future.
It is time for the international community – particularly Western democracies – to take an unambiguous stand. Hamas must be permanently banned—not just its military wing, but its entire structure. There can be no meaningful peace, no rebuilding of Gaza, and no credible peaceful future while Hamas continues to hold power and wield influence.
Despite the mounting civilian cost, Hamas has shown no intention of disarming. The group openly positions itself as a perpetual “resistance force” rather than a governing body accountable to and respecting the people of Gaza. Its survival strategy is predicated on suffering—banking on civilian casualties to inflame global opinion while preserving its own arsenal in tunnels and bunkers. This is not governance. This is terrorism dressed in political clothing.
Hamas official boasts of sacrificing his own civilian population to slaughter Jewish civilians, shortly after the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel (source: MEMRI)
Yet in Europe, the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization remains inconsistent. Some countries distinguish between its so-called “military” and “political” wings, an artificial and dangerous separation. This division gives cover to operatives, fundraising networks, and propaganda arms that prolong the conflict and contribute to ongoing suffering.
Now, there is growing concern in the United Kingdom, where a legal effort is underway to challenge Hamas’s terrorist designation. This must not be allowed to succeed. On the contrary, the UK should lead Europe in reaffirming that Hamas is a terrorist entity in its entirety. Such a stance must be echoed by Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the EU. It must happen in Canada and Australia and throughout the Global North.
UK lawyers are fighting to get Hamas removed from the list of terrorist groups
Riverway Law submitted a 106-page filing in the UK which argued that Hamas is a local “resistance movement… which has won the only free and fair election in the occupied Palestinian territories” and it “poses no threat to the UK people.” The submission argued that “the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and alien domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, is moral [and] legitimate.”
Lost in this filing is that the legal definition of terrorism is about targeting civilians for political aims. That is the core mission of Hamas. Its stated purpose and actions on, before and after October 7, 2023 is to attack Jewish civilians inside Israel and around the world.
To wit, in April 2022, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who would later spearhead the October 2023 massacre in Israel said “Whoever makes the decision to repeat this desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be making a decision to desecrate thousands of synagogues and Jewish temples all over the world,” explicitly saying that actions done by the Israeli government would be reason to take actions against Jews around the world, including in the UK.
The invective is a grisly echo of the 1988 foundational Hamas Charter which explicitly cites the antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elder of Zion about the supposed vile nature of Jews everywhere. It claims that Jews conspire to control the world and “Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should… fight with the warmongering Jews (Article 32).” The Hamas charter uses the word “world” twenty-five times. “Globe” is used twice. “Jew” – not “Zionist” – is used twelve times, including stating “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people, (Article 28)” targeting Jews everywhere and the religion itself as a permanent offense to 1.9 billion Muslims.
It was with this antisemitic genocidal charter that Palestinians voted Hamas to the majority of parliament in 2006. That this vile party won elections – like the Nazi party in Germany – is not a defense of its legitimacy but a condemnation of the “deformity in Palestinian culture,” to quote James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute comment at the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023.
Banning Hamas is not only a matter of principle, but of practical necessity. No group that openly glorifies violence and opposes basic coexistence can have any legitimate role in governance.
Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau said in an October 24, 2023 show on LBC TV (Lebanon) that Hamas is prepared to repeat the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation time and again until Israel is annihilated. (source: MEMRI)
A political party that glorifies the death of its own population with public declarations “we are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs,” shows no value for the lives of its own civilians, let alone of others. The Global North must lead with moral clarity and urge the Arab League to follow suit.
When people on the streets and campuses in the Global North yell “Free Palestine,” they are doing so under the banner of Hamas in a call to eradicate the only Jewish State and to attack Jews globally. If people want to make the argument that the statement is for coexistence, then fight to end Hamas, argue for a Free Israel and to Create Palestine, and condemn the heinous attacks on Jews happening all over the world.
To end this war, we must end Hamas. Ban them—politically, financially, and globally. Only then can people talk about “the day after,” and the longer future.
How many generations should someone be called a “refugee?” Two? Ten? My parents were refugees and I consider myself the son of refugees. But not a refugee. To do so would be a mockery of millions of people fleeing homes to faraway lands where they have no family, infrastructure or knowledge of the local language.
Alas, while every year the world adds and removes refugees from the global tally, there is a permanent exception.
There are roughly 122 million displaced people worldwide (68 million internally displaced, 38 million refugees and millions of others seeking protection), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is tasked with helping them. Its mission is clear: assist people fleeing conflict or persecution to either return home when it’s safe, or resettle in a new country where they can rebuild their lives and become citizens. Refugee status, according to UNHCR, is meant to be temporary. A tragic but manageable step toward normalcy.
But for one group of people, the rules were rewritten.
In 1949, the United Nations created a separate agency: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Its job was not to help all refugees, but a specific set—Arabs who left or were displaced from what became the State of Israel during the 1948 war.
Unlike the UNHCR, UNRWA never intended to help these refugees resettle or gain citizenship elsewhere. In fact, when Jordan annexed the to be named “West Bank” in 1950 and granted full Jordanian citizenship to the Arabs living there in 1954 (Jews were specifically excluded from Jordanian citizenship) —including the so-called refugees—UNRWA still kept them on its refugee rolls. Why? They were no longer stateless, no longer displaced from their community, and in most cases, were living just miles from where they or their families once resided.
No other refugee population in the world is treated this way.
The Palestinians under UNRWA are not counted based on where they live or whether they’ve rebuilt their lives. They’re counted based on ancestry—any descendant of someone who lived in Mandatory Palestine in 1946 and left during the war is considered a “refugee.” That includes people who are now citizens of Jordan who have never set foot in Israel, and those who live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza.
This isn’t about resettlement. It isn’t about a “two-state solution.” It’s about return. Not return to a country they fled—but to homes where their grandparents once lived, in a country that has since fought multiple wars for its survival and established itself as a sovereign nation.
This has locked the Middle East into a perpetual state of conflict. UNRWA doesn’t just preserve the status of Palestinian refugees—it amplifies it, funds it, and builds an international bureaucracy around it. It has denied Israel’s right to control its own immigration, and basic principle of sovereignty.
Worse, the UN’s actions have turned a situation normally considered a humanitarian issue into a real estate dispute. By insisting that people return to a house—not a country, as outlined in international human rights law—the global political body has exceeded its own mandate. This isn’t a question of national self-determination, but one of personal property claims. UNRWA isn’t so much a champion of the creation of a state beside Israel; it champions individual return to specific homes, decades abandoned or destroyed, now occupied by others in a sovereign country.
Meanwhile, the descendants of every other refugee group in the world—from Sudan to Ukraine—are helped by the UN to find a path forward. Only the Palestinians are encouraged to walk backward, into the houses of their grandparents.
UNHCR helps refugees stop being refugees. UNRWA helps them stay that way.
Every year, new wars create new displaced people. But only one group stays on the list year after year, generation after generation.
For Palestinian Arabs, the 1948 war is still being fought. Generations of people haven’t been birthed into refugee status as much as the region is in a 100 years war. While the world may use political terminology of an UNRWA ward who has never been to Israel as a descendant of a “refugee,” Palestinians simply see a permanent property right which will never be forfeited. The UN simply provides cover under the “refugee” monicker.
The world sees Gaza through the lens of curated sympathy – smoke trails from missile strikes, wounded children, crumbled buildings – rendered by the media and United Nations. The headlines scream “siege” and “occupation,” and the images are carefully framed to elicit tears, not questions. For them, Gaza is a tragedy.
But Israelis? They see something very different.
They see a terrorist enclave. A society ruled by Hamas – not just tolerated but elected – with a charter calling for genocide against Jews. They see neighbors who have fired over 30,000 rockets at them since Israel left Gaza in 2005, and who used humanitarian aid to dig terror tunnels and stockpile weapons.
Israelis are haunted by October 7, 2023 – the day when 1,200 of their people were butchered. Burned alive. Shot in their homes. Raped in front of their families. And they remember what came next: polls showing 75% of Gazans supported the massacre. The popularity of other Palestinian Arab terrorist groups skyrocketed as well, including Islamic Jihad, al Aqsa Brigade and al Qassam. This wasn’t some fringe radical cell that commited the vile pogrom – this was public approval for mass murder. It was the fulfillment of their long-standing desire to attack Jewish civilians inside of Israel since 2000.
They also see something deeper: three-quarters of Gazans consider themselves “refugees” living in temporary homes. Not because of displacement from this war but because they believe they’re entitled to homes inside Israel. They don’t see Gaza as their future – they see Tel Aviv.
To the United Nations, Gaza is a moral play where Israel is always cast as the villain. They see Gaza not as a failure of Palestinian leadership, not as a society hijacked by jihad, but as a tragedy authored entirely by Israel. Why? Because Israel won’t allow these “refugees” to move into the homes of Israeli Jews – the very homes where grandparents fled in 1948 after five Arab armies attacked the new Jewish state.
The world has condemned Israel for responding “disproportionately” to the October 7 massacre. The UN saw Israeli counterstrikes as war crimes, not defense. They ignored the slaughter of Israeli children and focused on fuel shortages in Gaza. They accused Israel of starvation, ignoring the trucks of aid Israel itself let in, even while its soldiers were under fire. They paid scant lip service to Israeli hostages kept in tunnels by Hamas, viewing them as collateral to Israel’s ongoing “Nakba”.
The Arab and Muslim world is not fooled but is not helping. They don’t see Gazans as brothers and sisters in need of refuge. They see them as Palestinians – a distinct, useful political weapon. If Gazans were Syrians, they would’ve been taken in by now. But they’re not. They’re left to fester – a long-term tool to weaken and delegitimize the Jewish state.
Even in America, Gaza has become a kind of geopolitical Rorschach test. Leaders like Donald Trump and Jared Kushner see opportunity: beachfront real estate with the potential to be the Singapore of the Middle East. A future riviera. But that future depends on changing a mentality – one that for decades has been more obsessed with destroying Israel than building Gaza.
Because this is the reality: Gaza could have been Dubai. It had the backing of the international community, billions in aid, and a chance to chart its own path. Instead, it chose jihad. It chose hate. It chose martyrdom over medicine, tunnels over technology, indoctrination over innovation.
The world sees rubble. Death. Tragedy. Not on both sides; for Palestinians.
They can’t see the Israeli hostages through their clouded moral lenses. They don’t see the Jewish parents still waiting for their children. They don’t see the decades of restraint Israel exercised before finally saying “enough”. They are caught in an empathy swamp and have mentally baptised Gazans as martyrs instead of genocidal jihadists.
The Global South sees Gaza not just as another flashpoint – but as a pawn in a bigger game. The narrative is not just about “liberation” but “redistribution.” From peace talks to class war. Israel, to them, is just the first domino in toppling the Western-led world order.
Gaza isn’t just a local issue anymore. It’s global. It’s ideological. And for Israelis, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
In this backdrop of viewpoints, an international conference at the U.N. headquarters in New York will take place from June 17 to 20 co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia. The Global North will join the Global South in trying to find near-term and longer-term solutions to the 100-year Arab-Israeli conflict.
In this Coliseum, the General Assembly serves as the unruly crowd seeking the torture of the Jewish State, while the Security Council acts as caesar empowered with the pen to draft international law. Will the United States protect Israel in such forum on the heels of Trump’s visit to the Gulf? Will Trump seek to trade an unwinding of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 to get Israel to agree to short-term and longer term movements towards a permanent divorce between local Jews and Arabs?
Israel was blind to the October 7 attack. Does it see what the world sees in Gaza now and the positions being orchestrated for the June U.N. conference? Will the modern blind Samson bring down the house if it only hears calls for its demise and cannot see a path to live in peace?
After a few months of not being able to conduct a poll of Arabs in Gaza and the “West Bank,” the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released its latest findings on May 6, 2025. As summarized by PCPSR, “favorability of the October 7 attack, the belief that Hamas will win the war, and support for Hamas continue to decline, but the overwhelming majority is opposed to Hamas disarmament and does not believe that release of the hostages will bring an end to the war. Nonetheless, about half of Gazans support the anti-Hamas demonstrations and almost half want to leave the Gaza Strip if they could.”
Unpacking the May 2025 findings when the Hamas military is almost wiped out and the surviving members spend their time boobytrapping buildings and stealing food and aid from Gazans, Palestinians:
support the October 7 massacre;
do not want Hamas to disarm;
prefer the Hamas over Fatah
Figure 1 in the poll shows that support for the barbaric attack of October 7 has declined more in Gaza, from 71% in March 2024 to 37%, while support in the West Bank only declined from 71% to 59% over the same time. As of May 2025, half of all Palestinian Arabs still believe that the attack was “correct”, down from three-quarters right after the massacre.
The pollsters speculate that “most of the public continue to believe the attack and the following war have placed the Palestinian issue at the center of global attention. Unlike previous polls, today’s findings show that the majority of the public does not believe Hamas will win the current war. Still, a plurality of the public believes that Hamas will continue to control the Gaza Strip after the war.”
Despite virtually the entire command structure of Hamas being killed, 57% of Palestinian Arabs are satisfied with Hamas’s performance, with 67% believing as much in the West Bank, a much higher figure than the 39% in Gaza. For those who believe that Gazans are reluctant to express negative opinions about Hamas because of threats from the ruling party in Gaza, the high figure from the West Bank where Hamas holds no power tells a different story. Palestinians like Hamas.
Further, “when asked whether it supports or opposes the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to stop the war on the Gaza Strip, an overwhelming majority (85% in the West Bank and 64% in the Gaza Strip) said it is opposed to that; only 18% support it.” Palestinian Arabs would rather fight until the last bullet, rather than end the war with a surrender.
Overall, the opinion of Gazans about Hamas has barely changed from before the war until today. In September 2023, Gazans supported Hamas over Fatah by 38% to 25%, compared to 37% to 25% in May 2025. West Bank Arabs have generally become more supportive of Hamas since 20 months ago, but the favorability has been declining, as shown in Figure 13 of the May poll. Third parties are becoming a bigger factor in Gaza.
Overall, “40% (compared to 43% seven months ago) believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today while 19% (compared to 19% seven months ago) believe that Fatah led by president Abbas is the most deserving,” a two-to-one ratio, despite Hamas leading to the destruction of Gaza and becoming a shell organization.
While Gazan support for two states has remained relatively constant since before the war, West Bank support has increased from 30% in September 2023 to 45% today. Overall, 57% oppose a “two state solution.”
But the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) still think the best way to GET Israel to end the “occupation” is via war, albeit now less than half of the population (41%).
Some other notable findings in the poll:
“While the majority says it does not want to leave the Gaza Strip after the war ends, a large minority wants to do that. Similarly, about half of Gazans are willing to apply to Israel to help them emigrate to other countries via Israeli ports and airports”
Among “satisfaction with Arab/regional actors, the highest satisfaction rate went to Houthis in Yemen, as we found in our previous polls, today at 74% (84% in the West Bank and 61% in the Gaza Strip), followed by Qatar (45%), Hezbollah (43%), and Iran (31%).”
“Al Jazeera is the most watched TV station in Palestine”
Vast “majority (87%) said it [Hamas] did not commit such atrocities [on October 7], and only 9% said it did.”
What can account for these statistics? Nazi Germany ultimately surrendered after it was pummeled in the war, so why do the local Arabs still support the war and want Hamas to continue to fight on, much like the Houthis in Yemen where over 250,000 have died over the last decade of war?
An interesting question was added to this poll which may provide a clue. “A majority of 57% (70% in the West Bank and only 38% in the Gaza Strip) believes that the steadfastness of the residents of the Gaza Strip despite heavy human losses and massive destruction is due to their deep belief in God, fate and destiny while 25% (40% in the Gaza Strip and 15% in the West Bank) believe they have no other option, and 15% (22% in the Gaza Strip and 11% in the West Bank) believe it is due to their belief in their Palestinian national identity.” A majority of SAPs are holding on to the war because of religious conviction, not because of nationalist aspirations. It is a belief held more widely OUTSIDE of the Gaza Strip (70% to 15% in the West Bank) where people are not facing the consequences, then inside (38% to 40% in Gaza). It may also be that Gazans know better than West Bank Arabs that they committed vile sexual assaults and brutal torture of children and the elderly.
Such observation may add clarity as to why 9 out of 10 local Arabs do not believe Hamas committed the atrocities of October 7 despite the video and forensic evidence: because they believe that members of Hamas are deeply religious warriors. Perhaps the antidote would therefore be for the U.S. to pressure Qatar’s Al Jazeera to showcase the evidence.
The other takeaway from the poll is that Palestinian Arabs know that they cannot beat Israel militarily on their own. They need other actors joining the fighting (like the Houthis) and “global attention” to apply pressure on the small Jewish State.
While the world bemoans the destruction of Gaza, the local Arabs remain supportive of launching the war and for Hamas. Western empathy for radical jihadism may stop when the victims are no longer Jews, but at that point, it will be too late to stop the scourge.
ACTION ITEMS
Contact the White House to 1) get Qatar’s Al Jazeera to make clear that Hamas committed heinous crimes against humanity on October 7, including raping women and burning children alive; 2) insist that whichever entity assumes control of Gaza (if not Israel) must disarm Hamas; 3) facilitate Gazans leaving the strip to other countries; and 4) condemn the socialist-jihadi alliance attacking Israel and democratic values.
At its founding after World War II, the United Nations was declared a bold and righteous institution designed to bring about world peace. To accomplish its mission, it granted itself certain powers under the presumption that the agency’s role and workers were impartial and noble.
Alas, people are people, and the UN’s corruption and partiality grew over the years. It has made the UN not only a deformed shadow of its mission but a deeply dangerous and immoral tool cloaked in nobility.
When United Nations “peacekeepers” were deployed in Africa and Haiti, their role was to stop fighting between warring groups. However, during the deployment, many soldiers raped local women and some young boys. Investigations of the incidents confirmed multiple accounts of sexual assault, and noted that the UN’s shield of immunity protected the rapists, putting the local population at further risk.
Many UN “peacekeepers” have been accused of rape and shielded from prosecution by the UN’s cloak of immunity.
Over the past decades in Gaza, thousands of local Arabs join UNRWA, the UN’s “temporary” agency to house and educate the descendants of internally displaced Arabs who left homes a few miles away. It pays well and provides protection to carry out rapes and massacres like the one they perpetrated on October 7, 2023 in Israel.
Or so the UN terrorists hoped.
After many UNRWA workers were proved to have taken part in the barbaric massacre and provided material support to the U.S.-designated foreign terrorist group Hamas, victims of the atrocities and their families sued the UN. The UN claimed “immunity” from prosecution and the U.S.’s Biden administration agreed, stating “Because the U.N. has not waived immunity in this case, its subsidiary, UNRWA, retains full immunity, and the lawsuit against UNRWA should be dismissed due to lack of subject matter jurisdiction.”
In a pathetic attempt to mask its complicity, the UN fired some of the UNRWA workers, several of whom were already dead. It would not prosecute the fired living workers and left such matter of justice to local Gazans and Hamas to manage. UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said he fired the workers “in the interest of the Agency,” not as a matter of justice for thousands of butchered, raped and injured civilians in Israel.
It was a despicable display of inhumanity cloaked in virtue.
UNRWA’s Philippe Lazzarini
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) had enough. On April 14, 2025, he introduced legislation called the LIABLE Act to strip immunity from toxic bodies like UNRWA. Upon introducing the legislation, Cruz said “The United Nations Relief and Works Agency officials have for decades knowingly provided support to Hamas terrorists, including salaries and materials. That support facilitated Hamas’s terrorist attack on October 7th, which was the worst one-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and included the murder and kidnapping of dozens of Americans. Those victims and their families deserve the ability to hold UNRWA accountable, and the LIABLE Act would give them that opportunity.“
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
The United Nations has morphed into something deeply corrupt and unjust long shielded from prosecution, even for heinous actions. Perhaps the LIABLE ACT is the first domino to end the invincibility of barbarism under cover of white hats.
Israel is conducting a thorough review of what internal failures led to the massacre on October 7, 2023. The inquiries and analyses are designed to both assure accountability for mistakes, as well as to prevent future tragedies. The primary focus is on Israel’s military deployment and readiness, which will likely conclude with several changes inside the military.
Another analysis is needed externally – focused on Hamas and Gaza. The timeline below is meant as a framework to better consider how to address the conflict going forward.
Timeline of Key Moments in Gaza That Set October 7 Massacre
1948-9: There are two principle differences between the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL/ West Bank) and Gaza:
The majority of E49AL/WB Arabs are locals, whereas the majority of Gazans used to live in Israeli towns and villages;
E49AL/West Bank was annexed by Transjordan and all Arabs were given Jordanian citizenship; Gaza was only administered by Egypt
The Arabs in the much larger E49AL had citizenship and sovereignty. While most of the world considered Jordan’s annexation illegal, the local Arabs had pride in their Muslim Arab country. They also had control of Jerusalem/al Quds, the third holiest site for Muslims.
Not so for Gazans, who were in a much more confined space without citizenship, sovereignty or holy sites. Instead, they were wards of the United Nations which promised them that they would move into the Israeli towns in which they once lived.
1967: The 1967 war was a much bigger loss for West Bank Arabs than Gazans, as the Gazans already had less. Still, being under the rule of the Jewish State made the lack of sovereignty much more bitter.
2000: The Second Intifada started at the collapse of the Oslo Accords. While pundits point to a Temple Mount visit by Israeli Ariel Sharon as the trigger for the multi-year Arab riots, it was the failure of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to secure all of Arab demands in the negotiations, including moving millions of descendants of refugees and internally displaced people into Israel. This was especially true for Gazans.
2004: As Israel put down the Second Intifada, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon secured a letter from U.S. President George W Bush on April 14 that in exchange for pulling all Israelis out of Gaza, the United States would back Israel in assuring that all Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) would move to a new Palestinian State and not into Israel, and that new borders of Israel would account for new major Jewish population centers to be incorporated into Israel.
President George W Bush 2004 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
2005-7: Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005 and the Palestinians elected Hamas to 58% of its parliament in 2006. In 2007, Hamas took over full control of Gaza, outsing its rival political group Fatah. In response to the antisemitic genocidal group sworn to its destruction taking over Gaza, Israel imposed a blockade of strip to halt the flow of arms. Gaza, now with self-determination, opted for radical Islam.
2008-14: Under the banner of jihad, independent Gaza did not focus on building up its economy and society but instead focused on destroying Israel. It launched wars against the Jewish State in 2008-9, 2012 and 2014, each put down by Israel. Meanwhile Hamas began to heavily invest in its underground infrastructure inside of Gaza, which in the past was principally used outside of Gaza for raids into Israel (like kidnapping Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006) and smuggling goods from Egypt.
2018-2022: Under the banner of the “Great March of Return,” Hamas led Gazan society to prepare to invade Israel. With United Nations support, thousands of students from UNRWA schools would march to the fence with Israel, familiarizing themselves with the terrain and normalizing their presence for Israelis watching their movement.
2021: When Israeli courts approved the eviction of Arab squatters from Jewish owned homes in the Sheik Jarrah section of Jerusalem, Hamas launched missiles into Israel. The action caused Israel to put the evictions on hold, educating Hamas that terror pays.
2023: By this time, Hamas’ underground infrastructure was in place and it had stockpiled thousands of missiles. It had gotten Israel accustomed to “peaceful” protests along the Gaza border fence. Better, it watched Israeli society fight amongst itself about judicial reform, and for the first time ever, a majority of Democrats favored SAPs over Israelis. With Iran on the verge of nuclear weaponry breakout and Hezbollah in Lebanon well armed with roughly 150,000 missiles, Hamas was poised for an all-out war, well beyond the limited skirmishes of prior years.
Gazans are more religious than West Bank Arabs and many more consider themselves entitled to move into Israel as UNRWA wards (81% vs. 49%). Those supporting Hamas were much more likely to understand the “Great Marches of Return” were about external political matters than those from Fatah (59% to 24%, according to a September 2023 PCPSR poll).
While the devastation to Israel on October 7 happened over a single day, it took years of planning. Just as importantly, there was societal buy in for the attack.
Key Takeaways
Israel – and the world – should consider the events that led to Hamas’ genocidal invasion of Israel and formulate strategies beyond eliminating Hamas and its military infrastructure.
The UN and Saudi Arabia must adopt the contours of the 2004 Bush letter. Over 80% of Gazans believe that the world supports their moving into Israel, validating their storming the fence. There will not be peace until the UN and Saudi Arabia make clear that a two state solution means SAPs move into a new Palestinian State, not Israel.
Dismantle UNRWA in Gaza and the West Bank. The United Nations has encouraged generations of students that Israel is not really a sovereign entity and that the UN will dictate that Israel will be forced to accept millions of Arabs. With clarity that Arabs will be settled in Gaza and the West Bank, there is no reason for UNRWA to exist in those territories.
Decimation and Vilification of Hamas. As Gazans suffered more over the course of the war, a greater percentage became interested in forging peace with Israel. Additionally, people who supported Hamas were more likely to have not seen any of the footage of the October 7 massacre and did not believe that Hamas conducted rapes. Therefore, Hamas should not only be defeated militarily, but vilified clearly so it will be abandoned by Gazans and West Bank Arabs.
Reroute funding. Gaza’s principal backers have been from Qatar, Iran and Turkey. All of these countries have hostile or tense relationships with Israel and foment anti-Israel hatred. Future funding for Gaza should principally come from countries with good relationships with the Jewish State.
No immediate plans for a Palestinian State. Gazans had internalized that terror pays, as the Second Intifada made Israel abandon Gaza, and the 2021 war stopped the evictions in Sheik Jarrah. The devastation of Gaza must terminate that notion. The only immediate plans for Gaza should be how to rebuild. Engaging in a discussion now about statehood would once again make local Arabs believe that there is nothing beyond the pale in pursuit of self-determination.
The timeline of how Gazans got to October 7 should inform the world about future actions, just as Israel’s inquiries into its military failures will change its practices.
First One Through 