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.”
For decades, the pro-Palestinian narrative labeled any Jew living east of the 1949 Jordanian Armistice Lines a “settler.” The term was never about accuracy but about framing. “Settler” implied that Jews were foreign interlopers, distinct from Arab residents who were cast as the indigenous population. So when Jewish and Arab families from Jaffa moved to Jerusalem’s Old City, only the Jews were called settlers. The transplanted Arab was considered at home, while the transplanted Jew was branded an intruder.
Even more strangely, the label of “settler” wasn’t tied to the founding of a new community. A Jew moving into an existing neighborhood—or even just a single apartment—could suddenly transform the entire edifice into a “settlement.” Words bent reality; the label carried the weight of illegitimacy.
But the terminology seems to be shifting. Wafa, the Palestinian Authority’s official media arm, now increasingly calls Jews in these areas not “settlers,” but “colonists.” The updated lingo seems to fit better with the intellectual currents flowing through Western universities, where post-colonial studies cast Jews as Europeans imposing themselves on native lands. Never mind that Jews are the indigenous people of Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem, and that there are more Mizrachi Israeli Jews than Ashkenazi—the narrative works if repeated often enough.
Wafa website on August 19, 2025
If the key to eroding U.S. support for Israel lies in framing Jews as oppressors and colonizers, then the Palestinian Authority is adapting accordingly. By embracing this academic jargon, it aligns itself with progressive activists abroad.
Expect the United Nations, NGOs, and sympathetic media outlets to follow suit. Language is a weapon, and the word “colonist” sharpens the blade. The campaign is not just to vilify Jews east of an arbitrary line—it is to recast Jewish presence anywhere in the land as alien, invasive, and illegitimate.
Further, “settlers” is deeply embedded with an anti-Jewish narrative. A pivot to a generic smear appears less antisemitic as well as more universal in condemning the entire Western world’s imperialism and colonialism. Take on Jews everywhere in “Palestine.” Take on Americans throughout “Turtle Island.”
“Colonists” are the new cudgel in the effort to purge Jews from their homeland. It’s a deliberate term and effort, crafted so as to be easily next replicated against Americans by radicals as the new school year begins.
In 1975, film theorist Laura Mulvey coined the term “male gaze” to describe how women are portrayed on screen. The camera does not simply show reality — it frames women for a heterosexual male viewer. Women become visual objects, defined by how they serve the viewer’s pleasure, not by their own full humanity.
The concept applies far beyond film. A “gaze” is any dominant perspective that controls how another group is seen. The one doing the looking holds power; the one being looked at is flattened, reduced, and judged. The colonial gaze. The white gaze. The antisemitic gaze. In each, the subject is stripped of complexity and placed in a role that makes sense to the audience, not to themselves.
Israel is caught in such a gaze. Call it the “Israel Gaze.”
In the Israel Gaze, the Jewish state is the object, never the subject. It is to be observed, graded, managed — but rarely allowed to speak or act on its own terms. Its security concerns are minimized; its legitimacy treated as conditional.
Like the male gaze that zooms in on a woman’s body while ignoring the rest of her life, the Israel Gaze focuses on narrow, selective snapshots. Cameras linger on a checkpoint — but not the suicide bombings that created the need for it. They magnify airstrikes — but crop out the rockets that triggered them.
The framing serves the outside viewer, often a Western political elite, who want a morality play: powerful oppressor vs. powerless victim. Israel is assigned the role of aggressor. No matter the reality on the ground, the narrative is cast before the curtain rises.
And just as the male gaze reduces women to archetypes — seductress, mother, damsel — the Israel Gaze flattens Israel into “occupier,” “aggressor,” “settler state.” The country’s remarkable complexity — the ultimate decolonization project, a refuge for a persecuted people, a diverse democracy, a hub of innovation, a nation under constant threat — disappears from view.
This gaze is not neutral. It is a tool of power. In film, it props up patriarchy. In global politics, it reinforces the idea that Israel’s right to exist, defend itself, or define its own future depends on approval from outsiders who claim the right to judge.
Typical UN vote condemning Israel – lopsided
Mulvey noted in her analysis that “her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation.” So it is in global politics, with the viewer solely transfixed on Israel’s supposed evils that the actual storyline – and path to peace – is lost out of sight.
Both the male gaze and the Israel Gaze deny the subject the dignity of being whole. Both reduce identity to an image crafted for someone else’s satisfaction. And both sustain an imbalance in which the viewer’s comfort matters more than the subject’s survival.
Israel faces two battles at once: the immediate fight for security and the deeper fight to be seen truthfully. Until the gaze changes, the story will never be told honestly — and the verdict will be written before the trial even begins.
Trust is a curious thing. It can be so natural when it comes in small, unassuming packages. A neighbor offering a hand with the groceries. A stranger holding open a door. The innocent gaze of a child. These gestures, light as feathers, weigh more than they seem because they carry no hidden agenda.
Reading Sarah Tuttle-Singer on trust is like reading poetry. She writes with the hope that trust can bridge divides, that shared humanity can soothe ancient wounds. It’s tempting. It’s comforting. It makes us want to exhale and believe that the world really can turn softer, kinder, lighter.
But trust, in the realm of politics and war, is a word misused. Bus drivers and merchants may indeed know the art of coexistence, but their goodwill cannot stand against the fury of those consumed by hatred. History has shown this cruelly and clearly.
On October 7, Israel’s dreamers were shown what happens when trust meets rage. Peace-loving families along the Gaza envelope, who had spent years helping Gazans reach Israeli hospitals, were burned alive. Young people who came only for music and joy at the Nova festival were hunted, raped, and gunned down. Trust did not save them.
Leaders at war do not have the luxury of extending trust to enemies sworn to their destruction. Their duty is to protect their people, not to tell their adversaries where the defenses are weak or where to buy stronger weapons. In war, misplaced trust is not a virtue—it is a death sentence.
I like dreams. I enjoy Tuttle-Singer’s writings. But her kind of pre–October 7 dreaming feels like a dangerous nostalgia while Hamas still rules Gaza, while Israelis are still captives in tunnels, while so many Palestinian Arabs still celebrate the massacre and fantasize about taking over Israel itself.
Even more, I understand that I might have the luxury of fantasy, but the people in charge of keeping people safe do not.
Dreams belong in the safety of bed, not while driving a highway. Trust has a time and a place. For now, in the waking hours of the Middle East, those in charge with ensuring survival must act with clarity with dollops of charity.
It is better to trust in wartime leaders who are wide awake to reality than to believe in poets dreaming on the frontlines.
Parshat Eikev is about consequences. Love God and cherish the land, and there will be abundance. Turn away from them, and the blessings will vanish. It’s not just poetic scripture—it’s a binding principle embedded in Jewish destiny.
In 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza, handing the Strip to the Palestinian Authority. The move was framed as a step toward peace, but Palestinians internalized a different lesson from the Second Intifada: violence works. Within two years, Hamas was elected to a majority of the Palestinian parliament, seized power in Gaza, and rockets became Gaza’s chief export.
The same pattern played out decades earlier. In 1967, Israel reclaimed eastern Jerusalem from Jordan in a defensive war and reunified the city. Yet, instead of asserting Jewish sovereignty on the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism—Israel handed day-to-day control to the Islamic Waqf which banned Jewish prayer there. The Muslim world absorbed the message: Jews do not value their holy places as deeply as Muslims do.
These choices raise the uncomfortable question: do Jews truly love the land and God in the way Eikev commands? The Bible is not just a Jewish text. Billions of non-Jews around the globe read it. They know its covenantal clauses and its warnings. They understand—at least in their own terms—the consequences that befall Jews when we turn from God’s love and from the eternal heritage of the land. Some may even see themselves as agents in delivering divine justice.
God knows. The world knows.
It is time for Jews to internalize this truth. The Shema’s first line is often recited aloud with pride. But the second section (starting at Deuteronomy 11:13), with its stark outline of blessings for faithfulness and curses for betrayal, is whispered—if said at all. Perhaps it’s time to say it aloud, not just with our lips, but with our lives: affirming an unbreakable commitment to God and to the holiness of the land.
In Israel, that would be building homes in the area known as “E1,” cementing all of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount as integral to Israel. In the diaspora, it means putting mezuzahs on doorposts and wearing tefillin (11:18-20).
The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound
Consequences are not an abstraction in the Torah—they are the lived reality of Jewish history. Eikev’s message is as urgent now as it was on the plains of Moab.
Nothing so captures the European mindset like soccer. It’s a global sport with scant appreciation in North America, but Europeans are glued to it. Consequently, soccer (“football”) matches become backdrops for activists to shout their causes, knowing that it will attract millions – or perhaps billions – of eyeballs.
It was a moment anti-Israel advocates would not pass up.
UEFA had been criticized by pro-Gazan agitators for not coming out against Israel during this war. On August 12, the day before the match, UEFA announced an expansion of its existing “support for the humanitarian efforts for children in conflict zones,” to include Gaza. The wording was careful to not criticize either Israel or Hamas, and just focused on children.
Whatever the adults waging wars think they are doing, the children are innocent.
Aleksander Čeferin, UEFA President
UEFA took an added step during the match and had nine children from conflict zones where it supports humanitarian efforts – Afghanistan, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, and now Gaza – unfurl a banner on the field that read “stop killing children. stop killing civilians.”
Qatar-owned Al Jazeera would use the UEFA actions to generate its own anti-Israel story.
In an article titled “UEFA unfurls Gaza-related plea banner after Palestinian tribute fallout,” the pro-Hamas media site said that the banner was all about Gaza, even when children from multiple countries participated. The article pushed a Gaza narrative with “in the wake of heavy fallout over its meek tribute to a Palestinian player killed by Israel,” it mentioned Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah who condemned UEFA on August 10 for not calling out Israel in its statement.
Al Jazeera would then manufacture history, writing “Nine children refugees from Palestine, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq carried the banner onto the field of play before the game began.” But Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Iraq are actual countries, Palestine is not. The two children from Gaza who took part in the ceremony were in Milan receiving medical treatment, not fleeing persecution “owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” which is the definition of a refugee according to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees. Unless Al Jazeera believes these children are being targeted by Hamas.
Just days before this incident, on August 10, Al Jazeera had some of its journalists in Gaza killed by an Israeli strike. Israel said they were legitimate targets, as they were terrorists paid by Hamas. It was shocking to all that the media company which is owned by the wealthiest regime in the world needed its journalists to make some extra coin from an antisemitic genocidal organization that is supposedly “starving,” not that the journalists were terrorists, which was common knowledge.
The Qatari propaganda company has long accused Israel of committing a “genocide” in Gaza. It claims that “Israel kills an average 28 Palestinian children daily in Gaza,” attempting to make the Arab youth the primary victims and focus of the war, and portray Israel as a bloodthirsty monstrosity. It did not inform its readers that children under 18 account for 47% of the population of Gaza, but a much lower 31% of the fatalities according to OCHA, which gets its information from the Hamas run Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza.
When further considering that many of the children between 15 and 18 years old are part of the Hamas war machine, the much lower percentage of child fatalities points to Israel’s efforts to target Gazan fighters, not children. Even Hamas admits that nearly half of all fatalities in Gaza have been fighting-aged males (49%), even though they account for just one-quarter of the population (26%).
As for the 6,000 Gazans who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, Al Jazeera had no concern for how they treated Jewish children. The Gazans killed 38 Israeli children in front of their parents. They took the same number as hostages to Gaza. What kind of people take babies as hostages as a matter of policy?
Bibas children Kfir and Ariel, with mother, Shiri, all taken as hostages by Gazans, later returned dead in an exchange for Gazan terrorists
“Don’t kill children. Don’t kill civilians,” should be the understood motto of all civilized people and organizations. That Qatar and Al Jazeera continue to stand by Hamas after all they have done – and then attempt to misdirect the world towards Israel – makes them deeply complicit in the deaths of thousands.
Desire Doué and Ousmane Dembélé of France St. Germain lift the UEFA Super Cup Trophy, sporting jerseys embossed by their sponsor, Qatar Airways
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that Israel will retake Gaza, dismantle Hamas, and free the hostages still held there. In response, the UK and France have rushed to apply diplomatic pressure — not on Hamas, but on Israel — pledging to recognize a Palestinian state in September. This move will only embolden Hamas to fight on, convinced it is winning a historic victory.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy embraces Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad MustafaCHARLY TRIBALLEAU
The flaw in this strategy is glaring: it’s not Israel that needs pressure — it’s Hamas, and that pressure must come from the Arab world, not just Europe. On July 30, 2025, Arab states took an overdue but welcome step, publicly calling on Hamas to disarm and hand authority over to the Palestinian Authority. This was a first in regional unity against Hamas.
Now Europe must pivot and press Arab states to go further: formally designate Hamas as a terrorist organization. This is not a radical suggestion. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria and the UAE already classify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist group (the United States is on the cusp of doing so). Hamas is the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch — extending the label is logical and overdue.
Such a declaration would signal to Hamas and to Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) that terrorism against Israel has no future and no backing in the Arab world, and that the region is moving towards normalization. It would also make it easier for the United States to advance pushing the United Nations Security Council to list Hamas alongside al-Qaeda and ISIS as a global pariah. To date, UN officials have described Hamas as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, keeping the terrorist group’s hopes alive.
Only then could Netanyahu ease military pressure, creating space for serious negotiations to dismantle Hamas and secure the return of the hostages.
From nowhere they came — and now they’re everywhere. The spotted lanternfly, with its colorful delicate wings and destructive path, has infested the American landscape. It’s believed to have originated from China and, in just a few years, has spread across states, devastating crops and trees like the “tree of heaven,” its favorite host. The government seems incapable of containing it. Few natural predators exist. The infestation has become a symbol of bureaucratic failure and public resignation.
Spotted lanternfly
But some wonder: does this pestilence reflect something deeper, more corrosive — a cultural infestation?
Many point again to China, not just for the lanternfly, but for feeding antisemitism into western culture, especially through TikTok — a powerful delivery system for ideological poison. Others blame Qatar, which has poured billions into American universities that now shelter hatred under the guise of “free speech.” The Gaza war may have triggered the firestorm, but the kindling was laid long ago — through foreign influence, academic corruption, legal systems reluctant to confront hate when it wears the right colors and intersectional culture intent on vanishing Jews.
The response has been toothless. Protesters shut down airports and bridges with impunity. Cities release vandals hours after they’re arrested. Politicians decry antisemitism in speeches while voting to defund the very police tasked with protecting vulnerable communities. Universities who once claimed to be safe spaces now protect the mob instead of the beleaguered minority.
Like the lanternfly, antisemitism has become endemic. And just as officials tell us to stomp on the bugs as a civic duty, people now post videos taking down “protest” signs and washing off graffiti — not to eradicate the hate, but to vent helplessness.
We’ve reached a tipping point. Many have chosen to watch the wave rather than swim against it.
But Jews are not trees. Unlike the “tree of heaven,” the Jews have a history of moving, surviving, rebuilding. As America shrugs at the firebombs and broken windows, and as elected leaders dismiss Jewish fear as overreaction, a quiet migration begins. New York, Toronto, and Melbourne may look the same in ten years — but they will feel different. Not because the skyline will change, but because of the absence. The absence of a people whose presence once animated these places with faith, culture, and conscience.
Vienna was no longer Vienna after the Jews were rounded up and slaughtered, and French leaders know that France will no longer really be French if Jewish frustration and fear makes them move. But America has no such institutional memory. And as Americans elect younger and more inexperienced radical politicians, the destruction will accelerate.
Jews were forced to wear distinctive clothing in the Middle Ages and in Nazi Germany, and were tattooed in concentration camps before the annihilation was manifest. But it’s the moral corruption of the cities themselves that marks Jews for extinction; black sooty mold as the lanternflies feast and kill.
The last Jews will be those who see fellow Jews’ fears as fantasies, constellations drawn from a few distinct points like ancient mariners and pagans lost in heavenly thoughts. Perhaps those survivors will be the only Jews the West wants anyway: hearty crops which withstood the plague may have more in common with the new natural order.
A friend recently attended a Shabbat dinner in New York City and came away shaken by the politics. Somewhere between the challah and the halva, she realized that nearly everyone at the table planned to vote for Zohran Mamdani for mayor. The same Democratic Socialist Mamdani who whitewashes slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” who supports defunding the police, who has floated ideas about taxing “white neighborhoods” and redistributing wealth based on racial and ideological lines.
She was dumbfounded. How could fellow Jews support someone so openly hostile to the Jewish state, so enamored with radical ideologies, and so completely without experience?
I pointed her to the recent conversation between Peter Beinart and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Two progressive Jews—one secular (Stewart), the other traditional (Beinart)—discussed Beinart’s new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. The 18-minute segment is deeply revealing. The entire interview should be watched here, but allow me to share some essential lessons—before and after viewing—that help explain why so many Jews, especially young urban progressives, are drawn to voices like Mamdani and Beinart.
Lesson 1: Empathy Above All
To understand the progressive worldview, you must begin with its North Star: empathy.
Numerous studies (one in Israel, from Pew Research and the Cato Institute) have shown that liberal parents prioritize teaching their children empathy far more than rules or tradition. In contrast, conservative parents emphasize justice, law, and the preservation of custom (hence more prevalent among Orthodox and older Jews.)
This foundational difference creates radically divergent outlooks on society. A progressive might prefer to risk letting many guilty people roam free than to wrongly incarcerate one innocent person. A conservative accepts that, tragically, some mistakes happen but that a functioning justice system must deliver accountability and deterrence.
That lens helps understand how different people see the Hamas War from Gaza. The progressive Jewish instinct is not to ask how such barbarism could happen on October 7, but to imagine what life must feel like under Israeli rule, or how starvation affects a child in Khan Younis.
So when Hamas raped and tortured Israelis, when they slaughtered entire families and burned babies alive, Stewart and Beinart give it a passing nod… then quickly pivot to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, who—in their view—are the true victims, regardless of what many of them supported or elected.
Lesson 2: Virtue Signaling as Moral Currency
Empathy doesn’t just sit as a value; it becomes a performance.
Among progressive Jews, virtue signaling is a sort of social currency. The more you publicly condemn your “privilege,” the more you highlight your efforts to engage the suffering, and the more elevated you become to your audience.
Beinart models this in the interview. He talks about how well his family is doing, how comfortable his life is in New York, and then contrasts that by expressing concern for Gazans. The clear message: Look how aware I am of my privilege, and how much I care about the “Other.” He is not just the model of progressive Jewry, but a self-anointed saint of Tikkun Olam, “repairing the world.”
But this empathy becomes hollow when it’s divorced from context. Where is his concern for the Israeli mothers whose sons are still buried beneath Gaza? Where is the recognition that Gazans elected Hamas and would do so again today? Where is the acknowledgment that Israel lives under constant threat from genocidal neighbors, that Israeli civilians are routinely targeted, and that Hamas has vowed to repeat October 7 “again and again”?
This isn’t empathy—it’s performative pity, practiced in the safety of a Manhattan studio. And it is toxic.
Peter Beinart and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
The Problem of Projection
Beinart and Stewart approach Israel through the lens of American liberalism. They treat it as if it should behave like the U.S.—a country of immigrants with separation of church and state, with no ethnic identity at its core. A massive country with only two neighbors, each of which is no threat.
But Israel was not created to be an echo of America. It is the reestablished homeland of the Jewish people, in a region dominated by theocratic regimes. It’s not just a democracy—it’s an ethnic democracy, forged out of centuries of persecution and built in response to repeated extermination campaigns. It is a small country surrounded by hostile neighbors with ever-present security threats.
Israel cannot survive if it mimics U.S. norms. It has different rules because IT IS DIFFERENT and faces existential threats the U.S. does not. Yet Beinart and Stewart project their own experiences as comfortable, wealthy New York Jews onto a situation they cannot fully grasp—and then fault Israelis for not aligning with their fantasy of liberalism. It is an impossible liberal standard in the Middle East, and they fault the Jewish State for coming up short.
Progressive Jews Are Winning the Narrative—But At What Cost?
Beinart wants to be the prophet of the next generation of Jews—disillusioned, skeptical of Israel, obsessed with universal empathy. He’s the aspiring Grand Rebbe of Tikkun Olam. Stewart plays the court jester to the progressive tribe on his popular show, delivering cathartic lines that avoid hard truths.
Together, they are shaping a Jewish worldview in which Israel is an embarrassment to be shunned, and October 7 is a short footnote to be ignored. The primary directive is to lead with empathy, which is always directed away from oneself, and towards those perceived as underdogs. Whether those weaker individuals intend to do harm can ideally be rationalized. Better still, the AsAJew credentials provide a get-out-of-jail free card, absolving the sin and sinner by the highest authorities. If Hamas cannot or will not change, then Jewish victims must forgive the wicked party, grant their wishes, and risk their lives again as the pathway towards peace and coexistence. They are modern-day Jesuses delivering the sermon on the Mount – via cable TV.
That’s why voting for someone like Mamdani doesn’t feel like a betrayal—it feels like moral progress ensconced in a Jewish-like religion. Accept abuse as the toxic cleanse of particularism and embrace the abuser in the spiritual bath of universalism.
In the name of empathy, they abandon solidarity. In the name of justice, they ignore murder. In the name of virtue, they vote for those who vilify their own.
“Being Jewish after Gaza,” for progressives is a swamp of guilt, seeing Gaza as a killing field by right-wing Israeli Islamophobes. For conservatives, “after Gaza” means freedom, recognizing Gaza as a terrorist enclave steeped in a profound moral “deformity.” Both may have elements of truth, but neither side can imagine the validity of the other.
In the Middle East, progressive like Peter Beinart see Jews as supremacists. In New York, progressives like teacher union boss Randi Weingarten see city Jews as the “ownership class,” and WESPAC’s Howard Horowitz visualizes Jewish Zionists as racists. These progressives portray Jews around the world as rich, capitalist victimizers who cannot claim the mantle of victimhood, even after the October 7 massacre.
They are teaching young, progressive and non-Orthodox Jews to lead with select and projected empathy. In New York City, they can create a manifest destiny with votes for the alt-left, far more tangible than prancing with placards about something thousands of miles away.
Young New York Jews are picking up the “intifada” chant – Arabic for “shaking off” – of the Jewish State and pro-Israel Jews. At this moment, they may not recognize the jihad they have joined. Time will tell whether they will care when it inevitably turns violent on the most persecuted minority-minority.
And that’s how the show is supposed to end anyway, right? Jesus on the cross. But the epilogue has a pivot, seeking empathy-squared: Jesus was a Jew. Now the Jews are Jesus.
The grand rebbes of Tikkun Olam are the new apostles for Zohran Mamdani.
When IsraelAnalysis.com first reported an act of anti-Israel vandalism on the streets of White Plains, it pointed to the possibility of WESPAC—a long-standing left-wing activist group with a record of anti-Israel rhetoric—as being behind the hate-fueled attack. While no individual has been arrested or charged, the suspicion is not without reason. The question arises: why WESPAC?
Let’s start with timing. The graffiti appeared around 5:00 p.m. on the Ninth of Av, the somber Jewish fast day that mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. WESPAC planned a “urgent vigil for the children of Gaza” at the same time the next day in Peekskill. That city lies further north in Westchester, while many of WESPAC’s most vocal “activists” live in southern Westchester, including White Plains. “Solidarity” for these comrades in southern Westchester may have brought them out on a sunny Sunday.
WESPAC ad for a vigil for Gaza in northern Westchester
Moreover, the vandalized site itself—a street decorated with American and Israeli flags—was an obvious magnet for anti-Israel agitators. What better canvas for those hoping to make a statement on a Jewish day of mourning than one visually celebrating the very state they protest?
But the context runs deeper.
WESPAC has long used the veneer of social justice to cloak its deeply anti-Israel agenda. In neighboring Hartsdale, the group confronted Jews filled with virulent anti-Israel rhetoric. And the current chair of WESPAC, Howard Horowitz, isn’t just a local—he’s a paradoxical figure leading the Israel Action Committee at Temple Israel of New Rochelle, even while aligning publicly with radical anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow.
Horowitz’s own writings are telling. He lashed out at Jewish residents of New Rochelle who had the temerity to run for school board seats, accusing them—and by extension the broader Jewish community—of racism against people of color. He has taken aim at “the vast majority [who] repeat the “I stand with Israel” declarations, disregarding the horrific facts on the ground” in Gaza, making the banner-lined street in White Plains a perfect target for his vitriol. He further believes that such pro-Israel proclamation “denigrates the Jewish tragedies” like the Ninth of Av, making the fast day an appropriate moment to attack Israel supporters.
Horowitz makes no bones about mocking Jewish “nationalism” as evil and “antithetical to Yiddishkeit,” even while he advocates for Arab nationalism. That’s his right, but it doesn’t put him or his group beyond the sphere of suspicion.
As reported by Lohud, the media site covering the lower Hudson Valley, ADL reported that in 2024, Westchester was unique among the suburbs of New York City, to have an increase in antisemitic incidents, a rise of 22% from 2023. Rockland, Nassau and Suffolk counties had declines of 11%, 36% and 26%, respectively. The disparity had much to do with anti-Israel groups including JVP, Palestinian Youth Movement and Democratic Socialist of America – all groups aligned and supported by WESPAC.
To be clear: no direct evidence has emerged tying WESPAC—or Horowitz—to this act of vandalism in White Plains. But in a county like Westchester, where anti-Israel rhetoric has become increasingly normalized in certain activist circles, and where groups like WESPAC operate openly with impunity, the suspicion is understandable.
This wasn’t random graffiti. It was a calculated message, timed for maximum symbolic effect. It struck at a street display of solidarity, and a people commemorating thousands of years of trauma.
And when neighbors ask: Who would do something like this?—it’s not hard to see why eyes turn toward the radical group operating, quite literally, just down the street.
First One Through 