Category Archives: Jews

Advancing Religion In America

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On October 28, 2011, Lord Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, came to New York City and sat with Rabbi Meir Soloviechik at Yeshiva University. Their hour long talk touched on Lord Sacks’ book The Home We Build Together, and the role of religion in society, focusing on the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular.

Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Speaks at Yeshiva University with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, October 2011

In the opening remarks (3:10), Rabbi Soloveichik shared a story about Senator Joseph Lieberman, who once observed that on Simchat Torah, Jews dance with the Torah in the streets with joy, yet often fail to carry that Torah into the world during the rest of the year. It was a reminder that religion cannot remain confined to ritual but must be brought into society.

Lord Sacks followed with a story of his own. Prime Minister Tony Blair once teased him that he had reached the “boring part” of the Hebrew Bible—the lengthy passages about the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). Why, Blair asked, does the Torah devote hundreds of verses to it, compared to just 34 for the creation of the universe?

Lord Sacks replied:

Prime Minister, it is not difficult for an omniscient, omnipotent, infinite God to create a home for human beings. But for finite, fallible human beings to create a home for the infinite God, that is difficult.

The Mishkan, Sacks explained, was not just architecture—it was a project that united the people. More than what God does for us, it is what we do for God that transforms and binds us together. “If you want to take this diverse, fractured culture of Britain and turn it into a united nation,” Sacks said, “you have to get them to build something together.”

Rabbi Soloveichik and Lord Sacks went on to describe that the decline of religious life and secularization of Europe was tied to fewer children being born. A self-centered focus weakens families, weakens faith, and weakens society. In contrast, raising children—caring for someone more than oneself—provides both the foundation of belief and the roots of charity: “having somebody whose life you care about more than yourself, that could actually be the foundation of faith for many of us.”

Washington (D.C.) and Rembrandt

Nearly fourteen years later, on September 8, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump held an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. He invited members of the newly established (May 1, 2025) Religious Liberty Commission to hear how he was advancing the centrality of religion in American public life. He said “When faith gets weaker, our country seems to get weaker. When faith gets stronger… good things happen for our country…. To have a great nation, you have to have religion.”

President Trump remarks at the Museum of the Bible, September 8, 2025

One of the members of the Presidential Committee on Religious Liberty is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik. He was unable to attend the speech by the president in Washington because he was giving a day long-lecture in New York City at the home of Mem and Zalman Bernstein and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Tikvah Fund about art, religion and western society.

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik discussing Rembrandt’s 1635 painting “The Sacrifice of Isaac” for Tikvah

Rabbi Solveichik focused on Rembrandt’s two versions of the Sacrifice of Isaac. He contrasted Abraham’s devotion to God’s command to offer his son Isaac, to the investment of love and devotion he had made in his son. The angel broke the conflict, and with it, the end of human sacrifice which was prevalent in the world at that time. From this point onward, belief in a higher power could be accompanied by protecting and investing in our children.

Religion, Children and Western Democracy

It made for an interesting sermon triptych connecting religion, children and western values: Lord Sachs, Rabbi Soloveichik and President Trump all emphasized that religion has the power to strengthen ourselves, our families, our communities and our nation.

In Lord Sacks book, The Great Partnership, published in June 2011, right before his talk at YU, he wrote:

My argument has been that contrary to the received narrative, freedom has been better served in the modern world by a religious vision rather than a secular one. The Abrahamic vision, with its insistence on the non-negotiable dignity of the human person and the importance of protected space – the families and communities that make up civil society – where relationships are not based on power, saved England and America from the worst excesses of the revolutionary politics that cost tens of thousands of lives in France and tens of millions in Russia….

Abrahamic politics, by contrast, is politics with a human face, the politics that knows the limits of power, as well as the transformative effect of free persons freely joining together to make social institutions worthy of being a home for the divine presence. Abraham politics never forgets that there are things more important than politics, and that is what makes it the best defense of liberty.”

That is the motion before Western democracies: can humble faith as embodied in “Abraham politics” lead our different faiths to help build a cohesive society of respect and growth.

Concluding Circle

The discussion of religion and democracy is being advanced passionately today because it feels abandoned.

According to Lord Sacks, democracy under secularism preached intersectionality which yielded segregation and isolationism. Rabbi Solveichik responded that “a Mayflower of persecuted religions might leave England and Europe to come to safer shores [like America].” For his part, President Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission to deal with such matters, with the first group’s term ending on July 4, 2026, on the nation’s 250th anniversary.

So it was fitting that Rabbi Soloveichik should end his talk to the Tikvah Fund, a group whose motto is “Advancing Jewish Excellence and Western Civilization through Education & Ideas,” before Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, while President Trump was concluding his remarks in Washington, D.C.

Rabbi Soloveichik at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 2025

In the 1851 painting, the future president of the United States stood aboard a boat filled with a diverse crew, readying to end the rule of England and break with the British monarchy and Church of England, to establish a new democratic state in 1776. Nearly 250 years later, the Chief Rabbi of England, the president of the United States, and the rabbi leading the oldest synagogue in the United States were championing the importance of religion in strengthening democracies everywhere. A quiet revolution to return to the foundations of faith to help build a more perfect union.

UN Ignores Palestinian Murderers. Again

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Six Jewish civilians were killed simply for being Jews. Surely, a world leader would stand firm, demand justice, and declare solidarity with the victims. Yet UN Secretary-General António Guterres offered only a perfunctory “strong condemnation” via his spokesperson—no mention of justice, no demand for the murderers to be brought to account, no affirmation of solidarity.

Because these murdered Jews were in Israel.

That’s the moral vacuum of the UN.

In Mali, after a terror attack on 17 September 2024, Guterres said he “strongly condemns the terrorist attack,” extended his “sincere condolences” to victims and the government, and—crucially—urged the Malian transitional government “to ensure that those responsible for this despicable attack are held to account.”

Guterres statement after attack in Mali in September 2024

In Pakistan, following a deadly blast, he “strongly condemned the ‘abhorrent’ attack” and offering “solidarity” with the “Government and people of Pakistan in their efforts to address terrorism and violent extremism.“

Guterres statement after attack in Pakistan in January 2023

Yet no demand for justice or expression of solidarity with the government and people of Israel. The word “Israel” didn’t even appear in the statement.

Guterres statement after attack in Jerusalem in September 2025

This is standard operating procedure for the UN Secretary General. When Muslims or Christians were killed in houses of worship, Guterres demanded justice while professing solidarity unequivocally. But not for Jews.

Why does Guterres morph into a fierce defender of victims—and demand justice—when the targets are not Israelis, but merely issue a dry statement when Jews are murdered? Perhaps he is waiting to find out if this Palestinian Arab terrorist was also a UN employee?

This is not nuance. It’s deliberate abandonment. A moral inversion because the villains have long ago been beatified, and Guterres has internalized that 2 billion Muslims are his real clients.

The UN has become a place where Jewish lives are treated as collateral, while other victims are granted full moral and political recognition. Guterres’s pattern isn’t subtle—it’s a glaring indictment of the UN’s moral bankruptcy.

Palestinian Pride in Death

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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 Sadism Of Local Hamas Supporters

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Hamas is genocidal. Evil. Its barbarous attacks on women and children are burned into the minds of anyone with a conscience. Its antisemitic charter leaves no doubt about its goal: kill the Jews, erase Israel, and replace it with a Sharia-run terror state.

As sick and twisted as that sounds, at least Hamas has a selfish motivation — they want the land, the power, the glory.

But what about the people waving Hamas flags on Western streets? The “activists” blocking bridges, intimidating students, and screaming for “resistance” while sipping lattes in safe democracies? They gain nothing material from Hamas’s success.

Their prize is watching Jews suffer.

Every synagogue with a new police guard. Every Jewish family installing security cameras. Every Jewish kid who removes a Star of David necklace before walking into school. People holding events at “undisclosed locations.” These moments are their theater. The sight of Jews — once confident, prosperous, “privileged” — now nervously glancing over their shoulders is the payoff.

Can you imagine people defacing the 9/11 memorial? For what purpose would they do such a thing? The carved names were innocent people murdered at work by fanatical jihadists. Yet hundreds of New Yorkers rip down posters of hostages held in Gaza. People in Boulder, CO, burn and shout at people who want innocent people reunited with their families. The attacks on hostage supporters is not for Gaza, but to torment Jews.

Memorial for victims of September 11, 2001 jihadi attack on the Twin Towers in New York City (photo: First One Through)

Hamas is an antisemitic death cult, and its western supporters are sadists. They want Jews to run, to hide, to shrink. To stop asserting their place in society. To become ghettoized again. Marked as “enemies,” unwelcomed.

The “resistance” has been revealed to be against Jewish safety – anywhere.

Judging the Judges of Psychopaths

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A suicidal antisemite walked into a church school in Minnesota and opened fire. He left behind rants of depression and hate. He idolized the mass murderers who came before him — Hitler, Columbine, Christchurch, Pittsburgh — and fantasized about joining their ranks in death.

It is a sad story. Sad for the victims, whose lives were cut short. Sad for the shooter’s family, who must live with the legacy of his murders. Sad for society, which must add another notch to the ledger of preventable carnage.

But I pause on the judges. Not the judges in robes who preside over courts of law — this menace took his own life and will only face a real judge in the afterlife, if you believe in one. The judges I mean are the self-appointed arbiters of truth on social media, the pundits with millions of followers who rush to craft a narrative before the blood on the church floor has dried.

Narratives Over Facts

Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, quickly posted on X that the killer “hates Israel and Muslims.” Two deliberate misdirections.

First misdirection: He didn’t hate Israel in the abstract. He hated Jews — which is precisely why he hated Israel. On his weapon magazine he scrawled, “6 million wasn’t enough.” That wasn’t about Israel. That was about Jews. In his journal he wrote “If I carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” before calling Jewish people “entitled” and “penny-sniffing” and adding “FREE PALESTINE!”

writings on the Minneapolis killer’s weaponry

He even called for destroying HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that helps resettle refugees in the U.S. His antisemitism and anti-Israel animus were inseparable. He loved Nazis and he loved Palestinian Arabs who killed Jews. Cenk only loves the latter, because it allows him to hang his “anti-Zionist, not antisemitic” credentials where he cannot with the former.

Second misdirection: The shooter never expressed hatred of Muslims. He praised mass murderers — including some who targeted mosques — but not because he despised Islam. His adoration was for the act of mass killing as a pathway to glory. He wanted to die a martyr in the suicide-mass murder cult, to etch his name in the pantheon of psychopaths and inspire the next one, just as he inscribed their names on his gun, as well as “mashallah,” meaning “Gd has willed it” in Arabic.

The Sanitizers

So why did Cenk say what he said? To refit the crime into his own comfortable narrative. To launder the reality that this shooter’s rants — about Jews, Israel, HIAS — were fueled by the same demonization that Cenk himself mainstreams daily.

Cenk published this rant about Israel controlling the US government around the same time as misdirecting people about the Minnesota killer

This is how today’s judges operate. They aren’t rendering justice to take the wicked off the streets. They are sanitizing their own crimes by placing their incitement onto a scapegoat and pushing it off a cliff. They hope you will move on, and not notice their bloody handprints on the crime scene of young children dead on a church floor.

But be clear, Cenk and others like him are inciting the next mass shooter. They just hope the murderers come for Israel supporters.

Conclusion

There are no winners in these tragedies. The dead are buried, the families are broken, the shooter is gone.

But the lies linger. The venom feels less poisonous once imbibed and cleansed by the antisemitic judges.

When influencers and media stars twist a killer’s words into their preferred stories, they are not exposing truth — they are covering their own complicity.

The Minneapolis shooter’s manifesto was clear enough. It will likely be on the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) book-of-the-month club reading. The world is sad and unjust and we must burn it down. Ideally, start with the Jews. If you can’t, make sure your manifesto reads like a modern day Mein Kampf that would make Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) proud.

The killer’s sphere of desecration was relatively small. Tragic, but limited. But the shrill antisemitic rants atop social media and infiltrating politics grossly widen the diameter of the damage.

The lingering tragedy is that the loudest voices have become the judges, and that will mark our entire society for collapse.

Villains Of Preference

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In 2001, a Palestinian Arab jihadist blew up 21 Jewish teens and young adults at Tel Aviv’s Dolphinarium disco. In 2016, a radical Muslim pledging allegiance to ISIS massacred 49 young people at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub. Both killers declared why they killed: Jews and gays had no right to live.

But read today’s news, and the stories have been rewritten. The jihadists are airbrushed out. In their place, new villains are supplied: Israel, Republicans, conservatives. Hamas’s October 7 slaughter becomes “anti-colonial resistance.” The Pulse massacre becomes proof of “alt-right bigotry.” The killers vanish; scapegoats stand in their stead.

The New York Times article on August 24, 2025 essentially blaming Republican anti-gay attitudes surrounding the Orlando nightclub killings. Nowhere does it say that the murderer was a radical Islamist who was interviewed several times by the FBI for involvement with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

This is the age of villains of preference.

A Hamas gunman disappears, Netanyahu is written in.

An ISIS bomber is scrubbed out, Trump takes his place.

Jihad becomes invisible, conservatives become the menace.

This isn’t sloppy reporting—it’s deliberate redirection. Our society, already awash in the viral toxicity of social media, is being pushed to focus obsessively on politics and demonizing your neighbors. It’s red vs. blue, right vs. left. The situation courses with the ultimate stakes: life and death. The reframing empowers a radical socialist agenda that uses a domestic enemy to mobilize its base. Jihadists don’t fit the script, but Republicans and Zionists do.

The real clash—radical Islam against democracy and freedom—is inconvenient to acknowledge. So it’s erased. In its place we’re told the true battle is internal: conservatives are dismantling democracy; Israel is committing genocide with American support; capitalism is the ultimate evil that threatens the world. The foreign killers who target Jews, Christians, and gays are excused, while the West turns on itself.

Anti-capitalist, anti-Zionist politicians-in-waiting, Jamaal Bowman and Zohran Mamdani

The creed is simple: protect the victims of preference, attack the villains of preference—Jews, conservatives, capitalists. They are being lined up for your bilestorm. Your retweets. Your ire. Your protest. Your vote.

It is a purposeful rerouting of outrage, weaponized by radicals who despise capitalism and democracy, and cheered on by regimes like Qatar and China that profit from the West’s collapse.

The jihadists told us why they killed. Our media tells us to look away. Because in the new faith, truth is expendable while villains of preference are eternal.

There is a subtle subtitle to mainstream news articles today. It is a chorus that is growing louder and closer, lifted from killers’ manifestos: “There is only one solution: Intifada Revolution.”

Antisemitism For Dummies

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A satire.

At last: the definitive handbook for turning age-old Jew-hatred into cutting-edge activism. Whether you’re a beginner looking to chant in the quad or a seasoned professional eager to upgrade from vague conspiracy posts to full-blown manifestos, this guide has you covered.

⭐️ Foreword by Zohran Mamdani

Mamdani reminds readers: the key to effective antisemitism is tone management. “Smile when you chant,” he writes. “Genocide with a grin reassures the brunch crowd that you’re not angry, you’re just passionate about human rights. Remember, a cheery face pairs well with calls for erasure.” He encourages everyone to follow his fellow Democratic Socialists around the United States in their vilification of Jews.

📚 Chapter Highlights

Chapter 1: Chair-Slamming for Justice (by disgraced former Congressman Jamaal Bowman)

Bowman demonstrates the physical theater of antisemitism. Pro tips:

  • Always slam a chair. Tables are optional.
  • If confronted, look wounded and insist you’re the one being silenced.
  • Practice lines like: “Why won’t anyone love me?” while pointing angrily at Jews.

⚠️ Warning Box: Weak antisemitism looks guilty. Turn up the volume.
It’s an interesting first chapter after the Mamdani “smiling antisemitism” approach in the introduction. The message is either speak softly with a smile or go full jihadi.

Bowman and Mamdani as besties, ready to educate the world on both the anti-Israel and anti-Jew lexicon

Chapter 2: Victimhood Chic (by Rep. Rashida Tlaib)

Learn how to wrap 19th-century blood libels in the soft blanket of “solidarity.” From “poor Gazans” to “oppressed Detroitians,” Tlaib shows how to recycle conspiracy theories as community-building.

💡 Pro Tip: Sprinkle “settler-colonial” and “they” into every sentence. Academia eats it up.

Chapter 3: Identifying Enemies (by Zahra Billoo, CAIR)

Billoo’s motto: Know thy Jewish neighbors, then denounce them.

Draw lists of Jewish organizations and label them “agents of oppression.”

Remember: Jewish schools, camps, and synagogues are all part of “the machine.”

Smile as you explain that Jews who acknowledge their heritage and history are “enemies,” even if they appear “polite.” Even if they are elderly or just children.

💡 Field Exercise: Practice in front of a mirror: “We’re not antisemitic, we’re just anti-Zionist.” Repeat until even you almost believe it.

Chapter 4: The Geography of Intimidation

Featuring Within Our Lifetime (WOL) and WESPAC
Why wait for a march in Washington? Bring the fight to Jewish neighborhoods directly.

Step 1: Find out where Jews live.

Step 2: Show up outside their homes and community centers.

Step 3: Chant until even the mezuzahs look nervous.

📌 Dummies Note: Always claim you’re just exercising free speech. (Lawyers love that one.)

Chapter 5: Bring a Jew (by Peter Beinart)

The best deflection against anti-Jew slander is to be accompanied by an AsAJew. You can usually pick one up in a local woke synagogue or library.

💡 Pro Tip: they are likely to be even louder than you are, so no need for an extra megaphone. Also, use them to help map Jewish locations per Chapter 4.

Chapter 6: Reuse Well-known Tropes- Repackaged for Today’s Audience (by Rep. Ilhan Omar)

Blend anti-capitalist buzzwords with old-school Jew-hatred. Example:
“From auto factories to olive groves, Jews profit off Black and Brown bodies.”
Add enough Marxist vocabulary and suddenly it sounds like grad school theory instead of medieval scapegoating. Be hip with “it’s all about the Benjamins,” to keep the younger audience engaged.

Chapter 7: Accuse Jews of Lying (Bowman)

Bowman comes back with the penultimate chapter. Part of antisemitism is to not only deny Jews a defense, but that they cannot be trusted. Even go so far as accuse raped Jewish women of being liars. Don’t be worried if it makes you appear callous and insane in an age of Believe Women: it helps shake out the true antisemites who will still rally to you.

Chapter 8: Theatrics, Not Apologies

Never apologize. If cornered, double down. If really cornered, accuse the accuser of “Islamophobia.” Remember: tears are a weapon—use them.

🎤 Bonus Features

🔲 Tips & Tricks Box:

Always bring a bullhorn or something else to make noise like whistles or pots. It’s impossible to sound genocidal when you whisper. Don’t let anyone have a passing part in the drama: let them be aware and own the fact that they are actively being complacent as Jews are marked for annihilation in their neighborhoods. They have tacitly joined the jihad.

If accused of antisemitism, pivot: “This is about Gaza!” Works every time.

📖 Sample Review Blurbs:

“Finally, a book that says what I scream outside synagogues every weekend!” — Anonymous Activist

“The Magna Carta of modern bigotry.” — UNESCO Heritage Committee

“Reads like Mein Kampf, but with a flair for fashion.” — Vogue Middle East

🏆 Epilogue: Owning It

The authors agree: antisemitism done timidly looks embarrassing. But antisemitism done boldly and passionately can get you re-elected, tenured, or at least viral on TikTok. Own it, project it, and never forget: you are the victim, even while chanting for someone else’s destruction.

Jesus, the Latest Jew Taken Hostage

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Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, posted on X that Jesus was a Palestinian. The implication was not only that Jesus was Arab, but also Muslim. Both are historically false. Jesus was a Jew in Judea. He lived, preached, and died as a Jew in his homeland.

If alive today, Jesus would not be celebrated by the Palestinian Authority. He would be condemned. The United Nations would call him an “illegal settler” for living in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Palestinian leaders would brand him a “colonist” because his Jewish family had the audacity to live in their ancestral land.

This is not a new stunt. A few years ago, activist Linda Sarsour declared that Jesus was a Palestinian from Nazareth. She conveniently ignored the fact that Nazareth is in Israel, and that Jesus was Jewish—observing Jewish holidays, quoting Jewish scripture, and praying in Jewish synagogues. He was as much a “Palestinian” as King David or Moses.

Radical preacher Omar Suleiman – invited to speak before Congress by Nancy Pelosi – said the same. His goal was to peel Christian support away from the Jewish State. Evangelical Zionists needed to hear the gospel from an Islamic extremist.

Why this persistent rewriting of history? Of cultural appropriation? Because anti-Israel agitators have a larger project: erasing Jewish ties to the land of Israel. They cannot admit that Jews have been in their holy land continuously for millennia, so they try to recast Jewish history in Arab clothing. They claim Jews are foreigners and interlopers while appropriating Jewish figures for their own narratives.

The irony is striking. For all their rhetoric about “coexistence” and “justice,” the pro-Palestinian movement reveals its antisemitic moral rot in these fabrications. They would rather deny Jewish history than seek peace with the Jewish people. They would rather invent a fictional Palestinian Jesus than accept the historical Jewish Jesus.

Jesus has now become the latest Jew taken hostage—not in body, but in identity. Uygur, Sarsour, and their fellow travelers parade his name as a prop in their campaign against Jewish sovereignty. But no amount of Twitterstorms, hashtags, or revisionist slogans can undo the reality: Jesus was a Jew, in Judea, in the land of Israel.

Jesus, like every Jew before and after him, is bound up with the land that antisemitic anti-Israel activists desperately want to sever from its true indigenous people.

Parshat Re’eh and E1: Gathering the Nation Around Jerusalem Then and Now

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Parshat Re’eh commands the Jewish people:

“Three times a year all your males shall appear before Hashem your God in the place He will choose—on the Festival of Matzot [Pesach], on the Festival of Weeks [Shavuot], and on the Festival of Booths. [Sukkot]” (Deuteronomy 16:16).

At a time when the tribes of Israel were destined to live across a wide and varied land—from the Galilee to the Negev, from the Mediterranean to the Jordan Valley and beyond—this commandment ensured that all Jews, regardless of tribe or geography, would remain bound to a single center: the place “He will choose:” Jerusalem.

Then: One City for One People

The pilgrimage festivals were not simply religious obligations; they were national glue.

  • Unity in Diversity: Each tribe had its own territory, customs, and leadership. But Jerusalem reminded them that they were not twelve separate entities—they were one nation.
  • Physical Connection: The journey itself—families traveling for days from north, south, east, and west, THREE TIMES A YEAR—kept every Jew intimately connected to the city at the nation’s core.
  • Spiritual Focus: No matter how far they lived, Jews oriented their lives toward Jerusalem.

Without this ritual of convergence, the tribes might have drifted apart, their shared purpose diluted by distance and difference.

Now: Re-Centering Around Jerusalem

Fast forward over three millennia. Jerusalem is once again the capital of a sovereign Jewish state. But the modern challenge is becoming increasingly less about tribal dispersion, with Jews in the holy land making up a plurality of Jews – it is geopolitical pressure and strategic vulnerability.

Recent government plans to develop the area known as E1, just east of Jerusalem, have sparked international controversy. Critics claim the project is “obstructive to peace.” It’s an absurd claim. Supporters see it differently: as an essential step to connect Jewish communities around the capital, ensuring that Jerusalem remains safe and accessible and central to Jews from north, south, east, and west.

The parallels to Re’eh are striking:

  • Geographic Cohesion: Just as ancient pilgrimage routes tied the tribes together, modern infrastructure links surrounding communities to Jerusalem.
  • National Identity: Building around Jerusalem reinforces its role not just as a city, but as the beating heart of Jewish life.
  • Defying Fragmentation: Where outside forces seek to carve up and isolate Jerusalem, development ensures continuity and connection.

Jerusalem: The Eternal Center

Parshat Re’eh’s vision was never merely about geography—it was about survival through unity. When Jews journeyed to Jerusalem three times a year, they reaffirmed their covenant and their peoplehood. One God, one people.

Today, as Israel strengthens the areas around Jerusalem, it is engaged in the same mission: to keep the Jewish people close to their capital, secure in their homeland, and united across generations.

Then as now, Jerusalem is not just a place—it is the center of a people.

The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount on the holiday of Sukkot

Names and Narrative: “Settlers” and “Colonists”

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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.