Category Archives: Middle East Analysis

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.

Van Hollen’s Mainstreaming War on Israel

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Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics in the U.S. Senate. Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, he has pursued a campaign that reframes Israel not as a besieged ally but as a war criminal state, worthy of sanction and censure. His playbook has five coordinated elements: a starvation narrative, a focus on Christian persecution, a drive to restrict U.S. arms, an effort to criminalize Israeli “settlers,” and to demonize the Israeli government while legitimizing the Palestinian Authority.

What began as fringe rhetoric has steadily migrated into the Democratic mainstream. In Washington’s political war over Israel, Van Hollen has positioned himself as the lead general, and he is increasingly turning to enact laws to enforce his worldview.

The Starvation Narrative

The turning point came in February 2024, when Van Hollen escalated from criticism to criminalization.

On February 13, 2024, he declared on the Senate floor:

“Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”

Just two weeks later, his office issued a statement reinforcing the charge:

“People are starving in Gaza. And civilians are dying every day. There is no excuse for this situation.”

At the time – just weeks into Gaza’s war on Israel – few international observers had made such claims. By labeling Israel’s blockade as “deliberate starvation,” Van Hollen provided the framework for others to follow. Within months, humanitarian agencies, U.N. officials, and fellow senators adopted the same language.

Christian Persecution: Expanding the Field of Victims

On trips to the region in June 2024 and August 2025, Van Hollen, joined by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) made highly publicized visits with Christian patriarchs in Jerusalem. They highlighted declining Christian communities and implied Israeli responsibility for their plight.

The narrative was selective: minimizing Hamas’s role and Palestinian Authority corruption while amplifying claims that Israel’s policies drove Christians from the Holy Land. Slowly, this angle began echoing in European diplomacy and American church politics. Van Hollen helped mainstream it.

Restricting U.S. Arms

Beyond rhetoric, Van Hollen has worked to curtail U.S. arms transfers to Israel. He joined resolutions to block certain sales, pushed for GAO investigations into Israel’s use of U.S. weapons, and demanded conditioning assistance on humanitarian compliance.

By mid-2025, other Democrats had joined him, showing his success in normalizing the once-fringe notion that America should starve Israel of weapons in the midst of its war for survival.

Criminalizing Settlers: From Rhetoric to Sanctions

Van Hollen has also targeted Israeli settlers, pressing for visa bans, sanctions, and financial restrictions.

In November 2024, nearly 90 Democrats, led by Van Hollen, urged Biden to impose sanctions on Israeli ministers tied to settler violence. In August 2025, he worked with Senator Peter Welch on a sanctions bill, declaring:

“The Netanyahu Government – driven by racist extremists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir – continues to fuel settler violence and support the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. The United States must not turn a blind eye to these acts.”

The progression from criticisms to sanctions is becoming a hallmark of his activities.

Boycotting Netanyahu, Embracing Abbas

The hypocrisy of Van Hollen’s diplomacy was laid bare in July 2024, when Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. Van Hollen loudly boycotted the speech, denouncing Netanyahu’s government as extremist and refusing to “be a rubber stamp” for what he called a “political prop.”

Yet, just weeks earlier in Ramallah, Van Hollen had gladly sat down with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—a man who: wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial; maintains laws banning the sale of land to Jews, punishable by imprisonment or death; and funds stipends to terrorists’ families under the “Pay for Slay” program.

This willingness to shun Israel’s elected leader while legitimizing Abbas exposes Van Hollen’s double standard. The boycott was staged as a moral stand, yet his embrace of Abbas—authoritarian, corrupt, and antisemitic—revealed a deeper hostility directed not at extremism but at Israel itself.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on a August 2025 trip to the region in which he does not meet any Israeli officials (photo from WAFA)

The Legal Framework: Turning Criticism into Punishment

Van Hollen’s strategy is deeper than speeches. He has worked to institutionalize anti-Israel positions into binding U.S. law:

  • Leahy Laws & Foreign Assistance Act: He invoked these statutes in May 2025 to argue that Israel’s restrictions on aid are a “commission of gross violations of human rights” which would trigger U.S. legal violations.
  • GAO Investigations: He formally requested audits to prove U.S. complicity, aiming to tie Israel’s actions to American liability.
  • Codifying Executive Orders: By reintroducing sanctions legislation in 2025, Van Hollen sought to ensure that settler bans would not depend on a future president’s discretion but become permanent U.S. law.

This layering of legal levers shows the depth of his campaign. Van Hollen is not merely criticizing Israel. He is trying to build the legal scaffolding that forces America to punish it.

Summary

Van Hollen as a multi-front war on Israel:

  1. Starvation narrative → turned humanitarian debates into accusations of Israeli war crimes.
  2. Christian persecution → expanded moral indictments beyond Palestinian Arabs.
  3. Arms restrictions → reframed U.S. support as conditional.
  4. Settler criminalization → sought to enshrine punitive measures into U.S. law.
  5. Boycott of Netanyahu, embrace of Abbas → pivot America’s ally from Israel to the Palestinians.

Each step has nudged Democrats further away from the historic bipartisan consensus supporting Israel, tarring the Jewish State as racist and criminal, and unworthy of support.

Mark Mellman of Democratic Majority for Israel – a longtime Van Hollen fan – bemoaned and warned about the “deleterious consequences of his [Van Hollen’s] actions,” as he watched the Democratic party follow Van Hollen’s lead. It has not slowed the senator down.

Chris Van Hollen has become the lead general in mainstreaming anti-Israel narratives and a Democratic political war against Israel—a campaign whose consequences extend from Washington to Jerusalem, and into the very legitimacy of Jewish life in the Holy Land.

The UK’s Troubling Misunderstanding of the Balfour Declaration, the Palestine Mandate, and the Middle East Today

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In a recent speech at the United Nations, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy declared his country was “determined to protect the viability of the two-state solution.” At first glance, this appears to be a standard diplomatic statement. But in elaborating on Britain’s historical role in the region, Lammy offered a revisionist take on the Balfour Declaration that reveals a deep and dangerous misunderstanding of Middle Eastern history—and raises questions about the UK’s current policy stance toward Israel and the Jewish people.

Lammy said the Balfour Declaration came with the “solemn promise that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the Palestinian people.” This phrasing might sound accurate to the uninformed, but in fact, it fundamentally distorts the language and intent of the original 1917 Declaration. The actual text stated that “nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.” That is a significant difference—not a matter of semantics, but of historical and political accuracy.

UK Foreign Minister David Lammy brings up the Balfour Declaration which he doesn’t comprehend

1. The Myth of a “Palestinian People” in 1917

In 1917, there was no recognized Palestinian national identity. The population of the region known as “Palestine” was a mix of Jews, Arabs, Druze, Bedouins, and others. They lived across a geographic region that included modern-day Israel, Jordan, Gaza, and what is now termed the West Bank. The idea of a distinct Palestinian Arab national identity only began to emerge decades later, especially in reaction to the creation of the State of Israel.

By 1948, the demographics had shifted dramatically, in part due to waves of Arab migration into the British Mandate territories from Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Egypt. Lammy’s reference to “the Palestinian people” as the subject of the Balfour Declaration imposes a modern nationalist narrative on a time when none existed. Balfour’s “existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” would exclude millions of Arabs who moved into Palestine after the 1917 declaration, whom Lammy probably considers “Palestinian people” today.

Balfour Declaration

2. A Jewish State That Did Not Prejudice Others

When Israel declared independence in 1948, it offered full citizenship to the roughly 160,000 non-Jews residing in its territory. Today, over 20% of Israel’s citizens are Arab, enjoying rights and protections that are absent in many neighboring states. Far from violating the civil and religious rights of non-Jewish communities, Israel has ensured freedom of worship, speech, and assembly for all its citizens.

So when Lammy said, “this has not been upheld and it is a historical injustice which continues to unfold,” he is lying. Completely. Israeli Arabs today enjoy far greater civil liberties than Arabs in Syria, Egypt, Jordan, or in Palestinian Authority- and Hamas-ruled territories. The “historical injustice” is not Israel’s creation, it exists beyond Israel’s internationally recognized borders.

3. Britain’s Role in Enabling Discrimination—Against Jews

Ironically, it was the UK itself—through the Mandate for Palestine—that laid the legal foundation for a Jewish homeland. And for ongoing antisemitism.

Britain unilaterally partitioned off nearly 80% of that territory in 1921 to create Transjordan (now Jordan), and stood by as the Hashemite Kingdom banned Jews from citizenship and ownership of land. When Jordan illegally seized the area later known as the “West Bank” in 1948, Britain was the only three countries (Pakistan and Iraq, which was also a British mandate) to formally recognize that annexation—a striking contradiction to the Balfour Declaration’s supposed promise of equal rights.

The Hashemite Kingdom, with Britain’s backing, quickly turned its part of Palestine into a Jewish-free zone, passing a citizenship law in 1954 that specifically excluded Jews. This glaring double standard—permitting discrimination against Jews while demanding protections for Arabs—is a historical stain that remains unacknowledged in Lammy’s telling.

Worse, it continues.

4. Britain’s Ongoing Endorsement of a Jew-Free Palestine

In 2016, the UK voted in favor of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which declared Israeli presence in the West Bank—including Jewish neighborhoods in the Old City of Jerusalem—to be illegal under international law. Then, in a joint statement with France and Canada last week, the UK reiterated this view, calling for Israel to “halt [Jewish] settlements,” and warning of potential sanctions.

In effect, the UK is advocating for a future Palestinian state that is entirely Jew-free—while curiously condemning Israel for allowing non-Jews to live freely within its own borders. How is this consistent with the principle of equal civil and religious rights? How can Lammy demand protections for non-Jews – who have rights – while simultaneously supporting policies that trample the rights of Jews to live in their ancestral homeland?

5. A “Two-State” Solution That Isn’t Two Equal States

This leads to the inescapable conclusion that what the UK envisions is not a genuine two-state solution. It is one and a half states for Arabs, and half a state for Jews—because one of those two states is expected to be Judenrein.

The fact that millions of non-Jews can live in Israel while Jews are prohibited from living in the proposed Palestinian state is not a path to peace. It is the codification of apartheid, not its cure. Can any reasonable person believe that a state founded on the exclusion of Jews will live peacefully beside the world’s only Jewish state?

6. A Dangerous Historical Amnesia

Lammy’s casual misquote of the Balfour Declaration isn’t just historically inaccurate—it betrays a worldview that has forgotten the lessons of Britain’s own policy failures. Britain once promised the Jews a national home, but reneged repeatedly, prioritizing Arab appeasement and imperial interests. It didn’t vote for a Jewish State in the November 1947 UN resolution and walked away from Palestine in May 1948, leaving the warring parties to fight it out. At war’s end, it blessed Jordan’s illegal seizure and ethnic cleansing of Jews.

Today, that legacy lives on in the UK’s refusal to recognize Israel’s legitimate rights while whitewashing Palestinian maximalist demands—whether from the Palestinian Authority (Jew-free Gaza and West Bank) or Hamas (Jew-free “from the river to the sea.”)

The Foreign Secretary’s focus on providing the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) self-determination, has blinded him to history and the basic human rights of Jews. A vision of peace that requires the ethnic cleansing of Jews from Judea and Samaria and demanding that Israeli Arabs with full citizenship rights get somehow even more rights, is not a peace worth supporting.

UNRWA, Hamas, and Genocide: A Lesson in Propaganda Over Truth

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As accusations of genocide in Gaza dominate global headlines, it’s important to revisit a revealing episode that exposes the deeper priorities of Palestinian political culture—from Hamas to institutions like UNRWA and even the Palestinian Authority.

Starting in 2009, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) made multiple attempts to introduce Holocaust education into its school curriculum. Hamas, which governs Gaza, unequivocally rejected the idea. Its officials declared that teaching about the Holocaust would “poison the minds of Palestinian children.”

  • Yunes al-Astal, member of the Hamas faction in the Palestinian Legislative Council said teaching the Holocaust in UNRWA schools would lead to “marketing and spreading a lie.” He said that adding the subject to the curriculum was “a war crime” and “support and service of the Zionists” (Filastin al-Yawm, August 30, 2009).
  • Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, said that Hamas opposed adding Holocaust to the curriculum because its objective was to justify the “Israeli the occupation” of the land of the Palestinian territories (Reuters, August 30, 2009).
  • Abd al-Rahman al-Jamal, head of the Palestinian Legislative Council’s education committee for Hamas, told a BBC correspondent that the Holocaust was “a big lie.”
  •  Mustafa Sawaf, editor of Hamas’ Felesteen, wrote an editorial (September 1) entitled slamming UNRWA’s intention to teach the Holocaust an attempt to brainwash the younger generation in the Gaza Strip and to “prettify the image of the murderous, criminal Jews.”
  • Jamila Al-Shanti, Hamas Minister of Education, said that “Talk about the Holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage and religion.” (Washington Post, September 2, 2009).
  • The Hamas-affiliated Popular Committees for Refugee Affairs denounced UNRWA, claiming that the Holocaust had not yet been scientifically proven and that teaching it was liable to cause students to identify with the Jews. Members of the committee absolute refused to have their children “learn the lie invented by the Zionists” (Filastin al-‘An website, August 30, 2009). According to the Committees, “the Holocaust was not real and outstanding Western scholars have proved that.” (PalToday website, August 30, 2009). It added “Holocaust studies in refugee camps is a contemptible plot and serves the Zionist entity with a goal of creating a reality and telling stories in order to justify acts of slaughter against the Palestinian people.”

UNRWA teachers in Jordan also refused to teach about the Holocaust, saying “teaching UNRWA students about the so-called ‘Holocaust’ as part of human rights harms the Palestinian cause… and changes the students’ views regarding their main enemy, namely the Israeli occupation.”

The Palestinian Authority remained silent or dismissive about Holocaust education in the West Bank.

Consequently, UNRWA held back from pushing the issue, as its mantra is to work within the framework of the “host countries” in which it operates.

This episode illustrates three key realities:

  1. UNRWA and Hamas are not the same—but not separate either. UNRWA claims neutrality, but its own documents state that it must work with the local authorities—in Gaza, that’s Hamas. This means Hamas effectively vetoes what UNRWA can teach and what it can do, no matter what UN policy says.

2. Antisemitic attitudes aren’t limited to Hamas. The resistance to teaching the Holocaust spans Palestinian political and educational institutions well beyond Gaza.

3. Propaganda overrides fact. From Holocaust denial to blood libel-style rhetoric, the dominant trend has been the elevation of anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives over historical truth. Even Columbia professor Edward Said – who vilified the State of Israel – acknowledged the antisemitic and conspiratorial discourse in Palestinian circles regarding Holocaust denial. James Zogby went so far as to call the violent antisemitic obsession, a “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture,” when speaking at the United Nations in June 2023.

Whether or not what is happening in Gaza today constitutes a genocide is a matter of intense debate. But what is beyond dispute is the long-standing, systemic preference in Palestinian political culture to weaponized falsehoods to spread propaganda to destroy the Jewish State.

We Let Minorities Die In The Middle East

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They came for the Yazidis. They came for the Druze. They came for the Kurds.
We came for the Jews.

Across the Middle East, ethnic and religious minorities have been hunted, uprooted, and erased. Yazidi women were rounded up and sold like cattle. The Druze were betrayed by neighbors and hunted in the streets. The Kurds—called terrorists for seeking sovereignty—were chased by Turkey with Western silence as a shield.

Thousands of Yazidi women sold as sex slaves in Iraq

We watched. We said nothing. We let them disappear, acknowledging—without saying it—that the Islamic Middle East had no place for ethnic and religious minorities. In our United Nations chairs, we shook hands with their butchers and waited for the news cycle to move on.

But not for the Jews.

The one minority whose return to sovereignty we supported—however begrudgingly many decades ago—was the Jews. We recognized their state, and in doing so, we made demands. MAKE demands. Demands no other people are burdened with.

We demand that Israel allow its citizens to be slaughtered and call for restraint. That it accept that others dictate its borders and immigration policy. That Jews be barred from praying at their holiest site. That any territory not clearly within historic armistice lines be judenrein, Jew-free.

And when Israel resists these demands – no, conditions we now apply for its existence – we condemn it. Not just at the UN, but in our schools, in our media, and on our streets—training citizens to treat diaspora Jews the same way: that they are alive only due to our grace. We are not equals; they owe us for everything.

We did not protect the Kurds. We abandoned the Yazidis. The Druze are being rounded up and killed. But we took action to help the Jews defy their extinction after the Holocaust. And for that, we believe they owe us—debtors with no right to complain. We pretend that Israel is a peer at the UN but we know the reality: it’s a vassal state and will be commanded by the order of the day.

Druze hunted in Syria

We don’t ask anything of the Gazans. Their genocidal rage toward Jews is seen as instinct, not ideology. Understandable. Natural. That’s why global protests erupt only when Jews defend themselves—not when they’re killed. Dog bites man, not the other way round.

To help Jews survive, we crafted Israel as a dam. It may shield its people inside from the massive jihadi flood—but only within walls we design.

However, once built, we insist that the floodwaters be let in. Millions of Muslim “refugees” must be allowed to “return” to the spring. The saltwater ocean that surrounds and crashes against the well’s walls, will mix with the spring water inside to become undrinkable.

We know it makes no sense. But we know we can’t contain the ocean, so we poison the well. It will happen eventually anyway, we reason.

The entrance to the United Nations’ Aida Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem, with a key on top showing that the doorway to get into homes inside Israel is via the UN

The world is watching—and learning. There is no future for Druze, Yazidis and Kurds. We silently move our lips, and our streets at home are silent. Yet when Jews retaliate when massacred, we rage and our people echo the screams.

Collectively we wonder whether maintaining the Jewish State is too hard.

Whether under dictatorship or democracy, religious zealotry or secular law, the story repeats: minorities are tolerated in the Global South only as long as they are passive, picturesque, and dying. The moment they survive and carve out self-determination, they are a threat to those with seats in the august UN chambers. Will these little tribes demand rights and sequester land too?

Yet another vote against Israel at the UN General Assembly

“Globalize the intifada” is not just a slogan; it is already in motion. Those floodwaters have breached the shores. The jihad is mowing down non-Muslims in the Middle East. It is teaching the Global North the chorus courtesy of Qatar, and dance moves via TikTok from China.

Marchers in the Global North demand an end to the Jewish State and persecution of Jews everywhere

The Global South – 42% Muslim outside of China and Latin America – will soon control the UN and is preparing to erase the exception of the Jewish state. Once America is convinced to step aside, the protective walls will surely collapse and the Jews will be slaughtered like other minority groups.

Druze mowed down outside hospital in Syria

Jews wonder why the streets are empty of protestors when various nations of the Middle East slaughter ethnic minorities, but are packed when Israel fights terrorists. It’s because Jews have still not internalized that the world views them as a minority which will ultimately be erased by the tide of the Islamic jihad, and it regrets making an exception for the most persecuted people on earth.

Related:

Palestinian “Human Rights” Demands Killing Israelis

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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.

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Turkey Seems Ready To Recognize Legality Of Jews In The “West Bank”

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On July 20, 2025, Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan made a remarkable statement, considering his years of rebuke for Israel in the area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan (E49AL/ the “West Bank’). He said that “it is time for the international community to come to terms with the facts on the ground” – in regards to Turkey’s presence in northern Cyprus.

Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and maintains 35,000 troops on the island to protect roughly 200,000 Turkish Cypriots. During the invasion, roughly 60,000 Turkish Cypriots moved to the northern Turkish section, while an estimated 150,000 Greek Cypriots moved south. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) declared itself independent in 1983, in an action the entire international community still considers illegal. Turkey has continued to illegally move parts of its population into TRNC, also illegal.

Turkey’s Erdogan stresses “facts on the ground”… for Cyprus

The Turkish Cyprus dynamic is much more severe than between the oft-discussed Israel- West Bank situation.

Ethnic Cleansing

Islamic Turkey ethnically cleansed Orthodox Greeks from northern Cyprus when it invaded. It echoed the actions of 1923 when Turkey and Greece exchanged their religious and ethnic populations, as though Cyprus wasn’t a distinct entity. More harshly, the Arab Muslim Jordanian kingdom ethnically cleansed all Jews from the land of Israel it illegally seized in 1949 and banned Jewish citizenship in 1954. However, in sharp contrast, when Israel took back the West Bank from Jordan in a defensive war in 1967, it did not remove any Arabs from the region.

Colonization

Further, Turkey already had an enormous country. Its colonial arm seizing northern Cyprus was seemingly to make up for the shame of losing the vast Ottoman Empire. That is completely dissimilar to the West Bank which has always been an integral part of the Jewish homeland, and was part of the British Mandate in 1922. Yet people have come up with a distinct term for Israeli Jews in the West Bank, “settlers,” even if they live in established cities (not new settlements).

Legality

No country recognizes Turkey’s illegal seizure of northern Cyprus. Yet several countries recognize Israel’s capital of Jerusalem and consider the West Bank to only be disputed land, especially as many western countries do not recognize a State of Palestine and Jordan abandoned all claims to the land in 1988.

Population and troops

The Arab population in the West Bank has increased dramatically since Israel retook the land in 1967. Israel granted the vast majority of Arabs self determination as part of the Oslo Accords, specifically in Areas A and B of the West Bank. However, there aren’t even any Greeks in TRNC to consider.

Israel has roughly 10,000 troops in the West Bank protecting 450,000 Israelis, in normal circumstances. During periods of conflict, the number of soldiers can double. That ratio is roughly 45 civilians to 1 Israeli soldier, quite different than the one soldier per 5 civilians in TRNC. TRNC is essentially a fort.

Conclusion

While both cases involve territorial disputes and ethnic tensions, the moral, legal, and historical justifications differ greatly. The Turkish occupation of Northern Cyprus is a blatant violation of international law, resulting in displacement and ethnic separation. The Jewish presence in E49AL/ the “West Bank” reflects a historic Jewish return, legal ambiguity, and an attempt at coexistence under a negotiated peace process.

Denying Jews the right to live in their ancestral homeland while excusing Erdoğan’s illegal occupation of Cyprus highlights a dangerous double standard: these disputes are really not about land or international law, but appeasing Islamic authoritarianism and ratifying antisemitism.

Related:

Importing Peaceful Ideas to the West Bank (February 2021)

Turkey’s Hajj of Hypocrisy (October 2019)

The Long History of Dictating Where Jews Can Live Continues (December 2015)

Obama’s Friendly Pass to Turkey’s Erdogan (June 2015)

Jews “In Any Part Of Palestine”

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On February 18, 1947, senior members of the British Kingdom’s government assembled to discuss the Palestine Mandate. By this point, the British had already separated the area east of the Jordan River and handed it to the small Hashemite tribe who created the Kingdom of Trans-Jordan. The people assembled at this meeting were at an impasse of how to handle the remaining portion of Palestine in regards to the roughly 1,200,000 Arabs and 600,000 Jews.

It is worth reading the discussion in full, but I will only highlight a few points here.

By way of background, the British had assumed the Palestine Mandate as well as for Iraq in 1922, while France had mandates for Syria and Lebanon. Due to Arab revolts in Palestine which started in 1936, the British – contrary to their mandate – limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to only 75,000 during the European Holocaust; they placed no limits on Arab migration into Palestine, allowing the Arab population to grow rapidly (more than doubling from 1918, whereas Syria only grew by 50% over the period).

An interesting observation is that the word “Palestinian” appears nowhere in the discussion, as the current notion that it only means Arabs would not be concocted for decades. At this point in time, the idea of a possible “Palestinian State” would incorporate both Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews, a term without meaning today.

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Ernest Bevin (1881-1951) led the discussion about the difficulty squaring the demands of both the Arabs and Jews. He was against the establishment of a Jewish State and even sent the Jewish refugee ship Exodus back to Germany. He had mocked the United States proposal to allow 100,000 Jews into Palestine immediately “because they do not want too many of them [Jews] in New York.” As a member of Winston Churchill’s war cabinet, he had prioritized friendly relations with the Arab world and with Muslims worldwide, as the UK still controlled India.

In discussing the desire of the local Arab population in Palestine, Bevin said that the Arabs were “unwilling to contemplate further Jewish immigration into Palestine,” even when survivors of the European Holocaust were desperate to come to the Jewish homeland. He added that the Arabs “are equally opposed to the creation of a Jewish State in any part of Palestine.“

Remarks by FM Ernest Bevin on February 18, 1947 about the Palestine Mandate

Bevin would go on to state the position of Zionists who wanted an independent state, in line with the mandate which called for Jews “reconstituting their national home in that country.”

Again, he made the position clear that “for the Arabs, the essential point of principle is to resist to the last the establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of Palestine.” He saw “no prospect of resolving this conflict by [negotiated] settlement,” consequentially leading to persistent violence. The competing demands of the Arabs and Jews made the situation “irreconcilable.”

Remarks by FM Ernest Bevin on February 18, 1947 about the Palestine Mandate

Willie Gallacher (1881-1965), a communist who had opposed Britain’s involvement in WWII asked during the back-and-forth whether the UK’s “Balfour Declaration is recognised to be utterly unrealistic,” giving priority to Arab claims. He failed to comprehend that the declaration served as the very basis for which Britain had been handed the mandate for Palestine. The members therefore concluded that the matter should go to the United Nations General Assembly to decide how to reconcile the irreconcilable.

The discussion proved prophetic. Even today (“to the last”), the majority of the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) refuse to accept a Jewish State “in any part of Palestine.” They continue to fight it by any means at their disposal, including war, terrorism and boycotts. Their actions do not only make life difficult for Jews in Israel but for Americans. The US embassy in Israel issued “travel advisories” suggesting people reconsider travel to Israel and the West Bank and to not go to Gaza because of the activities of various Palestinian Arab terrorist groups.

US embassy in Israel travel advisory of July 1, 2025

The SAPs are fighting Jews on two fronts, via the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas. The PA is fighting for a Palestinian State without a single Jew living in it. It has the United Nations endorsement, with the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 in December 2016. Hamas and other terrorist groups are fighting to ensure no Jewish State exists “in any part of Palestine.”

Other jihadists – countries and groups – also rallied to fight a Jewish State “in any part of Palestine.” From 1948 to the 1970s, the Arab world routed 850,000 Jews from their nations. Most still refuse to recognize Israel. Many boycott Israel and do not allow Israelis to enter their country. Islamic countries which are not Arab – foremost Iran and Turkey – actively support Hamas. Turkish President Recep Erdogan said right after the October 7 massacre that “Hamas is not a terrorist organization, it is a liberation group, ‘mujahideen’ waging a battle to protect its lands and people.”

Jihadi groups like al Qaeda rally radical Muslims to attack “Americans and Jews” around the world because of Israel, and attack tourists and fellow Muslims in Egypt and Jordan because those countries struck peace agreements with the Jewish State. The presence of Jewish sovereignty in Palestine has generated a call to history of 1,000 years ago, with the “World Islamic Front for the Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.“

The conflict is cast in western circles as a local conflict over land between Jews and Arabs which can find compromise, but radical Islamists see it as a global religious matter between Muslims and Jews. The violent extremists cannot accept Jewish sovereignty “in any part of Palestine” as an “essential point of principle.” Current efforts to “Globalize the Intifada” is their rallying call to end the Jewish State in its entirety, with Jews and Christians (“Crusaders”) fair marks for attack.

Related:

Globalize The Intifada With Socialists (May 2024)

The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada (January 2024)

Hamas’s Willing Executioners (July 2021)

Losing Rights (October 2017)

The Original Nakba: The Division of “TransJordan” (August 2017)

October 7: The First Pogrom from the Global South In the Modern Era

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For centuries, antisemitic violence has been a grotesque feature of Jewish history—pogroms in Tsarist Russia, inquisitions in Catholic Europe, and, ultimately, the Holocaust engineered by Nazi Germany. These atrocities were largely confined to the Global North, where much of world Jewry lived and where the modern tools of mass murder were industrialized.

Global North in blue, Global South in red

But on October 7, 2023, the locus of mass antisemitic violence shifted decisively. The massacre orchestrated by Hamas, the ruling authority of Gaza, against Israeli civilians was not merely another terror attack—it was the first state-sponsored pogrom to originate from the Global South on the Global North in centuries. It marked a turning point in the nature of antisemitic violence: no longer the work of loosely organized mobs in the South or repressive imperial regimes of the North, but the deliberate, systematic assault by a democratically-elected government in the Muslim world, targeting Jews as Jews, and Jews and “colonizers.”

A Historic Shift

Historically, Jews living under Muslim rule experienced discrimination and periodic violence, but the scale of the bloodshed never approached that of Christian Europe. Pogroms in places like Fez (1912), Constantine (1934) and Baghdad (1941), were undeniably horrific, but they typically resulted in the deaths of dozens, not thousands. In most cases, these events were local eruptions of violence, not centrally planned exterminations.

That changed dramatically in the 1950s. The rise of Arab nationalism, fused with pan-Islamic identity and antisemitic European ideologies, led to the near-total ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Muslim world. From Iraq to Egypt, from Yemen to Libya, ancient Jewish communities were uprooted. Between the late 1940s and 1970s, over 850,000 Jews were forced to flee Muslim-majority countries. They resettled primarily in Israel, France, and North America. But while the Jews left, the hatred remained. For Jews, and for Western “imperialism.”

Hamas and the Theology of Erasure

Hamas is not just a terrorist organization; it is the elected governing body of Gaza, a polity not recognized by much of the Global North but very much embraced within the Global South. Its 1988 charter is steeped in genocidal antisemitism. It doesn’t distinguish between Israeli combatants and civilians. It doesn’t merely call for “resistance” against Israeli policy—it calls for the annihilation of Jews in the land, whom it labels foreign interlopers and infidels contaminating Muslim soil.

On October 7, 2023, this ideology became mass action. Roughly 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered—women, children, the elderly—tortured, raped, and mutilated in their homes and at a music festival, and 250 people were taken captive. The violence wasn’t spontaneous. It was premeditated, coordinated, and state-executed. It echoed the darkest moments of European Jewish history, but this time the origin was a Muslim-ruled territory in the developing world.

Hamas had launched many wars against Israel since it took over Gaza in 2007, most notably in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. But it never did a mass coordinated invasion of Israel. It never took hundreds of hostages. It never counted on regional allies of Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran to join the jihad.

While Muslims are a minority in the Global North, they are the plurality on the Global South

A Government Pogrom

What separates October 7 from prior attacks is its nature: it was not a riot nor mob action. It was not a fringe group operating in defiance of authorities. It was the government. Hamas planned the massacre for years. It diverted foreign aid and resources meant for schools and hospitals to build tunnels, train fighters, and manufacture weapons. And then it unleashed them— on civilians.

The western world has been slow to reckon with this fact. The idea of a pogrom—an antisemitic mass killing—carried out by a government of the Global South against the Global North challenges dominant narratives in international politics, which often frame power dynamics as North exploiting South, not the other way around. But facts do not bend to ideology.

The Silence and the Hypocrisy

Western voices that once said “Never Again” have hesitated to name October 7 for what it was. Some have even rationalized it as “resistance,” blurring the line between anti-Zionism and rank Jew hatred. But no cause justifies the butchery of innocents. No political grievance legitimizes the burning of children or the beheading of elderly Holocaust survivors.

October 7 was a pogrom. Not the first in Jewish history, but the first of its kind, launched from the Global South by a sitting government, acting with genocidal intent against a Jewish population it deems foreign and expendable.

It will not be the last. Members of the Global South have been moving to the Global North post de-colonization. The numbers have ramped considerably over the past decade, as the poorly named “Arab Spring” and civil wars launched tens of thousands of people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) into Europe and North America.

The First Pogrom from the Global South was greeted in western city streets with chants to “Globalize the Intifada,” because this war of annihilation is infused with radical Islamism and nationalism. The first battle is against the perceived island of the Global North inside the Muslim Global South: Israel. Europe and the United States are to follow.

Antisemitism is not bound by geography or ideology; it infects the right and left around the world. But the Muslim Crusade of colonizing the Global North is very much a function of region and philosophy. It is coming for a broad redistribution of power and wealth from North to South, and indoctrination of Islamic principles from South to North. It will achieve its aims through force of arms and diplomatic cover of an altered United Nations.

“the Jewish people suffering the worst and most murderous pogrom since the Holocaust.

–UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron

Thinking of October 7 in terms of the worst slaughter of Jews since the European Holocaust blinds people to the tectonic earthquake that is taking place. History is not simply repeating itself in killing Jews. A new chapter of crusades is upon us in which Jews are the first victims but will not be the last.

Related:

Global South’s Beachhead On American Universities (March 2025)

Globalize The Intifada With Socialists (May 2024)

Most Palestinians Are For Hamas. Most Israelis Are Not European Jews. (April 2022)

The New York Times Thinks that the Jews from Arab Countries Simply “Immigrated” (October 2016)

Double Standards: Reporters Without Borders (RSF)

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Over twenty years ago, Jewish Russian-Israeli Natan Sharansky coined the “3D Test of Anti-Semitism: Demonization, Double Standards, Delegitimization.” Each one comes for Jews in their own unique way: demonization actively incites hatred; delegitimization undermines support structures over time; and double standards drips slowly into society, barely noticed and acknowledged.

Consider the assassination of noted terrorist Osama Bin Laden by the United States. World leaders applauded the American attack, thousands of miles from its shores, as justice served. Yet when Israel eliminated the terrorist Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder of Hamas, the world lined up to condemn Israel. Hypocrisy masked by time, place and protagonists concealed the rank Jew-hatred.

It happens to Israel frequently.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) is a non-governmental organization (NGO) based in France which attempts to get information out to the world regardless of frontiers, and to protect journalists. Its tagline does not clarify that it does this selectively, such as toeing the line with the French government, and persistently coming for Israel.

For years, RSF pushed to get Russia Today (RT) off the air and internet in France. RSF claimed RT was “Russia’s war propaganda machine,” and successfully got Channel One Russia off the air which it labeled “an important part of the state’s disinformation arsenal in Russia, where TV continues to be a very influential medium.”

RSF worked to ban media outlet RT because it claimed it is a disinformation outlet

Yet when Israel banned Qatar-owned Al Jazeera from Israel in May 2024, which had long served as an open propaganda outlet for the political-terrorist group Hamas, RSF went nuts. The group’s Middle East leader said “The Israeli parliament’s vote to censor Al Jazeera, and Benjamin Netanyahu’s defamatory remarks about its journalists are unacceptable. RSF demands that the Israeli authorities end their aggressive harassment of Al Jazeera. Such censorship legislation, under the guise of democratic regulation, implicitly targeting a specific media outlet, creates a precedent fraught with dangers for journalism in Israel.”

RSF didn’t only object to Israel’s ban of Hamas’s propaganda arm of Al Jazeera but accused Israel of “persecution”

RSF did not only defend the Hamas mouthpiece headquartered in Qatar, its entire framework of the Gaza war completely sides with Hamas. Examples of Hamas simply being annoying while Israel is the source of violence include: “Journalists suspected of collaborating with Israel are hampered in their work by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, while also enduring the violence of the Israeli blockade on the territory,” and blaming Israel for starting the latest war with “Press freedom, media plurality and editorial independence have been increasingly restricted in Israel since the start of the war in Gaza, launched by Israel on 7 October 2023 following the deadly Hamas attack,” which would be like blaming the U.S.A. for starting a war with Japan after the Pearl Harbor attack.

In January 2025, the Palestinian Authority also shut down Al Jazeera in the parts of the West Bank it controls, stating the company’s websites have “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife.” Israel went further and accused several Al Jazeera journalists of participating in the October 7 massacre. Whether causing “strife” or participating in lynchings, the media outlet has been blamed by both sides in fueling the war.

The double standards of Reporters Without Borders attempting to protect the Hamas propaganda outlet of Al Jazeera during the terrorist group’s horrific war but pushing to ban Russian media in Europe is appalling. It also raises questions about the NGO’s biases.

This isn’t a defense of censorship but a demand for consistency. If Al Jazeera’s ability to operate is sacred, then so is Russia Today’s. If RT can be banned for spreading propaganda and fueling war, then so can Al Jazeera. RSF’s double standard is damning.

The reality of today is there is no neutral and completely fact-based press. Government-owned media like Russia Today and Al Jazeera should fall under a single bucket of treatment. Ban them or air them with wrappers that identify them as foreign propaganda outlets so viewers understand the nature of the content.

Freedom of the press is not a weapon to be wielded selectively. But for groups like Reporters Without Borders, it increasingly is. And that should concern everyone who actually believes in a free and honest media.

Related articles:

Banning Qatar’s Al Jazeera Is Only News Sometimes (December 2024)

US Hypocrisy On Terrorist Media (April 2024)

The Scary Growth of Terrorist Propaganda (November 2021)

Nexus of Terrorism Hypocrisy: UN, Qatar and Hamas (June 2021)

Al Jazeera’s Lies Call for Jihad Against the Jewish State (November 2017)

Journalists Killed in 2016 #AlternativeFacts (January 2017)

Liberal Hypocrisy on Foreign Government Intervention (October 2016)

An Easy Boycott: Al Jazeera (Qatar) (April 2015)