For decades, Arab and Muslim leaders have fed their people a poisonous myth — that Israel dreams of ruling the Middle East, that it seeks to drive out Arabs and Muslims, that its goal is a genocidal “Greater Israel.” They have said it from Cairo pulpits and Riyadh conferences, shouted it at the United Nations, and woven it into the political DNA of generations.
Yet reality told a different story — 230 straight days of restraint.
From October 26, 2024, when Israel obliterated Iran’s air-defense network, until June 13, 2025, when it finally struck Iran’s nuclear weapons sites, Israel had total air supremacy over the Islamic Republic. For more than seven months, Israel could have flattened Tehran, crippled the oil fields of Khuzestan, or plunged the country into darkness by bombing power plants and airports. Instead, it waited.
The Iranian regime — the self-declared spearhead of the “Axis of Resistance” — had launched a multi-front war: Hezbollah in the north, the Houthis from the south, militias in Iraq, drones from Syria. Yet Israel responded surgically, destroying Iran’s air defenses and exposing the regime’s weakness. Then it stopped. No mass civilian targets, no vengeance against cities — only vigilance.
When Israel finally acted again, its aim was limited and precise: the nuclear enrichment facilities that Tehran had openly threatened to use to annihilate the Jewish state. The operation was not about conquest; it was about survival.
Had the situation been reversed — had Iran dismantled Israel’s air defenses — the results would have been catastrophic. Iran’s own rhetoric, and its record of missile and drone attacks on Israeli cities, show exactly what it would have done: unleashed devastation on civilian population centers. Annihilating the “Zionist regime” as an excuse for eliminating the the threat of a “Greater Israel.”
For 230 days, Israel had the power to destroy Iran and chose not to, just as it could have obliterated Gaza from the first day of the war. Those months are the clearest refutation of the propaganda long sold across the Muslim world about “Greater Israel” and “genocide.” Israel does not seek domination or extermination — it seeks to live.
Two hundred thirty days of restraint. Two hundred thirty days of truth.
There is a growing movement around the world to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. It is a cause whose time has come — and whose passage is long overdue.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not merely a political or religious movement. It is the ideological parent of countless extremist groups, from al-Qaeda to Hamas. The Brotherhood’s goal has always been clear: the creation of an Islamist world order governed by sharia law and fueled by perpetual jihad. It is the intellectual engine behind modern Islamic terrorism.
Hamas — officially designated by the United States and European Union as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter cites the Brotherhood as its ideological and organizational source. The brutal October 7 massacre, the ongoing rocket attacks, and the indoctrination of Gazan youth into genocidal hatred all stem from this same poisonous root.
Several nations – Muslim Arab nations – understand the threat. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have all formally banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity. So have other responsible actors in the global north, including Austria and Russia. Yet the group still finds safe haven in Qatar and Turkey — two countries that finance, arm, and politically shield Hamas.
These sponsors of Islamist militancy must not be allowed any role in Gaza’s future. To invite them into post-war planning is to guarantee the next war. As Khaled Abu Toameh says “Inviting Qatar and Turkey to play a role in the Gaza Strip means again bringing Iran in through the back door.” To empower these countries diplomatically is to ensure that peace will never take hold. The Brotherhood’s network thrives on chaos, martyrdom, and perpetual victimhood; its ideology is incompatible with coexistence or modernization.
Turkey’s first lady, Emine Erdogan, was recognized with an award by the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) in New York in 2022. The award was personally delivered by Ousama Jammal, a key Muslim Brotherhood figure in the US. USCMO has been accused of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
If the international community truly seeks an enduring peace in the Middle East, it must begin with moral clarity. The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates must be banned — everywhere. Those who fund or defend them must be excluded from the table. Only when the root of jihadist ideology is removed can the region finally begin to heal.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan shake hands. Turkey’s involvement in Gaza with Trump’s blessing guarantees future bloodshed with Israel; and the next US president may not care.
If one were to build a museum chronicling how a people educated generations toward hatred and eradication, the Palestinian Arabs would tragically merit their own institution. The Museum of Genocidal Intent would not showcase armies, the tools of genocide. It would display ideas, laws, sermons, and schoolbooks that made destruction a virtue and coexistence a sin.
Entrance Hall – The Charter of Death
Visitors first encounter the founding documents: the Hamas Charter (1988) and early Fatah Constitution passages promising Israel’s annihilation. There are ballots underneath from the 2006 parliamentary elections with articles alongside showing the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) electing Hamas to 58% of parliament as a first action of breathing self-determination. As one leaves the room, leaders—from Arafat to Abbas to Haniyeh—chant “From the River to the Sea” and “We love death more than you love life.“
Gallery I – Educating for Erasure
School desks and children’s cartoons line the room. In cases, textbooks from the Palestinian Authority show lessons which erase Israel from maps. UNRWA teachers like Afaf Talab have Facebook posts featuring wishes that God kills the Jews. A 9th grade lesson calls the firebombing of an Israeli bus a “barbeque party.” There is a coloring book hanging on the wall used in a fifth grade class in an UNRWA school which has a flag dripping in blood in front of the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, with a map of Israel alongside, erased into “Palestine.”
Coloring book from an UNRWA fifth grade class tying religion, prayer, death and destruction of the Jewish State
A television plays cartoons from Hamas TV shows, showing ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli soldiers digging under al Aqsa mocking Arabs and Muslims who are “asleep” as the crooked nosed-Jews threaten the mosque.
Interactive displays allow visitors to click on various videos from summer camps in Gaza and east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL/ “West Bank”). Young girls sing about “igniting an intifada,” encouraged “to shoot all the Jews” and taught if the Jews don’t leave Palestine, all of them should be “slaughtered.”
And the music. Popular Arabic songs play throughout the museum. They call for Jews to leave the land or be killed or kidnapped.
Gallery II – Icons of Murder
Here hang portraits of those celebrated for killing Jews: Dalal Mughrabi, Yahya Ayyash, and others. Under each image scroll the names of their victims—families, schoolchildren, passengers. Nearby, official “martyrs’ fund” ledgers show stipends paid to convicted attackers from the Palestinian government. In the center of the room are mock ups of the various schools, public squares and soccer tournaments named for the “martyrs.”
Gallery III – International Complicity
Painted UN blue, this hall traces how global institutions enabled indoctrination. Pictures of leaders of various European countries including Belgium and Norway that fund the schools and squares named after terrorists. Copies of numerous United Nations resolutions cover the walls, which condemn Israel but not Hamas, which make it illegal for Jews to live in the Old City of Jerusalem, and illegal to pray at their holiest site on the Temple Mount.
A large picture of the entrance to the UN-run “refugee” camp in Bethlehem with a key on top of a keyhole portal emphasizes that the international community is the vehicle for Arabs to eradicate the Jewish State.
Gallery IV – Blood Narratives
Walls of newspapers and posters accuse Jews of medieval crimes: poisoning wells, harvesting organs. Animated panels compare Nazi caricatures to modern Palestinian cartoons—the imagery identical. Loudspeakers replay sermons calling Jews “descendants of apes and pigs.”
Interactive charts present PCPSR and other surveys over time:
December 2023 – about three-quarters of Palestinians called the October 7 attack “correct.”
Majorities favored continued “armed struggle.”
Roughly two-thirds support killing Jewish civilians in Israel in every poll since 2000
Gallery VI – Jerusalem: The Theater of Denial
A model of the Al-Aqsa plaza plays footage of Murabitat women harassing Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other PA officials can be seen on videos claiming “Jews have no history in Jerusalem.” Audio of chants—“With blood and soul we will redeem you O Aqsa”—fills the room. Hamas leaders promise to repeat the October 7 “al Aqsa flood” massacre “again and again.”
PA president Mahmoud Abbas glorifying death on behalf of Jerusalem
Gallery VII – The Forgotten Ethnic Cleansing of Jews
Artifacts from before 1967 tell the story before the story:
The massacre and expulsion of Jews from Hebron in 1929
Synagogues Destroyed: photos of Jerusalem’s Old City after Jordan’s takeover—58 synagogues razed.
Expulsion: maps marking every Jewish family removed from the Old City.
Jordan’s illegal annexation of part of Israel in 1950.
Gallery VIII – Lynching: Public Violence as Spectacle
The public spectacle of the killing for the crowds is highlighted in the last room of the permanent collection.
Hebron 1929 – photos and testimonies of the massacre where 67 Jews were murdered
Ramallah 2000 – two Israeli reservists beaten to death by a mob; a photograph of a man showing blood-stained hands became an icon of the Second Intifada. The crowd cheers.
Gaza, 2023 – pictures of Gazans cheering as dead Israeli women are paraded through the streets.
The bloody hands of a Palestinian man after lynching an Israeli in Ramallah has become a symbol of the genocidal intent
Special Exhibit – The Sbarro Massacre: Innocence Targeted
At the museum’s center stands a quiet, glass-walled room marking August 9, 2001, the bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem.
Bombing at Sbarro restaurant in the Palestinian terrorist war on Israeli Jews
Artifacts include: fragments of the restaurant sign and surviving menu board; the broken guitar of 15-year-old victim Malki Roth; children’s shoes and schoolbooks retrieved from the site.
Chronology Panel: maps trace the attacker’s route and later trials of the planners.
Testimony Wall: written reflections from victims’ families—the Roths, Greenbaums, Schijveschuurders—describe loss and their ongoing quest for justice.
Media Archive: displays neutral summaries of press interviews and court transcripts noting the convicted organizer’s open lack of remorse, contrasted with international outrage and U.S. extradition efforts.
A video concludes with the terrorist Ahlam al-Tamimi stating how proud she was to have killed “religious Jews” and eight children.
Her words hang over the door as one leaves the building: “the philosophy of death is very difficult to understand.” She lives as a free woman walking the streets of Jordan today, a hero to millions.
Interview with terrorist Ahlam al Tamimi who has no regrets for killing women and children at a pizzeria
Epilogue
The Museum of Genocidal Intent does not exist, yet its exhibits do—scattered through classrooms, speeches, and monuments. Each artifact documents a choice: to teach vengeance or to teach life. Only when the real-world versions of these exhibits are dismantled will the possibility of peace move from behind glass into the open air.
For decades, Palestinians have believed there were three paths to statehood—and they pursued them simultaneously.
1. Violence. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah’s militias and several Palestinian Arab terrorist groups waged terror wars, convinced that bloodshed brought gains: the First Intifada led to the Oslo Accords; the Second Intifada drove Israel from Gaza and parts of the West Bank; the 2021 riots were hailed for halting evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. The October 7 massacre, backed by roughly 75% of Palestinians, was the latest in that grim pattern.
2. International Pressure. Even as rockets fell, Palestinian allies abroad pressed boycotts, divestment, sanctions, and United Nations resolutions, seeking to isolate Israel diplomatically and economically until it yielded territory.
3. Negotiations. The Palestinian Authority claimed to prefer talks to gain legitimacy and foreign aid—but insisted on maximalist demands: all the West Bank, all of eastern Jerusalem, a Jew-free Palestine, and a mass “right of return.” Yasser Arafat walked away from a state in 2000 and launched the Second Intifada instead. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, also spoke of peace while undermining it—keeping the notorious “pay-to-slay” stipends for terrorists’ families and, in a January 2018 speech, blessing those who chose violence even as he professed support for diplomacy.
Polling has consistently shown the order of Palestinian preference: violence first, global pressure second, negotiations last.
The Cost of Failed Strategies
Both violence and sanctions have brought suffering to Palestinians themselves. Suicide bombings and rocket wars prompted Israel to build the security fence, which restricted movement and economic activity. The October 7 attack provoked a massive war in which Gaza was devastated and Hamas decimated. Attempts to use international pressure backfired as well, leading Israel to withhold funds from the PA and tighten restrictions.
Israel fights like a cornered raccoon—fiercely, without backing down when attacked. Every round of violence has left Palestinians weaker and poorer.
In the recent war, Israel scored a double victory: It destroyed Hamas’s military capability, killing an estimated 25,000 fighters, and it refused to bow to global pressure, pressing on despite UN condemnations, ICC threats, and warnings of diplomatic isolation.
This shattered the long-held belief that if terror failed, the world could still coerce Israel into retreat.
A New Reality — and a Call to the Arab World
The old strategies of terror and economic warfare have failed and only deepened Palestinian misery. The third path—real negotiations—remains the only way forward.
Israel and the United States now hope the Arab world will engage Israel constructively, encouraging Palestinian leaders to abandon impossible UN demands and accept the reality of Israel’s permanence. Clinging to maximalist positions will only bring more rounds of bloodshed and despair.
And an Alternative Reality — Coming for Diaspora Jews
While Israel feels that it may have finally fought a war that could lead to long-term peace, there are those who still cling to eradicating the Jewish State. The international “Free Palestine” fighters do not want to see Israel holding onto the Old City of Jerusalem nor limiting the entry of millions of Arabs who claim UN’s mantle of “refugees.” The light at the end of the tunnel for them is not coexistence but a continued “Nakba,” a disaster.
So they are revamping the second front of international pressure, from targeting Israel to the soft targets of diaspora Jews.
They are chanting to “globalize the Intifada” to bring the war to every Jew and pro-Israel person and organization. The incineration of the kibbutzim in Israel on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah was echoed in the burning of the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania’s home on the holiday of Passover. Burning Jews alive in Kibbutz Be’eri was mirrored in burning Jews in Boulder, Colorado.
Burned kibbutzGov. Shapiro burned home
While Israel sees that it is in a strongest position in the region since its reestablishment which may finally enable an enduring peace, the anti-Israel horde has opened a new front on the global diaspora.
The international pressure of the BDS camp has not been defeated but inflamed. They are ratcheting up their smears of “apartheid” to “genocide,” and marking local Jews as co-conspirators.
While Israel won the Iranian proxies war, the Free Palestine camp is taking millions of new hostages – diaspora Jewry. Who will fight for them?
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has perfected the art of self-deception — and the spectacle has become an embarrassment to watch. Its leaders trade in fantasies while their people – and the entire region – suffer the consequences of their delusions.
When President Donald Trump released his 20-point Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, it was explicit: the focus was on fixing Gaza and the PA would have no role. The document said in plain language that the PA would need to be overhauled and reformed before it could ever be trusted as a partner for peace. It deliberately withheld any credit or recognition for the current leadership, recognizing its corruption, incitement, and support for terror. “A technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” headed by Trump himself would be the day-after plan for Gaza. Only “qualified Palestinians” would get to sit on such committee, not the UN-lauded PA.
President Trump’s peace plan specifically did not hand control of Gaza to the PA and said the group had to “complete its reform program.”
The plan’s very structure was layered with conditionality — each potential step toward a Palestinian state contingent on verifiable reforms, renunciation of violence and demilitarization. Even then, the most it offered was that maybe one day, post-reform, there could be a pathway to a two-state solution.
The Trump plan layered conditions of “when,” “may” and “pathway” to Palestinian “statehood”
And yet, in a surreal twist, the official PA news agency WAFA ran an article in which Mahmoud Abbas claimed that Trump stood ready to endorse a Palestinian state with “East Jerusalem” as its capital. It was an astonishing fabrication — a complete lie, meant to mask Abbas’s very public humiliation and preserve his illusion of relevance.
Official PA media lied that Trump’s peace plan would establish a new Palestinian State which would follow the “June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital”
This distortion was not a misunderstanding; it was intentional misrepresentation, propaganda designed to convince Palestinian Arabs that Abbas still holds the key to their future. But everyone can see through the act. All Abbas and Hamas have delivered is destruction, division, and hatred.
The PA’s falsehoods no longer even convince its own people. Each new lie only underscores its impotence — a government in name only, ruling by inertia and deceit. The tragedy – like the lies – has layers of corruption, hatred, murder and deceit.
The Palestinian people, too, bear responsibility for their choices. They voted for Hamas, a genocidal terrorist movement to 58% of the parliamentary seats which brought death and destruction not only to Israelis but to Palestinians themselves – which the vast majority supported. They elected Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier and an ineffective president, and now watch him recycle lies and propaganda instead of leadership and reform. The Palestinians voted for failure — and the region has paid the price.
WAFA called the Israeli government an “occupation government”, clearly showing the PA was upset by being sidelined because it sorely needs reform
The Trump plan recognized that hard truth. It was not a welcome mat for Fatah or Hamas, nor a reward for decades of violence and corruption. The plan envisioned a different future entirely. The “day after” will not be another PA regime or HAMAS ruling Gaza, but the first step in a new chapter of deradicalization, where education replaces indoctrination, coexistence replaces hate, and peace is no longer a slogan but a shared reality.
Trump’s plan – as endorsed by Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – states clearly that a possible Palestinian State will come as a BYPRODUCT of deradicalization and peace, not in order to CREATE the forum for coexistence as offered by France and the United Kingdom. All of which may or may not happen, and most likely after Abbas is long gone.
“Decolonization” has become one of the most fashionable buzzwords of the modern age. It is taught in schools, shouted in protests, and deployed at the United Nations as a moral bludgeon against the West. European imperialists, we are told, robbed indigenous peoples of their land, stripped them of their culture, and erected foreign regimes on stolen soil. The work of decolonization — dismantling those legacies and restoring dignity — has been cast as the great ethical project of our time.
But what of the other colonial power that swept across continents, subjugating peoples and erasing their sacred spaces? What of Islamic imperialism, which invaded the Jewish promised land centuries ago, laying claim to sites that predated Muhammad’s birth by millennia?
Consider Hebron, the resting place of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah. For Jews, it is the Ma’arat HaMachpelah, the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs — a holy site woven into the very text of Genesis. When Muslim conquerors took over, they renamed it the “Ibrahimi Mosque,” transformed it into a shrine for their own creed, and barred Jews from entering. For seven hundred years, Jews were not even allowed to set foot past the seventh step of the building.
This was not preservation; it was expropriation. A classic colonial tactic: erase the indigenous name, overwrite the meaning, and forbid the natives from practicing their own faith.
But unlike the narratives drilled into young students about European settlers in Africa or Asia, the Jewish story is not told.
In 1967, Israel liberated Hebron, and Jews once again could pray at the burial site of their patriarchs and matriarchs. Slowly, painstakingly, the work of de-Islamification has begun — not by erasing the Muslim presence, but by restoring Jewish rights. Jews may now pray, Jews may now enter, Jews may now sanctify their ancestral home.
And in June 2025, a historic step was taken: the Israeli government transferred administration of the second holiest site in Judaism to Jewish leaders in Kiryat Arba, removing it from the sole control of the Islamic waqf. This was neither vengeance nor displacement. It was simple justice — the recognition that all of those buried at the site are the founders of Judaism (while only one is revered by Muslims), and Jews are the indigenous people in the land as proven by that fact.
Decolonization movements have received global endorsement. Universities run entire programs on “postcolonial studies.” Yet when Jews engage in the parallel project of reclaiming their holy spaces from centuries of Islamic imperial rule, the world looks away — or worse, condemns.
Why should “decolonization” be celebrated while “de-Islamification” is scorned? Both are projects of justice. Both undo centuries of cultural theft. Both restore indigenous peoples to their rightful heritage.
If the United Nations were consistent, it would champion de-Islamification alongside decolonization. It would recognize Jewish efforts as authentic acts of restoration, not “provocations.” Schools should teach children that just as Africans reclaimed their lands from European empires, Jews are reclaiming their sacred spaces from Islamic erasure.
Instead, the UN gives its platform to radical jihadists who claim that Israel is trying to “Judaize” the Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron. It’s an offensive smear deliberately made to try to erase the reality of their Islamic imperialism, colonization, ethic cleansing and cultural appropriation.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas talking about the “Judaization” of Jerusalem to conceal that Islamic cultural appropriation.
The jihadists fear that after Hebron, the Jews will come for the site they know is really Jewish – Jerusalem. They are calling the transfer of the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs from the Hebron Waqf to Jewish authorities a “rehearsal for al Aqsa” in Jerusalem. They know the Jewish Temple Mount is the holiest site for Jews and Muslims invaded and took the site. They are proud of the feat and fear a reversal would legitimize a people they consider “sons of apes and pigs.“
There is no “Judaization” of Jerusalem and Hebron. There is de-Islamification.
Decolonization may be decades old, but de-Islamification is still in its early chapters. It deserves not only legitimacy, but applause.
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.
Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has become one of Israel’s fiercest critics in the U.S. Senate. Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, he has pursued a campaign that reframes Israel not as a besieged ally but as a war criminal state, worthy of sanction and censure. His playbook has five coordinated elements: a starvation narrative, a focus on Christian persecution, a drive to restrict U.S. arms, an effort to criminalize Israeli “settlers,” and to demonize the Israeli government while legitimizing the Palestinian Authority.
What began as fringe rhetoric has steadily migrated into the Democratic mainstream. In Washington’s political war over Israel, Van Hollen has positioned himself as the lead general, and he is increasingly turning to enact laws to enforce his worldview.
The Starvation Narrative
The turning point came in February 2024, when Van Hollen escalated from criticism to criminalization.
On February 13, 2024, he declared on the Senate floor:
“Kids in Gaza are now dying from the deliberate withholding of food. That is a war crime. It is a textbook war crime. And that makes those who orchestrate it war criminals.”
Just two weeks later, his office issued a statement reinforcing the charge:
“People are starving in Gaza. And civilians are dying every day. There is no excuse for this situation.”
At the time – just weeks into Gaza’s war on Israel – few international observers had made such claims. By labeling Israel’s blockade as “deliberate starvation,” Van Hollen provided the framework for others to follow. Within months, humanitarian agencies, U.N. officials, and fellow senators adopted the same language.
Christian Persecution: Expanding the Field of Victims
On trips to the region in June 2024 and August 2025, Van Hollen, joined by Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) made highly publicized visits with Christian patriarchs in Jerusalem. They highlighted declining Christian communities and implied Israeli responsibility for their plight.
The narrative was selective: minimizing Hamas’s role and Palestinian Authority corruption while amplifying claims that Israel’s policies drove Christians from the Holy Land. Slowly, this angle began echoing in European diplomacy and American church politics. Van Hollen helped mainstream it.
Restricting U.S. Arms
Beyond rhetoric, Van Hollen has worked to curtail U.S. arms transfers to Israel. He joined resolutions to block certain sales, pushed for GAO investigations into Israel’s use of U.S. weapons, and demanded conditioning assistance on humanitarian compliance.
By mid-2025, other Democrats had joined him, showing his success in normalizing the once-fringe notion that America should starve Israel of weapons in the midst of its war for survival.
Criminalizing Settlers: From Rhetoric to Sanctions
Van Hollen has also targeted Israeli settlers, pressing for visa bans, sanctions, and financial restrictions.
In November 2024, nearly 90 Democrats, led by Van Hollen, urged Biden to impose sanctions on Israeli ministers tied to settler violence. In August 2025, he worked with Senator Peter Welch on a sanctions bill, declaring:
“The Netanyahu Government – driven by racist extremists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir – continues to fuel settler violence and support the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. The United States must not turn a blind eye to these acts.”
The progression from criticisms to sanctions is becoming a hallmark of his activities.
Boycotting Netanyahu, Embracing Abbas
The hypocrisy of Van Hollen’s diplomacy was laid bare in July 2024, when Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress. Van Hollen loudly boycotted the speech, denouncing Netanyahu’s government as extremist and refusing to “be a rubber stamp” for what he called a “political prop.”
Yet, just weeks earlier in Ramallah, Van Hollen had gladly sat down with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—a man who: wrote his doctoral thesis on Holocaust denial; maintains laws banning the sale of land to Jews, punishable by imprisonment or death; and funds stipends to terrorists’ families under the “Pay for Slay” program.
This willingness to shun Israel’s elected leader while legitimizing Abbas exposes Van Hollen’s double standard. The boycott was staged as a moral stand, yet his embrace of Abbas—authoritarian, corrupt, and antisemitic—revealed a deeper hostility directed not at extremism but at Israel itself.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen meets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on a August 2025 trip to the region in which he does not meet any Israeli officials (photo from WAFA)
The Legal Framework: Turning Criticism into Punishment
Van Hollen’s strategy is deeper than speeches. He has worked to institutionalize anti-Israel positions into binding U.S. law:
Leahy Laws & Foreign Assistance Act: He invoked these statutes in May 2025 to argue that Israel’s restrictions on aid are a “commission of gross violations of human rights” which would trigger U.S. legal violations.
GAO Investigations: He formally requested audits to prove U.S. complicity, aiming to tie Israel’s actions to American liability.
Codifying Executive Orders: By reintroducing sanctions legislation in 2025, Van Hollen sought to ensure that settler bans would not depend on a future president’s discretion but become permanent U.S. law.
This layering of legal levers shows the depth of his campaign. Van Hollen is not merely criticizing Israel. He is trying to build the legal scaffolding that forces America to punish it.
Summary
Van Hollen as a multi-front war on Israel:
Starvation narrative → turned humanitarian debates into accusations of Israeli war crimes.
Christian persecution → expanded moral indictments beyond Palestinian Arabs.
Arms restrictions → reframed U.S. support as conditional.
Settler criminalization → sought to enshrine punitive measures into U.S. law.
Boycott of Netanyahu, embrace of Abbas → pivot America’s ally from Israel to the Palestinians.
Each step has nudged Democrats further away from the historic bipartisan consensus supporting Israel, tarring the Jewish State as racist and criminal, and unworthy of support.
Mark Mellman of Democratic Majority for Israel – a longtime Van Hollen fan – bemoaned and warned about the “deleterious consequences of his [Van Hollen’s] actions,” as he watched the Democratic party follow Van Hollen’s lead. It has not slowed the senator down.
Chris Van Hollen has become the lead general in mainstreaming anti-Israel narratives and a Democratic political war against Israel—a campaign whose consequences extend from Washington to Jerusalem, and into the very legitimacy of Jewish life in the Holy Land.
In a 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
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.
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:
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.
First One Through 
