Category Archives: Middle East Analysis

Does Israel’s War Meet the Catholic Just War Test?

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For more than sixteen centuries, the Catholic Church has wrestled with one of humanity’s most difficult questions: When, if ever, is war morally justified?

St. Augustine laid the foundation by teaching that, “The purpose of all wars is peace.” War was never to be pursued for conquest, revenge, or hatred, but only to restore a just peace.

St. Thomas Aquinas refined that principle, writing that, “In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign… Secondly, a just cause… Thirdly… the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil.”

The Catechism of the Catholic Church later added that “The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration.” It identifies four additional requirements: the aggressor must inflict lasting, grave and certain damage; peaceful alternatives must have been exhausted; there must be a serious prospect of success; and the use of force must not create evils greater than those it seeks to eliminate.

These principles have recently been invoked by Catholics questioning Israel’s wars against Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.

The first question is legitimate authority.

Israel is a sovereign state with an elected government entrusted with protecting its citizens. Hamas is a terrorist organization that seized control of Gaza by force. Hezbollah is an Iranian-backed militia that operates independently of the Lebanese government while maintaining its own army. Iran finances, arms, trains, and directs proxy organizations across the region while repeatedly calling for Israel’s destruction.

The Catholic tradition recognizes a government’s duty to defend those under its care. That responsibility belongs to Israel’s government. It does not belong to terrorist organizations.

The second question is just cause.

Israel did not manufacture this conflict. On October 7, Hamas crossed into Israel and deliberately massacred civilians, raped women, tortured families, burned people alive in their homes, and kidnapped more than 250 men, women, children, and elderly people. Hezbollah opened a northern front with sustained rocket attacks, while Iran’s regional proxy network joined the conflict.

Catholic teaching has long recognized that governments possess both the right and the obligation to defend innocent life against grave aggression.

The third question is right intention.

Israel has repeatedly stated that its objective is the dismantling of Hamas’s military capability, the removal of Hezbollah’s threat along its northern border, and the degradation of Iran’s ability to wage war through proxies. Those are military objectives directed toward restoring security.

Its enemies have declared something fundamentally different: that the Jewish state should be destroyed. One side seeks to eliminate a military threat. The other seeks to eliminate a nation.

The Catechism next asks whether war is truly the last resort.

Israel withdrew every soldier and civilian from Gaza in 2005. Instead of peace, Hamas transformed Gaza into an armed fortress, investing billions in rockets, tunnels, command centers, and military infrastructure embedded beneath civilian neighborhoods. Ceasefires repeatedly collapsed. Diplomatic initiatives failed to end the attacks. Every pause became an opportunity for Hamas and Hezbollah to rearm.

Hamas tunnels

Catholic teaching does not require a nation to absorb repeated massacres while endlessly hoping the next ceasefire will succeed where every previous one failed.

There must also be a reasonable chance of success.

Israel’s objectives have been difficult but attainable: dismantling terrorist command structures, destroying military infrastructure, rescuing hostages, degrading missile capabilities, and reducing Iran’s capacity to project violence through its proxies. Success doesn’t mean perfect peace. It means substantially reducing a continuing threat to innocent life.

Finally comes proportionality and discrimination.

These principles are often reduced to comparing casualty figures. That is not how Catholic teaching understands proportionality. The question is whether the military response is proportionate to removing the evil being confronted and whether civilians are intentionally protected.

Hamas deliberately embeds military assets beneath hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential neighborhoods. It stores weapons among civilians, fires rockets from civilian areas, steals humanitarian aid, and has long been accused of using civilians as shields. It refuses to let civilians enter the tunnels for shelter. Hezbollah has similarly embedded military infrastructure within Lebanese civilian communities.

Those realities fundamentally shape how Israel’s responsibilities must be judged.

The Catholic just war tradition was never intended to evaluate only one participant in a conflict. Every criterion applies equally to every combatant. A moral framework that scrutinizes Israel while ignoring Hamas, Hezbollah, or Iran is no longer applying Catholic teaching consistently.

When the Church’s own criteria are applied carefully – legitimate authority, just cause, right intention, last resort, reasonable hope of success, proportionality, and discrimination – Israel’s campaign against Hamas and Iran’s proxy network presents a strong case for satisfying the classical requirements of a just war.

Israel’s Permanent Elimination Game

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Every sports fan understands the pressure of an elimination game. One team takes the field knowing that a loss ends its season. There are no adjustments, no second chances. Everything rests on one contest.

The opposing team may desperately want to win, but the consequences of defeat are entirely different. It can return for another attempt with a new strategy, a new line up.

The scoreboard is the same. The stakes are not.

Now imagine a tournament where one team disappears forever if it loses, while its opponent simply waits for the next season. We would never describe that as an even contest. Yet that is remarkably close to the strategic reality Israel has faced throughout its history.

For Israel’s enemies, wars are not elimination games.

  • Egypt fought Israel repeatedly and lost. Egypt survived and eventually chose peace.
  • Syria launched major wars in 1948, 1967 and 1973. Each ended in defeat. Syria remained Syria.
  • Jordan lost territory but continued as a kingdom.

The pattern extends beyond states. Hamas has suffered repeated military defeats, lost senior leaders, and watched much of its military infrastructure destroyed. Yet after every conflict it has sought to rebuild. Hezbollah has absorbed devastating blows over decades while remaining a powerful force in Lebanon. Military defeat has never meant the end of either organization. They regroup, recruit, rearm and wait for another opportunity.

Hamas official stating that it will repeat the massacres of October 7 again and again

Israel has fought many opponents. Repeatedly.

That is because Israel’s war aims have been limited. Israel seeks to remove the military threat confronting its citizens. It has not sought the disappearance of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon or Iran. Even against terrorist organizations, its objective has been to dismantle military capabilities, not to eradicate an entire population.

Conversely, Israel’s adversaries have declared that the Jewish state should be destroyed. The objective was not merely to reverse a battlefield defeat or gain negotiating leverage. It was to eliminate Israel altogether.

That changes the meaning of every war.

Israel believes it cannot afford to lose an existential conflict because defeat would not simply mean surrendering territory, replacing a government, or rebuilding an army. Defeat would mean the destruction of the Jewish state.

Its adversaries have confronted a different calculation. If they fail, they survive. Their governments continue. Their organizations recruit new members. Their ideology remains intact. History gives them another chance.

Israel never assumes it will receive that luxury.

This asymmetry is one of the least understood aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Outside observers often judge each round of fighting as though both sides enter the contest with identical risks and identical objectives.

They do not.

One side has repeatedly demonstrated that it can lose wars and return years later to fight again. The other has long believed that losing an existential war would leave no opportunity for a comeback.

Israel has lived for nearly eight decades in what often feels like a permanent one-sided elimination game. Its opponents have repeatedly lost wars and returned for another season. Israel has never believed it would be granted that same privilege.

That is why Israelis often see war differently than much of the world. The debate is rarely about this season’s standings. It is about whether there will be another season at all.

Completing Jerusalem

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In July 1980, the Knesset passed the Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel. Its opening declaration remains one of the clearest statements of Zionist purpose ever enacted by the State of Israel:

“Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”

The law settled a question that had haunted Jewish history for centuries. Jerusalem would never again be divided by barbed wire, minefields, and sniper positions. The city reunited in 1967 would remain the political and spiritual heart of the Jewish state.

Forty-six years later, it is worth asking a simple question:

What does “united” mean?

The answer cannot be limited to municipal boundaries. It cannot be measured solely by roads, tax collection, or police jurisdiction. A united city is ultimately a civic reality. It is a city whose residents share a common framework of governance and belonging.

Image of man walking through Herod’s Gate in Old City of Jerusalem (FirstOneThrough with AI)

When Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, the decision to grant permanent residency rather than citizenship to the Arab residents made practical sense. The future of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict remained uncertain, and the status of Jerusalem itself was still contested internationally.

But those residents’ children are no longer children.

An Arab born in eastern Jerusalem in 1981 is now in his mid-forties. He has spent his entire life under Israeli administration. He attended schools in Jerusalem, received healthcare through Israeli institutions, worked in Jerusalem businesses, and raised a family in Jerusalem. For an entire generation born after the Jerusalem Law, the temporary arrangement has become a permanent condition.

An Arab born in Nazareth in 1981 became an Israeli citizen at birth. An Arab born in Jerusalem in 1981 generally remained a permanent resident. Both have lived under Israeli sovereignty their entire lives. One votes in national elections while the other does not.

If Jerusalem is truly united, how should that distinction be understood nearly half a century after the Basic Law was enacted?

The question is no longer theoretical. In recent years, thousands of eastern Jerusalem Arabs have applied for Israeli citizenship, reflecting a significant shift from earlier decades. The demand exists. What many applicants encounter instead is a cumbersome process that can stretch for years.

The issue has taken on added significance since October 7.

Hamas named its attack the “Al-Aqsa Flood” because it sought to seize sovereignty in Jerusalem. For decades, Hamas and other rejectionist movements have portrayed Jerusalem as a city temporarily under Jewish control and awaiting liberation.

A confident nation answers such claims by strengthening the institutions of sovereignty.

The ramifications would extend far beyond voting rights in Israel.

The Palestinian Authority presents “East Jerusalem” as the capital of a future Palestinian state. International organizations continue to describe “East Jerusalem” as occupied territory, while critics accuse Israel of apartheid and permanent disenfranchisement.

Yet what would happen if large numbers of Arabs born in Jerusalem after 1980 chose Israeli citizenship?

Hamas would struggle to explain why residents supposedly awaiting liberation had instead chosen participation in Israeli democracy. The Palestinian Authority would find it difficult to claim as its constituency citizens voting in Israeli elections. International institutions would confront a reality more complicated than diplomatic formulas unchanged since 1967. Critics would have to reconcile accusations of apartheid with a policy that expands citizenship and voting rights.

Jerusalem also offers a practical test for Israel’s broader sovereignty debate. Politicians who advocate annexing parts or all of Judea and Samaria should first explain their position regarding Arabs born after 1980 in Israel’s declared and united capital. If no consensus exists in Jerusalem, it is difficult to imagine one elsewhere.

Every party seeking to govern Israel should therefore answer a simple question: Do you support an expedited path to citizenship for Arabs born in eastern Jerusalem after the passage of the Jerusalem Law?

Such a program could include security screening, an oath of loyalty to the State of Israel and its laws, and a streamlined administrative process. Those who prefer permanent residency could retain it. Those seeking citizenship would no longer spend years navigating bureaucratic obstacles.

Jerusalem was reunited in 1967 and anchored in law in 1980. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Jerusalem Law approaches, Israelis should decide whether the next step is to complete the city’s civic integration.

The question is larger than citizenship. It is about the meaning of a united Jerusalem and the confidence of a sovereign nation in its eternal capital.

The Flag, the Staff, and the Fight for Civilization

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One of the most enduring images of the American Revolution is not a musket fired at Lexington or a cannon at Yorktown. It is a flag.

“Spirit of ’76” by Archibald Willard, 1875

In paintings celebrating the American Revolution, men advance carrying banners while drummer boys beat the cadence beside them. Often these figures are unarmed or lightly armed. To a modern observer, this seems irrational. Why would an army send men into battle carrying flags and drums instead of rifles?

Because they were not there to fight but to remind others why the fight mattered.

The flag represented the regiment, the cause, and the emerging nation. The drum provided rhythm and cohesion amid the chaos of battle. Neither was a weapon. Yet both were indispensable.

While tools like weapons help achieve an objective, symbols give meaning to the objective.

The Declaration of Independence was not a weapon. Neither was the America flag. Yet without them, the American Revolution would have been little more than a military rebellion. The cause and symbols transformed a collection of armed colonists into a people united by a common purpose.

The same lesson appeared thousands of years earlier in the Torah.

Moses’ staff began as an ordinary shepherd’s stick. In Egypt it became a symbol of divine authority. It was present during the plagues, at the splitting of the sea, and throughout Israel’s journey in the wilderness.

Similarly, during the battle against Amalek, Moses stood on a hill overlooking the fighting. When he raised his hands, Israel prevailed.

The rabbis famously ask whether Moses’ hands actually won the battle. Of course not. Joshua and the soldiers were the actual fighters. Like the flag carried by a Revolutionary soldier, the Moses’ raised arms pointed upwards. It reminded the warriors that victory depended not only on military strength but on the faith that united them.

Moses’ arms raised during fight with Amalek

Unfortunately, Moses later forgot the important distinction between symbol and tool. In Numbers 20, God instructs Moses to speak to a rock to make it produce water but instead Moses used the staff to hit the rock.

“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Take the tent and gather the congregation together, you and Aaron your brother, and speak to the rock before their eyes, and give them water from it,… And Moses lifted up his hand, and smote the rock with his rod, and there came out abundant water,… And the LORD said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the sight of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.”

Had Moses held the staff and spoken to the rock, it would have been clear that Moses was acting as an agent of God. However, by using the staff to hit the rock, the appearance to the congregation was that Moses produced the water through his physical actions. The important symbol was converted into a mere tool.

That temptation remains with every generation.

Today, neither America nor Israel doubts the superiority of its weapons. The United States and Israel possess military capabilities far beyond those of the jihadist movements that seek their destruction.

But this war is not only about weapons and short-term military victory.

The jihadists understand the power of symbols. They flew their flags over burned civilian homes and corpses of families. Their propaganda celebrates martyrdom of their own people. Their movements are built around vile narratives and identity.

So the engagement with the enemies must be beyond tools and include symbols.

The challenge facing America as it approaches its 250th birthday, and Israel as it continues its long war against jihadist movements sworn to its destruction, is not merely maintaining military superiority. It is ensuring that the superiority of their cause is just as visible.

For Israel, that means rebuilding the communities of the Gaza Envelope, returning families to their homes, raising the flag over places terrorists tried to erase, and celebrating Jewish life where jihadists sought death.

For America, it means reclaiming the language of the Declaration of Independence, speaking unapologetically about liberty and human rights, and using international forums not merely to condemn violence in general but to condemn noxious jihadist violence specifically.

The free world must repeatedly denounce genocidal jihadists like Hamas and Hezbollah and pass resolutions that celebrate democracy, defend religious freedom, and affirm the dignity of every human being.

The current fight matters more than military victory. It requires weapons, and also a proud display of enduring Jewish and Democratic values.

Tools win battles. Symbols sustain civilizations. They are both distinct and required at pivotal moments like today.

From Jesus the Jew to Gaza: The Vatican’s Dangerous Narrative

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For years, pro-Palestinian activists have promoted the false claim that Jesus was a Palestinian.

Jesus was a Jew, born to a Jewish family, living in the Jewish homeland, speaking to Jewish audiences, teaching from the Hebrew Bible, and making pilgrimages to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The word “Palestine” was not even the name of the province during His lifetime. The Roman renaming of Judea to Syria Palaestina occurred about a century after His death.

Yet the claim persists because it serves an ahistorical but political purpose: If Jesus can be transformed from a Jew into a Arab, then the central figure of Christianity can be detached from Jewish history and reinserted into a modern political narrative. Suddenly, Jews are no longer obvious indigenous people in the Holy Land, but Arabs – who did not arrive en masse to region for another six centuries – are the real Jews.

The recent Vatican News article about Gaza takes that process one step further.

The article does not explicitly call Jesus a Palestinian. Instead, it wraps a Gazan narrative in the language of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. Gaza becomes the tomb. The refugee becomes the suffering servant. The journey out becomes resurrection.

The symbolism is unmistakable.

For centuries, Christians looked to the suffering of Jesus as a uniquely sacred story. Increasingly, anti-Israel agitators are attempting to woo parts of the Christian world by recasting that story through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinian Arabs occupying the role once reserved for Christ Himself.

The war in Gaza did not begin with suffering descending from heaven. It began with decisions made by thousands of Gazans. Hamas invaded Israel, murdered civilians and took hostages. Hamas launched a war that it knew would bring devastating consequences to Gaza as it hid it tunnels and refused to let women and children enter the shelters.

Does that resemble Jesus?

Genocidal psychopaths are being transformed into the innocent sufferer. The political and military context disappears from view. Agency gives way to symbolism.

What makes this especially troubling for many Jews is that the institution promoting this narrative is no longer just fringe anti-Israel groups or university protest movements.

It is the Vatican itself.

For two thousand years, the Church has wrestled with the consequences of separating Christianity from its Jewish roots. In recent decades, Catholic-Jewish relations made enormous progress by reaffirming the Jewishness of Jesus and Christianity’s historical connection to the Jewish people.

That progress is undermined when contemporary narratives replace Jesus the Jew with a new symbolic figure: the Palestinian sufferer who cheered Jews being burned alive.

The UN Secretary-General’s Favorite Headline

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The United Nations Secretary-General issued a statement yesterday condemning Israeli strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut.

That was expected.

What was remarkable was his explanation.

Guterres wrote that the strikes occurred “despite the ceasefire” and at a moment when the United States and Iran were expected to reach an agreement that would “pave the way to a peaceful resolution of this conflict.” He then added that “this conflict is having a devastating impact on the world’s economy.”

The statement raises an obvious question: what do his comments have to do with Israel and Hezbollah?

The negotiations were between the United States and Iran. Israel was not a participant. Israel did not negotiate the terms. Israel did not sign the agreement. American officials themselves stated that Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon was not a condition of the deal.

Yet Guterres presented Israel’s actions as though they were undermining an agreement to which Israel was never a party.

The logic becomes even stranger when he turns to the economy.

The conflict affecting global markets is not the war between Israel and Hezbollah. The economic concern revolves around the American war with Iran which threatens energy supplies and disrupts shipping routes. Markets do not react because Hezbollah fires rockets into northern Israel or because Israel strikes Hezbollah positions in Beirut.

But in the Secretary-General’s telling, Israel is the root cause.

A Hezbollah-Israel clash suddenly becomes a threat to the world economy. A U.S.-Iran negotiation suddenly becomes Israel’s responsibility. An agreement Israel never joined suddenly becomes grounds to condemn Israel.

This is absurd.

But it is a continuation of the farce that is the United Nations.

The UN Secretary General is so obsessed with vilifying Israel and getting the world to join in, that he manufactures reasons that are devoid of any logic.

Solomon’s Pools and the Battle to Replace the Builders

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The Palestinian Authority has announced plans to transform Solomon’s Pools, between Bethlehem and Efrat, into a major Palestinian tourist, cultural, and religious destination. The project includes a mosque, tourism infrastructure, educational programs, international advocacy campaigns, and efforts to preserve what officials describe as the site’s historical and demographic character.

The irony is hard to miss.

Solomon’s Pools are among the most important surviving engineering works of ancient Judea. Built during the Second Temple period, the reservoirs and aqueducts supplied water to Jerusalem and the Jewish Temple. Their existence is evidence of the Jewish civilization that built and governed Jerusalem over two thousand years ago, that grew the city towards the end of the Second Temple period to approximately 50,0000 people.

Mazar, A.A. 2002. Survey of the aqueducts to Israel. In The Aqueducts of Israel, ed. Amit D., Patrich J., and Hirschfeld Y., 212–244.

Without Jewish Jerusalem, there would be no Solomon’s Pools.

Yet Palestinian officials speak of preserving the site’s historical character while proposing changes that have no connection to the history that made the site significant.

  • If the goal is to preserve the site’s historical character, why alter it?
  • If the goal is to protect its demographic character, what demographic character existed when the reservoirs were built?

The people who built Solomon’s Pools were Jews. The reservoirs were built to serve a Jewish capital. The aqueducts carried water to the Jewish Temple. The site’s significance is inseparable from ancient Jewish Jerusalem.

Solomon’s Pools c. 1890

So why place a mosque at a reservoir built by Jews to serve Jewish Jerusalem while claiming to preserve its historical character?

The answer appears in the language of the project itself. Officials speak of strengthening Palestinian presence, reinforcing Palestinian identity, and mobilizing international support for Palestinian claims.

This is not preservation. This is a battle of historical replacement.

A generation from now, visitors may encounter a mosque, Palestinian tourism facilities, and Palestinian historical narratives. What may become increasingly distant is the reason the site exists at all: it was built by Jews to serve Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish people.

“We know that the prime Zionist goal is emptying this land of its Christians and Muslims. They [the Jews] don’t want anyone here other than themselves. The Christians before the Muslims, because the Christians were here on this land before the Muslims… the Christian is the brother of the Muslim. They celebrate together, suffer together, live together, work together, and fight together against their enemy, because we have been the owners of this land since this land’s existence… We will remain in this land forever, while the attackers [the Jews] have no place in Jerusalem and no place here.” – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas March 2023

That is how historical replacement works. The monument is not destroyed. The identity of its builders is replaced.

Solomon’s Pools stand as evidence of Jewish statehood, Jewish engineering, and Jewish life in the land of Israel long before the rise of Christianity, Islam, or modern Palestinian nationalism.

Solomon’s Pools is located off Road 60, between Efrat and Bethlehem

Palestinians’ nationalism is being built on erasing Jewish history and heritage. Today, it is clearly evident at Solomon’s Pools.

Who First Gave Palestinian Arabs Self-Government?

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One of the most common claims in the Arab-Israeli conflict is that Jews took the land from Palestinian Arabs and denied them self-government.

History tells a different story.

  • For four hundred years, the Holy Land was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. There was no Palestinian Arab state.
  • After World War I, Britain took control under the Mandate for Palestine. Again, there was no Palestinian Arab state.
  • In 1947, the United Nations proposed creating both a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jewish leadership accepted the plan. Arab leaders rejected it and chose war.
  • When the fighting ended, Jordan occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem while Egypt controlled Gaza. For the next nineteen years, neither country established a Palestinian state. Neither granted sovereignty to the local Arab population. Neither created independent Palestinian governing institutions.

The first meaningful Palestinian self-government did not emerge under Ottoman rule, British rule, Jordanian rule, or Egyptian rule.

It emerged through agreements with Israel.

The Oslo Accords created the Palestinian Authority and transferred governing responsibilities in Palestinian cities to Palestinian leaders. For the first time in modern history, Palestinian Arabs exercised substantial self-rule in the territory where they lived.

Signing of Oslo II Accords

Then in 2005, Israel withdrew every soldier and civilian from Gaza, leaving the territory entirely under Palestinian administration.

Israel is often accused by Israel haters of having stolen a Palestinian state. Yet no Palestinian state existed under Ottoman rule, British rule, Jordanian rule, or Egyptian rule. The first meaningful Palestinian self-government emerged only through agreements negotiated with Israel.

From a Hamas Double Standard to the Hamas Dangerous Standard

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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres recently declared that he supports “a monopoly on weapons by the Lebanese Government.”

He is right.

No sovereign state can exist when an organization maintains its own army outside central government control. Hezbollah may hold seats in parliament and participate in Lebanese politics, but that does not give it the right to possess an independent military force and wage war outside the direction of the government.

The obvious question is why the Secretary-General does not apply the same principle to Gaza.

If Lebanon requires a state monopoly on force, then so does any future Palestinian state. Hamas must be disarmed. There is no path to peace while an independent army remains outside governmental authority.

Yet the United Nations does not say so. Instead, it issues endless calls for ceasefires, negotiations, and diplomacy while avoiding the central reality that an armed movement dedicated to Israel’s destruction cannot simultaneously be the foundation for coexistence.

That double standard helps sustain the current conflict. Israelis and Gazans continue to suffer while international institutions refuse to confront the most basic requirement for ending the war.

But today’s war is not the real danger.

The real danger is what comes next.

Every major Palestinian poll points in the same direction. Palestinians are increasingly likely to hand control of the Palestinian Authority itself to Hamas or leaders who share Hamas’s objectives.

The result will not be a Palestinian Authority that replaces Hamas but Hamas becoming the Palestinian Authority.

At that point, Hamas will no longer be an armed movement operating from Gaza. It will be the internationally recognized government of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank. Its army will no longer be described as a militia but the armed forces of Palestine, internationally recognized, and still committed to the destruction of the Jewish state.

If so, the suffering of Israelis and Gazans today will pale in comparison to the conflict that follows.

Difficult situations are sometimes referred to as being between a rock and a hard place. The popular Palestinian terrorist group places the Middle East between a double standard and a destructive standard.

Related:

When Founding Fathers Are Psychopaths And Cowards (January 2024)

The Most Antisemitic Line in Erdoğan’s Speech Was the One English Readers Never Saw

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When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attacked Israel this week, most English-language reports focused on his accusations of genocide, his attacks on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his warnings about regional instability.

But Arabic and Turkish media focused on a different line.

According to Turkey’s own state-run Anadolu Agency, Erdoğan declared:

“We know very well what the ultimate objective of the delusions of the Promised Land is, and God willing, we will never allow it.”

It is a line he has used for years. It’s a headline phrase across the Arab world. Al Jazeera highlighted it. Egypt’s Al-Ahram highlighted it. Al-Quds Al-Arabi highlighted it. He uses it as a charge that Israel is coming for Turkey itself.

Yet the English-language media ignored it.

That omission matters because Erdoğan was no longer criticizing Israeli policy. He was ridiculing a foundational Jewish belief.

The Promised Land is not a policy of Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not a platform of the Israeli government. It is a central element of Jewish faith, history, and identity dating back more than three thousand years. It appears throughout the Hebrew Bible and has been part of Jewish religious life through centuries of exile.

Calling that belief a “delusion” is no different than mocking Christian belief in the Resurrection or Muslim belief in the divine revelation of the Quran.

There is a word for dismissing the core religious beliefs of Jews as uniquely illegitimate: antisemitism.

Yet English-language audiences were shielded from that reality. Readers were told Erdoğan was criticizing Israel. They were not told he was deriding one of Judaism’s foundational beliefs. That this is a Muslim war against the Jews.

For years, Western audiences have been told that criticism of Israel must be distinguished from hostility toward Jews. But when a foreign leader publicly mocks a core tenet of Judaism and the press translates it into a story solely about Israeli policy, the distinction is being used in reverse. Anti-Jewish rhetoric is sanitized and repackaged as ordinary criticism of Israel.

Arabic readers saw what Erdoğan actually chose to emphasize. English readers did not, guided on a narrow path to direct the public.

And that may be the most revealing story of all.