Category Archives: Palestinians

The Hydra Can Die

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In Greek mythology, the Hydra was almost impossible to kill.

It had many heads. Cut one off and more grew in its place. Heracles eventually understood that killing the monster required more than endlessly chopping at whichever head was attacking him. Each severed neck had to be cauterized so it could not regenerate.

Heracles battling the Lernean Hydra

For nearly three years, Israel has been told that Hamas is a Hydra. Kill its leaders. Destroy its tunnels. Eliminate its fighters. It won’t matter. Hamas—or something worse—will simply grow back.

Queen Rania of Jordan articulated the underlying argument shortly after the October 7 massacre, that Israel’s actions against Hamas:

“create a new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent” – Queen Rania of Jordan

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Peter Mansoor was more explicit, predicting that “Hamas 2.0 will rise” from the destruction.

They identified a real danger. But regeneration is not immortality.

Hamas is more than leaders, tunnels, rockets and gunmen. It is a political and military organization built around an ideology. Destroy the organization while preserving everything capable of regenerating it and another head may indeed grow.

The question is whether everything capable of regenerating it must also be allowed to survive.

Nearly three years of Palestinian polling shows the problem.

As detailed recently in Palestinian Arabs Turn Inward, But Not Away From Hamas, Palestinian Arabs have dramatically lowered their expectations after three years of war. Support for Hamas and armed struggle has fallen sharply from the extraordinary levels recorded after October 7. But losing faith in Hamas’s ability to win is not the same thing as rejecting Hamas.

In the August 2026 PCPSR poll, 72% opposed Hamas disarming before a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Asked what Hamas would become if it gave up its weapons, 53% envisioned it remaining both armed and political and another 36% solely political. In all, 89% envisioned Hamas surviving in some form.

That is the Hydra problem.

And Hamas is only one head.

Hezbollah sits to Israel’s north. The Houthis attack from Yemen. Palestinian Islamic Jihad fights alongside Hamas. Above them, the Islamic Republic of Iran spent decades financing, arming and connecting organizations surrounding Israel.

October 7 exposed not simply a Hamas problem, but an ecosystem.

That is why eliminating Hamas militarily cannot be the entire definition of victory. As FirstOneThrough argued in From a Hamas Double Standard to the Hamas Dangerous Standard, an organization cannot maintain an independent army committed to destroying another state while simultaneously being normalized as an ordinary participant in democratic politics.

And military defeat addresses only part of what allows another head to grow.

FirstOneThrough addressed another part in The Only Way The Conflict Can End: the Palestinian claim to a so-called “right of return” into Israel itself.

A Palestinian state alongside Israel cannot simultaneously mean millions of Palestinians receive a state of their own while millions more retain a claim to move into Israel. That is 1.5 states for Arabs and 0.5 of a state for Jews.

American policy once said this plainly.

The 2004 Democratic Party platform called for Palestinian refugees to settle in a Palestinian state “rather than in Israel.” The 2008 platform repeated the position before the language was omitted in 2012.

President George W. Bush made the same commitment directly to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2004 as Sharon prepared the Gaza disengagement. A realistic solution, Bush wrote, would involve establishing a Palestinian state and “the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

The principle was straightforward: Palestinian statehood was supposed to resolve Palestinian statelessness, not provide another mechanism for eliminating the Jewish State.

Defeating the Hydra therefore requires ending not only Hamas’s ability to wage war, but the expectation that Israel is temporary.

History offers another model.

Nazi Germany did not fight alone, and victory did not consist of killing Hitler while leaving the Axis intact. Germany and its allies were defeated or surrendered.

Then came political defeat. The Nazi military and political apparatus was dismantled. The Nazi Party was outlawed. Its leaders were prosecuted. Germany was not invited to preserve a rebranded Nazi Party so its supporters could recover through elections what they had lost through war.

The Axis was defeated as a system.

The same principle should define the defeat of Hamas.

Hamas cannot be permitted to lose its army, change clothes and emerge as an internationally accepted political party. Global institutions and governments should treat Hamas as one organization, dismantle its financing and international infrastructure, and isolate organizations that materially finance or facilitate its terrorism.

Prohibition is only half the answer.

Muslim governments, religious leaders and international institutions should strengthen Muslim movements committed to peaceful coexistence, religious equality and acceptance of Jewish sovereignty. Muslim-majority countries that have made peace with Israel already demonstrate that Islam and permanent war against Jewish sovereignty are not synonymous. Isolate the jihadis in the Jihadi-Israel Conflict and empower the moderate Arab and Muslim countries.

Make the institutions of coexistence stronger while making the institutions of violent supremacy militarily, financially and politically untenable.

The Hydra has many heads.

Hamas is a head. Hezbollah is a head. The Houthis are a head. The Islamic Republic supplies the Hydra with blood. The ideology gives it reason to regenerate.

The Hamas 2.0 warning should therefore be taken seriously—but not accepted as prophecy.

The Hydra is difficult to kill. It is not immortal.

Correcting An UNRWA School

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A school in Jerusalem’s Shuafat refugee camp is reopening. The building is the same but UNRWA is no longer running it.

The school is now affiliated with Israel’s Ministry of Education and the Jerusalem Municipality. Jerusalem Deputy Mayor Aryeh King posted video of UNRWA signs being removed as the school prepared to open.

Sign of UNRWA run school in Shu’afat, Jerusalem

The change ends an educational arrangement dating back more than sixty years.

UNRWA established the Shuafat refugee camp in 1965, when Jordan controlled “East Jerusalem.” UNRWA’s educational policy, dating to 1952, has been to use the curriculum of the “host countries,” allowing refugee children to take local examinations and continue into local schools and universities.

So UNRWA worked with Jordan at that time.

There was nothing internationally settled about Jordan’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. Jordan seized eastern Jerusalem in 1948 and annexed the West Bank – including East Jerusalem in 1950. Even Britain, one of only two countries (along with Pakistan) which recognized Jordan’s illegal annexation of the West Bank, specifically withheld recognition of Jordanian sovereignty over Jerusalem. It only recognized Jordan’s de facto authority there.

Yet Jordan administered East Jerusalem, so UNRWA worked with Jordan there.

Then came 1967.

Israel captured East Jerusalem and became the government actually administering Shuafat, much like Jordan had previously. But UNRWA did not treat Israel the same way as the de facto administrating authority.

The Jordanian curriculum continued for years. After the Palestinian Authority was established, UNRWA increasingly coordinated its West Bank education program with it and ultimately used the Palestinian Authority curriculum.

That is difficult to square with the simple explanation that UNRWA follows the curriculum of its host country. The Palestinian Authority did not govern Jerusalem; Israel did. Yet UNRWA chose the PA curriculum for schools there.

The contrast is particularly striking today. Israel has nine foreign embassies located in Jerusalem, with Nauru announced as the tenth. Jordan never enjoyed anything approaching that level of international recognition of its rule over Jerusalem. Yet UNRWA had been willing to work with the authority actually administering the city when that authority was Jordan.

UNRWA offices in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)

But the problem at Shuafat went beyond which government UNRWA chose to recognize educationally. It was what children at this particular school were saying they learned.

UNRWA says its curriculum framework must reflect UN principles of neutrality, human rights, tolerance, equality and non-discrimination.

Footage recorded at an UNRWA school in Shuafat in 2022 and published by Ynet in 2024 showed something very different.

Students said that stabbing and running over Jews brought Palestinians honor. One said he was prepared to carry out a suicide attack. Another said they were taught that Jews were terrorists. Another said they were taught that Jews were deceitful and evil and that he would stab and run them over.

The videos offer a horrifying vision of what is taught at UN schools.

Israel eventually acted.

In May 2025, Israeli authorities closed six UNRWA schools in eastern Jerusalem, including three in Shuafat. UNRWA protested that hundreds of Palestinian children were being deprived of education. Israel said alternative schooling would be provided through the Jerusalem education system.

Now that alternative is becoming tangible.

A former UNRWA school in Shuafat is reopening under the Israeli Ministry of Education and Jerusalem Municipality.

The choice was never between UNRWA and no education. What can change is the system educating them and the content of that education.

The UNRWA sign coming down in the Shuafat school is symbolic. What the children learn when they walk back through those doors will determine whether the real change happened inside.

Palestinian Arabs Turn Inward, But Not Away From Hamas

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Three years ago, Palestinian Arabs thought October 7 might change their future by changing Israel. Polls show how much that ambition has changed.

In December 2023, 72% of Palestinian Arabs said Hamas was correct to launch the October 7 attack. 70% believed Hamas would emerge victorious. 63% preferred armed struggle as the best way to achieve Palestinian goals.

Nearly three years of war produced something very different.

According to PCPSR’s August 2026 poll, only 20% now believe Hamas won the Gaza war. Hamas political support has fallen to 24%. Half of Palestinian Arabs say “armed resistance” (aka massacring Jewish civilians) failed to protect them or end the “Israeli occupation” and instead brought destruction. Among Gazans, 65% say so.

Support for armed struggle has fallen from 63% to 27%. 44% now choose negotiations as the most effective strategy.

Their priorities have shifted with it.

Asked in the August 2026 poll what the next Palestinian legislature should address, Palestinian Arabs answered:

  • 19% — Unifying the West Bank and Gaza
  • 18% — Stopping the killing in Gaza
  • 15% — Improving the economy
  • 11% — Rebuilding Gaza
  • 10% — Confronting “settler terrorism”
  • 9% — Combating corruption

Settler violence ranks fifth.

That is a very different Palestinian Arab story from the one dominating international headlines. Palestinian Arabs put reunification, ending the Gaza fighting, economic recovery and rebuilding Gaza ahead of attacks from West Bank Jews.

While the ambitions of October 2023 were directed outward, towards ending the Jewish State, the priorities of August 2026 are directed inward, to unification, rebuilding and recovering.

And Hamas remains part of that project.

The Palestinian Authority wants candidates in the coming elections to accept the commitments of the Palestine Liberation Organization, including its agreements with Israel. 66% of Palestinian Arabs oppose that requirement. Only 27% support it.

Because Palestinian Arabs envision Hamas remaining part of their future.

Asked what Hamas would become if it gave up its weapons, 53% said it would remain both an armed resistance and political movement. Another 36% said it would become solely a political movement. That means 89% see Hamas continuing as a political movement in some form.

There is a historical lesson in what happens after a genocidal society launches a disastrous war and loses.

Postwar Germany did not rebuild by simply disarming the Nazi Party and inviting it to contest elections. The Nazi Party was abolished and banned. Its political structures were dismantled. Germany’s reconstruction required a break with the movement that had led it into catastrophe.

Palestinian Arabs are not making that equivalent break. While they increasingly recognize that Hamas’s war failed, they want Hamas to be part of the Palestinian future.

As the western media and United Nations narrows a focus on violence committed by Israeli Jews against Palestinian Arabs, those same Arabs are no longer focused on those Jews. Instead, the Arabs prioritize rebuilding after the disaster while maintaining the eliminationist ideology in their society for a future war.

The Religious Formula for Ethnic Cleansing Jews

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WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official media, has spent years describing Jews who enter the Temple Mount as “storming Al-Aqsa.” I have written about that linguistic sleight of hand before.

Now WAFA is promoting something more dangerous: that Jews have no right to enter Judaism’s holiest site without Muslim permission, and that Jewish worship there is an assault on Islamic sanctity.

In April 2026, WAFA reported a Palestinian statement declaring the site one that “belongs exclusively to Muslims, to which no one else has any right of entry without their consent.”

On August 13, WAFA carried an Arab League statement condemning Jews entering the site and performing religious rituals as a “blatant violation of the sanctity of the mosque.”

WAFA promoted several lies:

  • Muslims do not control entry. Israel controls security and access to the Temple Mount. The Jordanian-backed Waqf administers Muslim religious affairs there. Presenting Muslim consent as a prerequisite for Jewish entry is totally false.
  • The compound does not “belong exclusively to Muslims.” That is a religious and political claim masquerading as settled fact about the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism.
  • Jewish presence does not inherently violate Islamic sanctity. Islam does not have a general rule that a Jew entering Muslim sacred space desecrates it. Restrictions on Jewish prayer under the status quo are one issue; declaring Jewish worship itself an assault on Islam is another.

Then comes another sleight of hand.

Having defined Jewish presence as an offense against Islam, these organizations pivot to demanding action by the international community on behalf of Palestinians.

But those categories – Muslims and Palestinian Arabs – are not interchangeable.

Some 1.85 million Muslims live in Israel, nearly one-fifth of the country’s population. And the Muslim religious administration of the Temple Mount is handled by the Jordanian-backed Waqf. Palestinian Arabs do not exercise control over entry to the site, nor do they represent all Muslims in the region.

So why transform an asserted Muslim religious grievance into a Palestinian national claim demanding international intervention?

Because the lies are the tell.

The argument is no longer about protecting Muslim worship. It takes an assertion of Muslim religious exclusivity, converts it into a Palestinian territorial right, and then asks the world to enforce that right against Israel and Jews.

The implications become darker when the same logic is applied beyond the Temple Mount. Hamas’s 1988 charter declared all of Palestine an Islamic waqf. Combine that doctrine with the claim being promoted around Al-Aqsa—that Jewish physical presence and worship offend Islamic sanctity—and expelling Jews can be transformed into protecting Muslim holy land.

“the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.” – Hamas Foundational Charter, Article 11

That is why the Arab League and WAFA’s language matters. By repeatedly publishing these false assertions, it helps turn a Palestinian territorial claim into a purported Islamic prohibition against Jewish presence.

And it begins at the most perverse possible location: Judaism’s holiest site.

The progression is stark:

  • Declare the Jewish holy site exclusively Muslim.
  • Deny Jews the right to enter without Muslim permission.
  • Call Jewish presence and worship a desecration of Islam.
  • Turn that religious claim into a Palestinian territorial right.
  • Ask the world to enforce it.

The Arab League and Palestinian Authority are building a religious and political case for removing Jews from their own holy land.

Jihadi Protection Bills

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Congress did not arrive at legislation protecting Hamas overnight. It arrived there one bill at a time.

For decades, debates over Israel revolved around diplomacy. Republicans and Democrats argued over settlements, negotiations, Jerusalem, and the contours of a future Palestinian state. Even lawmakers sharply critical of Israel generally framed their proposals around advancing a negotiated two-state solution. The disagreement was over how peace should be achieved, not whether Israel had the right to defend itself against terrorist organizations.

In 2020, as the Trump Administration unveiled its peace plan and Israel considered extending sovereignty to portions of the West Bank, progressive lawmakers introduced legislation preventing American assistance from supporting annexation. Whether one believed annexation was prudent or unwise, the objective remained fundamentally political. These bills sought to influence the outcome of negotiations and preserve the possibility of a future Palestinian state. The debate was about borders, diplomacy, and competing visions for peace.

That bill did not stand in isolation.

In 2019, Representative Betty McCollum (D-MN) also introduced legislation prohibiting U.S. assistance from supporting the military detention of Palestinian minors. On its face, the proposal carried moral appeal. No civilized society wants children caught in war, and few slogans resonate more powerfully than protecting minors.

Yet the legislation missed the point. Israel’s military justice system does not prosecute minors because they are children. It prosecutes minors accused of security offenses, including violent rioting, firebomb attacks, shootings, stabbings, and participation in terrorist organizations. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have all recruited teenagers into violent activity for decades.

Arab minors caught on camera right before they stab Israelis

The debate was no longer centered on where Israel’s borders should ultimately lie. It was becoming a debate over whether Congress should restrict Israel’s ability to prosecute those participating in terrorism.

That evolution became unmistakable after October 7.

The largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust might reasonably have been expected to produce overwhelming congressional support for dismantling Hamas. Instead, it accelerated an entirely different legislative movement.

Arabs in Gaza take the body of Israeli woman they had just killed into Gaza where the crowds pelted her body and spat on her

One proposal after another sought to block the military tools Israel argued were necessary to fight the war. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) repeatedly forced votes to halt major arms sales. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Representative Delia Ramirez (D-IL), and others introduced the Block the Bombs Act. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) sought to impose additional legal restrictions before military assistance could proceed.

US Senator Chris Van Hollen attends a Senate subcommittee on the Justice Departments proposed 2027 budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 19, 2026.

Supporters presented these bills as humanitarian safeguards designed to protect civilians and uphold international law. Their practical effect, however, would have been to deny or delay weapons while Israel was engaged in combat against a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that had murdered, raped, tortured, kidnapped, and burned civilians alive.

Congress was no longer principally debating the contours of a future peace agreement. It was debating how much of Israel’s wartime capability should be withheld while the war itself was still being fought.

And it continued.

In July 2026, Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced an amendment eliminating the entire $3.3 billion annual Foreign Military Financing package for Israel. Previous proposals had sought to condition aid or block particular weapons systems. Massie’s proposal went much further. It would have ended America’s regular military assistance altogether.

The amendment failed by a wide margin. But 104 members of Congress voted for it, including 103 Democrats alongside the bill’s Republican author.

That vote tells a larger story than the amendment itself.

Over the course of a few years, the legislative progression moved from opposing territorial annexation, to restricting Israeli counterterrorism practices, to limiting the weapons available to fight Hamas, and finally to questioning whether the United States should continue military assistance at all. Each bill built upon the political space created by the one before it. What once occupied the outer edge of congressional debate gradually became part of mainstream legislative discussion.

The coalition itself is unusual. Rashida Tlaib approaches the issue through Palestinian nationalism. Bernie Sanders emphasizes humanitarian law and civilian casualties. Chris Van Hollen argues for greater legal oversight of military assistance. Thomas Massie opposes foreign aid as a matter of constitutional principle. They arrive from very different ideological traditions, yet increasingly find themselves casting the same vote.

For generations, support for Israel was one of Washington’s few enduring bipartisan constants. That consensus has not disappeared; overwhelming majorities in Congress still support the alliance. But the terms of the debate have unmistakably changed.

Six years ago, Congress debated how American policy might influence a two-state solution. Today, members openly introduce legislation that would limit—or eliminate altogether—the military support Israel says it needs to defeat jihadist organizations committed not to coexistence, but to its destruction.

That is the real story of the Jihadi Protection Bills. Not that any single measure became law. But that, one bill at a time, the center of the American political conversation migrated from shaping the peace process to constraining Israel’s ability to wage war against jihadist movements to its basic ability to protect itself in a deeply hostile region.

Related

Nobody Protests the Military Bases in Germany (May 2026)

Stealing a People’s Past

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For generations, antisemitism sought to remove Jews from the future. Today, it increasingly seeks to remove them from the past.

That is the deeper significance of the growing campaign to recast Jewish history as Palestinian history. It is not simply a dispute over archaeology or competing national narratives. It is an effort to strip the Jewish people of their origins, their memory, and ultimately their legitimacy and basic human rights.

The examples are becoming impossible to ignore.

The Holocaust—the systematic murder of six million Jews—is routinely appropriated as a metaphor for Palestinian suffering. Jewish victims become a rhetorical device rather than a people with a unique history. The descendants of Holocaust survivors are cast as the new Nazis, while the actual genocide of European Jewry is emptied of its historical meaning.

Some Europeans have taken the Jewish girl, Anne Frank, and dressed her in an Arab kefiyeh as if she were a Palestinian Arab or would have supported the murder of Jews. During World War II, Anne hid in an attic while Nazis hunted her and other Jews for years, before the Nazis took her and murdered her in a concentration camp.

Now even Jesus is being rewritten.

Rather than acknowledging the historical reality that Jesus was a Jew who lived, taught, and died among the Jewish people in Judea, activists increasingly describe him as “Palestinian.” The purpose is to transplant one of history’s most influential Jews from the Jewish story into a Palestinian national narrative that not only didn’t exist in his lifetime, but Arabs didn’t invade the Jewish holy land until the seventh and eighth century CE, hundreds of years after Jesus lived.

The same pattern extends across nearly every cornerstone of Jewish civilization.

The First and Second Temples become myths or located in far-way lands. The Western Wall is detached from Jewish history. Jerusalem is reframed as an exclusively Muslim city. The Jewish patriarchs and matriarchs are recast. Ancient Israel is dismissed as colonial fiction. Hebrew becomes a borrowed language rather than the indigenous language of the Jewish people. Even Jewish holy sites are repeatedly described as exclusively Islamic or Christian.

United Nations 1949 map of of holy sites in Jerusalem lists the Jewish Temple Mount as only holy to Muslims

Each claim may appear isolated. Together they reveal a coherent project.

The goal is not simply to elevate a Palestinian Arab identity or an Islamic one. Every people is entitled to tell its own story. But no national movement has the right to build its identity by erasing another people’s history, heritage and human rights.

If a Palestinian Arab national identity is legitimate, it should be able to stand on its own. It shouldn’t require denying that Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel. It does not require pretending the Temples never stood in Jerusalem. It does not require transforming Jesus into an Arab. It wouldn’t require appropriating appropriating words and people from their national tragedies.

Anti-Israel author Susan Abulhawa repeatedly uses terms like “Holocaust” to turn Jews into Nazis, in an attempt at misdirection from the popular Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group Hamas, which are actual modern-day Nazis

Yet this pattern of historical theft has increasingly been accompanied by something darker: the revival of some of Europe’s oldest antisemitic ideas.

The Hamas Charter drew explicitly from antisemitic conspiracy theories and echoed themes long propagated by Nazi ideology. Since October 7, the world has again witnessed chants, slogans, and propaganda that do not merely oppose Israeli government policies but deny the legitimacy of Jewish peoplehood itself. Public figures, writers, and activists have too often trafficked in narratives that portray Jews not as an indigenous people with a continuous history, but as impostors who fabricated their past.

If Jews can be separated from Jerusalem, from the Temple, from Abraham and Sarah, from David, from Hebrew, from the Holocaust, and even from Jesus, then they become a people without roots. A nation without ancestors is easier to portray as foreign. A foreign people is easier to cast as colonizers. And colonizers, in the moral framework of today’s activists, can be removed. Should be removed.

Historical negation is not an academic exercise. It prepares the ground for political exclusion, eviction, and violence.

The attempt to steal Jewish history is not ultimately about the past. It is about deciding whether the Jewish people have any legitimate place in the future.

Related:

The Anti-Semitism In Anti-Zionism

A Student Conference, a Presidential Endorsement, and the Heroes We Choose

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When a head of state opens a student conference, the message extends far beyond procedural remarks. It is a statement about the values and aspirations a society hopes to pass to its next generation.

That is why Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s patronage of the 11th General Conference of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) deserves careful attention. In its official announcement, the conference proudly celebrated the organization’s history by declaring that it produced leaders including Yasser Arafat, George Habash, Nayef Hawatmeh, Faisal Husseini, Hanan Ashrawi, and Walid Khalidi.

Three of those names stand apart.

George Habash founded and led the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), responsible for airline hijackings, bombings, and attacks on civilians. Nayef Hawatmeh founded the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), whose history likewise includes attacks targeting civilians. Yasser Arafat led Fatah during decades in which its armed wing carried out numerous attacks against civilians before the Oslo era.

No one reading the official announcement could miss the point. This was not merely a history lesson. It was an effort to present these figures as part of the proud lineage of Palestinian student leadership.

That should concern anyone who hopes for a future of coexistence.

Every society chooses whom to celebrate before its young people. Some elevate scientists, entrepreneurs, doctors, artists, and peacemakers. Others elevate military heroes. But when organizations whose leaders orchestrated attacks on civilians are held up as exemplars at a student conference, the lesson is unmistakable: these are people worthy of admiration and emulation.

PA President Mamoud Abbas continued that the program is “a school for developing future leaders, and a bridge connecting generations of Palestinian students in the homeland and the diaspora,” and the hope that Palestinian Arabs who “invest in the education and awareness of their youth cannot be defeated by occupation or have their cause extinguished.”

Defenders may argue that these figures are important because they shaped the Palestinian national movement. History should indeed be taught honestly. But there is an important distinction between teaching history and celebrating it. Germany teaches students about Adolf Hitler without holding him up as a model. The United States studies the Ku Klux Klan without celebrating its founders. Context matters. So does moral judgment.

A student organization launching a new generation of leaders has every opportunity to highlight Palestinians who built universities, hospitals, businesses, charities, diplomatic institutions, or scientific achievements. Instead, its official narrative deliberately included men whose names are inseparable from campaigns of terrorism.

If Palestinian leaders genuinely seek to prepare young people for peace, they should be encouraging students to surpass the generation that embraced violence—not to walk in its footsteps.

Peace requires more than negotiations. It requires choosing different heroes.

Changing the Map, Changing the Politics

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The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as frozen. It isn’t.

Both Israelis and Palestinians appear to believe that now is NOT the moment for a final peace agreement. Instead of negotiating, each side is using this period to improve its position for whatever comes next.

They have adopted two very different strategies.

Israel’s strategy is physical.

The settlement movement is racing to create new facts on the ground – approving settlements, establishing outposts, extending infrastructure, and expanding the Israeli presence in disputed territory of Judea and Samaria. The calculation is straightforward: when negotiations eventually resume, the map itself will have changed.

The pace has been striking.

ACTION20252026 (through April)What it Measures
Official settlements approved5434 additional approvals (bringing the current government’s total to 102 since January 2023)Government approval of new settlements or legalization of existing communities.
New unauthorized outposts established86Total outposts reached 363, with 212 created under the current governmentNew communities established before formal authorization.
Agricultural (herding) outposts60Continued expansionAgricultural communities that often extend practical control over large surrounding areas through grazing, roads, fencing, and infrastructure.
Outposts established in Judea and Samaria since 1991, according to Peace Now

Every month that passes without negotiations leaves more roads, homes, infrastructure, and communities for future negotiators to contend with.

New communities in Judea and Samaria approved by Israel according to Peace Now

The Palestinian strategy is political.

Rather than altering the geography, Palestinian leaders have concentrated on shifting international opinion. They have sought additional recognition from foreign governments, expanded support within international organizations, pursued legal and diplomatic campaigns against Israel, and strengthened ties with constituencies – particularly within the U.S. Democratic Party – that may wield greater influence under a future American administration. Their calculation is equally straightforward: when negotiations eventually resume, the political environment will have changed.

That effort has also produced measurable gains.

Diplomatic MilestoneSince October 7, 2023Why It Matters
New recognitions (2024)Norway, Ireland, Spain, Slovenia, Armenia, Bahamas, Barbados, Jamaica, Trinidad & TobagoExpanded formal recognition beyond the Global South.
Major Western powers (2025)France, United Kingdom, Canada, AustraliaFirst major Western/G7 countries to recognize Palestine, signaling a shift among traditional allies of Israel.
International legal initiativesExpandedIncreased reliance on the UN, the International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court to advance Palestinian objectives.
Political supportIncreasedGrowing support in parts of Europe and among segments of the U.S. Democratic Party.

Measured by their own objectives, both sides can point to progress. Israel has expanded its physical footprint while the Palestinians have expanded their diplomatic footprint. One strategy seeks to change the map while the other seeks to change the politics surrounding the map.

What is striking is what neither side is emphasizing.

Neither is devoting comparable energy to the difficult work of strengthening governance at home: confronting corruption, reforming institutions, addressing political dysfunction, or building the domestic political consensus that any lasting agreement would ultimately require.

Instead, each is attempting to improve its negotiating position by changing the external environment. It is a race between geography and diplomacy.

The next round of negotiations will not begin where the last one ended. It will begin with a new map and a new political landscape.

Coming Soon: Certified Jihadist-Free™

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A satire.

Shopping used to be simple. You bought food because it tasted good.

Today, every purchase arrives with a moral résumé.

  • The coffee is Fair Trade.
  • The chocolate is Rainforest Alliance Certified.
  • The eggs are Cage-Free.
  • The tuna is Dolphin Safe.

Soon the carton will tell you whether the chicken enjoyed equitable access to leadership opportunities.

With such established groundwork, the assertive red-green alliance / socialist-jihadi umbrella will undoubtedly develop a new standard for consumers to evaluate purchases:

Ethical Jihad Certification™

I imagine the following questionnaire for companies and organizations to complete, developed by the International Ethical Jihad Standards Council (IEJSC).

Supplier Ethics and Sustainability Review

If your organization employs child soldiers, is recruitment gender-balanced?

☐ Boys and girls equally represented
☐ Nonbinary recruitment targets adopted
☐ Diversity metrics forthcoming

If child brides are supplied, are they ethically sourced?

☐ Local
☐ Organic
☐ Family-owned supply chain

If weapons are stored among civilians, are they distributed equitably across community institutions?

☐ Hospitals
☐ Schools
☐ Mosques
☐ Balanced portfolio across all three

If hostages are held underground, are the tunnels built with recycled concrete?

☐ Yes
☐ Carbon offsets purchased
☐ Sustainability consultant retained

If civilians are used as human shields, has the organization achieved demographic representation?

☐ Women included
☐ Children included
☐ Elderly included
☐ Fully inclusive shielding policy

When invading another country, were low-emission vehicles prioritized?

☐ Bicycles
☐ Electric scooters
☐ Hang gliders
☐ Carbon-neutral pickup trucks

If rockets are launched from residential neighborhoods, has the launcher committed to Net Zero by 2040?

☐ Yes
☐ 2050
☐ Targets pending Qatari-donor approval

If propaganda calls for genocide, is the language gender-neutral?

☐ Yes
☐ Pronouns included
☐ Available in multiple languages

If a terrorist organization takes hostages, are accommodations culturally sensitive?

☐ Dietary needs considered
☐ Prayer space available
☐ Captivity experience survey administered

When returning hostages, was a positive community engagement experience provided?

☐ Parade route optimized
☐ Cheering crowds strategically positioned
☐ Children included for authentic community participation
☐ Environmentally-friendly branded backdrop prominently displayed

If civilians are murdered, was the operation at least locally sourced?

☐ Indigenous weapons
☐ Community-based perpetrators
☐ Minimal imported inputs

If rape is used as a mode of mass “resistance,” are the targets well represented?

☐ Young women
☐ Elderly women
☐ Trans-women
☐ Boys
☐ Sheep and goats

If burning a family alive in their home, what methods were used to assess environmental impact?

☐ Carbon emissions measured
☐ Certified sustainable ignition sources
☐ Recycled accelerants
☐ Ashes recycled in accordance with circular economy principles

If political opponents require corrective kneecapping, please confirm that your organization follows an equitable enforcement policy.

☐ Applied without regard to race, religion, gender, or political affiliation
☐ Accessibility accommodations provided during the disciplinary process
☐ Impact assessment completed
☐ Stakeholder feedback incorporated into future kneecappings

If political opponents are subjected to “involuntary rooftop relocation,” (tossed off of rooftops) please indicate which governance standards were followed.

☐ Community stakeholders notified
☐ Staff received annual safety training
☐ Proper signage installed
☐ Liability waivers completed

How does your organization incorporate the LGBTQ+ community?

☐ Rainbow headbands replace green ones during Pride month
☐ Local imams considering ordaining transwomen
☐ Gay men’s decapitated heads disposed of in another jurisdiction

Palestinian man, Ahmad Abu Marhia, beheaded because he was gay

Have you established regular communication with:

☐ International NGOs
☐ Foreign correspondents
☐ Western university researchers
☐ Social media advocacy networks

Has your organization retained celebrity spokespersons to improve international brand perception?

☐ Actor
☐ Musician
☐ Influencer
☐ Climate activist

Has your organization demonstrated continuous improvement in expanding the number of international agencies, committees, or special offices devoted exclusively to your cause?

☐ Year-over-year growth achieved
☐ Additional mandate secured
☐ Dedicated rapporteur established
☐ Additional entities under consideration

Before issuing historical claims, has your organization completed a Heritage Simplification Assessment?

☐ Archaeological evidence destroyed
☐ Conflicting evidence omitted
☐ Timeline reduced to a convenient starting date
☐ Approved historical narrative distributed
☐ Site renamed in Arabic with only Islamic grounding

Has your organization’s founding charter undergone an independent review for language that may be inconsistent with modern human rights standards?

☐ Terminology modernized without changing intent
☐ Currently undergoing reputation management with select NGOs
☐ Using reputational management software to block viewers from finding foundational charter
☐ We prefer not to revisit founding documents

Has your organization successfully persuaded international stakeholders that your adversaries have no legitimate historical connection, cultural heritage, or rights associated with the land?

☐ Global awareness campaign exceeded expectations
☐ Educational materials updated accordingly
☐ Approved terminology adopted
☐ Further stakeholder engagement required

Has your organization successfully repositioned itself from perpetrator to primary victim in international discourse?

☐ Independent observers persuaded
☐ Media narrative successfully reframed
☐ Stakeholder sympathy increased
☐ Further communications investment required

Successful applicants receive one of four ratings:

Bronze: Mass violence, in recyclable packaging.
Silver: Child soldiers recruited inclusively.
Gold: Hostage facilities powered by solar panels.
Platinum: Calls for genocide delivered with a complete ESG report.

For foods, there is an addition to the consumer label. For example:

Nutrition Facts

Calories: 140
Protein: 4g
Sodium: 120mg
Carbon footprint: Low
Gender equity: Certified
Child soldiers: Inclusive
Child brides: Ethically sourced
Weapons near civilians: Institutionally diversified
Support for genocidal jihadists: Values-aligned

May contain traces of sesame.

May also contain an entire moral civilization that has forgotten the difference between auditing evil and opposing it.

Fiction vs. Fact: Palestine 1948 and PLO 1964

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There is a popular belief that Palestine was a country stolen and occupied by invading Jews in 1948. This has no basis in fact.

When the British Mandate ended in May 1948, there was no sovereign Palestinian Arab government waiting to assume power. There was no functioning Arab parliament, cabinet, constitution, or national administration prepared to govern an independent state.

The Jewish community took a different path. Over decades it had built the institutions of self-government: representative political bodies, courts, schools, hospitals, financial institutions, and a defense force. When Britain withdrew, those institutions became the foundation of the State of Israel.

The local Arab leadership did not establish comparable institutions of national government. Not before 1948 nor after.

Instead, neighboring Arab armies invaded the newly declared Jewish state. Transjordan assumed control of the West Bank. Egypt administered Gaza. A short-lived All-Palestine Government was announced later that year, but it exercised little authority and never became an effective sovereign government.

For the next sixteen years, there was no effort to start a Palestinian State.

Only in 1964 did the Arab League create the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Even its name is revealing.

It was not called the State of Palestine. It was not called the Government of Palestine. It was called the Palestine “Liberation” Organization.

Governments are created to govern. Liberation movements are created to liberate territory from an existing sovereign.

First Chairman of the PLO, Ahmad al-Shukeiri, was born in Lebanon and served as both Syrian and Saudi Arabian delegate to the United Nations at different times. He had to resign in shame after failing to destroy Israel in 1967.

The PLO’s founding charter reinforces that distinction. Rather than outlining the institutions of a future Palestinian state, Article 24 declared:

“This Organization does not exercise any regional sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, on the Gaza Strip, or in the Himmah Area [where Israel, Jordan and Syria meet].”

The PLO’s founding charter expressly declined to claim sovereignty over the parts of historic Palestine then under Arab administration. Yet throughout the document, its central mission was the “liberation of Palestine” – a struggle directed at Israel, the Jewish State. At its core, local Arabs wanted Arab rule, wherever it may come from. They opposed the so-called “Zionist invasion” and Jewish sovereignty “in any part of Palestine.“

When the first lasting Palestinian national organization finally appeared in 1964, it was constituted not as a government-in-waiting or a reclamation government but as a liberation movement, and its own charter expressly disclaimed sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza while solely focusing its mission on Israel.

Within three years of its founding, the PLO and surrounding Arabs countries initiated their plan to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. They failed then as they failed in 1948.

The Palestinian “liberation” movement is a pan-Arab effort to remove the Jewish state first and foremost. Current efforts to portray it as a people seeking to reclaim their historic country is without any basis in fact.