To watch a political novice backed by a far-left extremist group rise to the brink of becoming mayor of the largest city in America is frightening enough. To realize that he will have the full backing of a Democratic governor and a compliant state legislature to enact his radical agenda is terrifying. Zohran Mamdani, a darling of the antisemitic Democratic Socialists of America, has weaponized a friendly smile and promises of “free” everything into a populist movement ready to capture real power.
The race is effectively over. The weakness and fragmentation of his opponents make his November 4 election almost certain. But that does not mean New Yorkers are powerless. Far from it.
1. Register Democratic — and block the radicals. While national elections generate headlines, your single vote barely registers on a national scale. Local elections, however, can be swung by a few hundred ballots. In a deep-blue state like New York, the real election is the Democratic primary. That’s where the socialists gain power — because moderates stay home or remain registered as independents. If you want to stop extremists from running your city, county and state, you must register as a Democrat and vote against the zealots in the primaries.
2. Vote Republican in the general election — everywhere. Even outside New York City, every voter can help slow the DSA’s march. New York State operates under a blue-wall trifecta: a Democratic governor and supermajorities in both the State Senate and Assembly. Republicans have no effective voice. Governor Kathy Hochul’s open endorsement of Mamdani means his far-left policies will move through Albany unchecked unless the state’s Republican vote share grows.
Far-left media Jacobin advances “to govern, the Left needs many Zohrans.”
So yes — in this strange political moment — the smart play for moderates and centrists is tactical: register Democratic to stop radicals in primaries, and vote Republican to blunt their power in office.
If New Yorkers don’t act now, the most radical city government in America won’t just run New York — it will set the agenda for the entire country.
When the heckler’s veto becomes public policy, liberty dies by degrees.
The world rallied in Paris when jihadi radicals murdered staff at Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Leaders raised banners for free speech and spoke of defending the liberties that make liberal democracies possible. The same chorus rose after other political murders like Charlie Kirk in 2025: condemnations, eulogies, brief outrage.
Yet the Global North has a quieter, more corrosive surrender under way — a surrender not to a foreign army but to the heckler’s veto. When threats of violence can shape who is allowed to speak, to march, to play, or to pray, freedom has already been bargained away.
UK’s MP Ayoub Khan celebrating the banning of Tel Aviv fans from a game because their presence might bring out protestors. Other fans were welcomed to attend in October 2025.
Too often now the mere presence of Jews is treated as a provocation that must be managed by erasure. In Britain, politicians warn that protests will make events “unsafe” and ask organizers to exclude Israeli athletes and fans, Jewish speakers, or symbols rather than arrest the thugs who threaten violence. In 1929, after brutal attacks in Hebron, British authorities removed all Jews from their homes to suppress further bloodshed — an act that punished the innocent to placate the violent. That precedent echoes when modern officials choose exclusion over enforcement.
Call it what it is: when a state lets intimidation determine who may appear in public, it substitutes coercion for law. When politicians cave to the loudest violent faction to avoid a headline, they have abandoned the first duty of government — to protect the rights of every citizen, not to negotiate them away.
Canadian police ask Jewish family to leave the street since their “presence is deemed a sufficient provocation for removal,” in November 2024.
This is not a critique of a religion; it is an indictment of extremism and of political cowardice. The problem is not Muslim faith but those within it who preach and practice violence — and the leaders who, for fear or for votes, let those violent actors set the rules.
A democracy that permits the heckler’s veto on principle is no longer democratic; it is ruled by fear. If we are to remain free, the test is simple: do we defend rights when it is inconvenient, or only when it is safe? If the answer is the latter, then we are well on the way to living under a very different law — one written by radical mobs and enforced by silence.
US President Obama advisor Aaron Keyak tells Jews to “take off your kippah and hide your magen david” to avoid being targeted in May 2021.
President Biden set this in motion in the U.S. in May 2021 when his own Jewish advisor, Aaron Keyak, told Jews to hide their Jewishness, presumably because they should not assume that the government would protect them showing their faith publicly. In September 2024, school officials at New York’s Baruch College said it explicitly, telling Jews that they could not “guarantee their security” if they held a celebration for Rosh Hashana.
We have set the stage for Democratic-Socialist Zohran Mamdani to become mayor of the city with the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world. Where police will not only suggest that Jews stay off the streets but may be directed by the mayor to arrest Jews because their very presence is deemed a provocation.
“Why do the nations rage, and the peoples plot in vain?”— Psalm 2:1
Saudi Arabia – the kingdom which Israel hoped would next join the Abraham Accords – sought to pressure Israel into ending its defensive war in Gaza by rallying nations of the Global North to recognize a State of Palestine. It found a partner in France, which successfully pulled the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia into the orbit of recognition. In September 2025 at the United Nations, the group jointly declared their acknowledgment of a Palestinian state—with caveats—but the symbolism was unmistakable.
Israel did not budge. It viewed the coordinated announcement as an alarming reward for the genocidal Hamas regime that had unleashed war on October 7 two years earlier.
Enter the United States. President Donald Trump had tasked developer and confidant Steve Witkoff to lead a back-channel negotiation with Hamas for the release of Israeli hostages and an end to hostilities. Jared Kushner joined the effort more forcefully in September, unveiling a “20-point plan” aimed at ending the two-year war and reshaping the region’s political future.
To counter the Saudi-French gambit, Trump built his own coalition. The U.S. secured the backing of several Arab and Muslim nations from the Global South—including Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt —for its peace framework. By October, the administration succeeded in gathering the leaders of 27 countries from across the North and South, including some that had just recognized Palestine, to fly to Egypt to sign what was billed as a ceasefire agreement.
A summit to support ending the more than two-year Israel-Hamas war in Gaza after a breakthrough ceasefire deal, Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt labeled “Peace 2025”
It was a mirage. Neither of the warring parties—Israel or Hamas—attended. The event was instead diplomatic theater, meant to transform a ceasefire proposal into a movement for regional peace. Trump designed the event to flip the script.
Where Saudi Arabia and France tried to impose the weight of the Global North on Israel, the United States sought to use the combined weight of both hemispheres on Hamas. The former demanded an immediate path to a two-state solution; the latter demanded the end of Hamas rule.
The Moral Gravity
The story of this moment is not only about geopolitics, but about moral gravity. The nations of the world have grown accustomed to weighing Israel’s every move while ignoring the crimes of its enemies. They call for “balance” in a war that began with mass murder, rape, and hostage-taking. They lecture the victim to compromise while the aggressor reloads. The UN Security Council could have easily passed resolutions to push for an end to the war if they had just condemned Hamas, but repeatedly refused to do so.
The weight of nations once meant the defense of justice and the pursuit of peace. Today, it is too often the ballast of perfidy—dragging down the innocent under the pretense of even-handedness.
Israel, standing increasingly alone, may yet prove that the true measure of a nation is not in the number of its allies, but in the steadiness of its conscience. It is fortunate to have President Trump in the White House as it shoulders this weight once again.
The tight bond between Israel and the United States has continued, despite Americans starting to sour on Israel since 2015.
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.
“What starts with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews.” We are watching that adage unfold in real time.
Seven hundred days ago, way too many people in western cities took to the streets and shredded the faces of Israeli hostages taped to lampposts. Those faces were voices, each one a witness, a story, a plea — and that is precisely why some felt they had to be destroyed. It wasn’t enough to ignore them; they had to be erased, obliterated, so that the public would never be confronted by their humanity.
So it was with the assassination of Charlie Kirk. They didn’t just want his opinions silenced — they wanted his existence blotted out. His death was a warning to anyone who shared his worldview: you will not be allowed to speak, and if you persist, you will suffer.
This is not merely a campaign against perceived bad ideas — it is a maximal campaign against the people who hold them. They want Israel destroyed, and they want those who support Israel to feel pain. They want conservatives destroyed, and those who think like them to live in fear.
This is not free speech but a purge. It is a revolution that calls itself “good trouble” but wields the club, the knife, and the guns to bring the “intifada” to the west.
The secular left has adopted an “Islamonormative” framework. It treats the faces of Jewish hostages like drawings of Mohammed, punishable by erasure, and treats conservative talking points as blasphemy, punishable by death. This is not debate — it is jihad.
America is not just losing empathy for hostages nor tolerance for opposing ideas — it is learning to enjoy their destruction. The mob laughs as the faces are ripped down, cheers as the dissenter is silenced. America’s youth are being groomed to take pleasure in erasing the unwanted. Once that appetite is formed, it will not stay confined.
The spectacle of the auto de fe is slowly coming to America as society moves from speech to speakers. To infidels.
Jews have long been the most persecuted and hunted people in the world. Now, religious conservatives are becoming new Jews as the secular crusade vilifies their beliefs.
Ten years ago they came for blasphemers at Charlie Hebdo in France, and expanded their jihad to nearby Jews (read “random folks” by US President Obama). World leaders marched arm in arm that they would not be silenced. Now they offer to lie Charlie Kirk’s body at the U.S. Capitol building, in a sign of respect and a nation that remained unbowed. Gestures.
But the voice of the Jew, the face of the Jew, and the Jew himself are one and the same. People believe The Jew is targeted in isolation; that his situation is unique. A dynamic that will not pierce the majority. Until they realize that it has.
The drip of antisemitism infiltrates society and corrodes it from within, an insidious jihad. Stealthily, it kills morality and sanity. Alas, it is too subtle to recognize as a macro threat until it is a stage four tumor that has ransacked the body politic, then unable to proffer basic protection for the masses.
Conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated today while he spoke with college students in Utah. The killing was yet another sad marker on the collapse of American society. The comments about his murder were much the same.
The left-wing media at MSNBC essentially said that he deserved it with Matthew Dodd saying “He has been one of the most divisive figures … who is constantly sort of pushing this sort of hate speech aimed at certain groups. And I always go back to hateful thoughts lead to hateful words which then lead to hateful actions, and I think that’s the environment we’re in. You can’t stop with these sort of awful thoughts you have and then just saying these awful words and not expect awful actions to take place.” His colleague Katy Tur also called Kirk “a divisive figure. Polarizing. Lightning rod. Whatever term you want to use.”
Left-wing politicians including AOC and Ilhan Omar condemned the killing and denounced… gun violence.
What if antisemitic Congressperson Rashida Tlaib were assassinated. Would AOC and Omar issue a statement about gun violence or denounce the killers and the vitriol that surrounded such shooting? Would MSNBC say she deserved to be taken out because of her rants about Jews? Would the right issue statements like the left-wing is doing today?
Tlaib is an active voice in conferences which call to destabilize the United States and to destroy Israel. She whips up the violent jihadi and Democratic Socialists of America mob to tear down western society and the Jewish State.
But that only means she’s evil. It means she should be arrested if found to incite violence. But it doesn’t mean she should be killed or her murder celebrated or excused.
Charlie Kirk had lots of opinions but he took the time to calmly debate and have a discussion with anyone. He did not call for the destruction of America or American allies. So why the obnoxious comments from the far left?
The issue before us is not only the violence itself but the selective outrage that follows. Political violence is corrosive to democracy. To our humanity. If Americans respond to it with partisanship — excusing it when the victim is an opponent, or diminishing it when the rhetoric seems uncomfortable — then the nation is already fractured beyond recognition.
The true test of a society’s moral health is whether it can condemn violence against its enemies with the same clarity as against its friends. Those people who cannot, are likely the ones whose goal is the destruction of our society.
On October 28, 2011, Lord Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, came to New York City and sat with Rabbi Meir Soloviechik at Yeshiva University. Their hour long talk touched on Lord Sacks’ book The Home We Build Together, and the role of religion in society, focusing on the United States and the United Kingdom, in particular.
Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Speaks at Yeshiva University with Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, October 2011
In the opening remarks (3:10), Rabbi Soloveichik shared a story about Senator Joseph Lieberman, who once observed that on Simchat Torah, Jews dance with the Torah in the streets with joy, yet often fail to carry that Torah into the world during the rest of the year. It was a reminder that religion cannot remain confined to ritual but must be brought into society.
Lord Sacks followed with a story of his own. Prime Minister Tony Blair once teased him that he had reached the “boring part” of the Hebrew Bible—the lengthy passages about the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle). Why, Blair asked, does the Torah devote hundreds of verses to it, compared to just 34 for the creation of the universe?
Lord Sacks replied:
Prime Minister, it is not difficult for an omniscient, omnipotent, infinite God to create a home for human beings. But for finite, fallible human beings to create a home for the infinite God, that is difficult.
The Mishkan, Sacks explained, was not just architecture—it was a project that united the people. More than what God does for us, it is what we do for God that transforms and binds us together. “If you want to take this diverse, fractured culture of Britain and turn it into a united nation,” Sacks said, “you have to get them to build something together.”
Rabbi Soloveichik and Lord Sacks went on to describe that the decline of religious life and secularization of Europe was tied to fewer children being born. A self-centered focus weakens families, weakens faith, and weakens society. In contrast, raising children—caring for someone more than oneself—provides both the foundation of belief and the roots of charity: “having somebody whose life you care about more than yourself, that could actually be the foundation of faith for many of us.”
Washington (D.C.) and Rembrandt
Nearly fourteen years later, on September 8, 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump held an event at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. He invited members of the newly established (May 1, 2025) Religious Liberty Commission to hear how he was advancing the centrality of religion in American public life. He said “When faith gets weaker, our country seems to get weaker. When faith gets stronger… good things happen for our country…. To have a great nation, you have to have religion.”
One of the members of the Presidential Committee on Religious Liberty is Rabbi Meir Soloveichik. He was unable to attend the speech by the president in Washington because he was giving a day long-lecture in New York City at the home of Mem and Zalman Bernstein and the Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Tikvah Fund about art, religion and western society.
Rabbi Solveichik focused on Rembrandt’s two versions of the Sacrifice of Isaac. He contrasted Abraham’s devotion to God’s command to offer his son Isaac, to the investment of love and devotion he had made in his son. The angel broke the conflict, and with it, the end of human sacrifice which was prevalent in the world at that time. From this point onward, belief in a higher power could be accompanied by protecting and investing in our children.
Religion, Children and Western Democracy
It made for an interesting sermon triptych connecting religion, children and western values: Lord Sachs, Rabbi Soloveichik and President Trump all emphasized that religion has the power to strengthen ourselves, our families, our communities and our nation.
In Lord Sacks book, The Great Partnership, published in June 2011, right before his talk at YU, he wrote:
My argument has been that contrary to the received narrative, freedom has been better served in the modern world by a religious vision rather than a secular one. The Abrahamic vision, with its insistence on the non-negotiable dignity of the human person and the importance of protected space – the families and communities that make up civil society – where relationships are not based on power, saved England and America from the worst excesses of the revolutionary politics that cost tens of thousands of lives in France and tens of millions in Russia….
Abrahamic politics, by contrast, is politics with a human face, the politics that knows the limits of power, as well as the transformative effect of free persons freely joining together to make social institutions worthy of being a home for the divine presence. Abraham politics never forgets that there are things more important than politics, and that is what makes it the best defense of liberty.”
That is the motion before Western democracies: can humble faith as embodied in “Abraham politics” lead our different faiths to help build a cohesive society of respect and growth.
Concluding Circle
The discussion of religion and democracy is being advanced passionately today because it feels abandoned.
According to Lord Sacks, democracy under secularism preached intersectionality which yielded segregation and isolationism. Rabbi Solveichik responded that “a Mayflower of persecuted religions might leave England and Europe to come to safer shores [like America].” For his part, President Trump established the Religious Liberty Commission to deal with such matters, with the first group’s term ending on July 4, 2026, on the nation’s 250th anniversary.
So it was fitting that Rabbi Soloveichik should end his talk to the Tikvah Fund, a group whose motto is “Advancing Jewish Excellence and Western Civilization through Education & Ideas,” before Emanuel Leutze’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, while President Trump was concluding his remarks in Washington, D.C.
Rabbi Soloveichik at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 2025
In the 1851 painting, the future president of the United States stood aboard a boat filled with a diverse crew, readying to end the rule of England and break with the British monarchy and Church of England, to establish a new democratic state in 1776. Nearly 250 years later, the Chief Rabbi of England, the president of the United States, and the rabbi leading the oldest synagogue in the United States were championing the importance of religion in strengthening democracies everywhere. A quiet revolution to return to the foundations of faith to help build a more perfect union.
A suicidal antisemite walked into a church school in Minnesota and opened fire. He left behind rants of depression and hate. He idolized the mass murderers who came before him — Hitler, Columbine, Christchurch, Pittsburgh — and fantasized about joining their ranks in death.
It is a sad story. Sad for the victims, whose lives were cut short. Sad for the shooter’s family, who must live with the legacy of his murders. Sad for society, which must add another notch to the ledger of preventable carnage.
But I pause on the judges. Not the judges in robes who preside over courts of law — this menace took his own life and will only face a real judge in the afterlife, if you believe in one. The judges I mean are the self-appointed arbiters of truth on social media, the pundits with millions of followers who rush to craft a narrative before the blood on the church floor has dried.
Narratives Over Facts
Cenk Uygur, founder of The Young Turks, quickly posted on X that the killer “hates Israel and Muslims.” Two deliberate misdirections.
First misdirection: He didn’t hate Israel in the abstract. He hated Jews — which is precisely why he hated Israel. On his weapon magazine he scrawled, “6 million wasn’t enough.” That wasn’t about Israel. That was about Jews. In his journal he wrote “If I carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews,” before calling Jewish people “entitled” and “penny-sniffing” and adding “FREE PALESTINE!”
writings on the Minneapolis killer’s weaponry
He even called for destroying HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that helps resettle refugees in the U.S. His antisemitism and anti-Israel animus were inseparable. He loved Nazis and he loved Palestinian Arabs who killed Jews. Cenk only loves the latter, because it allows him to hang his “anti-Zionist, not antisemitic” credentials where he cannot with the former.
Second misdirection: The shooter never expressed hatred of Muslims. He praised mass murderers — including some who targeted mosques — but not because he despised Islam. His adoration was for the act of mass killing as a pathway to glory. He wanted to die a martyr in the suicide-mass murder cult, to etch his name in the pantheon of psychopaths and inspire the next one, just as he inscribed their names on his gun, as well as “mashallah,” meaning “Gd has willed it” in Arabic.
The Sanitizers
So why did Cenk say what he said? To refit the crime into his own comfortable narrative. To launder the reality that this shooter’s rants — about Jews, Israel, HIAS — were fueled by the same demonization that Cenk himself mainstreams daily.
Cenk published this rant about Israel controlling the US government around the same time as misdirecting people about the Minnesota killer
This is how today’s judges operate. They aren’t rendering justice to take the wicked off the streets. They are sanitizing their own crimes by placing their incitement onto a scapegoat and pushing it off a cliff. They hope you will move on, and not notice their bloody handprints on the crime scene of young children dead on a church floor.
But be clear, Cenk and others like him are inciting the next mass shooter. They just hope the murderers come for Israel supporters.
Conclusion
There are no winners in these tragedies. The dead are buried, the families are broken, the shooter is gone.
But the lies linger. The venom feels less poisonous once imbibed and cleansed by the antisemitic judges.
When influencers and media stars twist a killer’s words into their preferred stories, they are not exposing truth — they are covering their own complicity.
The Minneapolis shooter’s manifesto was clear enough. It will likely be on the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) book-of-the-month club reading. The world is sad and unjust and we must burn it down. Ideally, start with the Jews. If you can’t, make sure your manifesto reads like a modern day Mein Kampf that would make Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) proud.
The killer’s sphere of desecration was relatively small. Tragic, but limited. But the shrill antisemitic rants atop social media and infiltrating politics grossly widen the diameter of the damage.
The lingering tragedy is that the loudest voices have become the judges, and that will mark our entire society for collapse.
New Jersey prides itself on being “progressive,” but its legal framework reveals a hypocrisy that should make any thinking citizen bristle. On one hand, the state enforces Blue Laws in Bergen County — a set of regulations rooted in 17th-century Christian Sabbath observance that still ban most retail sales on Sundays. On the other hand, it boasts some of the most radical abortion laws in the country, permitting the ending of a pregnancy at virtually any stage.
If New Jersey is going to use the force of law to protect Christian values, then be consistent and protect life. If not, stop pretending by maintaining antiquated religious impositions like the Blue Laws.
The Blue Laws: Christian Morality Enforced by Penalty
Bergen County’s Blue Laws are codified in N.J.S.A. 40A:64-1 et seq., prohibiting the sale of clothing, furniture, appliances, and most retail goods on Sundays. Violators face fines up to $1,000 and potential jail time of up to 90 days (N.J.S.A. 40A:64-6). The intent? To preserve Sunday as a day of rest, explicitly tied to the Christian Sabbath.
Supporters of the laws admit their religious roots. Bergen County County Executive James Tedesco “has been a steadfast supporter of the Bergen County blue laws, long recognizing their vital role in enhancing residents’ quality of life and guaranteeing retail employees at least one day off each week,” echoing the original moral intent of honoring Sunday as a sacred day.
Abortion: Unfettered Access, Zero Protection for the Unborn
Contrast this with New Jersey’s abortion statutes. In 2022, Governor Phil Murphy signed the Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act (P.L.2021, c.375), enshrining the right to abortion at any stage of pregnancy with no parental notification for minors, no mandatory waiting periods, and no limits on late-term procedures. Clinics openly advertise this reality: “No gestational limit” (Planned Parenthood of New Jersey, 2023).
For Christians and countless others who believe life begins before birth, this isn’t neutrality — it’s the state actively rejecting Christian morality in the most profound area imaginable: the protection of human life.
Bergen County abortion clinic – closed Sundays
A Call for Coherence
New Jersey cannot have it both ways. Either the state should abandon religiously grounded laws like the Blue Laws — which literally fine people for shopping on Sunday in deference to Christian tradition — and let people lead the lives they choose, or it should acknowledge that Christian moral values still have a legitimate place in public law and extend them consistently, particularly to protect the unborn.
It’s time for New Jersey legislators to stop hiding behind selective morality. If the state truly believes in secular governance, repeal the Blue Laws and let commerce run seven days a week. If it still believes Christian moral heritage has value, then apply it where it matters most — to the defense of life itself.
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.
First One Through 