Look Right

There are signs on the streets of London that read “LOOK RIGHT.” They are painted boldly on the pavement to protect visitors—especially Americans—who are used to glancing left before stepping into the street. In the U.K., traffic comes from the opposite direction, and those who rely on old instincts can find themselves in sudden danger.

So it is now with American Jews.

For generations, they have turned instinctively to the Democratic Party—to the left—out of habit, heritage, and a deep belief that liberal ideals best protected minorities. But the political landscape has shifted beneath their feet. The party that once championed freedom, tolerance, and support for Israel has been co-opted by radicals: anti-Israel voices, socialists, and anarchists who now wield growing influence in its ranks.

These are not the Democrats of old. They are activists who view capitalism as oppression, who denounce Israel as colonial, and who see Jews not as a vulnerable minority but as part of a power structure to be dismantled. They are coming for capitalism—and for the Jews who helped build and sustain it.

This election, American Jews must recognize that the public square is not what it used to be. The political traffic now comes from the right direction—but the danger comes from the left.

Times have changed. Look right.

Above and Below the Line

Jews Must Rise Above America’s Political Polarization

For Jews, the political spectrum no longer runs right or left — it runs above and below the line.

America once resembled a bell curve, a society centered in moderation. But over the last decade, that middle has collapsed into a barbell nation, with weight piling up at the extremes. And history has shown: whenever societies polarize, Jews suffer at both ends.

On the left, antisemitism festers in universities and coastal enclaves, driven by a socialist–jihadi alliance that paints Jews as colonial thieves and privileged elites. On the right, particularly across America’s heartland, antisemitism takes the form of nationalist resentment, depicting Jews as cunning manipulators steering the country toward decay.

The Jewish community now faces hostility from Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists on one side, and Christian nationalists and conspiratorial populists on the other. As America sorts itself into partisan tribes, Jews are politically homeless — stranded in what might be called Team White, surrounded by Red and Blue armies locked in mortal combat.

It is a moment that demands clarity:
Jews must not follow the crowd, nor celebrate the likes of Zohran Mamdani or Marjorie Taylor Greene simply because they shout loudest. Safety will not be found at the edges.

NYC mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani with the extremist group Democratic Socialists of America

Instead, Jews must think on the Y-axis and rise above the line — where decency, truth, and moral courage define political identity, not the toxic binaries of today’s discourse. The task is to build bridges among the decent left, right, and center, and to undermine the machinery of polarization itself.

That begins with the primary system, which rewards extremism and punishes moderation. Jews — and all who value stability — should register with the majority party in their region to vote for moderates in primaries, then vote for the opposing party in the general election to restore balance. The goal is not partisanship but preservation.

There is more to do:

  • Be counter-algorithm. Social media algorithms are built on inflaming passions and feeding extremism. Get kids away from social media including banning phones in schools. Encourage people to spend less time on the platforms or to promote moderate posts.
  • Invest in institutions that elevate, not inflame. Support schools, media, and synagogues that model dialogue over division.
  • Be models of decency. Civility is countercultural today — make it contagious. Argue without anger, engage without hatred, and remind others that moral clarity does not require moral superiority.
  • Rebuild community and trust. Host conversations, bridge gaps, and welcome allies who differ politically but share ethical ground. Strength grows in connection, not isolation.
  • Be proudly above the line. Celebrate being moderate, balanced, and reasonable. The middle is not weakness — it is wisdom earned through restraint.
  • Expose extremists, even within. Call out the Jewish radicals who justify Hamas and the October 7 pogrom, as well as those who echo conspiratorial nationalism. Moral consistency demands internal accountability.
  • Teach Jewish ethics loudly. The Torah’s call to pursue justice and peace should echo in civic spaces — as a guide for repairing the world, not tearing it further apart.

A polarized society is a society on edge — brittle, unstable, and eager for scapegoats. Extremists will portray Jews as symbols of what’s wrong, a convenient vessel for resentment. As a minority-minority, Jews become easy targets when the center collapses.

The survival of the Jewish people in America depends not on joining the mobs below the line, but on lifting others above it — where truth, civility, and unity still have a fighting chance.

New Yorkers Must Register Democrat and Vote Republican

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.

Sharia Britain, Canada and U.S.

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.

The Weight of Nations

“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 Embarrassment and Lies of the Palestinian Authority in Trump’s Peace Plan

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.

From Hostage Posters to Charlie Kirk

“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.

I’m Offended, You’re Dead.

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.

What They Said About The Assassination of Rashida Tlaib

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.

Advancing Religion In America

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.”

President Trump remarks at the Museum of the Bible, September 8, 2025

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 Meir Soloveichik discussing Rembrandt’s 1635 painting “The Sacrifice of Isaac” for Tikvah

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.

Judging the Judges of Psychopaths

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.