Every Year a Refugee

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How many generations should someone be called a “refugee?” Two? Ten? My parents were refugees and I consider myself the son of refugees. But not a refugee. To do so would be a mockery of millions of people fleeing homes to faraway lands where they have no family, infrastructure or knowledge of the local language.

Alas, while every year the world adds and removes refugees from the global tally, there is a permanent exception.

There are roughly 122 million displaced people worldwide (68 million internally displaced, 38 million refugees and millions of others seeking protection), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is tasked with helping them. Its mission is clear: assist people fleeing conflict or persecution to either return home when it’s safe, or resettle in a new country where they can rebuild their lives and become citizens. Refugee status, according to UNHCR, is meant to be temporary. A tragic but manageable step toward normalcy.

But for one group of people, the rules were rewritten.

In 1949, the United Nations created a separate agency: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Its job was not to help all refugees, but a specific set—Arabs who left or were displaced from what became the State of Israel during the 1948 war.

Unlike the UNHCR, UNRWA never intended to help these refugees resettle or gain citizenship elsewhere. In fact, when Jordan annexed the to be named “West Bank” in 1950 and granted full Jordanian citizenship to the Arabs living there in 1954 (Jews were specifically excluded from Jordanian citizenship) —including the so-called refugees—UNRWA still kept them on its refugee rolls. Why? They were no longer stateless, no longer displaced from their community, and in most cases, were living just miles from where they or their families once resided.

No other refugee population in the world is treated this way.

The Palestinians under UNRWA are not counted based on where they live or whether they’ve rebuilt their lives. They’re counted based on ancestry—any descendant of someone who lived in Mandatory Palestine in 1946 and left during the war is considered a “refugee.” That includes people who are now citizens of Jordan who have never set foot in Israel, and those who live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza.

This isn’t about resettlement. It isn’t about a “two-state solution.” It’s about return. Not return to a country they fled—but to homes where their grandparents once lived, in a country that has since fought multiple wars for its survival and established itself as a sovereign nation.

This has locked the Middle East into a perpetual state of conflict. UNRWA doesn’t just preserve the status of Palestinian refugees—it amplifies it, funds it, and builds an international bureaucracy around it. It has denied Israel’s right to control its own immigration, and basic principle of sovereignty.

Worse, the UN’s actions have turned a situation normally considered a humanitarian issue into a real estate dispute. By insisting that people return to a house—not a country, as outlined in international human rights law—the global political body has exceeded its own mandate. This isn’t a question of national self-determination, but one of personal property claims. UNRWA isn’t so much a champion of the creation of a state beside Israel; it champions individual return to specific homes, decades abandoned or destroyed, now occupied by others in a sovereign country.

Meanwhile, the descendants of every other refugee group in the world—from Sudan to Ukraine—are helped by the UN to find a path forward. Only the Palestinians are encouraged to walk backward, into the houses of their grandparents.

UNHCR helps refugees stop being refugees. UNRWA helps them stay that way.

Every year, new wars create new displaced people. But only one group stays on the list year after year, generation after generation.

For Palestinian Arabs, the 1948 war is still being fought. Generations of people haven’t been birthed into refugee status as much as the region is in a 100 years war. While the world may use political terminology of an UNRWA ward who has never been to Israel as a descendant of a “refugee,” Palestinians simply see a permanent property right which will never be forfeited. The UN simply provides cover under the “refugee” monicker.

Every year, a refugee. By design. In partnership.

Related articles:

Palestinian Authority Demands That UN Come Clean On UNRWA (November 2024)

‘Right Of Return’ Must Be Integral To Negotiations (September 2024)

There Is No Basis For A Palestinian “Right of Return” (July 2024)

After UNRWA (February 2024)

“Two States For Two People” And An Arab “Right Of Return” Are Mutually Exclusive (September 2023)

There Is No Backing For A Palestinian “Right Of Return” (December 2022)

When the Democrats Opposed the Palestinian “Right of Return” (August 2018)

Colorful Antisemitic Manifestos Are At Your Lips

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America is now home to a deadly literary genre: the antisemitic manifesto. Each one is a twisted cocktail of conspiracy, borrowed slogans, and rage—crafted by individuals from vastly different backgrounds but united by one target: Jews. The authors shoot in synagogues, storm kosher markets, take hostages, and justify it all in screeds that dress up genocidal hatred as “resistance.”

These murderers come from various corners, dressed as isolated incidents. But the actors aren’t truly lone wolves when they borrow from a common playbook, one that has now become widespread and familiar to everyone.

White in Pittsburgh: “All Jews Must Die”

In 2018, a white supremacist stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh during Shabbat services and gunned down eleven worshipers. His manifesto was steeped in the “Great Replacement theory” accusing Jews of orchestrating a “white genocide” by bringing immigrants into the U.S. through humanitarian organizations like HIAS. His worldview was that Jews are global saboteurs, aiding an invasion. His solution was simple: exterminate them.

Memorial outside Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA

Black in Jersey City 2019: Killing the “Infiltrators”

A year later, in 2019, two Black extremists of the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology shot up a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, NJ killing three people. They believed that Jews were economic infiltrators and exploiters, encroaching on Black communities. In their eyes, a Jewish storefront was a symbol of oppression and they turned it into a morgue.

Islamist in Colleyville 2022: Jews As Power Brokers

In 2022, a British Islamist traveled to Texas and held four Jews hostage inside a synagogue. He wanted the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a convicted al-Qaeda operative being held in prison. Siddiqui believed that Jews control the government, the banks, the courts. So if you want America to listen, best to grab some Jews. This wasn’t about a local grievance. It was international antisemitism dressed up as activism.

Leftist in Washington, D.C. 2025: Killing International “Genocide” Enablers

In 2025, another Jewish cultural center was targeted. Two people believed to be Jews (one was a Christian Israeli) were murdered by a man whose manifesto was saturated with the language of international NGOs. He wrote of Israeli “genocide,” and declared himself a soldier for Palestinian justice. Except he didn’t go to Gaza. He went to Washington. And he didn’t shoot soldiers. He shot civilians under the framework that “the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity.”

Two people killed outside Jewish event in Washington DC, May 2025 (photo: Rod Lamkey, AP)

Their Common Delusion: Jews as the Evil Power Behind Everything

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: every single one of these killers thought they were acting in defense. Of their race. Of their people. Of the oppressed. And in each case, they believed that Jews were behind their suffering. The puppet masters. The infiltrators. The warmongers. The colonizers. The landlords. The cabal. It’s the oldest lie in the world—crafted for modern rage packed in a holster.

Our Common Delusion: They are not Identical. Some of Them Are Right

These attackers may look like lone wolves, but they aren’t howling alone. They are members of ecosystems—8chan threads, Telegram groups, Reddit subs, Twitter/X echo chambers. They are fed a steady diet of Holocaust inversion, “Zionist” conspiracies, blood libels, and genocidal memes. And increasingly, they’re finding validation from public-facing NGOs and international institutions whose language about Israel normalizes antisemitic tropes.

PBS did in depth documentaries about “White Supremacy” groups and their echo chambers on Telegram. When a killer shot a synagogue in Poway, CA in 2019 killing someone, the media reviewed his White supremacy manifesto, as it did when a shooter in Texas in 2023 killed eight people, covering the shooter’s extensive “antisemitism, misogyny and White Supremacy” rants on social media.

But one couldn’t find such analyses or scathing rebukes of non-White Supremacy groups. Black Israelites were pardoned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as merely having a few bad apples. Islamists and leftists were criticized – but rationalized – as being upset about the bleak situation of Muslims around the world.

The media had two principle reasons for the soft coverage of non-White killers: protecting those racial and ethnic groups, and agreeing with the underlying grievance. In the first, the SPLC and other liberal groups make the argument that highlighting violence from minority groups leads to their being over-policed and ultimately police violence against them. In the second, the media are the disseminators of the anti-Jewish and anti-Jewish State narrative so why self-incriminate.

Internationally Approved Manifestos

White supremacist “lone wolves” crafted manifestos and called out fellow “martyrs” designed to inspire followers and provoke copycat attacks, like Brenton Tarrant, Anders Breivik, Dylann Roof and Patrick Crusius. Non governmental groups like Amnesty International and the United Nations publish their own scathing reports (more official sounding than “manifesto”) to initiate action against Israel.

The non-White supremacist antisemites worship from these third party bibles. They can read The New York Times that tells them about the “Powerful” Jew and listen to liberal politicians list reasons why Jews don’t deserve to be defended. They can cite the International Criminal Court about Israel committing a “genocide” of Gazans, or Amnesty’s report on Israel practicing “ethnic cleansing.” These antisemites are spared the slog of penning a long manifesto like the Poway shooter about the “tyrannical and genocidal Jew.”

The antisemitic forgery “Protocols Of the Elders Of Zion” is no longer only being quoted in the Hamas Charter and sold at shadowy flea markets. It is retold in officially approved manuscripts quoted on global platforms with the same conclusion about Jews.

Jew Hate into the Vernacular

The steady diet of Jew bashing has become fully normalized. Rep. Rashida Tlaib calling out global Jewry “from Gaza to Detroit… [operating] behind the curtain… to profit off of racism,” could have been lifted from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yet it got no pushback. It did not take long for Kanye West to publish a song called “Heil Hitler.”

The hatred that was once peddled in the shadows of 8chan and Telegram to hundreds of people is now in the open to millions. Their conspiracy theories and Jew hatred remain the same but the taboo of enlisting in the pogrom has been lifted.

Antisemitism isn’t coming from one direction anymore. It’s everywhere. The right, the left, Islamist circles, anti-colonial extremists. They may appear different but they end up with the same conclusion: Jews are causing a genocide of my favorite group. They must die.

Their manifestos, colorful as they may be, all write the same sentence in the end.

Related articles:

No Israeli Good Deed Goes Unpunished For Amnesty International and NY Times (May 2023)

Conspiracy Theories About Jewish Power and Control (November 2022)

The Heartwarming Story of My Guilty Demise (January 2020)

The Holocaust Will Not Be Colorized. The Holocaust Will Be Live. (May 2019)

Is “Free Palestine” Immoral Or “Counterproductive”?

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In political and ideological debates, few words carry as much quiet weight as “counterproductive.” It is a term that cloaks deep moral issues in the language of strategy, substituting ethical clarity with tactical calculus.

Recent uses of the word by political figures and organizations—such as Cenk Uygur’s response to the murder of two Israeli diplomats in Washington, D.C., and J Street’s condemnation of the student takeover of Columbia University’s Butler Library—highlight the way moral outrage is increasingly filtered through the lens of utility.

Alt-left commentator Cenk Uygur comments about the murder of a young couple from Israel on the streets of Washington, DC by a man yelling “Free Palestine”

The Language of Outcomes

When Cenk Uygur called the murder of the diplomats “counterproductive” and “stupid,” he minimized his “obviously immoral” charge. He reframed the cold-blooded murder of two young Israelis at a Jewish event through a critique that the violence would “harm the Palestinian cause.” Similarly, J Street’s reaction to the Butler Library takeover focused not on the pain caused to students studying for finals but on the effectiveness of the mass action.

J Street commentary on violent takeover of Columbia University library during study week

Both statements imply a worldview where the ends can justify the means IF the means produce desired outcomes. Violence and disruptions aren’t inherently wrong, full stop; they’re wrong if they don’t work.

This mode of thinking belongs to a form of strategic utilitarianism—actions are weighed not on whether they are ethically sound, but whether they are instrumentally successful. Murder isn’t condemned for its cruelty or injustice, but for its inefficiency. Protest isn’t wrong because it defies norms, but because it alienates potential allies or invites political backlash as in: it “provide[s] the Trump Administration with ammunition…” and “it allows people to frame the whole peace movement as violent.”

The Profound Delusion

How is the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people and mass rape of women and butchering of babies a “peace movement?” a sane person would ask. How is the killing of a young couple in Washington – thousands of miles from Gaza – an issue of “framing” for the masses (read “potential allies”)?

The idea that victims’ deaths were simply “counterproductive” is chilling. It suggests they were not wronged, but miscalculated. Their humanity becomes a variable in someone else’s flawed strategy. The moral frame disappears; only the tactical one remains.

There is a profound gap between calculated language and moral reality. For the political commentators, everything is a chessboard; for the people on the ground, it is their lives.

Question If The Entire Movement Is Unjustified And Immoral

Uygur and J Street – different parts of the socialists-jihadi alliance – use of “counterproductive” is an attempt to separate the actions of the violent offenders in the United States from the Hamas-led war in Israel. It seeks to sanitize the Gazan war to “Free Palestine” as a noble goal, while the tactics of some people – including possibly the October 7 massacre itself – are flawed.

Lost on those absorbing this insidious narrative of “Free Palestine” is that the movement is immoral. The chants of an “ongoing Nakba” are not cries for peace but a desire of SAPs and their supporters to destroy Israel and ethnically cleanse the Jewish Promised Land of Jews, marketed under the banner of human rights. Yes, local Arabs deserve self-determination which can be achieved in multiple ways. No, they don’t have an “inalienable right” to their own country nor to move into houses where grandparents once lived.

The only way of achieving their stated desired goal of ending Israel is via violence, both there and here. The murder of two Israelis outside a Jewish event in America’s capital city isn’t “counterproductive” but an unspoken essential component of the global jihad. It is the definition of “by any means necessary.”

Conclusion

Language shapes how we see the world. When murder is called “counterproductive” – whether of two Israelis in Washington or 1,200 people in Israel – the victims’ moral worth is sidelined in favor of strategic impact. Worse, the soft wording obfuscates not only the evil of the immediate killings but that the entire “Free Palestine” mission is about the mass murder of Jews.

The issue isn’t optics. There is a reason the hordes are yelling “we are all Hamas,” “gas the Jews” and “Heil Hitler,” and it isn’t coexistence. The alt-left’s shielding of violent antisemites has made them complicit in both the violence against Jews and the ongoing trauma the Jewish community is enduring.

Related articles:

Genocidal Jihadists Come For ‘Soft Targets’ (September 2024)

When Enemies Of The Jews Use “Any Means Necessary” (May 2024)

The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada (January 2024)

What The World Sees In Gaza

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The world sees Gaza through the lens of curated sympathy – smoke trails from missile strikes, wounded children, crumbled buildings – rendered by the media and United Nations. The headlines scream “siege” and “occupation,” and the images are carefully framed to elicit tears, not questions. For them, Gaza is a tragedy.

But Israelis? They see something very different.

They see a terrorist enclave. A society ruled by Hamas – not just tolerated but elected – with a charter calling for genocide against Jews. They see neighbors who have fired over 30,000 rockets at them since Israel left Gaza in 2005, and who used humanitarian aid to dig terror tunnels and stockpile weapons.

Israelis are haunted by October 7, 2023 – the day when 1,200 of their people were butchered. Burned alive. Shot in their homes. Raped in front of their families. And they remember what came next: polls showing 75% of Gazans supported the massacre. The popularity of other Palestinian Arab terrorist groups skyrocketed as well, including Islamic Jihad, al Aqsa Brigade and al Qassam. This wasn’t some fringe radical cell that commited the vile pogrom – this was public approval for mass murder. It was the fulfillment of their long-standing desire to attack Jewish civilians inside of Israel since 2000.

They also see something deeper: three-quarters of Gazans consider themselves “refugees” living in temporary homes. Not because of displacement from this war but because they believe they’re entitled to homes inside Israel. They don’t see Gaza as their future – they see Tel Aviv.

To the United Nations, Gaza is a moral play where Israel is always cast as the villain. They see Gaza not as a failure of Palestinian leadership, not as a society hijacked by jihad, but as a tragedy authored entirely by Israel. Why? Because Israel won’t allow these “refugees” to move into the homes of Israeli Jews – the very homes where grandparents fled in 1948 after five Arab armies attacked the new Jewish state.

The world has condemned Israel for responding “disproportionately” to the October 7 massacre. The UN saw Israeli counterstrikes as war crimes, not defense. They ignored the slaughter of Israeli children and focused on fuel shortages in Gaza. They accused Israel of starvation, ignoring the trucks of aid Israel itself let in, even while its soldiers were under fire. They paid scant lip service to Israeli hostages kept in tunnels by Hamas, viewing them as collateral to Israel’s ongoing “Nakba”.

The Arab and Muslim world is not fooled but is not helping. They don’t see Gazans as brothers and sisters in need of refuge. They see them as Palestinians – a distinct, useful political weapon. If Gazans were Syrians, they would’ve been taken in by now. But they’re not. They’re left to fester – a long-term tool to weaken and delegitimize the Jewish state.

Even in America, Gaza has become a kind of geopolitical Rorschach test. Leaders like Donald Trump and Jared Kushner see opportunity: beachfront real estate with the potential to be the Singapore of the Middle East. A future riviera. But that future depends on changing a mentality – one that for decades has been more obsessed with destroying Israel than building Gaza.

Because this is the reality: Gaza could have been Dubai. It had the backing of the international community, billions in aid, and a chance to chart its own path. Instead, it chose jihad. It chose hate. It chose martyrdom over medicine, tunnels over technology, indoctrination over innovation.

The world sees rubble. Death. Tragedy. Not on both sides; for Palestinians.

They can’t see the Israeli hostages through their clouded moral lenses. They don’t see the Jewish parents still waiting for their children. They don’t see the decades of restraint Israel exercised before finally saying “enough”. They are caught in an empathy swamp and have mentally baptised Gazans as martyrs instead of genocidal jihadists.

The Global South sees Gaza not just as another flashpoint – but as a pawn in a bigger game. The narrative is not just about “liberation” but “redistribution.” From peace talks to class war. Israel, to them, is just the first domino in toppling the Western-led world order.

Gaza isn’t just a local issue anymore. It’s global. It’s ideological. And for Israelis, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

In this backdrop of viewpoints, an international conference at the U.N. headquarters in New York will take place from June 17 to 20 co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia. The Global North will join the Global South in trying to find near-term and longer-term solutions to the 100-year Arab-Israeli conflict.

In this Coliseum, the General Assembly serves as the unruly crowd seeking the torture of the Jewish State, while the Security Council acts as caesar empowered with the pen to draft international law. Will the United States protect Israel in such forum on the heels of Trump’s visit to the Gulf? Will Trump seek to trade an unwinding of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334 to get Israel to agree to short-term and longer term movements towards a permanent divorce between local Jews and Arabs?

Israel was blind to the October 7 attack. Does it see what the world sees in Gaza now and the positions being orchestrated for the June U.N. conference? Will the modern blind Samson bring down the house if it only hears calls for its demise and cannot see a path to live in peace?

Related articles:

The Distant Fantasy Of Two States Living Side By Side In Today’s Reality (August 2024)

The Three “Two-State Solution”s (December 2023)

The Asynchronous Audience At Jihadists’ Auto-da-Fe (November 2023)

Palestinians Utterly Fail Two Tests: Oslo Accords And Gaza Disengagement (August 2023)

White Plains School District – Vote Tuesday May 20

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Westchester County has three neighboring towns which act very differently when it comes to their public schools. White Plains stands out relative to neighboring Scarsdale and similarly sized New Rochelle: it spends more and gets worse student performance.

White Plains has a staggering 2025-2026 budget of $277,965,500 for 6,836 students. That amounts to $40,662 per student. That is 13% more than Scarsdale spends, which is one of the best school districts in the entire country. It is also significantly more than New Rochelle which is a similarly sized city with comparable demographics.

And White Plains performs much worse than both despite its massive budget.

Almost all of the Hispanic and Black students in Scarsdale perform well in math, with both groups having over 80% proficiency. In New Rochelle, proficiency in mathematics is 57% each for the groups. Yet in White Plains, only 38% of Hispanics and 42% of Black students have proficiency in math.

Where does the money go in White Plains if not into educating students?

Ten years ago, the White Plains school budget was $208,750,0000 in 2016-2017 when it had 7,091 students, spending $29,439 per student. White Plains is now spending 38% more per student. Much of the cost is NOT GOING FOR THE STUDENTS but to facilities and teacher benefits.

Facilities

The school district has 1.4 million square feet of buildings, not including the new $33 million high school building going up now. New York State generally guides schools to have 85 to 125 square feet per child, depending on the grade. White Plains has 199 square feet per student, 60% more than the high-end recommendation.

And the White Plains school district is planning on spending much more on facilities despite a declining enrollment.

According to the school district’s long-term plan, school enrollment is projected to decline to 6,540 in 2028-9. Despite the shrinking student body, the 20-year plan has $395 million of expenditures to upgrade its facilities.

The city already has $88 million of debt and an $11 million capital lease (page 26). The capital lease and $38 million in notes are coming due in 2026. Presumably this is going to be refinanced in a higher interest rate environment which will add expenses into the school budget.

Fewer kids, worse performance and state-of-the-art buildings.

Teacher Salaries and Benefits

The budget lays out teacher salaries (page 39), with school principals making just under $200,000 per year and the school superintendent making over $300,000.

Employee benefits account for $68.6 million (page 10), or 25% of the budget. This is a 10% jump from the previous year, and accounts for OVER HALF OF THE INCREASE from last year’s budget. So while curriculum development went down this year, teacher benefits rose by $6.25 million.

And this is going to continue according to the long-term plan (page 25). Contributions to the teachers retirement and employee retirement systems are going to keep going up while the number of students declines.

Student Performance

There is a lot of data on student performance (pages 43 onward). There are a few take-aways:

  • The school is 70% Latino and Black and those groups are not reaching proficiency in English or math
  • Roughly 19% of the students are English language learners, 17% have disabilities and 56% are economically disadvantaged. The English learners and those with disabilities are doing terribly. It is unclear how the school can continue to keep these children in the school system when they are clearly unable to service them. The government should do a full review of the situation.

School Board

The school board will tell you that your taxes are not going up and that the school district is an incredibly open and caring environment with state-of-the-art facilities. What they are not telling you is that they have been over-taxing you for years to fund capital projects, have $50 million of looming debt coming due in 2026, are spending incredible sums on teacher benefits while allowing a significant percentage of the student body to flounder.

That is the sad reality.

ACTION PLAN

Vote on May 20. Polls are open from 12:00PM to 9:00PM. Find your voting location here.

Vote ‘No” on the school budget to reduce it by $3.4 million.

Vote for Julia Oliva, a parent of a second grader who wants to put money into services instead of football fields. It is time to phase out the old school board which has spent your money on shiny buildings instead of our youth.

Related articles:

School Boards Are the New Battleground: Why the New York Jewish Community Must Vote on May 20

The Mirrored Key Of The Jewish Temple

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Across Western cities, “Nakba” protests fill the streets in May, marking what Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) call the “catastrophe” of Israel’s founding. Protesters chant slogans of “liberation,” wave Palestinian flags, and brandish large symbolic keys—representing homes lost in the Arab-Israeli 1948 War, and a longed-for return.

In London, British actor Khalid Abdalla holds a key symbolising the supposed Palestinian “right of return” (photo: Middle East Eye)

To the casual observer, these demonstrations appear to be non-violent expressions of secular nationalism: a displaced people demanding justice and return. The rhetoric is packaged in the language of “anti-colonialism,” a phrase from the Global South marketed at western universities.

The terminology is secular and political but the facts on the ground tell a different story.

The actual war against Israel is not being led by nationalists. It is driven by radical Islamist groups including Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The attack launched on October 7, 2023, was not called the “Nakba Response” or “Operation Liberation.” It was named “Al-Aqsa Flood”—a title soaked in religious meaning, not national aspiration. It invoked Islam’s third-holiest site which sits atop Judaism’s holiest site.

The strategic use of “Nakba” language in western cities is a deliberate effort to mask a religious war in secular terms. It is designed to resonate with Western leftists who are comfortable championing national self-determination but uneasy with theocratic zeal. It reframes an Islamic holy war as a freedom struggle, making it seem modern, rational, and even “progressive.”

But the religious reality will not remain buried forever.

Because just as SAPs speak of return, so do Jews. If Jews are forced to lose their sovereignty, perhaps diluted in a binational state, it will likely not lead to secular coexistence—it may unleash something far older and deeper: the demand for rebuilding the Third Jewish Temple.

Today, the Temple Mount is controlled administratively by the Jordanian Waqf, which bans Jewish prayer. Since the Second Temple was destroyed in 70AD, Jews have dreamed of rebuilding it, and while that has remained marginal in the modern secular Jewish state, it may surge forward in a post-Zionist situation in which Jews are compelled to relinquish so much.

If Israel is converted to a binational state in which everyone has equal rights, Jews would obviously insist on the same rights as Muslims enjoy today, to pray openly by the thousands on the Temple Mount. The demand to rebuild the Jewish Temple could move from the fringe to the center. The so-called “liberation” of Palestine would be matched by calls to liberate the Mount—from Islamic control.

In that light, the pro-Palestinian protest chants of “liberation” are a double-edged sword. They echo with reciprocal cries: not just the return of SAPs to Jaffa but the return of Jews to the Temple Mount. The religious war launched by Gazans wrapped in secular “Nakba” terminology in the west would be laid bare for what it is.

Muslims and Jews hold keys for places that don’t exist in the holy land anymore – for homes and a Temple. Should one side pursue a “right of return” to create a future-past, the mirrored key will do no less.

Related articles:

More Muslims Visit The Jewish Temple Mount / Al Aqsa Mosque On Single Day Than All Jews Over The Past Year (March 2025)

There Is No Basis For A Palestinian “Right of Return” (July 2024)

Holocaust Survivors At The 2024 Israeli Day Parade In New York City (June 2024)

Israel, Ceuta and Melilla: Third World Escape Hatches (November 2023)

Delivery of the Fictional Palestinian Keys (May 2015)

Nine American Socialists And The UN Mock Israel’s Independence Day

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On Friday, May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence—one day before the British ended their Palestine Mandate and left the region. The timing wasn’t accidental. Israel’s founding leaders wanted the moment to be marked with reverence, not paperwork, so the declaration was made in advance of the Jewish Sabbath, allowing the entire Jewish people to enter its rebirth with dignity and joy.

The joy wasn’t shared. Within hours, neighboring Arab armies invaded the nascent state, launching a war to crush Jews in the shadow of the European Holocaust. That contempt hasn’t faded. It echoes today in the halls of foreign governments, NGOs, and the mouths of extremist politicians thousands of miles from the region.

To “commemorate” Israel’s 77th birthday, the United Nations hosted a session dedicated not to peace or coexistence—but to “the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.” One speaker after another vilified Israel, slandering its conduct in defending itself in a war it never wanted. Accusations of “racism,” “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” flowed freely—from China, South Africa, Guyana, and others eager to hijack human rights rhetoric for anti-Israel theater.

Not to be outdone, U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution to formally mark Israel’s independence as Nakba Day—”the catastrophe.” The language mirrored the UN’s smear campaign, ignoring context, facts, and Israel’s right to exist as a sovereign nation. The resolution outrageously called on Israel to accept seven million Arab descendants of refugees and internally displaced people—almost all of whom have never set foot in Israel—negating a fundamental right of statehood by erasing Israel’s right to control its own borders. It called for the United States to withhold all diplomatic and military support from Israel as it defends itself in the midst of a multi-front war, to facilitate a genocide of Jews.

As Israel marked its 75th year in 2023, Jewish civilians were massacred by genocidal jihadi Arab terror groups on the Sabbath and Simchat Torah, a holiday celebrating the Jewish Bible. Rockets, kidnappings, and slaughter were launched from Gaza, with terrorists using Palestinians as human shields and Jewish hostages as bargaining chips—while cheering voices thousands of miles away offered rhetorical cover.

Today’s political war against Israel is led by the unholy alliance of far-left ideologues and Islamist extremists. They’ve inherited the mantle of the Arab armies defeated in 1948—and continue their campaign, not for coexistence, but for the erasure of the Jewish homeland. This is a Global Intifada dressed in human rights language but aimed at ethnic cleansing. In 1948, the horde successfully removed all Jews from eastern Jerusalem, the “West Bank” and Gaza. They strive to finish the job.

For them, Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral Jewish homeland remains a “catastrophe,” and Israel’s Independence Day is a day for revolutionaries to perpetuate the war. Not just for the 30 countries which continue to refuse to recognize Israel—but for shrill voices in the U.S. Congress who speak as if the past 77 years never happened.

After Arab armies failed to destroy Israel in 1967, the Arab League produced its “Three No’s“: no peace with Israel; no negotiations with Israel; and no recognition of Israel. It has an underlying three principles which continue to drive Jew haters: Jews have too much; Jews enjoying fundamental human rights is a provocation; and Jewish joy is triggering.

The trifecta of Israel’s Independence Day is too rich for global antisemites to ignore.

Related articles:

The Toxicity of The Latest “Nakba” Resolution (May 2023)

The Disgraceful Promotion of Refugee-Washing ‘Nakba’ In The U.S. Congress (May 2022)

Does the UN Only Grant Inalienable Rights to Palestinians? (May 2021)

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians” (December 2017)

The Original Nakba: The Division of “TransJordan” (August 2017)

School Boards Are the New Battleground: Why the New York Jewish Community Must Vote on May 20

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If you thought the fight for our values ended with Jamaal Bowman’s defeat in last year’s Congressional Democratic primary, think again. That victory—fueled by a coalition of Jewish voters, moderates, and outraged citizens—was just one front in a much larger war. The next battleground? Our local school boards.

Yes, school boards—those often-overlooked panels of elected volunteers who decide how to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, what our children are taught, and what values our public institutions promote. Voting to approve school budgets and new school boards will take around New York State on May 20. In Westchester County, two city school board races —in New Rochelle and White Plains—are shaping up to be ideological flashpoints, and the Jewish community cannot afford to sit them out.

Because what’s happening in these school districts mirrors the dynamics that led to Bowman’s rise—and fall. And unless we show up, the same extremist playbook will continue to take root, just under a different banner.

From Bowman to the Board: The Same Movement, New Target

In 2020, former public school principal Bowman’s ascent was cheered by radical groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as he defeated Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th Congressional District, one of several “progressive” victories. The DSA’s 2023 convention called on its members to build on those victories and get people elected not only in Congress but on local school boards.

The strategy was simple: infiltrate local systems—schools, unions, and boards—with activists trained not in pedagogy or finance, but in ideology. These organizations view school boards as soft targets: low-turnout races that are easy to win with grassroots organization, with enormous power over curriculum, staffing, budget and even political culture.

Nowhere is this strategy more visible than in the New Rochelle school board election, where Dr. Rosa Rivera-McCutchen is aligned with the same progressive, anti-Israel networks like WESPAC that propelled Bowman into Congress. Rivera-McCutchen has been outspoken in her support of “radical care” models, a euphemism for politicized curricula that blur the line between education and activism. Her book on “Radical Care” has a foreword by Bowman and he has endorsed her in the race, which should alarm every Jewish and moderate voter.

Remember: Bowman didn’t fall because his opponents suddenly outspent him, despite what radical socialists scream. He fell because our community turned out. In Westchester, especially in places like New Rochelle, Scarsdale, and White Plains, Jewish voters made the difference. And we must do it again on May 20.

The Stakes in New Rochelle

New Rochelle’s school district is large—9,700 students and over $360 million in spending—and politically volatile. While minority student outcomes have improved, the district is on shaky fiscal ground, and ideological activism is increasingly overt.

Two candidates—Elana Jacob and Jessica Klein—are running to restore balance. Both are active members of the Jewish community and parents. Both are running because they believe in education, not indoctrination. They are not interested in scoring political points—they’re interested in ensuring that students can read, write, think critically, and treat others with respect.

They are up against a well-organized, highly motivated bloc that views school boards as the next front in a larger ideological war. If we don’t match that energy, we lose the ground we worked so hard to win when we sent Bowman packing.

What’s Going On in White Plains?

White Plains is not immune. There, a two-seat school board race has drawn four candidates—two incumbents and two challengers. Sheryl Brady and Charlie Norris have each served for over 15 years. They are status quo guardians who toe the superintendent’s line, not particularly concerned about antisemitism indoctrination in the district, favor “age-appropriate” instruction on gender identity to even the youngest students in kindergarten, and are giddy about the city’s capital program that has professional-grade football fields. Their governance has led to skyrocketing costs—over $40,000 per student, among the highest in the state—while academic outcomes for minority students, especially Black and Hispanic students, have remained poor. That astronomical cost is funded 78% with local taxes, also a high in the state where the normal local tax burden for public schools is around 50%.

Enter Julia Oliva, a new candidate who is running on a platform of fiscal discipline, academic excellence, and common sense. She has a child in the public elementary school and believes in redirecting funds from flashy capital projects toward things that actually benefit students: vocational training, classroom instruction, and teacher development.

While it is unclear how she will do in a board setting, Oliva deserves our support. She would bring a fresh, needed voice to a board that desperately needs one.

The fourth candidate, Dr. Mohammed S Chowdhury, has no children in the school, is unfamiliar about the weak performance of minority students and the enormous budget, and not a serious invested candidate.

The Broader Trend: Silence Is Not Neutrality

Some in our community may ask, “Why get involved in school board politics?” Here’s why:

  1. School boards set the tone for everything: what’s taught, how it’s taught, and whether bias—subtle or overt—is allowed to fester. They help set the budget for the public schools and influence whether charter schools or transportation for students at private schools will get funded.
  2. These elections are winnable. Most school board races are decided by just a few hundred votes. In districts like New Rochelle and White Plains, the Jewish vote is not only significant—it is decisive.
  3. The opposition is not sleeping. Progressive networks have identified these races as key footholds. They are training, funding, and running candidates who align with their views. If we stay home, we hand them the keys.

Remember: the same activist energy that got Bowman elected now animates many of these local candidates. They may not use his name—but they are advancing his ideology.

What You Can Do

  • Vote on May 20. Put it in your calendar. Bring a friend. Tell your synagogue or community group. You do not need to have students in public school to vote. You pay taxes and fund the future.
  • Support Jacob and Klein in New Rochelle. Support Julia Oliva in White Plains.
  • Vote on the school budget: Reject the White Plains budget to lower the expenses by $3.4 million.
  • Prepare to run in 2026: There is an election every year, and all that is needed is 100 signatures from the district.
  • Speak up: Attend board meetings, write letters, post on social media. White Plains Superintendent is Dr. Joseph Ricca (Josephricca@wpcsd.k12.ny.us 914-422-2019)
  • Volunteer: Local races are won with word-of-mouth and turning out.

These are low-turnout races. Your vote isn’t one in a million—it might be the one that tips the balance.

Final Word: This Is Where the Fight Is Now

We can’t let down our guard. The battle against Bowman was just the beginning. The activists who filled his rallies are now aiming for school board seats. And they are counting on your apathy.

Don’t give it to them.

Vote on May 20.

Stand up—for our children, our community, and our values.

RESOURCES

If you are out of town or unable to vote on May 20, you can pick up absentee ballots and drop them off before May 20.

White Plains Board of Education election information

New Rochelle Board of Education information

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School Board Elections Are Like Rotten Tomatoes Documentaries—Unanimously Approved Because No One Watches

School Board Case Studies: White Plains and New Rochelle

Anti-Israel Socialists Are Coming For Public Schools

Talking About Local School Boards In New York State

Ignoring Columbia’s – And The Education Industry’s – Systemic Antisemitism (July 2024)

CNN And NY Times Call Congressional Hearing On Antisemitism in Public Schools A Fake Issue Concocted By Republicans (May 2024)

Follow the Money: Democrats and the Education Industry (November 2020)

Qatar Buys Influence Everywhere In America

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Qatar has been buying its way into the heart of American power. Not metaphorically—literally. The small Gulf state has dumped billions of dollars into American universities, co-opted think tanks, and inserted itself into political circles on both sides of the aisle. It’s not just about soft power anymore. This is strategic infiltration.

According to Middle East Forum, Qatar pumped “$33.4 billion into businesses and real estate; $6.25 billion to universities; $72 million to lobbyists. Qatar purchases access to our corridors of power while simultaneously funding Hamas terrorists who seek our destruction. The pattern is clear: Qatar targets critical infrastructure, including our energy grid. It bankrolls academic departments that foment campus unrest, buys Manhattan skyscrapers, and infiltrates Silicon Valley. Its capital flows to Washington insiders who shape Middle East policy.”

And now, in the latest display of quiet power, Qatar gifted the President of the United States a brand-new plane.

This isn’t a gift. It’s a transaction. And we don’t know what was sold.

Experts Sound The Alarm

Jonathan Conricus, a former Israel Defense Forces spokesperson and now senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), has made it clear that Qatar is not neutral. He describes the Gulf emirate as an “active nefarious actor,” using its wealth to export ideological influence and to shield organizations like Hamas. He’s seen what this money funds—from underground terror tunnels in Gaza to misinformation and antisemitic narratives in the West.

Others, like Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute, argue Qatar is just playing defense—just a tiny monarchy with a population of 300,000 surrounded by giants like Saudi Arabia and Iran. But here’s the flaw: Qatar already hosts the largest U.S. military base in the Middle East, the Al Udeid Air Base, just outside Doha. With thousands of American troops stationed there, Qatar doesn’t need more protection. What it IS doing is leveraging that partnership as cover for its far-reaching agenda.

Buying The American Narrative And Minds Of The Youth

Qatar’s influence isn’t just in think tanks and campuses—it’s also in your living room.

In 2013, Qatar’s state media arm Al Jazeera bought Al Gore’s cable network, Current TV, for a staggering $500 million. The rebranded Al Jazeera America failed commercially, but its goal wasn’t ratings. It was presence in 40 million American households.

The acquisition gave Qatar the ability to market propaganda under the guise of serious journalism. It continues to do so under the AJ+ brand on social media, pushing anti-Israel, anti-Western, and often antisemitic narratives to audiences across the globe. It doesn’t aim to inform—it aims to manipulate.

The monarchy’s influence extends into elementary public schools.The Qatar Foundation provides materials for New York City’s “Arab Culture Arts” program which has a map of the Middle East with Israel removed. Tova Plaut, a New York City public school instructional coordinator for pre-K through fifth grade classrooms, said “It’s not just that we’re experiencing Jewish hate in NYC public schools, we’re actually experiencing Jewish erasure.”

A report by the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) uncovered extensive foreign influence and anti-Israel bias infiltrating as many as 8,000 K-12 classrooms, reaching one million students. Qatar is mentioned 48 times in the report.

Congressional Sleepwalking

Disgracefully, few members of Congress have called out Qatar for their support of Hamas and fueling antisemitism in American schools.

Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) did so in November 2023 noting “the influence of foreign governments on tax-exempt college campuses, [specifically] Qatari funding for Northwestern University. It is no coincidence that it now has a campus in the Gulf country and has become a pipeline for reporters for the Qatari state-owned media Al Jazeera and their youth-focused subsidiary, AJ+.”

Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), Vice Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said in May 2024, “It’s simple: if Qatar can’t pressure Hamas to make a deal with Israel, they must expel these terrorists so they can be brought to justice and punished for their horrific crimes against humanity.  If they won’t do either, then the United States should seriously examine whether Qatar still deserves the privileges of its status as a major non-NATO ally.”

Yet it’s taken the public gift of an airplane to President Trump to finally make everyone in Congress wake up to the evils of Qatari influence.

Conclusion: Start The Audit And Pressure Campaign

President Trump has no qualms bankrupting Iran’s oil business if it continues to pursue a nuclear weapons program. It is time to threaten the Qatari regime to reverse its nefarious connections to state sponsors of terrorism and vicious antisemitism, or face actions similar to those inflicted on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Congress should use the airplane gift as an opportunity to open a wide ranging probe into Qatari influence everywhere in the USA.

Related articles:

Banning Qatar’s Al Jazeera Is Only News Sometimes (December 2024)

Nexus of Terrorism Hypocrisy: UN, Qatar and Hamas (January 2021)

Al Jazeera (Qatar) Evicts Jews and Judaism from Jerusalem. Time to Return the Favor (October 2016)

An Easy Boycott: Al Jazeera (Qatar) (April 2015)

School Board Elections Are Like Rotten Tomatoes Documentaries—Unanimously Approved Because No One Watches

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If school board elections were Rotten Tomatoes scores, they’d be 97% Fresh—but only because nobody bothered to show up.

White Plains held its 2024 budget approval and school board elections and just over 2,100 voters cast a ballot in a city of more than 60,000 people. That’s less than 4% of the population deciding who controls a school budget north of $250 million. The budget got almost a 90% approval because only the devout show up to vote. You’d get more engagement trying to organize a bocce tournament in a thunderstorm.

This year, four candidates are competing for two open board seats, making the election a contested one – a rarity. Alas, fewer than twenty people showed up to hear them speak and two of them were the timekeepers. And what did the candidates talk about? Diversity, as if that’s a school board issue rather than a census reality. No discussion of education, student performance, budget allocation, or academic results. Just talking points straight out of a DEI seminar.

Candidates for White Plains School Board Debate in White Plains High School library, May 13, 2025

No one mentioned that Black and Hispanic students continue to underperform in math and science. No one asked why 14% of the city’s students—those in private schools—get zero dollars from the school budget. And not a peep about the fact that White Plains spends an eye-watering $40,000 per student, one of the highest per-student spends in the entire state.

Local taxpayers are footing 78% of the school bill. That’s not just high—it’s the highest in the state. The state average is 50%. If the board had its way with no one watching the shop, they’d probably approve one-on-one tutoring for every student and throw in a life coach just to round things out.

In a functioning democracy, school board elections should be about education policy, results, and fiscal responsibility. In White Plains – and most school boards – it’s a sleepy backroom handshake and a baked-in majority. The less people show up, the more the insiders run the show. And in 2025, they’re running it like it’s their own personal foundation.

Don’t believe me? The city is now adding a $33 million building to the sprawling high school as part of a $395 million 20-year capital plan, even though demographers predict that enrollment will stay flat for the next decade.

White Plains High School is adding a $33 million building to be a free vocational school for teenagers

It is no wonder that the school board panel discussion happened in the fantasy section of the high school library. Everyone in the room imagined that they were directors in a high school musical where education is irrelevant and money grows on trees. Maybe next year, the school board candidate debate should be held in a science lab so people can reorient the discussion towards student success.

Don’t get me wrong – I very much appreciate the volunteer work that the school board does. It’s essential. However, they have seemingly lost the focus on teaching students critical skills and have adopted an orientation that school is really drop-off child care so parents can go to work. The primary function – no, the mission – is to keep kids in elementary and middle school safe and happy. With few basic skills, the high school (read pre-vocational school), will prepare them for jobs in nursing and food services after they change out of their prom dresses.

Vote on May 20 in your local school board election and bring a friend. Trust me, there will be no lines.

Related articles:

School Board Case Studies: White Plains and New Rochelle

Talking About Local School Boards In New York State