The latest United Nations conference on “social justice” met in Qatar – that same Qatar that supports the antisemitic genocidal terrorists of Hamas and instills their narrative into the United States and the world.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed pretended to reach for the moral high ground, invoking the Copenhagen Declaration and the Doha Development Agenda as the guiding stars of global fairness. She spoke of social justice, inclusion, development, and the duty to “leave no one behind.” And then, inevitably, she cited Gaza – and only Gaza – not as a lesson in hypocrisy, but as a tragedy of war that, in her telling, derailed those noble promises.
But the fact is that Gaza did not collapse because the UN’s social programs failed to reach it or from war. Gaza was the UN’s social program. For decades, the UN built and funded the schools, administered the food aid, managed the clinics, and drafted the talking points. Generations were raised under their flag of humanitarian idealism. Yet what was taught was not coexistence, tolerance, or equality. It was grievance, entitlement, and the dream of a land without Israel.
If Copenhagen promised inclusion, Gaza delivered indoctrination. If Doha promised shared prosperity, Gaza institutionalized dependency. The UN’s own agencies became the state’s scaffolding—without the accountability of a state or the moral compass of true social justice. There was never any “leaving no one behind”; there was only teaching millions that history owed them everything and responsibility was optional.
The United Nations Deputy Secretary-General mourns Gaza as proof that war has undone the UN’s human-development vision. Alas, Gaza is proof that the vision itself was hollow, or at least deeply corrupted when it came to the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). The declarations were printed on fine paper, but the values were never applied where it mattered most. No education for coexistence. No curriculum of compromise. No inclusion for those outside the narrative.
The Copenhagen and Doha declarations were supposed to represent the conscience of human values. In Gaza, they became the cover for a project that replaced human rights with perpetual resentment. That is not social justice. That is social decay, dressed up in UN language and called compassion.
In Lebanon and Syria, senior terror leaders keep disappearing. Israel’s intelligence services have shown that even far from home, their reach is absolute. Hezbollah commanders vanish without warning. Iranian coordinators meet “accidents” in Damascus. Israel’s eyes are everywhere — east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL / “West Bank”) and far beyond.
Inside Israel and the territories under its vigilance, that network of informants has kept the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) from unleashing the kind of barbarism seen under Hamas. The true security barrier is not made of concrete or wire — it is people: HUMINT, human intelligence, the whispers that prevent slaughter.
But Gaza became a black hole the moment Israel withdrew in 2005. Every soldier, every Jew, every Israeli presence was uprooted — and with them went the eyes and ears that had kept the region stable. Hamas seized power through blood, executing its rivals and every suspected collaborator. What followed since 2007 was not liberation but suffocation. Gaza became a fortress of fanaticism, sealed off and armed to the teeth.
Hamas interrogates suspected informants in 2014
The legal Israeli blockade was not enough. While Israel and Egypt controlled the borders, Hamas tunneled beneath them — smuggling Iranian rockets, explosives, and even the raw materials to build new weapons. Gaza transformed from a strip of land into a terrorist enclave. By 2023, it was not just armed — it was indoctrinated, radicalized, and ready for mass murder.
Israel will not make that mistake again.
Among the newly released SAP prisoners, there are almost certainly Israeli plants — men and women turned during interrogations or cultivated long before. They will slip back into Gaza’s shattered neighborhoods, listening, watching, feeding intelligence. Every conversation, every weapons cache, every hint of reorganization could be the thread that prevents the next October 7.
Hamas knows this. Its paranoia will turn inward. Accusations will fly, confessions will be forced, and public executions will become commonplace to the shouts of “Allahu Akhbar.” The group will again devour its own, because it cannot rule without fear.
Hamas executes suspected informants in front of crowd of children
Any new ruling authority that replaces Hamas will need to coordinate with Israel. There can be no “independent Gaza” left to rot in secrecy. Deradicalization cannot be trusted to glossy NGOs or “neutral” foreign agencies alone. It must be verified — by intelligence, by informants, by those who know the difference between reform and camouflage.
[As for the Arab propaganda outlets, none of the public executions are discussed on Qatari-owned Al Jazeera. It is busy selling Gaza and Hamas as peace-loving.]
The intelligence war has already begun. The question is not whether Israel has plants among the returnees — it is how many will live long enough to stop Gaza from sinking back into the darkness it dug for itself.
“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.
Trust is a curious thing. It can be so natural when it comes in small, unassuming packages. A neighbor offering a hand with the groceries. A stranger holding open a door. The innocent gaze of a child. These gestures, light as feathers, weigh more than they seem because they carry no hidden agenda.
Reading Sarah Tuttle-Singer on trust is like reading poetry. She writes with the hope that trust can bridge divides, that shared humanity can soothe ancient wounds. It’s tempting. It’s comforting. It makes us want to exhale and believe that the world really can turn softer, kinder, lighter.
But trust, in the realm of politics and war, is a word misused. Bus drivers and merchants may indeed know the art of coexistence, but their goodwill cannot stand against the fury of those consumed by hatred. History has shown this cruelly and clearly.
On October 7, Israel’s dreamers were shown what happens when trust meets rage. Peace-loving families along the Gaza envelope, who had spent years helping Gazans reach Israeli hospitals, were burned alive. Young people who came only for music and joy at the Nova festival were hunted, raped, and gunned down. Trust did not save them.
Leaders at war do not have the luxury of extending trust to enemies sworn to their destruction. Their duty is to protect their people, not to tell their adversaries where the defenses are weak or where to buy stronger weapons. In war, misplaced trust is not a virtue—it is a death sentence.
I like dreams. I enjoy Tuttle-Singer’s writings. But her kind of pre–October 7 dreaming feels like a dangerous nostalgia while Hamas still rules Gaza, while Israelis are still captives in tunnels, while so many Palestinian Arabs still celebrate the massacre and fantasize about taking over Israel itself.
Even more, I understand that I might have the luxury of fantasy, but the people in charge of keeping people safe do not.
Dreams belong in the safety of bed, not while driving a highway. Trust has a time and a place. For now, in the waking hours of the Middle East, those in charge with ensuring survival must act with clarity with dollops of charity.
It is better to trust in wartime leaders who are wide awake to reality than to believe in poets dreaming on the frontlines.
As the war from Gaza continues to take its devastating toll on everyone involved, the road to peace remains blocked by a singular, stubborn obstacle: Hamas. The group’s leadership refuses to accept ceasefires not out of strength, but from the conviction that they can endure, rearm, and fight again. The violence will not end as long as Hamas is allowed to believe it has a future.
It is time for the international community – particularly Western democracies – to take an unambiguous stand. Hamas must be permanently banned—not just its military wing, but its entire structure. There can be no meaningful peace, no rebuilding of Gaza, and no credible peaceful future while Hamas continues to hold power and wield influence.
Despite the mounting civilian cost, Hamas has shown no intention of disarming. The group openly positions itself as a perpetual “resistance force” rather than a governing body accountable to and respecting the people of Gaza. Its survival strategy is predicated on suffering—banking on civilian casualties to inflame global opinion while preserving its own arsenal in tunnels and bunkers. This is not governance. This is terrorism dressed in political clothing.
Hamas official boasts of sacrificing his own civilian population to slaughter Jewish civilians, shortly after the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel (source: MEMRI)
Yet in Europe, the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization remains inconsistent. Some countries distinguish between its so-called “military” and “political” wings, an artificial and dangerous separation. This division gives cover to operatives, fundraising networks, and propaganda arms that prolong the conflict and contribute to ongoing suffering.
Now, there is growing concern in the United Kingdom, where a legal effort is underway to challenge Hamas’s terrorist designation. This must not be allowed to succeed. On the contrary, the UK should lead Europe in reaffirming that Hamas is a terrorist entity in its entirety. Such a stance must be echoed by Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the EU. It must happen in Canada and Australia and throughout the Global North.
UK lawyers are fighting to get Hamas removed from the list of terrorist groups
Riverway Law submitted a 106-page filing in the UK which argued that Hamas is a local “resistance movement… which has won the only free and fair election in the occupied Palestinian territories” and it “poses no threat to the UK people.” The submission argued that “the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and alien domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, is moral [and] legitimate.”
Lost in this filing is that the legal definition of terrorism is about targeting civilians for political aims. That is the core mission of Hamas. Its stated purpose and actions on, before and after October 7, 2023 is to attack Jewish civilians inside Israel and around the world.
To wit, in April 2022, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who would later spearhead the October 2023 massacre in Israel said “Whoever makes the decision to repeat this desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be making a decision to desecrate thousands of synagogues and Jewish temples all over the world,” explicitly saying that actions done by the Israeli government would be reason to take actions against Jews around the world, including in the UK.
The invective is a grisly echo of the 1988 foundational Hamas Charter which explicitly cites the antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elder of Zion about the supposed vile nature of Jews everywhere. It claims that Jews conspire to control the world and “Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should… fight with the warmongering Jews (Article 32).” The Hamas charter uses the word “world” twenty-five times. “Globe” is used twice. “Jew” – not “Zionist” – is used twelve times, including stating “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people, (Article 28)” targeting Jews everywhere and the religion itself as a permanent offense to 1.9 billion Muslims.
It was with this antisemitic genocidal charter that Palestinians voted Hamas to the majority of parliament in 2006. That this vile party won elections – like the Nazi party in Germany – is not a defense of its legitimacy but a condemnation of the “deformity in Palestinian culture,” to quote James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute comment at the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023.
Banning Hamas is not only a matter of principle, but of practical necessity. No group that openly glorifies violence and opposes basic coexistence can have any legitimate role in governance.
Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau said in an October 24, 2023 show on LBC TV (Lebanon) that Hamas is prepared to repeat the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation time and again until Israel is annihilated. (source: MEMRI)
A political party that glorifies the death of its own population with public declarations “we are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs,” shows no value for the lives of its own civilians, let alone of others. The Global North must lead with moral clarity and urge the Arab League to follow suit.
When people on the streets and campuses in the Global North yell “Free Palestine,” they are doing so under the banner of Hamas in a call to eradicate the only Jewish State and to attack Jews globally. If people want to make the argument that the statement is for coexistence, then fight to end Hamas, argue for a Free Israel and to Create Palestine, and condemn the heinous attacks on Jews happening all over the world.
To end this war, we must end Hamas. Ban them—politically, financially, and globally. Only then can people talk about “the day after,” and the longer future.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres is first and foremost a politician, not a human being. What else can be the reasons behind his ignoring the slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel, burning entire towns, raping women and kidnapping 250 people, other than serving his constituents of the Global South whom he has learned are rabid antisemites?
When a radical socialist-jihadi gunned down two young Israeli diplomats outside a Jewish event in Washington, D.C. in May 2025, Guterres immediately issued a statement condemning the murders. It was something he did not do after the massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023. Or October 8. Or October 9. Or October 10.
But he rose to the occasion in May 2025 after the targeted killing of the Israeli couple by a lunatic yelling “Free, free Palestine,” as if he were surrounded by fantom college campus agitators. Perhaps anticipating blowback from the anti-Israel horde he leads (read serves), Guterres explained this statement “reiterat[ing] his consistent condemnation of attacks against diplomatic officials.”
THIS particular antisemitic murderer should be “brought to justice” because he killed diplomats, a Bozo no-no. In this circumstance, the UN “extends sympathies to the Government of Israel,” because members of the sacred circle of high brow governmental officials were gunned down, not Jews having breakfast with their kids in their kitchens.
The thousands of butchered and injured people in Israel by over 3,000 Gazans in October 2023 were just Jews and therefore deserved no sympathy from the United Nations. Guterres could not offer any words of condemnation or consolation to the Jewish State for such barbarity; he has been so trained by the Global South. His office would not demand that thousands of Gazans “be brought to justice”; they are the UN’s protected wards.
When the head of the United Nations explained to the world that he decided to quickly condemn the murder of two Israelis when he ignored the butchering of 1,200, because of unity among diplomats, he further exposed the profound inhumanity of the cancerous global institution.
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?
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.
Anti-Zionism—the rejection of the legitimacy of a Jewish state in the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people—has existed since the dawn of modern Zionism. However, in 2025 it feels radically different from the 1975 United Nations incarnation. The rhetoric may sound similar, but the ideology, tactics, and alliances behind anti-Zionism have undergone a seismic shift. What once masqueraded as anti-colonial nationalism on the global stage has mutated into global terrorism fused with religious fanaticism. What was once a geopolitical power play of 6.4 billion people from the Global South has transformed into mob lynchings in the streets of Western capitals.
The 1975 Moment: Terrorism Wrapped in Nationalist Language
In 1975, while the United Nations was led by a former Nazi, Kurt Waldheim, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, equating Zionism with racism—a resolution so grotesque and politically motivated that it was ultimately revoked in 1991 through the efforts of the United States. But that year also saw another dangerous precedent set: UNGA Resolution 3376 which declared that the Palestinian people have an “inalienable right” to statehood AND “to return to their homes and property.” This declaration, unprecedented in international law, granted Palestinian Arabs a right that is not afforded to any other specific ethnic group—no such resolution exists affirming an “inalienable” right to statehood for the Kurds, Tibetans, Basques, or countless others seeking independence, and no refugees anywhere have a right to “return to homes.”
This special treatment of the Palestinian cause, even while terrorism was a central strategy of their campaign, reveals a deep double standard in international institutions. Groups like the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), whose operatives hijacked planes and massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, were welcomed at the UN with open arms. Their leaders were treated as statesmen rather than terrorists. The PLO’s largest faction, Fatah, founded by Yasser Arafat, waged a war not just on Israeli soldiers but on civilians worldwide—from airline terminals in Rome and Vienna to school buses and synagogues.
Yet, the PLO and other Palestinian factions successfully cloaked their violence in the language of anti-colonialism. They painted the Jewish State of Israel—a country with deep historical, religious, and legal claims to the land—as a European settler colony, despite the fact that Jews are indigenous to that specific land. In the bipolar Cold War world, the Palestinian cause was adopted by the Soviet bloc (which pretended it never had colonies despite the entire bloc being colonies) as a weapon against the West, and Israel became a convenient scapegoat for third-world grievances.
Today’s Anti-Zionism: From Nationalism to Jihad
The anti-Zionist movement in 2025 is no longer pretending to be about secular nationalism. Gone are the olive-drab uniforms and revolutionary manifestos of Arafat’s PLO. In their place are the colorful flags of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad—groups whose founding documents do not mention two states, borders, or peace but rather the annihilation of Israel, vile Jewish conspiracy plots, subjugation of Jews and the imposition of Islamic rule.
Palestinian Arabs wave Palestinian and Islamic terrorist group flags in front of the Dome of the Rock atop the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, following the last Friday prayers of Ramadan, on April 29, 2022. (Photo by Ahmad GHARABLI / AFP)
This is not political “resistance”—it is Islamic terrorism, pure and simple. Hamas, recognized as a terrorist organization by the US, EU, and much of the democratic world, deliberately targets civilians with rockets, suicide bombings, and, most recently, the atrocities of October 7, 2023. That day saw the cold-blooded murder of over 1,200 Israelis—men, women, children, and the elderly—in a coordinated attack that included rape, torture, and hostage-taking. It was not a liberation struggle but a heinous pogrom.
The shift from secular nationalism to radical Islamism has had profound consequences. Today’s anti-Zionist actors no longer make appeals to human rights, self-determination, or even statehood. Their aim is not a Palestinian state alongside Israel but a caliphate instead of it. Hamas’ charter explicitly rejects any peaceful resolution and defines the conflict in religious, not political, terms.
This ideological transformation aligns Palestinian terrorism with broader jihadist movements including al-Qaeda, ISIS and the Taliban. Their ideological DNA is strikingly similar: the use of violence as a religious duty, hatred of Jews as a theological imperative, and contempt for the liberal values of democracy, pluralism, and gender equality.
The Reverse Flow: From Global South to Global North
In 1975, anti-Zionism was projected from the Global South outward, as newly independent states sought to reshape the international order. Israel was falsely cast as a proxy of colonialism. But today, the direction has reversed. Anti-Zionism now festers not only in Middle Eastern regimes and terror groups, but in the heart of the West including Paris, Berlin, London, and New York City.
Anti-Israel protests in front of Columbia University in New York City
This shift is in part the result of demographic and ideological changes in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. Starting in 2010, the wave of uprisings which once promised liberal reform, instead ushered in chaos, civil war, and Islamist resurgence. Millions fled failed states and collapsing economies, many ending up in Europe and North America. While many migrants seek peace and prosperity in their new homes, a shrill cohort brought the radical ideologies of their home countries—including deep-seated antisemitism and hostility toward Israel.
The result is that anti-Zionist marches in Western cities increasingly showcase imported hatred. Protests ostensibly about Gaza often devolve into anti-Jewish rhetoric, violence, and the open glorification of terrorism. In some cases, demonstrators chant slogans borrowed directly from Hamas propaganda. Far too many on the political left—who once stood for secularism, women’s rights, and LGBTQ+ protections—have aligned themselves with Islamist movements that stand for the exact opposite.
Anti-Israel protestors in front of New York City exhibit about those murdered at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023
In 1975, college Marxists may have read the United Nations’ “Zionism is racism” resolution as simply a tool used by a group seeking national independence. In 2025, the kaffiyeh-clad protestors are shouting for an “intifada revolution” with the religious zeal of Hamas affinity groups. They have been baptized by the current conflict and converted to winner-take-all jihadists.
All Noisy on the Western Front
Palestinian terrorist groups cannot defeat the Israeli army on their own. To defeat Israel, local Arab leadership relies on two principal supporting actors: Islamist countries and groups on the military front, and stripping Israel’s defensive support from the west.
The Islamists countries of Iran and Turkey (both not Arab) and the jihadi groups of Hezbollah and the Houthis provide weaponry, training and funds to fight Israel militarily. Palestinian Arabs hoped for greater success in killing Jews, but appreciated those waging war on Israel.
Hamas continues to count on jihadists – old and new converts – in western cities to wage its bloody antisemitic war. Members of the Global South now residing in the Global North and their allies are an essential front to end support for the Jewish State. Actively removing defenses may appear to pass legal scrutiny by western laws compared to calling for violence, but the desired antisemitic goal is identical: the demise of half of global Jewry who live in their ancestral homeland.
Conclusion
Anti-Zionism in 2025 feels different than it did in 1975 because it IS different. Then, it was driven by secular radicals speaking the language of national liberation—even as they committed acts of terror. Today, it is led by Islamist extremists who openly seek genocide and global jihad. Then, it was framed as the Global South fighting colonialism. Today, it is the Global South bringing its biases into the heart of the Global North.
The “radical left” always carried the notion of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism but over the last fifty years, it has adopted new comrades and approaches. As the far-left is loathe to call out the antisemitic, anti-gay, anti-feminist zealot allies – lest they appear insensitive to different cultures – they have absorbed new philosophies. Such is the war of “by any means necessary,” a Jew-hunt which is becoming localized by the socialist-jihadi alliance.
Anti-Israel protestors march in the streets in front of Columbia University
The movie “All Quiet On The Western Front” was about the brutality of trench warfare in World War I, and the impact on soldiers’ mental and physical well-being. People use the phrase as an expression of things outwardly appearing normal and unchanging while huge terrifying tectonic shifts occur beneath the surface.
Whether a secular nationalist bursts into a synagogue shooting worshippers or a jihadi fanatic does so, makes little difference to the Jewish dead. However, progressives’ abandonment of their own fundamental tenets when it comes to Jews – and doing so proudly and publicly – is a five-bell alarm about crumbling democratic norms.
After a few months of not being able to conduct a poll of Arabs in Gaza and the “West Bank,” the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released its latest findings on May 6, 2025. As summarized by PCPSR, “favorability of the October 7 attack, the belief that Hamas will win the war, and support for Hamas continue to decline, but the overwhelming majority is opposed to Hamas disarmament and does not believe that release of the hostages will bring an end to the war. Nonetheless, about half of Gazans support the anti-Hamas demonstrations and almost half want to leave the Gaza Strip if they could.”
Unpacking the May 2025 findings when the Hamas military is almost wiped out and the surviving members spend their time boobytrapping buildings and stealing food and aid from Gazans, Palestinians:
support the October 7 massacre;
do not want Hamas to disarm;
prefer the Hamas over Fatah
Figure 1 in the poll shows that support for the barbaric attack of October 7 has declined more in Gaza, from 71% in March 2024 to 37%, while support in the West Bank only declined from 71% to 59% over the same time. As of May 2025, half of all Palestinian Arabs still believe that the attack was “correct”, down from three-quarters right after the massacre.
The pollsters speculate that “most of the public continue to believe the attack and the following war have placed the Palestinian issue at the center of global attention. Unlike previous polls, today’s findings show that the majority of the public does not believe Hamas will win the current war. Still, a plurality of the public believes that Hamas will continue to control the Gaza Strip after the war.”
Despite virtually the entire command structure of Hamas being killed, 57% of Palestinian Arabs are satisfied with Hamas’s performance, with 67% believing as much in the West Bank, a much higher figure than the 39% in Gaza. For those who believe that Gazans are reluctant to express negative opinions about Hamas because of threats from the ruling party in Gaza, the high figure from the West Bank where Hamas holds no power tells a different story. Palestinians like Hamas.
Further, “when asked whether it supports or opposes the disarmament of Hamas in the Gaza Strip in order to stop the war on the Gaza Strip, an overwhelming majority (85% in the West Bank and 64% in the Gaza Strip) said it is opposed to that; only 18% support it.” Palestinian Arabs would rather fight until the last bullet, rather than end the war with a surrender.
Overall, the opinion of Gazans about Hamas has barely changed from before the war until today. In September 2023, Gazans supported Hamas over Fatah by 38% to 25%, compared to 37% to 25% in May 2025. West Bank Arabs have generally become more supportive of Hamas since 20 months ago, but the favorability has been declining, as shown in Figure 13 of the May poll. Third parties are becoming a bigger factor in Gaza.
Overall, “40% (compared to 43% seven months ago) believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today while 19% (compared to 19% seven months ago) believe that Fatah led by president Abbas is the most deserving,” a two-to-one ratio, despite Hamas leading to the destruction of Gaza and becoming a shell organization.
While Gazan support for two states has remained relatively constant since before the war, West Bank support has increased from 30% in September 2023 to 45% today. Overall, 57% oppose a “two state solution.”
But the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) still think the best way to GET Israel to end the “occupation” is via war, albeit now less than half of the population (41%).
Some other notable findings in the poll:
“While the majority says it does not want to leave the Gaza Strip after the war ends, a large minority wants to do that. Similarly, about half of Gazans are willing to apply to Israel to help them emigrate to other countries via Israeli ports and airports”
Among “satisfaction with Arab/regional actors, the highest satisfaction rate went to Houthis in Yemen, as we found in our previous polls, today at 74% (84% in the West Bank and 61% in the Gaza Strip), followed by Qatar (45%), Hezbollah (43%), and Iran (31%).”
“Al Jazeera is the most watched TV station in Palestine”
Vast “majority (87%) said it [Hamas] did not commit such atrocities [on October 7], and only 9% said it did.”
What can account for these statistics? Nazi Germany ultimately surrendered after it was pummeled in the war, so why do the local Arabs still support the war and want Hamas to continue to fight on, much like the Houthis in Yemen where over 250,000 have died over the last decade of war?
An interesting question was added to this poll which may provide a clue. “A majority of 57% (70% in the West Bank and only 38% in the Gaza Strip) believes that the steadfastness of the residents of the Gaza Strip despite heavy human losses and massive destruction is due to their deep belief in God, fate and destiny while 25% (40% in the Gaza Strip and 15% in the West Bank) believe they have no other option, and 15% (22% in the Gaza Strip and 11% in the West Bank) believe it is due to their belief in their Palestinian national identity.” A majority of SAPs are holding on to the war because of religious conviction, not because of nationalist aspirations. It is a belief held more widely OUTSIDE of the Gaza Strip (70% to 15% in the West Bank) where people are not facing the consequences, then inside (38% to 40% in Gaza). It may also be that Gazans know better than West Bank Arabs that they committed vile sexual assaults and brutal torture of children and the elderly.
Such observation may add clarity as to why 9 out of 10 local Arabs do not believe Hamas committed the atrocities of October 7 despite the video and forensic evidence: because they believe that members of Hamas are deeply religious warriors. Perhaps the antidote would therefore be for the U.S. to pressure Qatar’s Al Jazeera to showcase the evidence.
The other takeaway from the poll is that Palestinian Arabs know that they cannot beat Israel militarily on their own. They need other actors joining the fighting (like the Houthis) and “global attention” to apply pressure on the small Jewish State.
While the world bemoans the destruction of Gaza, the local Arabs remain supportive of launching the war and for Hamas. Western empathy for radical jihadism may stop when the victims are no longer Jews, but at that point, it will be too late to stop the scourge.
ACTION ITEMS
Contact the White House to 1) get Qatar’s Al Jazeera to make clear that Hamas committed heinous crimes against humanity on October 7, including raping women and burning children alive; 2) insist that whichever entity assumes control of Gaza (if not Israel) must disarm Hamas; 3) facilitate Gazans leaving the strip to other countries; and 4) condemn the socialist-jihadi alliance attacking Israel and democratic values.
First One Through 