Tag Archives: Hamas

They Rebranded The Jihad And Joined It

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Hamas called its October 7, 2023 war “Al-Aqsa Flood”. The name announced its ambition to ignite a religious war that would mobilize the Muslim world against Israel and ultimately destroy the Jewish state.

The attack began in southern Israel, far from Jerusalem. Hamas terrorists invaded Jewish communities, murdered families, raped and slaughtered young people at a music festival, and dragged 251 hostages into Gaza. Yet the operation was named for Al-Aqsa Mosque, on the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site.

Al Aqsa Mosque
Al Aqsa Mosque (photo: First One Through)

Jerusalem was the rallying cry. The destruction of Israel was the objective.

Hamas’s 1988 founding charter called for Israel’s destruction via jihad, invoked religious teachings about killing Jews, and envisioned an Islamic Palestine encompassing the entire land.

On October 7, Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif called on Muslims throughout the region to join the battle. He summoned armed organizations in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen and appealed to Arabs in Jerusalem, the Negev, the Galilee, and across Israel to rise up. Al-Aqsa, located on the site of the ancient Jewish Temples, provided the religious banner under which Hamas hoped to unite Muslims across national borders.

“Today, the people are bringing back the revolution and reviving the March of return.” [Arabs in Jerusalem and inside Israel, in the Negev, the Galilee and the Triangle area:] “set the earth on fire under the feet of the occupiers.” – Mohammed Deif on October 7, 2023

Hezbollah answered the following day, attacking Israel from Lebanon. The Houthis subsequently launched missiles and drones from Yemen and attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Iranian-backed militias joined the fighting from Iraq and Syria. Iran, which had spent decades arming and financing organizations dedicated to Israel’s destruction, eventually attacked Israel directly.

The war spread across the region, drawing in Iran’s network of armed allies. The broader Muslim uprising Hamas sought, however, never materialized. Egypt and Jordan maintained their peace treaties with Israel. Saudi Arabia stayed out of the fighting. Muslim-majority countries across Asia and Africa condemned Israel’s military campaign but kept their armies at home.

Most revealing was the response of Israeli Arabs, whom Deif had specifically called upon to rise against Israel, hoping they would further their war against the Jews they had started in May 2021.

Yet they overwhelmingly stayed out of the fighting. A December 2023 Israel Democracy Institute survey found that 56% agreed the October 7 attack did not reflect the values of Arab society, the Palestinian people, or Islam. Nearly two-thirds felt part of Israel and its problems, while 86.5% supported civilian volunteering during the war. [Note that the Israeli Arab response about feeling part of Israel varied by religion: Druze (80%), Christians (73%) and Muslims (62%)].

Israeli Muslims had access to Al-Aqsa. They could judge Hamas’s claims about the mosque against their own experience.

Israeli Muslim women descend from the Temple Mount (photo: First One Through)

While Hamas’s appeal for a mass Muslim uprising went largely unanswered, a very different movement was taking shape thousands of miles away.

On October 12, five days after the massacre, National Students for Justice in Palestine organized a “Day of Resistance” on American college campuses. Its organizing materials celebrated October 7 massacre as a historic victory for Palestinian resistance and called for the dismantling of Zionism.

“Long live October 7th” banner in New York City

The language spread through campuses, demonstrations, and activist networks. Some Western radicals celebrated the attack on Israeli civilians as resistance against colonialism. Hamas’s religious struggle acquired the vocabulary of progressive politics that had been promoted on campuses over the prior decade.

As the war continued, international attention increasingly centered on Israel’s military campaign, Palestinian civilian suffering, and smears of apartheid, colonialism, and genocide. Within activist narratives celebrating October 7, Hamas’s original declaration of a religious war and its eliminationist objectives disappeared behind the language of so-called “liberation.”

Hamas declared a jihad against the Jewish state but Israeli Arabs overwhelmingly declined the call. Yet Western radicals thousands of miles away celebrated the massacre as “liberation,” volunteering to become the political instruments of a jihad they mistook for social justice.

El Sayed’s Ad Is Designed To Be Antisemitic

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A political ad backing Abdul El-Sayed tells Michigan families that America’s support for Israel is part of the reason they cannot afford groceries. It turns Israel into the culprit for economic pain and casts Americans who support Israel as politicians bought by a foreign power, choosing Israel over their own neighbors. That is the old dual-loyalty smear dressed up as a grocery-price argument.

“Even though the rage of the people sometimes flares high against the eternal blood-sucker [Jew], it does not in the least prevent him from reappearing in a few years in the place he had hardly left and beginning the old life all over again. No persecution can deter him from his type of human exploitation, none can drive him away; after every persecution he is back again in a short time, and just the same as before.” – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

The ad comes from Rebellion PAC, founded by Cenk Uygur. It links U.S. aid to Israel and the war in Gaza to the cost of food, while accusing Republican Mike Rogers of putting Israeli interests ahead of Michigan families. The Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt condemned the ad as scapegoating Israel.

The figures expose the absurdity of the accusation. The United States spends an estimated $80 billion annually to maintain its military presence abroad. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Qatar, Italy and the United Kingdom together account for tens of billions of that cost. Israel receives $3.8 billion in regular annual military assistance – less than five percent of the $80 billion estimate. The ad singles out Israel while ignoring the vastly larger cost of America’s global military posture.

The Ukraine comparison is just as revealing. Since the wars began, the United States has provided roughly $127 billion in assistance to Ukraine, compared with $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel—about six times as much for Ukraine. The Russia-Ukraine war has caused an estimated 610,000 deaths, compared with roughly 77,000 in the Israel-Hamas war. That is about eight times as many deaths in Ukraine.

America’s own casualty record sharpens the contrast. More than 65,000 U.S. service members died in the recent direct wars: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War and the U.S.-Iran war. In the wars Ukraine and Israel are fighting against America’s adversaries, three American soldiers were killed in Jordan by an Iran-backed militia.

The ad offers no evidence that aid to Israel drives grocery prices. Instead, it directs public anger at Israel and at Americans who support its right to defend itself. It turns pro-Israel sentiment into an accusation of disloyalty: if you support Israel, you are supposedly taking food from American families.

Dana Nessel, a fellow Michigan Democrat – who has endorsed El-Sayed – has already warned her party to stop making Israel and AIPAC the villains in every political story.

Cenk Uygur’s PAC turns grocery prices into an indictment of Israel. His nephew, Hasan Piker, supplies the online megaphone. Zohran Mamdani and El-Sayed give this politics electoral respectability. The message running through it is profound Jew hatred: Jews who support Israel are foreign agents, their loyalty is suspect, and their political participation is a threat to ordinary Americans.

Hasan Piker (right) campaigning with Abdul El-Sayed

“Trade and all money business he considers his very own privilege, which he exploits ruthlessly. Financial business and trade have become altogether his monopoly.” – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

If this was all about money to foreign countries, if it was all about military spending, if it was all about people being killed, the ad would have mentioned Japan and Germany and Qatar and Ukraine. But it only mentioned one conflict, one country, and featured one government: Israel, and targeted its supporters.

Nessel has told them to stop. Jewish groups have told them to stop. Instead, they are doubling-down as elections approach.

Every Democrat who stays silent while Zionists are cast as the cause of Americans’ financial hardship helps make antisemitism acceptable. Voting for these candidates and promoting their backers accelerates the demonization of Jews.

The Gaza Death Toll Is Telling a Story Almost Nobody Is Reading

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Gaza’s daily reported fatalities plunged by more than 90% following the October 2025 ceasefire, falling from over 90 per day during intense fighting in July to roughly four during much of 2026. Meanwhile, adult men’s share of newly identified fatalities climbed from 42% to over 63%, although they represented just 24.4% of Gaza’s population. Hamas combatants likely accounted for a substantial portion of those deaths. These extraordinary shifts tell a story buried beneath three years of cumulative death toll headlines.

For three years, Gaza’s death toll has dominated headlines. The number rises, newspapers report the latest milestone, politicians condemn Israel, and the world is reminded of the mounting casualties.

Yet the underlying data tell a story that has received remarkably little attention.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health under the direction of Hamas publishes detailed fatality figures, reproduced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Those figures reveal dramatic changes in who was dying, how frequently deaths were being reported, and how the cumulative death toll was being assembled.

Together, they offer a very different perspective on the progression of Israel’s military campaign.

The Remarkable Shift Toward Adult Men

Before the war, children represented approximately 47% of Gaza’s population. Adult men ages 18–59 accounted for just 24.4%, adult women 23.9%, and the elderly 4.8%.

The composition of reported fatalities changed substantially as the war progressed.

Among deaths newly identified between April and October 2024, adult men accounted for 42%, children 34.4%, and adult women 14.1%. By July–October 2025, adult men’s share had risen to 59.5%, while children’s share had fallen to 25.1% and adult women’s share to just 9.9%.

Adult men were therefore accounting for nearly two and a half times their proportion of Gaza’s population, while women and children represented substantially smaller shares of fatalities than their respective population shares.

The pattern continued after the October 2025 ceasefire. Among 1,076 fatalities verified by the UN Human Rights Office through July 2026, 63.4% were men, 24.9% children and 11.7% women. The UN’s categories differ from the earlier Ministry of Health breakdown, but the disproportionate representation of men remains striking.

Hamas combatants are overwhelmingly adult men. The growing concentration of fatalities among this demographic is consistent with Israeli forces increasingly engaging combatants as they gained control of the battlefield and improved their ability to identify and target Hamas and other terrorist group’s positions.

A chart titled 'Who Was Dying in Gaza?' illustrating the demographics of fatalities in Gaza. The data highlights that adult men aged 18-59, who make up 24.4% of the population, accounted for 59.5% of fatalities between July and October 2025. It also compares the shares of fatalities among children, adult women, and the elderly, showing discrepancies relative to their population sizes.

From More Than 90 Deaths a Day to Fewer Than Five

The changes in the daily death toll are equally dramatic.

During the first eleven months of the war, Gaza reported an average of approximately 124 fatalities per day. Following the January 2025 ceasefire, the rate declined sharply before rising again when major military operations resumed in March.

During intense fighting in July 2025, the Ministry of Health reported more than 90 deaths per day. Following the October 2025 ceasefire, that figure collapsed. By September 16–23, 2026, just 24 fatalities were reported over seven days, an average of 3.4 per day. That represents a decline of more than 96% compared with the July 2025 reporting interval.

The numbers demonstrate how dramatically the intensity of military operations affected fatalities. They also reveal how misleading it can be to treat Gaza’s cumulative death toll as though it describes an unchanging level of violence.

Bar graph illustrating average daily reported deaths in Gaza from October 2023 to September 2026, highlighting a significant decline in fatalities after the October 2025 ceasefire.

The Death Toll Includes Deaths From Earlier Years

Another remarkable feature of Gaza’s reported death toll is how many fatalities are being added retrospectively.

Hamas’s Ministry of Health continues identifying bodies, reconciling records and approving deaths that occurred in earlier periods. Those deaths enter the cumulative total when they are registered, regardless of when or how they occurred. In several 2026 reporting periods, retrospective registrations accounted for the majority of additions to the published total.

Between September 16 and 23, for example, 24 fatalities were reported for the period while another 85 earlier deaths were added after their identification details were approved. Retrospective registrations therefore represented 78% of the combined increase.

That distinction is almost entirely lost when the media simply announces another increase in Gaza’s cumulative death toll.

Bar graph illustrating reported fatalities in Gaza during several periods in 2026. The graph shows percentages of recently reported fatalities and earlier deaths added retrospectively, highlighting that most fatalities are registrations of earlier deaths.

What the Numbers Say About Israel’s Campaign

The world has spent three years judging Israel’s military campaign largely through a steadily increasing cumulative death toll. Yet the underlying statistics reveal a campaign whose reported fatality patterns changed dramatically.

As Israeli forces gained control of the battlefield, adult men accounted for an increasingly disproportionate share of identified fatalities. Women and children represented progressively smaller shares, well below their proportions of Gaza’s population.

These patterns are consistent with a military increasingly able to distinguish and target Hamas combatants. They challenge the portrayal of a campaign conducted without regard for the distinction between fighters and civilians.

Meanwhile, the reported daily death rate has collapsed, and much of the recent growth in the cumulative total during selected periods has come from deaths registered long after they occurred.

The accusation of indiscriminate slaughter collapses when looking into the data. The numbers have been available. The story they tell has largely gone unread.

Sources: Gaza Ministry of Health fatality figures published by UN OCHA; Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2023 population estimates; UN Human Rights Office verified-fatality reporting. Demographic identification cohorts and UN-verified post-ceasefire deaths use different methodologies and should not be interpreted as directly comparable measures of battlefield fatalities.

The Countries Paying for Palestinian Children Aren’t Having Their Own

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For decades, the world has been told that Palestinians live under conditions of extraordinary deprivation. Yet before October 7, 2023, several important demographic and social indicators told a very different story.

In 2022, the West Bank and Gaza had a fertility rate of approximately 3.4 children per woman. Among countries with fertility rates above three, the Palestinian territories also reported relatively high life expectancy, low infant mortality and exceptionally high adult literacy.

Uniquely among its Arab peers. Only Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan (neither Arab) among high fertility countries, have quality of life statistics remotely close to Palestinian Arabs.

A colorful table ranking high-fertility countries by life expectancy in 2022, displaying columns for country name, fertility rate, infant mortality, life expectancy, adult literacy rate, and highlighting values with color coding.

Palestinian Arab adult literacy was 98%. Infant mortality was far below that of many other high-fertility populations. Reported life expectancy was in the mid-70s, although estimates vary by source.

These were meaningful achievements, particularly in a region marked by conflict, poverty and political instability. They reflected billions of dollars of investment in education, extensive public health and educational services.

These incredible quality of life statistics came principally from the charity of western countries. The United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, Norway, Ireland and other countries have provided extensive financial assistance to Palestinian Arabs, both directly and through international institutions such as UNRWA.

Yet these charitable countries face an entirely different demographic reality.

In 2022, fertility in Norway was approximately 1.4 children per woman. Ireland and Germany were around 1.5. Japan approximately 1.3, and the United States around 1.7. All were below the roughly 2.1 births per woman associated with long-term population replacement in low-mortality societies.

The Palestinian territories, meanwhile, averaged approximately 3.4.

So the countries financing Palestinian schools, hospitals and social services were experiencing declining birth rates and aging populations at home. And their taxpayers were helping support a population having roughly twice as many children per woman as their own societies.

And despite the western generosity and much better quality of life than surrounding Arabs, these same Palestinians decided to launch a genocidal war against Israel and destroy the world that Europeans and Americans financed.

A person in military attire holding a firearm while walking on a path surrounded by trees and buildings.
Member of Gazan terrorist group during massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023

The uncomfortable question for international donors is whether charity to a people who prioritize destroying their neighbor over building a society is logical. Or moral.

Norway, Ireland, Germany and Japan cannot purchase peace simply by financing another generation’s schools and hospitals.

A society’s children deserve more than the opportunity to survive infancy, learn to read and live long lives. They deserve leaders who will not gamble away those achievements in war, and an ideology that values coexistence with a Jewish State.

Related:

“Deformity in Palestinian Culture” Is A Permanent Feature (August 2023)

J Street’s Blindness to Hamas Is Moral Cowardice

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J Street calls itself “pro-Israel and pro-peace.” Apparently, that requires pretending Hamas has no agency nor role in the conflict.

In a Facebook post marking the anniversary of the Gaza ceasefire, J Street laments displaced Palestinians, continuing deaths, stalled reconstruction and the absence of a new Palestinian government. It then delivers its indictment:

“We cannot claim to stand for Israel’s future while looking away as its government denies Palestinians the possibility of one.”

A social media post from J Street discussing the ongoing struggles of Israelis and Palestinians, emphasizing unfulfilled hopes for peace and the plight of displaced families in Gaza.

Notice who is missing from this account of Gaza’s future: Hamas.

Hamas launched the October 7 massacre. Hamas continues to maintain an armed organization. Hamas has resisted surrendering its weapons and relinquishing military control. Yet in J Street’s telling, the obstacle to peace is Israel’s government.

Hamas becomes a passive spectator to its own war. Palestinians become people without political leadership or responsibility. Israel alone possesses agency, and therefore Israel alone receives blame.

J Street knows better. Its own policy analyses acknowledge Hamas’s continued armed presence and the necessity of disarmament. Yet when communicating with its Facebook audience, those inconvenient facts disappear.

J Street claims to be pro-Israel and pro-peace while treating Hamas as an innocent bystander and Israel as the sole villain. That is more than intellectual dishonesty. It is moral cowardice masquerading as moral clarity.

HISTORICAL ECHO

We have seen this in Jewish history before – those in leadership positions enabling the mob rather than confronting depravity.

In the wilderness, Aaron fashioned a Golden Calf rather than confront a crowd demanding an idol. Today, condemning Israel has become a new Golden Calf, an act of public devotion that substitutes fashionable outrage for moral judgment. J Street, which claims to speak for Jewish values and Israel’s future, should recognize the biblical warning. Instead, it leads and joins the worshippers, sacrificing moral clarity on the altar of popular approval.

A dramatic historical painting depicting a crowd worshipping a golden calf, with individuals in ancient attire engaging in fervent celebration. The scene includes a central figure presenting offerings to the calf, surrounded by onlookers expressing various emotions.

The New York Times Pretends Gazans Hope for Normal Life, Not Slaughtering Israelis

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Three days after the third anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 massacre, The New York Times devoted its dominant front-page photograph and two full inside pages to the “hopes” and aspirations of Gazans. There were weddings, swimming, barbershops, reopened businesses and families trying to rebuild their lives amid the rubble.

It was a touching portrait of ordinary dreams – at least for normal people in the western world. But what about the extraordinary support among Gazans for killing Israeli civilians that preceded the war?

In June 2022, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 73% of Gazans supported armed attacks inside Israel similar to those had been recently carried out. Fifteen months later, Hamas invaded Israel, slaughtered civilians, kidnapped families and celebrated the massacre. By March 2024, five months into the war and amid Gaza’s devastation, 71% of Gazans still considered Hamas’s decision to launch October 7 correct, according to the same polling organization.

Two-thirds of Gazans on average since 2001 have supported killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel according to PCPSR polls

These were majority attitudes, measured before the massacre and after its consequences became devastatingly clear.

Hamas is Gaza’s government, controlling the territory since 2007. It operated ministries, schools, police and security forces alongside its military apparatus. It is Gaza’s political life. Before October 7, PCPSR polling showed Hamas leading Fatah in hypothetical Palestinian parliamentary voting and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh defeating Mahmoud Abbas in a two-candidate presidential contest. Hamas continues to lead Fatah, which is why PA President Mahmoud Abbas continues to delay elections.

Yet the Times’ sprawling photographic treatment of Gaza’s aspirations ignored the genocidal ideology that permeates Gaza and helped produce October 7. The newspaper deliberately failed to show what Gazans truly hope for: dead Jews and the destruction of the Jewish State.

Imagine the same treatment of Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces. Three days after the anniversary of an RSF massacre, would the Times devote its front page and two inside pages to swimming, weddings and employment in communities governed by the militia, with little examination of the violence and political support behind it?

The Times showed readers Gazans dreaming of a swim. Its own society’s polling shows overwhelming support for killing Jewish civilians both before and after the October 7 massacre.

The Times has whitewashed the genocidal ideology of Gazans and portrayed them as victims of the jihadi war they launched. Doing so is not just anti-Israel, it is a promotion of radical Islam deployed against Jews.

Or perhaps worse – the Times is educating its readers that those who want to rape and kill Jews are very much like us.

From the Canyon of Heroes to the March of Jihad

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On April 16, 1962, New Yorkers lined Broadway to welcome Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, and Empress Farah. The ruler of a Muslim-majority American ally received a ticker-tape parade through Lower Manhattan’s Canyon of Heroes. A plaque embedded in the sidewalk still commemorates their visit.

A person walking by a stone inscription on the pavement that reads 'APRIL 16, 1962 REZA PAHLEVI, SHAH OF IRAN, AND EMPRESS FARAH.'
Marker on downtown Broadway sidewalk commemorating ticker tape parade for Shah of Iran and his wife (photo: First One Through)

Seventeen years later, the Islamic Revolution overthrew the Shah. Ayatollah Khomeini established a theocratic regime that called America the Great Satan, sought Israel’s destruction and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

America had welcomed a Muslim ally. The jihadists who seized power declared America their enemy.

Their war against the West did not remain in the Middle East. Iranian revolutionaries seized Americans in Tehran, while Sunni jihadists carried their violence to American soil. Just blocks from the Shah’s parade route, Islamist terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and destroyed its towers on September 11, 2001, murdering nearly 3,000 people.

Close-up of a memorial at the 9/11 Memorial Plaza, featuring the inscription 'FLIGHT 11' on a stone edge, overlooking a water feature with a deep void surrounded by a patterned wall.
World Trade Center memorial for those who died in the jihadi war on America on September 11, 2001 (photo: First One Through)

Different branches of radical Islam pursued their own visions of religious domination. ISIS declared a caliphate spanning national borders. Hamas, supported by Iran, sought an Islamist Palestine in place of Israel, massacring approximately 1,200 people and abducting 251 on October 7, 2023.

Three years later, masked demonstrators wearing green headbands marched along Lower Broadway displaying Hamas-associated symbols, with City Hall nearby and the rebuilt One World Trade Center rising behind them.

Two individuals holding a flag stand in the middle of a street surrounded by tall buildings, with a crowd in the background.
Young men with faces covered and Hamas headbands sporting jihadi flag, stand on Broadway before the World Trade Center to call for the continued war on Israel on the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023 jihadi massacre in Israel (photo: Gideon Askowitz)

Within a few blocks, the Canyon of Heroes had become the setting for three extraordinary encounters: Americans celebrating a Muslim ally, mourning the victims of Islamist terrorism and tolerating demonstrators displaying the symbols of a jihadi movement responsible for massacring Jews.

For decades, America has welcomed Muslims as allies, immigrants and citizens, embracing religious freedom and coexistence. At the same time, jihadist movements have declared their own war against the West, seeking religious and political domination. They carried that confrontation beyond the Middle East, taking American hostages, destroying American landmarks and massacring American allies.

The intersections of narrow streets in downtown Manhattan seemingly have compressed history into a web of toxins poisoned by Islamic radicals. Coexistence will only be permissible “under the wing of Islam,” as their “struggle” is perpetual and voracious.

“under the wing of Islam followers of all religions can coexist in security and safety where their lives, possessions and rights are concerned. In the absence of Islam, strife will be rife, oppression spreads, evil prevails and schisms and wars will break out.” – 1988 Hamas foundational charter

The West is in a defensive war against radical Islam. One can see the progression clearly on the streets of lower Broadway.

Democratic Politicians’ Different Declarations For Victims of Terrorism

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Three years after Hamas invaded Israel and slaughtered roughly 1,200 people, leading Democrats marked October 7 by remembering the murdered Israelis… but then immediately called out Palestinian Arabs who suffered in the war that they launched while condemning Israel.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) began appropriately. He described “Hamas terrorists intent on destroying Israel” who murdered, kidnapped and raped innocent civilians. Then he turned the anniversary toward Palestinians, calling civilian deaths and the devastation of Gaza “reprehensible,” demanding the “creation of an independent Palestinian state” and condemning Israeli settler violence.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) bemoaning Palestinian deaths, condemning Israeli violence and calling for an Palestinian State – on the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) similarly remembered Hamas’s “heinous terror attack,” the 1,200 murdered and the hostages. Then came the turn: “Three years into the brutality of the war in Gaza,” followed by demands to stop the bombing, deliver aid and secure Palestinian self-determination.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) devoted most of his statement to the massacre and hostages, but his conclusion expanded the October 7 commemoration to “the aid and well-being of the Palestinian people,” Gaza’s devastation, reconstruction and Palestinian statehood.

Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer

Apparently, commemorating a terrorist massacre now requires remembering the people who suffered when the country that was attacked went to war.

Well… only when it comes to the massacre of Jews.

Just four weeks ago, Markey commemorated the 25th anniversary of 9/11. He remembered the nearly 3,000 people murdered, the families in Massachusetts who lost loved ones, America’s resilience and the need to prevent another terrorist attack. He used the anniversary to demand better funding for the TSA.

Afghans and Iraqis never entered his statement.

Jeffries has followed the same convention. His 9/11 statement remembered the 2,977 people murdered by Al Qaeda and then extended the remembrance to first responders who became sick from exposure at Ground Zero. He noted that more FDNY responders had died from 9/11-related diseases than were killed in the attack itself.

Iraqis and Afghans never entered his statement.

Schumer went even further this September. In a lengthy address marking 25 years since 9/11, he remembered the dead, their families, sick first responders, people who developed cancer after working at Ground Zero, the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan and America’s resilience.

Iraqis and Afghans never entered his statement either.

And there were plenty of them to remember.

Brown University’s Costs of War project estimates that more than 940,000 people were killed directly in the major post-9/11 war zones, including more than 432,000 civilians. When indirect deaths from destroyed health systems, infrastructure, food insecurity and other consequences of war are included, Brown estimates 4.5 million to 4.7 million people died. More than 38 million people were displaced. Brown says the number wounded or made ill was higher still.

Yet nobody apparently told Jeffries, Markey or Schumer that a September 11 remembrance had to be balanced by those that Americans killed.

Because they knew that September 11 belongs to the people murdered on September 11. It belongs to the passengers who boarded airplanes that morning, the people who went to work in the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the families who never saw them again and the firefighters and police officers who ran toward burning buildings.

There are other days to debate Afghanistan, Iraq, American military policy and the enormous suffering those wars produced. But not the anniversary of the heinous jihadi terrorism.

These leading Democratic politicians know that. But they don’t care to apply the same decency when Jews are slaughtered and raped.

Jews slaughtered in their homes must share their anniversary with an accounting of their country’s subsequent conduct. The young people murdered at a music festival in Israel must make room for Gaza policy. The women sexually assaulted by Hamas terrorists must share the day with discussions of Palestinian statehood. The hostages dragged into Gaza become the introduction to a statement about Palestinian suffering.

These LEADING DEMOCRATS REVERSED THEIR BASIC HUMAN INSTINCT FOR COMPASSION in just a couple of weeks when the victims were Jews.

Why, when the victims are Jews, must the anniversary of their massacre become a day to remember everyone except just them?

ACTION ITEM

Contact Hakeem Jeffries (202) 225-5936 

Contact Chuck Schumer (202) 224-6542

Contact Ed Markey (617) 565-8519

Resilience Versus the Politics of Grievance

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Resilience is a word we use so casually that we sometimes forget what it actually means. It comes from the idea of springing back: absorbing a blow without allowing the blow to determine what comes next.

Israel received an extraordinary demonstration of it Wednesday morning.

Flydubai Flight FZ1073 was flying from Dubai to Tel Aviv carrying roughly 150 Israelis when something went terribly wrong in the cockpit. The plane plunged rapidly, eventually transmitted the international code for unlawful interference and diverted to Saudi Arabia. Israeli officials now say they are investigating the incident as an attempted terrorist attack. According to Israeli officials cited in press reports, a pilot was stabbed during the cockpit struggle, and passengers and crew helped overpower the attacker. Everyone aboard survived.

The investigation is continuing, and some details remain unsettled. But the response aboard the aircraft is striking. A plane full of people suddenly drops thousands of feet. There is violence in the cockpit. Passengers realize their lives may depend upon what happens in the next few minutes. People act and the attacker is subdued. The aircraft lands.

That is resilience in its most compressed form.

Inside the cockpit chaos: Passengers describe blood, screams on Flydubai flight

For a slower version, look at Kibbutz Be’eri.

On October 7, 2023 Be’eri suffered a horrific massacre at the hands of jihadists from Gaza. Nearly three years later, its residents are rebuilding houses, schools and community facilities and preparing for a broader return. Most of the community says it wants to return. The rebuilding effort describes its purpose in the simplest possible terms: returning home rather than allowing jihadi terror to decide whether the community continues to exist.

That is resilience too. Not forgetting or forgiving. Not pretending nothing happened nor escaping grief. Rebuilding anyway.

There is another way some societies and movements can process grievance, and it has almost the opposite dynamic.

A grievance can become something to preserve rather than overcome. Suffering becomes justification for retaliation. Retaliation produces a counterattack. The counterattack becomes a new grievance. That grievance then justifies another attack. Instead of absorbing catastrophe and trying to restore ordinary life, the political ideology continually replenishes itself from catastrophe.

There is a name for this process: grievance-fueled radicalization. Over the course of a century, it has become the mantra of Palestinian Arabs.

Palestinian Arabs mutilate Israelis in Ramallah and hold bloody hands aloft to cheering crowd at start of Second Intifada in October 2000

And it is impossible to understand Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad without understanding how powerfully this mechanism operates within their ideology.

Hamas’ foundational charter did not merely object to particular Israeli borders or governments. It presented Palestine as an Islamic waqf that could not be surrendered and described the struggle over the land in explicitly religious terms. It was a call to “cleanse” the land of Jews and “Crusaders.”

Palestinian Islamic Jihad is even less ambiguous. The U.S. State Department has described PIJ as committed to Israel’s destruction and the creation of an Islamic state throughout historic Palestine, including present-day Israel.

Hamas and PIJ bring back body of dead woman to cheering crowds in Gaza on October 7, 2023

The Palestinian jihadi movement built around grievance can interpret the consequences of its own violence as additional evidence for the grievance that justified the violence in the first place.

Hamas political bureau member Ghazi Hamad supplied an unusually stark example after October 7. He argued that Israel itself was responsible for the bloodshed, said Hamas would repeat October 7 again and again, and rejected the idea that Israel had a legitimate place on the land.

Consider the circularity. Israel’s existence is a grievance > Hamas attacks Israel is resistance > Israel response is a new grievance.

The cycle reproduces itself indefinitely because almost every possible outcome feeds it.

That is fundamentally the opposite of resilience.

Resilience does not require forgetting a grievance. Israelis certainly have not forgotten October 7, just as the people of Be’eri have not forgotten what happened in their homes. Resilience is the decision that suffering will not become the organizing principle of everything that follows.

The passengers on FZ1073 did not have the luxury of theorizing about any of this. Their aircraft was falling. They fought for control of it.

Be’eri has been doing essentially the same thing for three years, only much more slowly: taking back control of what comes next.

Israel has built resilience around what comes after catastrophe: survive, rebuild and move forward. Palestinian jihadist movements have built their cause around grievance that must be preserved, intensified and avenged. Coexistence becomes possible only when their stated mission to eliminate the Jewish state no longer governs the conflict.

At the UN, Borders Are Inviolable, Except Israel’s

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At the closing of the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, its president, Annalena Baerbock, offered a final defense of the international order.

At 10:15, she invoked Gaza and said “if borders can be changed by force, if sovereignty can be set aside when inconvenient, or upheld only when politics allows, then no Member State can sleep peacefully anymore.” She repeated Gaza alongside Ukraine as she closed her remarks at 17:00.

Israel is a UN member state. Gaza is not. Palestine is not. Yet the UN increasingly discusses this war as though those roles were reversed.

On October 7, 2023, Hamas, the government of Gaza alongside thousands of Gazans invaded Israel. Thousands of terrorists attacked communities and military installations, killed roughly 1,200 people and abducted 251 into Gaza.

Members of Hamas tear down fence and invade Israel on October 7, 2023

If Baerbock wanted an example of a member state’s border being violated by force, she had one.

Instead, the UN performs a remarkable double inversion. It starts the clock after October 7, making the war appear to begin with Israel’s campaign in Gaza. Then it treats Gaza as the territory whose sovereignty and borders are paramount, while the actual member state that was invaded becomes the accused.

Territorial integrity cannot be a foundational principle when Russia enters Ukraine and an inconvenient technicality when Gazans invade Israel. A rule whose application depends upon who is doing the invading is not a principle. It is politics dressed up as international law.

The organization created to protect member states has demonstrated that when Israel, a member state, is invaded and its civilians raped, slaughtered and kidnapped, by some evil orchestration and institutional design, the terrorist enclave from which the attack emerged can be turned into the aggrieved party.

The UN has not merely failed its own basic test. It has exposed the fine print in its supposedly universal principles: borders are inviolable, sovereignty is sacred, and member states must be protected – unless the member state is Israel.

Hamas terrorist in Israeli kibbutz on October 7, 2023