Tag Archives: Hamas

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

An Election for a Failed State

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Palestinian Arabs are scheduled to vote on November 28 in their first legislative election in twenty years. International observers will naturally ask whether the election is free and fair. But there is a more fundamental question:

Will Palestinians actually be electing a government capable of governing?

The problem begins with the Palestine Liberation Organization.

The PLO was established in 1964, decades before there was a Palestinian Authority. In 1993, it was the PLO—not the Palestinian Authority—that entered the Oslo process with Israel. Those agreements established the framework for Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza and contemplated an elected Palestinian Council. The Palestinian Authority and the executive institutions emerged from that process as the interim governing apparatus.

The PLO is the institutional skeleton on which the Palestinian political system was built.

And that makes the coming election peculiar.

Electing People Who Reject the System

The August modification to the election law requires candidates to commit to recognition of the PLO as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, as well as its political and national program and relevant international resolutions.

Yet Palestinians overwhelmingly reject that requirement.

According to the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, two-thirds oppose requiring candidates to accept the PLO’s commitments, including its agreements with Israel. Only 27% support the requirement.

That is not an opinion related to dissatisfaction with Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah or the incumbent government. That is an outright rejection of the entire government structure and institutions. Palestinians want to elect the government while leaving unsettled whether the people elected to run it accept the foundations of the system they are entering.

It is a election whose foundation is anarchy.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas

If insufficient, the Arabs want to vote for terrorism.

Ballots Without Giving Up the Guns

Democratic government requires more than elections. Ultimately, the elected government must possess political authority and a monopoly on legitimate force. Yet Palestinian politics continues to blur the distinction between a political party and an armed organization.

Hamas is the clearest example.

The devastation of the Gaza war appears to have changed Palestinian calculations. Only 20% now say Hamas won the war, compared with 39% ten months earlier. Support for “armed struggle” (terrorism) as the most effective means of achieving Palestinian statehood has fallen from 41% to 27%, which was around two-thirds immediately after October 7, 2023. Meanwhile, support for negotiations has risen from 36% to 44%, its highest level in four years.

That all sounds encouraging. But look more closely at what changed.

Palestinians only moved toward negotiations as violence has proven devastating and unsuccessful. Yet even after that experience, 72% oppose Hamas disarming before Israel completely withdraws from Gaza. And 53% believe that even if Hamas gives up its weapons, it will remain both an armed resistance movement and a political movement. Only 36% expect it to become solely political. So 89% (basically everyone) thinks the group that most of the Global North has labeled a terrorist organization, will be part of the Palestinian government.

That holds true for the various Palestinian terrorist groups. A society established in which various militias will be free to operate their own foreign affairs and military engagements.

An Elected Government That May Not Govern

If not appalling enough, there is another revealing number.

If elections are held and a new Palestinian government is formed, only 28% of Palestinians say they would prefer that elected government to administer Gaza. Thirty-two percent prefer the separate National Committee, while 34% prefer neither.

Consider these three facts:

  • Palestinians are preparing to elect a legislature for a political system whose foundational commitments most do not want imposed on candidates.
  • They may elect factions that retain independent armed power outside the government’s control.
  • They do not want the resulting elected government to govern Gaza.

Combined, this is not merely an imperfect election in the shadow of war of a fledgling state.

It is a vote for anarchy with a veneer of cohesion.

Related:

Israel Is Surrounded by Failed States – and Failed States in Waiting (July 2026)

Before Palestinians Can Hold an Election, They Must Decide Who Is Palestinian (June 2026)

The Illiberal Global South’s War on the Liberal Global North

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From 9/11 to October 7

On September 11, 2001, jihadi terrorists turned passenger airplanes into missiles and murdered nearly 3,000 Americans.

Only three days later, while bodies were still being recovered, ANSWER—Act Now to Stop War and End Racism—was formed to protest what America might do in response.

The name was important.

ANSWER viewed American military power abroad and racism at home as pieces of the same system: a wealthy, largely Western “Global North” dominating the poorer, disproportionately black and brown “Global South.”

For this anti-Western group, America was not defending itself. It was exercising imperial power. Those fighting it could be engaged in “resistance.”

Seven months after 9/11, Israel was pulled into the same framework.

On April 20, 2002, ANSWER organized more than 100,000 people in Washington under “Free Palestine, No War on Iraq.”

The Iraq War had not even begun.

Later that year, Medea Benjamin, Jodie Evans and others founded CODEPINK to oppose the coming Iraq War. The organizations forming around it had a broader worldview: America and its allies represented imperialism, while their opponents represented oppressed peoples fighting back.

Israel became another perfect target.

It was democratic, prosperous, militarily powerful and allied with America. It therefore became part of the “Global North.”

Never mind that roughly half of Israeli Jews have roots in the Middle East and North Africa. Never mind that Israel’s citizens include Arabs, Druze and other minorities. The supposedly racial framework somehow classified this remarkably diverse Middle Eastern country as the white colonialist.

That classification did something important.

It determined who was allowed to fight back.

Palestinian Arab jihadi violence could be “resistance.” Israeli force became “aggression.” ANSWER could call itself an antiwar organization while defending Palestinian attacks because it wasn’t really applying a rule against war. It was applying different rules to different sides.

Then came October 7, 2023. Thousands of Gazan terrorists invaded Israel, murdered roughly 1,200 people and kidnapped more than 250.

Israelis were still recovering bodies when ANSWER was mobilizing for “Free Palestine.”

The parallel with September 11 was remarkable. America gets attacked. Focus immediately turns to restraining America. Israel gets attacked. Focus immediately turns to restraining Israel.

Twenty-two years separated the attacks, but the ideological framework had barely moved.

The liberal societies being condemned have been spectacularly successful. People from every race, religion and continent continue trying to move to the United States, Canada, Europe and other liberal democracies. Israel itself absorbed Jews fleeing Europe, the Soviet Union, Ethiopia and the Arab and Muslim worlds.

People vote with their feet. They generally flee toward societies with elections, property rights, women’s equality, education, religious freedom and economic opportunity—not away from them.

The divide is not really white versus brown or North versus South. It is between those who view successful liberal societies as achievements worth defending and those who view their success and power as evidence of oppression.

September 11 exposed that divide in America. October 7 exposed it again in Israel.

The anti-Global North’s victims of preference changed from Afghanistan to Iraq to Palestine. And the vocabulary remained: imperialism, colonialism, oppression and resistance.

And so did the fundamental question: When terrorists attack a successful liberal society, who has the right to resist whom?