Tag Archives: Hamas

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?

The Hydra Can Die

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In Greek mythology, the Hydra was almost impossible to kill.

It had many heads. Cut one off and more grew in its place. Heracles eventually understood that killing the monster required more than endlessly chopping at whichever head was attacking him. Each severed neck had to be cauterized so it could not regenerate.

Heracles battling the Lernean Hydra

For nearly three years, Israel has been told that Hamas is a Hydra. Kill its leaders. Destroy its tunnels. Eliminate its fighters. It won’t matter. Hamas—or something worse—will simply grow back.

Queen Rania of Jordan articulated the underlying argument shortly after the October 7 massacre, that Israel’s actions against Hamas:

“create a new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent” – Queen Rania of Jordan

Retired U.S. Army Colonel Peter Mansoor was more explicit, predicting that “Hamas 2.0 will rise” from the destruction.

They identified a real danger. But regeneration is not immortality.

Hamas is more than leaders, tunnels, rockets and gunmen. It is a political and military organization built around an ideology. Destroy the organization while preserving everything capable of regenerating it and another head may indeed grow.

The question is whether everything capable of regenerating it must also be allowed to survive.

Nearly three years of Palestinian polling shows the problem.

As detailed recently in Palestinian Arabs Turn Inward, But Not Away From Hamas, Palestinian Arabs have dramatically lowered their expectations after three years of war. Support for Hamas and armed struggle has fallen sharply from the extraordinary levels recorded after October 7. But losing faith in Hamas’s ability to win is not the same thing as rejecting Hamas.

In the August 2026 PCPSR poll, 72% opposed Hamas disarming before a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Asked what Hamas would become if it gave up its weapons, 53% envisioned it remaining both armed and political and another 36% solely political. In all, 89% envisioned Hamas surviving in some form.

That is the Hydra problem.

And Hamas is only one head.

Hezbollah sits to Israel’s north. The Houthis attack from Yemen. Palestinian Islamic Jihad fights alongside Hamas. Above them, the Islamic Republic of Iran spent decades financing, arming and connecting organizations surrounding Israel.

October 7 exposed not simply a Hamas problem, but an ecosystem.

That is why eliminating Hamas militarily cannot be the entire definition of victory. As FirstOneThrough argued in From a Hamas Double Standard to the Hamas Dangerous Standard, an organization cannot maintain an independent army committed to destroying another state while simultaneously being normalized as an ordinary participant in democratic politics.

And military defeat addresses only part of what allows another head to grow.

FirstOneThrough addressed another part in The Only Way The Conflict Can End: the Palestinian claim to a so-called “right of return” into Israel itself.

A Palestinian state alongside Israel cannot simultaneously mean millions of Palestinians receive a state of their own while millions more retain a claim to move into Israel. That is 1.5 states for Arabs and 0.5 of a state for Jews.

American policy once said this plainly.

The 2004 Democratic Party platform called for Palestinian refugees to settle in a Palestinian state “rather than in Israel.” The 2008 platform repeated the position before the language was omitted in 2012.

President George W. Bush made the same commitment directly to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in April 2004 as Sharon prepared the Gaza disengagement. A realistic solution, Bush wrote, would involve establishing a Palestinian state and “the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.”

The principle was straightforward: Palestinian statehood was supposed to resolve Palestinian statelessness, not provide another mechanism for eliminating the Jewish State.

Defeating the Hydra therefore requires ending not only Hamas’s ability to wage war, but the expectation that Israel is temporary.

History offers another model.

Nazi Germany did not fight alone, and victory did not consist of killing Hitler while leaving the Axis intact. Germany and its allies were defeated or surrendered.

Then came political defeat. The Nazi military and political apparatus was dismantled. The Nazi Party was outlawed. Its leaders were prosecuted. Germany was not invited to preserve a rebranded Nazi Party so its supporters could recover through elections what they had lost through war.

The Axis was defeated as a system.

The same principle should define the defeat of Hamas.

Hamas cannot be permitted to lose its army, change clothes and emerge as an internationally accepted political party. Global institutions and governments should treat Hamas as one organization, dismantle its financing and international infrastructure, and isolate organizations that materially finance or facilitate its terrorism.

Prohibition is only half the answer.

Muslim governments, religious leaders and international institutions should strengthen Muslim movements committed to peaceful coexistence, religious equality and acceptance of Jewish sovereignty. Muslim-majority countries that have made peace with Israel already demonstrate that Islam and permanent war against Jewish sovereignty are not synonymous. Isolate the jihadis in the Jihadi-Israel Conflict and empower the moderate Arab and Muslim countries.

Make the institutions of coexistence stronger while making the institutions of violent supremacy militarily, financially and politically untenable.

The Hydra has many heads.

Hamas is a head. Hezbollah is a head. The Houthis are a head. The Islamic Republic supplies the Hydra with blood. The ideology gives it reason to regenerate.

The Hamas 2.0 warning should therefore be taken seriously—but not accepted as prophecy.

The Hydra is difficult to kill. It is not immortal.

It Is Time to Call It the Jihadi-Israel Conflict

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It was once called the Arab-Israeli Conflict.

The name made sense at Israel’s founding. Israel fought wars against the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and other Arab states. The conflict was understood principally as one between the Jewish State and the surrounding Arab world.

Then the map changed.

Egypt made peace with Israel in 1979. Jordan followed in 1994. During the horrific Second Intifada, the suicide bombings, shootings and other attacks were overwhelmingly part of a localized war involving Palestinian Arabs. The terminology narrowed accordingly. The Arab-Israeli Conflict increasingly became the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.

That description is now inadequate too as the map evolved again over the past several years.

The Abraham Accords fundamentally changed the regional picture. The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco normalized relations with Israel. Trade, tourism, investment and security cooperation followed. Other Muslim-majority countries have also maintained or developed relations with the Jewish State.

Yet at the same time, Israel has faced repeated war from Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and, increasingly directly, the Islamic Republic of Iran. These forces are separated by borders, ethnicity and even the Sunni-Shiite divide. What connects them is not Arab identity. It is a radical Islamist rejectionism that refuses to accept a sovereign Jewish state in the Middle East.

It is therefore time for the terminology to catch up. This is increasingly the Jihadi-Israel Conflict.

Ahlam Tamimi, who helped plan and transported the suicide bomber to the 2001 Sbarro restaurant bombing in Jerusalem and now lives in Jordan.

The term captures the venom, vitriol and violence of Hamas and the armed Islamist movements aligned against Israel. It encompasses Hezbollah and the Houthis and, most importantly, the Islamic Republic of Iran that has armed, financed and supported much of the network surrounding Israel.

It also leaves room to describe the roles of Qatar and Turkey, whose close relationships with Hamas and fierce political hostility toward Israel place them in a very different category from Muslim and Arab governments pursuing normalization.

Most importantly, the new terminology does something the old terminology cannot: it separates Muslims and Arabs who seek peace with Israel from radical Islamists committed to its destruction and the slaughter of Jews.

Hamas leader calling for slaughtering Jews as a religious Islamic principle

The dividing line has moved.

And that makes the choices facing Lebanon, Syria and Saudi Arabia especially important. They can move toward a Middle East built around trade and coexistence, or remain trapped in a conflict driven by radical Islamist movements that reject Jewish sovereignty, basic human rights and self-determination.

The conflict has become crystallized for what it likely always was: the Jihadi-Israel Conflict.

The Summer of 2021 and the Wars of Today

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Two events separated by three months in 2021 delivered the same message to Islamist movements confronting more powerful enemies:

Keep fighting. Keep waiting. Eventually the infidels leave.

The first came in Israel.

In May 2021, Hamas launched rockets toward Jerusalem and Israeli cities, casting itself as the defender of Al-Aqsa and Palestinian Arab families facing possible eviction in Sheikh Jarrah.

Eleven days later came a ceasefire and the Israelis never moved forward with the evictions.

Immediately after the fight, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research’s June 2021 poll described a “paradigm shift” toward Hamas and armed struggle. 77% of Palestinian Arabs believed Hamas had won, versus 1% who thought Israel had won. And 65% believed Hamas had achieved its declared objectives regarding Sheikh Jarrah and Al-Aqsa.

The perceived lesson was simple: Violence worked.

Then came Afghanistan a few months later.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban returned to Kabul, twenty years after the United States had removed it from power. The lesson for jihadist movements was not that they needed to defeat a stronger enemy. They needed to outlast it.

As described at the time in Gaza, The Terrorist Enclave, Hamas met with the Taliban and congratulated it for expelling Western forces from Afghanistan.

By June 2023, Palestinian confidence had moved beyond believing Hamas could win a confrontation. PCPSR asked Palestinian Arabs whether Israel, then celebrating its 75th anniversary, would survive to celebrate its 100th. 66% said no. Only 27% believed Israel would still exist. Another 51% believed Palestinian Arabs would eventually recover historic Palestine and return refugees to their former villages and cities.

Just four months later came October 7.

Nearly three years of war have weakened that opinion – in the near-term. As FirstOneThrough detailed in Palestinian Arabs Turn Inward, But Not Away From Hamas, support for armed struggle has fallen sharply and only 20% of Palestinian Arabs now believe Hamas won the Gaza war but 89% believe Hamas will continue to exist in some capacity.

Weakened but waiting. “Resistance” with resolve.

Which brings the argument from the Taliban and Hamas to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran is making the same wager on time. That it can outlast the United States and send it packing much as the Taliban did in Afghanistan.

But for the United States, Iran is not Afghanistan.

Iran has called America the “Great Satan” since 1979 and built a regional military network directed against American forces and allies. Iran has developed increasingly long-range ballistic missiles and pursued nuclear weapons capabilities that could threaten far beyond its borders.

Afghanistan did neither.

Iran also sits on the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s petroleum consumption passes. Disruption there reaches energy markets and economies around the world.

Afghanistan had no comparable leverage over the global economy.

America had no long-term goals of staying in Afghanistan. It was not going to keep thousands of troops and pour billions of dollars in a region thousands of miles from its shores to make sure girls went to school and women had equal rights.

But Iran is a real concern for the entire western world, both militarily and economically.

The current U.S. war has already achieved important aims by severely degrading Iran’s nuclear, missile and proxy capabilities. But degraded is not finished.

Iran does not need to reverse its losses today. It only needs to survive long enough for politics to change.

And two elections are approaching. Israelis vote on October 27 and Americans vote in November 3.

For Iran, Hamas and the broader jihadist world, those are more than elections. They are milestones testing the strategy of patience.

While the strategic logic for Israel and U.S. to continue the fight may be sound, their citizens may vote differently. And that is what the jihadists are waiting to observe.

Israel cannot leave Israel. America cannot simply walk away from an Iran threatening its forces and allies, pursuing nuclear and long-range missile capabilities, and holding a critical artery of the global economy at risk.

But jihadist strategy places a different bet: Can they wait until Israelis and Americans vote to stop fighting?

The summer of 2021 taught Islamists that they don’t have to win the wars against more powerful foes. Iran has ten more weeks to stall negotiations and wait for democracies to decide whether to pursue long-term strategic benefits or move on to more immediate matters.

Democracies have elections. Their enemies know it.

Will Israelis and Americans turn their elections into the jihadists’ exit strategy.

Israel By The Numbers

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Israel is discussed with hyperbole and adjectives: massive settlements, enormous American aid, rampant settler violence, Jewish encroachment, disproportionate war.

It’s a fiction. A ruse.

Skip the adjectives. Look at the numbers.

750,000 → 5.9 Million;
850,000 → 0
— Two Refugee Populations

Between 700,000 and 750,000 Palestinian Arabs became refugees when they fled the battlefield as they awaited fellow Muslim Arab armies to destroy the nascent Jewish State during the 1948-9 war. In the same era, roughly 850,000 Jews left or were expelled from Arab countries with many more leaving non-Arab Muslim countries like Iran and Afghanistan.

Even though the Jewish refugee population was larger, we never speak of it today.

Today, UNRWA registers 5.9 million Palestinian Arab refugees, predominantly consisting of descendants of the original refugees, and those who married or were adopted by refugees. The comparable number of registered Jewish refugees from Arab and Muslim countries and their descendants is zero.

The Jews were absorbed as citizens of Israel and other countries. Their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren were not perpetuated as refugees, they way Palestinian Arabs have been forced by those same “brotherly” Arab countries which went to war with Israel in 1948-9, in order to perpetuate the war they initiated and lost.

650 Times
— Arab League Territory to Israel

Israel covers roughly 22,000 square kilometers and the 22 members of the Arab League collectively cover roughly 13–14 million square kilometers.

The territory of the Arab League is approximately 650 times the size of Israel.

127 Times
— Muslims to Jews

There are roughly 2 billion Muslims in the world, twice the size of the entire populations of North, Central and South America.

There are roughly 15.8 million Jews.

That is approximately 127 Muslims for every Jew.

Muslims account for roughly one-quarter of humanity. Jews account for about 0.2%.

Yet people in the West refer to Muslims as a “minority.”

60 to 1
— Muslims to Jews Ascending the Temple Mount

Before COVID, roughly 1.8 million to 2 million Muslims visited the Temple Mount annually, compared with approximately 30,000 Jewish visits in 2019. That is roughly 60 Muslim visits for every Jewish visit.

The more recent figures of 2025 after the October 7 massacre launched by Gazans has roughly halved the visits by Muslims and doubled those by Jews, lowering the figure to about 15 times at Judaism’s holiest site.

57 to 1
— OIC States to the Jewish State

There are 57 countries in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation that perpetually lambasts Israel. There is one Jewish state.

The Jewish state exists alongside a Muslim world dozens of times larger in countries, population and territory.

25 to 1
— American Defense Spending Outside Israel

Israel receives about $3.8 billion annually under the U.S.-Israel security assistance agreement. For every dollar America spends annually on Israel’s defense, roughly $25 is spent on defense elsewhere—defending the United States, maintaining forces abroad, supporting allies and providing security assistance around the world.

Even more striking, there are over 220,000 military personnel stationed around the world, of which slightly over 100 are in Israel. The baseline ratio is over 1,500-to-1, rising to 2,200-to-1 when reserve personnel are included.

The anti-Israel discussion focuses solely on Israel while ignoring the enormous American monies and personnel in Japan, Qatar, Germany and elsewhere.

14 Times
— The Growth of Israel’s Arab Population

Approximately 156,000 Arabs lived in Israel in 1948 when the modern Jewish State was reestablished. Today, approximately 2.16 million Arabs live in Israel.

Israel’s Arab population has grown almost 14-fold since the establishment of the Jewish state. Meanwhile, the number of Jews inside Israel hasn’t even grown 12-times in that same time.

And people accuse Israel of “ethnic-cleansing.”

12 Times
— Israeli Arabs Killed by Israeli Arabs
Versus West Bank Arabs Killed by West Bank Jews

Thus far in 2026, Arab Israelis are murdered by other Arab Israelis at roughly 12 times the number of Palestinian Arabs killed by West Bank Jewish civilians in Judea and Samaria.

Hundreds of Arab Israelis have been murdered amid the organized-crime epidemic inside Israel over the last few years. Yet the international narrative solely focuses on settler violence.

10 to 1
— Muslim Gates to the Jewish Entrance

Muslims have access to the Jewish Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem through ten gates. Jews and other non-Muslims enter through one: the Mughrabi Gate. There, Jews must pass through metal detectors and security clearance at only specified times of the day, even as Muslims ascend and descend at will through every other portal.

Muslim women descending from the Temple Mount through one of the many gates exclusively available for Muslims (photo: First One Through)

9
— Number of Times Hamas Charter Refers to Jews and Judaism

Hamas’s 1988 foundational charter is replete with antisemitic rhetoric. The opening lines begin with “Our struggle against the Jews…” and continues throughout its genocidal jihadist call to wipe out the Jewish people and Jewish State.

While the anti-Israel crowd pretends that the conflict is merely over land which can easily be compromised and carved up, they ignore the deep antisemitic ideology embedded in the Palestinian Arab culture.

8 Times
— U.S.’s Ukraine War Spending Versus Gaza War Spending

The United States has spent roughly eight times more in connection with the Ukraine war with Russia than the Gaza war against Israel.

America has made roughly $195 billion available for Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 invasion. American expenditures associated with Israel and the Gaza war are a fraction of that amount.

Yet it is spending associated with Israel that is routinely presented as uniquely extraordinary.

6 to 0
— UN Bodies for Palestinians Versus Israelis

The United Nations maintains six standing bodies, offices or mechanisms focused specifically on Palestinian Arabs and Israel’s treatment of said Arabs: UNRWA; the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People; the Division for Palestinian Rights; the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices; the Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories; and the Human Rights Council’s permanent Agenda Item 7.

There is no comparable UN agency, committee or permanent agenda item devoted to protecting Israelis from the conflict, nor is there any group in the entire world (think the Kurds) so over-represented at the global organization.

5
— Gaza Wars Since Hamas Took Control

Israel withdrew every Jewish civilian and military asset from Gaza in 2005. Hamas subsequently took control of Gaza in 2007. Since then, it has launched five major rounds of war with Israel: in 2008–09, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2023-.

Five wars in sixteen years.

2.5 to 1
— Israel Versus the Rest of the World at the UN

In 2024, the UN General Assembly adopted 18 resolutions focused on Israel. It adopted seven country-specific resolutions concerning the rest of the world combined.

That is roughly 2.5 to 1. One country received more than twice as many resolutions as every other country combined.

1 to 1
— An Equivalency of 15 Kilometers Which Matters for One But Not the Other

At its narrowest along the pre-1967 lines, Israel is roughly 15 kilometers wide. It is a stretch that continues along its major population centers.

After Ma’ale Adumim to Jerusalem’s east, the remaining West Bank corridor is also roughly 15 kilometers wide at a single narrow point where virtually no West Bank Arabs live.

15 kilometers versus 15 kilometers. Over a million Jews in the narrow stretch versus a few thousand Arabs.

Israel’s narrow waist is never described as dangerously vulnerable, while the West Bank neck is cast as making a two-state solution “impossible.”

1
— The Jewish State Whose Capital the World Challenges

There is only one country in the world whose national anthem is all about its capital.

Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, expresses the Jewish people’s ancient longing for Zion and Jerusalem.

The Knesset is there. The president is there. The prime minister is there. The Supreme Court is there. The government ministries are there.

Yet most countries still refuse to locate their embassies in Jerusalem or fully accept Israel’s designation of Jerusalem as its capital.

The numbers are there. Before accepting the narrative which is infused with anti-Israel bias, look at them.

Palestinian Arabs Turn Inward, But Not Away From Hamas

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Three years ago, Palestinian Arabs thought October 7 might change their future by changing Israel. Polls show how much that ambition has changed.

In December 2023, 72% of Palestinian Arabs said Hamas was correct to launch the October 7 attack. 70% believed Hamas would emerge victorious. 63% preferred armed struggle as the best way to achieve Palestinian goals.

Nearly three years of war produced something very different.

According to PCPSR’s August 2026 poll, only 20% now believe Hamas won the Gaza war. Hamas political support has fallen to 24%. Half of Palestinian Arabs say “armed resistance” (aka massacring Jewish civilians) failed to protect them or end the “Israeli occupation” and instead brought destruction. Among Gazans, 65% say so.

Support for armed struggle has fallen from 63% to 27%. 44% now choose negotiations as the most effective strategy.

Their priorities have shifted with it.

Asked in the August 2026 poll what the next Palestinian legislature should address, Palestinian Arabs answered:

  • 19% — Unifying the West Bank and Gaza
  • 18% — Stopping the killing in Gaza
  • 15% — Improving the economy
  • 11% — Rebuilding Gaza
  • 10% — Confronting “settler terrorism”
  • 9% — Combating corruption

Settler violence ranks fifth.

That is a very different Palestinian Arab story from the one dominating international headlines. Palestinian Arabs put reunification, ending the Gaza fighting, economic recovery and rebuilding Gaza ahead of attacks from West Bank Jews.

While the ambitions of October 2023 were directed outward, towards ending the Jewish State, the priorities of August 2026 are directed inward, to unification, rebuilding and recovering.

And Hamas remains part of that project.

The Palestinian Authority wants candidates in the coming elections to accept the commitments of the Palestine Liberation Organization, including its agreements with Israel. 66% of Palestinian Arabs oppose that requirement. Only 27% support it.

Because Palestinian Arabs envision Hamas remaining part of their future.

Asked what Hamas would become if it gave up its weapons, 53% said it would remain both an armed resistance and political movement. Another 36% said it would become solely a political movement. That means 89% see Hamas continuing as a political movement in some form.

There is a historical lesson in what happens after a genocidal society launches a disastrous war and loses.

Postwar Germany did not rebuild by simply disarming the Nazi Party and inviting it to contest elections. The Nazi Party was abolished and banned. Its political structures were dismantled. Germany’s reconstruction required a break with the movement that had led it into catastrophe.

Palestinian Arabs are not making that equivalent break. While they increasingly recognize that Hamas’s war failed, they want Hamas to be part of the Palestinian future.

As the western media and United Nations narrows a focus on violence committed by Israeli Jews against Palestinian Arabs, those same Arabs are no longer focused on those Jews. Instead, the Arabs prioritize rebuilding after the disaster while maintaining the eliminationist ideology in their society for a future war.

Meet the M8: The Muslim Bloc Trump Built

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Eight Muslim countries issued a joint statement Sunday condemning Israel’s rejection of the latest roadmap for implementing President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. They are: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia.

They have no formal collective name. So call them the Muslim Eight — the M8.

Together, the M8 countries have roughly 817 million people and contain forty percent of the world’s Muslims. Indonesia and Pakistan alone are two of the world’s largest Muslim-majority countries.

The M8 was assembled by U.S. President Donald Trump with a specific purpose.

On September 23, 2025, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, Trump convened the leaders and senior officials of these eight Arab and Muslim countries. The goal was to end the Gaza War and build a day-after framework. Trump needed Muslim and Arab countries with street-cred in Gaza to make that happen, as well as a history of operating functioning governments.

Egypt controlled the critical border with Gaza and, together with Qatar, was central to negotiations with Hamas. Jordan brought its relationship with Israel, the Palestinian Authority and sensitive holy sites in Jerusalem. Saudi Arabia brought money, Arab leadership and the enormous prize of possible normalization with Israel. The UAE brought capital, administrative expertise and an existing relationship with Israel. Turkey brought regional power and channels to Hamas. Pakistan and Indonesia brought two enormous Muslim populations and legitimacy extending well beyond the Arab world.

Trump assembled M8 to be directed at the problem in Gaza. Help end the war. Get the hostages released. Stabilize the ceasefire. Keep Hamas from returning to power. Reconstruct Gaza. Support a new Palestinian administration. Reform the Palestinian Authority. Create a workable security structure.

Six days after Trump’s meeting, the M8 jointly welcomed his Gaza peace proposal and committed themselves to working with the United States and the parties to implement it.

When Hamas responded to Trump’s proposal in October, the M8 responded together. When disputes developed over Rafah, the M8 responded together. When Trump established his Board of Peace to oversee Gaza’s transition, all eight announced together that they would join.

Trump had created a Muslim steering committee for Gaza. But soon, the M8 discovered it could steer other things.

By December, it was collectively defending UNRWA, even as Trump’s postwar architecture was establishing new institutions to govern, finance and rebuild Gaza.

In March 2026, the M8 jointly condemned Israeli restrictions at Al-Aqsa Mosque/ the Jewish Temple Mount. Later that month, it issued another statement about Muslim and Christian access to Jerusalem’s holy sites.

In April, it jointly declared that the entire 144-dunam Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound was exclusively a Muslim place of worship and backed the Jordanian Waqf’s authority there.

The M8 began issuing collective positions on Israeli settlements, Israeli sovereignty measures, “settler violence” in Judea and Samaria.

None of that was why Trump assembled the M8.

The Board of Peace was created around a specific Gaza program: maintain the ceasefire, demilitarize Gaza, establish transitional Palestinian governance, rebuild the territory, reform Palestinian institutions and create conditions for a different future.

Yet the M8 now speaks on subjects well outside of Gaza with the institutional weight it acquired by becoming Trump’s chosen Arab-Muslim partner. A coalition created to solve Gaza has become a platform to pressure Israel over Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, UNRWA and Palestinian statehood.

Trump gave the M8 a mandate to help fix Gaza. The M8 is turning it into a mandate to lecture Israel.

The Religious Formula for Ethnic Cleansing Jews

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WAFA, the Palestinian Authority’s official media, has spent years describing Jews who enter the Temple Mount as “storming Al-Aqsa.” I have written about that linguistic sleight of hand before.

Now WAFA is promoting something more dangerous: that Jews have no right to enter Judaism’s holiest site without Muslim permission, and that Jewish worship there is an assault on Islamic sanctity.

In April 2026, WAFA reported a Palestinian statement declaring the site one that “belongs exclusively to Muslims, to which no one else has any right of entry without their consent.”

On August 13, WAFA carried an Arab League statement condemning Jews entering the site and performing religious rituals as a “blatant violation of the sanctity of the mosque.”

WAFA promoted several lies:

  • Muslims do not control entry. Israel controls security and access to the Temple Mount. The Jordanian-backed Waqf administers Muslim religious affairs there. Presenting Muslim consent as a prerequisite for Jewish entry is totally false.
  • The compound does not “belong exclusively to Muslims.” That is a religious and political claim masquerading as settled fact about the Temple Mount—the holiest site in Judaism.
  • Jewish presence does not inherently violate Islamic sanctity. Islam does not have a general rule that a Jew entering Muslim sacred space desecrates it. Restrictions on Jewish prayer under the status quo are one issue; declaring Jewish worship itself an assault on Islam is another.

Then comes another sleight of hand.

Having defined Jewish presence as an offense against Islam, these organizations pivot to demanding action by the international community on behalf of Palestinians.

But those categories – Muslims and Palestinian Arabs – are not interchangeable.

Some 1.85 million Muslims live in Israel, nearly one-fifth of the country’s population. And the Muslim religious administration of the Temple Mount is handled by the Jordanian-backed Waqf. Palestinian Arabs do not exercise control over entry to the site, nor do they represent all Muslims in the region.

So why transform an asserted Muslim religious grievance into a Palestinian national claim demanding international intervention?

Because the lies are the tell.

The argument is no longer about protecting Muslim worship. It takes an assertion of Muslim religious exclusivity, converts it into a Palestinian territorial right, and then asks the world to enforce that right against Israel and Jews.

The implications become darker when the same logic is applied beyond the Temple Mount. Hamas’s 1988 charter declared all of Palestine an Islamic waqf. Combine that doctrine with the claim being promoted around Al-Aqsa—that Jewish physical presence and worship offend Islamic sanctity—and expelling Jews can be transformed into protecting Muslim holy land.

“the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.” – Hamas Foundational Charter, Article 11

That is why the Arab League and WAFA’s language matters. By repeatedly publishing these false assertions, it helps turn a Palestinian territorial claim into a purported Islamic prohibition against Jewish presence.

And it begins at the most perverse possible location: Judaism’s holiest site.

The progression is stark:

  • Declare the Jewish holy site exclusively Muslim.
  • Deny Jews the right to enter without Muslim permission.
  • Call Jewish presence and worship a desecration of Islam.
  • Turn that religious claim into a Palestinian territorial right.
  • Ask the world to enforce it.

The Arab League and Palestinian Authority are building a religious and political case for removing Jews from their own holy land.

The Depravity of Antisemitic Socialism Has Become a Movement

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From his perch at The New York Times, Thomas Friedman wants to be “very clear” about Hamas. Instead, his formulation gets the moral order backwards.

“Hamas is a terrible organization,” he writes, “first and foremost for Palestinians.”

Hamas is not primarily a terrible organization. It is a terrorist organization whose foundational ideology targeted Israel and Jews.

Hamas said so itself. Its 1988 charter declares that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” Article 7 invokes a religious tradition about Muslims fighting and killing Jews. Article 13 rejects negotiated settlements: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad.”

October 7 was the depravity of those words turned into action. Hamas terrorists crossed into Israel, attacked civilian communities, murdered families and kidnapped hundreds of people. Terrorism was not an unfortunate byproduct of Hamas rule. It was the method of an organization whose charter had openly described its enemy and objective.

Nor was Hamas imposed upon Palestinian Arabs. In the 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, voters handed Hamas 56% of the seats in parliament — 74 of 132 — and control of the legislature.

October 7 did not sever that political connection. In December 2023, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that 72% of Palestinians believed Hamas’s decision to launch the October 7 attack was correct, including 57% in Gaza and 82% in the West Bank. Even in October 2025, 53% still called the decision correct.

That context makes Friedman’s criticism of Western Hamas apologists particularly revealing. He calls the “free pass” Hamas receives from some pro-Palestinian progressives “shameful.”

The issue runs much deeper than shame.

There is a straight line from a charter describing the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews, to terrorists carrying out a massacre in Israel, to people defending the decision to launch that attack. The depravity lies in the ideology, the terrorism committed in its name and the willingness to celebrate or excuse it afterward.

And that depravity has migrated into American politics. The Democratic Socialists of America and radical left-wing university professors describe Israel as a colonial project and Israelis as “colonialists,” a framework to erase the distinction between combatants and civilians and recast violence against Israeli Jews as “resistance.” This movement is no longer confined to demonstrations and campuses; DSA member Zohran Mamdani has ridden the democratic-socialist movement into the New York City mayoralty and is now helping other left-wing candidates like Mohamed El-Zayed in Michigan win office.

Friedman’s formulation reverses the danger. Hamas becomes “terrible” rather than terrorist. Palestinians become its primary victims rather than a population which supports Hamas. And those in the United States and elsewhere who give Hamas political cover are merely “shameful.”

That formulation grants absolution to terrorists and their knowing supporters.

The endorsement and celebration of mass violence against Jews — a tiny minority-minority — is becoming a motivating force in American politics. That should terrify Thomas Friedman. It should terrify every decent American.

Because when a movement can watch the mass murder of Jews and explain why their killers were engaged in “resistance,” the problem is no longer simply Hamas.

The depravity has become a movement.