President-elect Donald Trump issued a warning to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas to release the 101 hostages it stole from Israel on October 7, 2023, or “all hell will break out” for them and the region. He would not comment further on what that meant for Hamas or its allies but reiterated that it would be severe.
Below are some thoughts on what actions the Trump administration might take, which fall into two principal categories: military and non-military.
Military
Trump’s first term in office did not see much activity in the way of American forces and action. While he did increase spending for the military over the Obama administration, his actual use of force was targeted and limited to particular strikes, such as the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and missile strikes on Syria for using chemical weapons. It is possible that Trump would order targeted attacks on Hamas operatives as well.
The general argument against this is that Israel has already pulverized Hamas in Gaza and there is little else that the U.S. could do. That is not true.
The United States has several things that Israel doesn’t have: massive bombs; incremental intelligence; and global influence.
At various points of the Hamas-initiated war, the Biden administration withheld some armaments to Israel, fearing it would harm civilians. Those bombs and other tools of warfare could be used against Hamas and its allies. Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon and Iran’s nuclear program could be eviscerated with advanced weaponry, whether given to and launched by Israel or used by American forces directly.
U.S. intelligence and reach spans beyond the immediate actors. One of Hamas’s leaders, Khaled Mashal lives openly in Qatar, where the US has its largest military base in the Middle East. The Trump administration may give Qatar the option of green-lighting the elimination of Mashal and his associates or watch the US move its over 10,000-person force to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the administration advances the Abraham Accords with a normalization agreement between Israel and KSA.
Non-military
The United States power can bring the world to pressure Hamas through political, economic and judicial actions. This is the opposite approach of the Biden administration and the world which put pressure on Israel to the detriment of the hostages. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted as much that “every time we put pressure on Israel, Hamas backed off from the hostage deal.”
The initiatives start with a simple order: label every government, agency, business or person associated with Hamas a terrorist entity.
The Palestinian Authority‘s parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council, is led by Hamas. The PA would immediately become a designated terrorist group unless it fires every member of Hamas. All members of the PA would be subject to arrest and no organization would be permitted to send material support to the PA. Every US charity that sends money to the PA would lose tax-exempt status and/or be shut down.
The United Nations considers Hamas a legitimate political Palestinian party and its main agency in the region, UNRWA, closely coordinates with Hamas. UNRWA offices in the United States would be closed and the US would push allies to similarly halt funding to UNRWA and close its offices. UNRWA would not only lose all US funding and standing, but possibly the United Nations as well, if the organization continues to legitimize Hamas.
In addition to the “axis of resistance” of the Iranian proxies already on the terrorist list, Qatar and Turkey would be forced to chose between the United States and Hamas. Each would see its economies and regional aspirations quickly collapse should they side with terrorists. Ramifications could include not only moving all US assets out of Qatar to Saudi Arabia, but also supporting Israel and Cyprus to all energy claims in the Mediterranean Sea which Turkey covets.
In the United States, people who provide material support to not just Hamas, but the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA would be committing a criminal act. People would go to jail for up to 20 years or be deported. Entire groups, or perhaps just senior leadership of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, Students for Justice in Palestine and others could be impacted, depending on their level of support.
In April 2024, Congress enacted the Hamas and Other Palestinian Terrorist Groups International Financing Prevention Act which requires the executive branch to impose sanctions on foreign states or persons that provide certain types of support to Hamas, and other Palestinian terrorist groups. Trump’s version of “hell” for Hamas supporters will be to not only enforce the will of Congress but to expand its targets by capturing the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA as Hamas affiliates.
The sorry state of Columbia University’s treatment of Jews is apparent to all. The administration, teachers and student-led groups have participated in the harassment, intimidation and assault on Jews and Jewish life on campus before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre and very significantly thereafter.
It is now manifest that graduates of the school – including some Jews, remarkably – have bonded with Hamas and rationalized its barbarism and whitewashed its antisemitism.
Consider anti-Israel Jewish alum Anna Baltzer. According to her Wikipedia page, Baltzer has written a number of books, and it seems that Noam Chomsky is a fan of her 2014 book “Witness in Palestine,” which details “Palestinian resistance” against the existence of Jews in the land of Israel. On November 12, 2023, shortly after the Hamas-led massacre, she wrote on the socialist-jihadi site Common Dreams an opinion piece titled “Hamas Didn’t Attack Israelis Because They Are Jewish,” in which she attempted to argue that Hamas killed Israelis because Israeli Jews are White supremacist colonial invaders, not because of their religion.
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
“raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” (Article 3)
“Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
“Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” (Article 12)
“In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)
The Charter would go on to spin a bunch of Jew-hatred conspiracy theories lifted from the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has NOTHING to do with the conflict in the land.
“In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money” (Article 20)
“With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein…. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” (Article 22)
“The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” (Article 28)
“the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control.” (Article 30)
“The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… here is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one’s country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values… fight with the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)
So how does this Ivy League-educated anti-Israel Jew deal with these facts? She pointed to Hamas’s revised charter of 2017 which says in Article 16 “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”
The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli physical attacks is long.
Hamas and its leaders have long denigrated Jews, calling them “the brothers of apes and pigs,” and told their followers that “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” among many other insults.
The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli verbal attacks is long.
Surely Baltzer knows all of this. So why make an argument that is plainly untrue, and why do it to fellow Jews?
While not all Jews are pro-Israel (or eat kosher, live in Israel, celebrate Jewish holidays or a variety of things that are inherently Jewish), some – like Baltzer – are anti-Israel. They may hate some government policies, the entire government, or the entire state. They may actually not hate Israel but are eager to see local Arabs achieve a state of their own.
So how can people like Baltzer willfully ignore the deep Jew-hatred of Hamas? How and why do they try to convince fellow Jews that despite everything Hamas says and does, its radical views of Islam and jihad are somehow not toxic to Jews everywhere?
It’s a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome. In the case of Stockholm, an abused person develops a strong bond with their abuser and defends their actions in a strange twist of empathy. In this iteration, which I call the Columbia Syndrome, the root source is not purely from the ABUSER’S actions, but from the desire of someone to purge a part of their identity.
In an effort to rid oneself of a component of the Jewish collective – Israel in this case – a person bonds with someone who similarly attacks that element (Hamas, here). The fact that the abuser is not solely focused on that narrow element, or gives some soft talking points as cover to mask the general hatred in order to enlist people to the cause, is excused. The person suffering from Columbia Syndrome wants to expunge a core association so profoundly, that they will empathize with groups or people who despise them completely.
Columbia University did not originate this phenomenon and the phenomenon is not confined to anti-Israel Jews. People like Peter Beinart (Yale alum) have long been attempting to shield antisemites like Rep. Rashida Tlaib of charges of Jew-hatred. Brown University held a panel discussion about antisemitism which included Jews and non-Jews that echoed each other that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel, and to combat antisemitism one needed to be anti-Israel. Student groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow routinely link arms with those with extensive antisemitic credentials.
But Columbia stands above the rest.
Home to Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, the school has long served as a fountain of denial of Jewish history and heritage. Today it is home to Joseph Massad, who celebrated the October 7 massacre of Jews and said that the Jews of the Old Testament are really “Palestinian Hebrews.”
Columbia is where students hoist banners calling for an “intifada” and point to Jews to be the next victims for Hamas.
Columbia is where socialist-jihadi politicians come to fawn on students harassing Jews.
Rep. Ilhan Omar at Columbia “encampment”
And Columbia is located in the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world, New York City. The university has the largest percentage of Jews of all the Ivy League schools, according to Hillel, and likely the largest Jewish alumni network of the Ivies.
Jews on campus and Jewish alumni witness the vocal anti-Israel fervor and must make a decision of how to respond: fight, flight, join or ignore. Many students worked very hard to gain admission to the institution to get a good education, and are loathe to leave the school or exert the physical and mental energy required to fight the tide of hatred. The majority of Jewish students are left with the choice to either listen to the toxicity or join the seemingly popular horde.
The Columbia environment echoes the school curricula of UNRWA, the temporary United Nations agency to care for descendants of Palestinian Arabs who left Israel at its founding. They are lied to that Jews are “colonialists” and “invaders” who “stole the land” from local Arabs. They are taught that all of Israel is an illegal “Zionist project” which should be terminated and handed to the stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs).
In such framework, Columbia Jews hear teachers and students echo the Democratic Socialists of America who argue that every Israeli Jew cannot be considered a civilian and is fair game for Palestinian Arabs “deploying violence to liberate themselves.”
Israeli Jews are no longer victims and Palestinians can longer be considered terrorists in such mindset. Even Arab men stabbing children to death while they slept, as happened in 2011, was supported by 51% of Arabs in Gaza. Some Columbia allies of SAPs may find the actions and associated support for killing children abhorrent but believe it has context for which Israel is solely to blame.
The depravity is appalling but it is part of the culture; it is deeply embedded in the Palestinian historical narrative at this point. The “allies” of SAPs have ingested the toxicity, including anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian Jews. What may have begun as just wanting SAPs to have freedom or an objection of Israeli policies, became a marriage made in hell.
Anti-Israel Jews try to cleanse Palestinian terrorists of antisemitism to rationalize their allegiance and to get fellow Jews to join the self-immolation. Rather than rethink the dangerous dynamic, the anti-Israel Jews affix themselves to people who want to see them dead – after they help destroy Jewish relatives.
People suffering from Columbia Syndrome are not only convinced that they are acting rationally but also morally. Like Jews who push for laws to ban the ritual slaughter of meat or circumcision, they concoct moral arguments for such actions. Driven by their profound desire to amputate part of their ethnicity and culture, they embrace people and movements which want to decapitate them.
Too many Jews are suffering from Columbia Syndrome in which they join forces with Hamas and other vicious antisemites to amputate any tinge of Zionism in their comportment. While Stockholm syndrome is understood by society to develop from a trauma-related experience, unfortunately, Columbia syndrome is viewed by a socialist-jihadist culture as a form of moral awakening.
If Jesus were alive in the 7th century, he would have been murdered by invading Muslim Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula.
If Jesus were alive in 1949, we would have been ethnically-cleansed from Bethlehem and the region by the Transjordanian army because he was a Jew.
Jews ethnically cleansed from the Old City of Jerusalem in 1949 by invading Arab Muslim armies
If Jesus were alive today, he would be banned from praying on the Temple Mount because it offends Muslims.
If Jesus were alive today, he’d be hiding in a bomb shelter from the “axis of resistance.”
If Jesus were alive today, Hamas would call for his rape and murder.
If Jesus were alive today, his dead body would be paraded through Gaza, where the local Arabs would gather to spit on him.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be a hostage in Gaza, and his picture would be ripped down in the streets of major U.S. cities.
If Jesus were alive today, his synagogue would be vandalized.
If Jesus were alive today, the United Nations would call him a “settler.”
If Jesus were alive today, Democratic Socialists would call him a “colonizer.”
If Jesus were alive today, he would be harassed and intimidated on college campuses.
If Jesus were alive today, Ireland would boycott him.
If Jesus were alive today, he would be fighting in the IDF.
If Jesus were alive today, he’d be lighting the first light of Chanukah, celebrating the rededication of the Jewish Temple in Judaism’s holiest city of Jerusalem.
The United Nations’ operation in Gaza is almost completely staffed by local Arabs. Since Hamas’s takeover of the coastal strip in 2007, UNRWA, the UN agency which runs schools and hospitals in the area, have operated in tandem with Hamas. The school circula is approved by the US-designated terrorist group and its facilities operate with Hamas’s oversight.
After Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023 and butchered 1,200 people, Israel sought to bring the perpetrators to justice, to save the 250 hostages stolen by the Gazans militant groups, and ensure that the terrorist groups could never attack again, as they had promised to do.
As Israel has been decimating Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups and their infrastructure in Gaza, local armed Arab gangs have been stealing aid being delivered into the strip.
The New York Times blames Israel for making Gazans hungry.
December 23, 2024 New York Times article about looting in Gaza
The article squarely put blame on Israel for: 1) its “bombardment and invasion of Gaza”; 2) its limiting flow of goods around Gaza; and 3) not putting a new government in charge of Gaza.
How absurd.
Hamas launched the invasion, not Israel. Hamas took hundreds of captives into Gaza, demanding Israel’s counter-invasion. Hamas’s history of importing and moving vast weapons of war and terrorists around Gaza necessitates Israel’s control of goods and people.
And it is the Palestinian Authority that is supposed to govern Gaza, not Israel. The world demands that Israel leave the strip so how does it simultaneously demand that its should put in place a new government?
The Times shared that UNRWA decided that it would no longer deliver aid through one of the major entry points into Gaza, and that relief is piling up at the crossings. It acknowledged that the Gaza police force is an arm of Hamas but they are rarely seen in Gaza these days.
The Times inadvertently highlighted the farce of the entire situation stating that “The United Nations does not allow Israeli soldiers to protect aid convoys, fearing that would compromise its [the UN’s] neutrality.” Unsaid, is that only under the protection of Hamas and other Gazan terrorist groups can UNRWA operate freely, showing that the UN group has always been extremely biased.
The article moved beyond the lawless areas without Hamas or Hamas’s police ruling the area to sectors “fully controlled by the Israeli military. UN agencies have been able to avoid looters and deliver some relief.” However, not enough according to the UN: “‘There is continued tolerance by the Israel Defense Forces of unacceptable amounts of looting.”
According to the article, Israel is responsible for the entire situation in Gaza. Not the Gazans who are doing the actual looting. Not Hamas which refuses every ceasefire and to return all the hostages. Not UNRWA, the joint venture between the United Nations and Hamas, which teaches Gazans that Israel is an illegal entity which should be destroyed and replaced with a purely Arab Palestine.
UNRWA collapsed because Hamas is defeated. Local Arab gangs steal humanitarian relief because Iran, Turkey and others have been smuggling in vast amount of weaponry into the region, despite the official Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the terrorist enclave.
Gazans are hungry today DESPITE the efforts of Israel, and because of the toxic policies of the United Nations and local Arab warlords for the past decades.
Some groups like Amnesty International and countries like South Africa have drummed up the idea that Israel is committing a ‘genocide’ against the people of Gaza, or Palestinian Arabs, or the Arab or Muslim world, depending on how narrow or broad the defaming party chose to go. They have ignored the lowest civilian-to-militant death ratio in any urban war, the declining number of women and children killed as the war moved on to a ground invasion, and many other statistics in Israel’s defensive war in making the accusation.
It is curious that people have also not considered the basic fact that Israel has offered many ceasefires to Hamas since the war started in October 2023. No target of a genocide has ever been offered a ceasefire.
Let alone reject it.
Yet Hamas has rejected one ceasefire after another since the war started.
If an army was intent on slaughtering a group of people, would it offer a ceasefire every month?
If a persecuted population felt like it was desperate for the killing to stop, would it reject offers to stop the fighting?
Jews in the Holocaust were not offered a ceasefire. They were defenseless. They had no army. They had no government advocating on their behalf to stop the slaughter.
The heavy loss of life among Gazans is because of a war they started and refuse to cease. It is the deep-seated antisemitic genocidal intent of Gazans to destroy Israel that has perpetuated the war, not Israel’s desire to eliminate Gazans as declared by know-nothings under heavily tarnished brands.
After fourteen months of refusing ceasefires, it is time for the Arab and Muslim world to force Hamas to admit defeat and surrender so that the killing can stop and the day after can begin.
The most famous Ugandan has long been Idi Amin (1928-2003) who served as president of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. He was known for his ‘reign of terror’ which systematically attacked minority groups including Christians, with over 100,000 people likely killed during his tenure.
A new Ugandan has emerged on the world stage, a 70-year old judge by the name Julia Sebutinde (1954-).
Julia Sebutinde, serving on the International Court of Justice
Sebutinde was the lone judge on the International Court of Justice who did not vote in favor of admonishing Israel regarding its war with the Palestinian terrorist-political party Hamas in several decisions, including on January 26, May 24 and July 19.
On May 24, she issued a lengthy dissenting opinion in which she argued that “I firmly believe that Israel has the right to defend itself against its enemies, including Hamas, and to continue efforts to rescue its missing hostages.” She believes that the ICJ overreached in essentially denying Israel such basic right, even as she agreed that Israel’s defensive actions need to be proportionate, adding “neither international law in general nor the Genocide Convention in particular deprive Israel of the right to take necessary and proportionate actions to defend its citizens and territory against such armed attacks on multiple fronts.”
The opinion was not appreciated by the government of Uganda which distanced itself from Sebutinde, stating her “ruling at the ICJ does not represent the Government of Uganda’s position on the situation in Palestine.” [Uganda recognizes Palestine as a country.]
Uganda took its sharp turn against Israel and sided up with jihadists early in Amin’s reign.
Uganda aligned with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi in February 1972 declaring that their regimes would be based on Islam and stand against “Zionism and imperialism.” A few months later, Amin sent a telegram to the United Nations Secretary General applauding Palestinian Arab terrorists murdering Israeli athletes at the Olympic Games in Munich, Germany. The telegram added that the locale was appropriate because “It happened because Hitler and all of the German people knew that the Israelis are not a people who work for humanity and because of that they burned them alive and killed them with gas on the soil of Germany.” He repeated the comments that Hitler was right to kill Jews the following year.
Amin continued to align with “the plight of the Palestinian people” by expelling all Israelis and shutting the Israeli embassy in Uganda in 1973. He declared that the Abayudya native Ugandan Jewish community was illegal and granted the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) permission to operate training facilities in Uganda.
That set the stage for Amin to allow Palestinian Arab terrorists to land a hijacked civilian airplane at its capital city airport of Entebbe in 1976. He watched as the Palestinian terrorists separated Jews and non-Jews, allowing the non-Jewish hostages to fly to France while the 94 Israelis and non-Israeli Jews plus 12 Air France crew remained hostages.
Julia Sebutinde was 22 years old when she watched her country platform Palestinian terrorists and hold 106 Jewish civilians as hostages. She must have marvelled at Israel’s ability to come to their rescue on July 4, 1976 in Operation Thunderbolt.
Roughly 48 years later in 2024, Sebutinde spoke of Israel’s right to fight for another group of 100-plus Israeli hostages held by Palestinian terrorists, this time, trapped in Gaza:
An Israeli operation in February 2024 resulted in the rescue of two hostages, and more recently, the bodies of three more hostages killed in captivity were recovered from Rafah. It is plausible that additional hostages in captivity remain in the area, which is why Israel has declared its intention to locate and return them, dead or alive, to their families. This is a right that the Court cannot deny Israel or the hostages.
The United States government stands with Israel’s right to self defense while a vocal minority of citizens ignore the hostages and call to “Free Palestine” and “Globalize the Intifada.” In Uganda, the situation is reversed, with a government hitched economically and politically to jihadi regimes, while a 70 year old judge declares the obvious, that Israel must be allowed to defend itself and bring back the hostages.
In May 2021, Israeli courts ruled that Arab squatters would be evicted from homes owned by Israeli Jews in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood north of the Old City of Jerusalem. This action set off a mini war with Hamas in Gaza, and law enforcement never proceeded with the eviction.
There was another property dispute going on at that time in Silwan, just southeast of the Old City, a neighborhood founded by Yemenite Jews in the 1880s. The eviction of the Arabs, the Ghaith family, was similarly postponed and the family appealed the decision in Israeli courts and lost. For the past few weeks they have been advised to vacate the two-story building but refused. December 10 was set as the eviction date, and it happened this morning according to the Palestinian Authority-run media site, Wafa.
Wafa reporting on eviction from Silwan
Wafa reported the story from Gaza, a strange dynamic as the PA has no presence there. Presumably it was done to make the action look like a military takeover by “Israeli colonists, under the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces.”
The United Nations had weighed in against Israel about the evictions on July 30, 2024 when it said “These [eviction] cases are examples of an ongoing systematic settlers’ campaign and application of a range of laws discriminatorily, to uproot Palestinians from their homes, take over their property and implant Israeli settlers in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.” Israel’s court disagreed and stated it was simply a real estate matter in returning the property to the rightful owners who had been ethnically cleansed from Silwan when Jordan invaded and illegally seized the land in the 1948/9 war.
The May 2021 mini war launched new terrorist groups east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL, “West Bank”) and set local Arabs on a genocidal path to kill Jewish civilians inside Israel. In March 2021, 18% of West Bank Arabs wanted to kill Jewish civilians; it rose to 57% by March 2023, close to the level of Gazan bloodlust.
The failed eviction of Arab squatters from Sheikh Jarrah in May 2021 initiated the soft launch of the massive war engulfing the region. Perhaps the December 2024 actual eviction of squatters from Silwan will mark the beginning of the end to the war.
Many pro-Israel people are outraged by Amnesty International calling Israel’s current actions in Gaza a “genocide,” by highlighting that Israel never wanted the war and would end it immediately if the hostages were released and Hamas surrenders. As there is no “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” as the term is defined in the Genocide Convention, the basic premise falls flat on its face before even getting to the physical nature of the battlefield and fatalities.
But that is exactly the point that anti-Israel people are making in their own narrative. Whether Israel’s current war is defensive or not is irrelevant. Whether the number of civilians-to-militants killed is the lowest ratio of any urban combat is dismissed.
Israeli police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
The anti-Israel crowd ties colonization to ethnic cleansing to apartheid to genocide. It is one big ball of “European White Supremacy” and “settler imperialism” that has been internalized as gospel by the anti-Israel mob.
Consider that in 2016, sixty different groups in the Black Lives Matter movement penned a manifesto labeling Israel as “an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people,” and that America’s aid to Israel made it complicit “in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”
Even when there was no war, and the Israeli Arab AND West Bank Arab AND Gazan Arab all had populations which skyrocketed decade after decade – dwarfing the growth of Israeli Jews and of Arab populations of surrounding countries – the BLM movement ignored any physical requirement of a “genocide” and rallied around perceived intent.
Whether the Jewish State is the most liberal country for a thousand miles in any direction was considered misdirection. Pointing out basic pluralistic truths was considered PinkWashing or GreenWashing or a rainbow of other colors meant to serve as red herrings to the core issue.
The anti-Israel community considers the creation of Israel an original sin that can never be righted until it is destroyed. To give Palestinian Arabs dignity requires a genocide of Israeli Jews, and their supporters.
The “axis of resistance” of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and its global supporters is against the Jewish State, which it considers a foreign “cancer” inside the purely Arab Middle East. Today’s war is the same as 1948, to annihilate the Jewish entity in their midst.
A growing number of pro-Palestinian activists are echoing the Hamas narrative, even as the military capabilities of the terrorist Palestinian party dwindle. They have internalized a lie which offers Israel no escape other than dissolution.
The “genocide” claims and cases against Israel now have a veneer of credibility as “human rights” groups accuse the country amidst a difficult defensive war. In truth, they are tools to arm the second wave – of judicial and economic attacks – to destroy the Jewish State, as the axis’ military offensives end in defeat.
Iran and its associates have long referred to the United States and Israel as “Great Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively. The jihadi extremists positioned themselves as the “axis of resistance” against western influence in what they perceive to be a purely Islamic Middle East.
The leading edge of the warmongering jihadists are rapidly fading.
Hamas, the Popular Islamic Palestinian Arab Terrorist Group
Hamas has been listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist group (FTO) since the US began the list in 1997. The Palestinian Arab group which ran Gaza and has a majority position in the Palestinian parliament since 2006, has the most antisemitic foundational charter of any country. It is sworn to the destruction of Israel.
Hamas invaded the Jewish State on October 7, 2023 and slaughtered 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages. In Israel’s response to the assault, it has decimated Hamas’s leadership including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif. Hamas’s arsenal and tunnel infrastructure has virtually been eliminated and thousands of its members are either dead or in Israeli jails.
Hezbollah in Lebanon
Hezbollah, like Hamas, is sponsored by Iran. The Lebanese-based US FTO launched an attack on Israel on October 8, and Israel began responding more aggressively over the past few months. During this time, Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership including Hassan Nasrallah, Ali Karaki, Ibrahim Qubaisi, Fuad Shukr, Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi and Ibrahim Aqil.
After Israel incapacitated much of Hezbollah’s fighting force in southern Lebanon, the group accepted a ceasefire agreement. Israel hopes that the government of Lebanon will assume military control of its territory, expunge Hezbollah from parliament and emerge from decades of being a failed state.
Hamas and Hezbollah flags, under foot
Syria
The Iranian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad has overseen a brutal civil war which has left over 600,000 dead and millions displaced since 2011. Since Hezbollah’s ceasefire, Syrian resistance forces have overtaken many of the large cities of western Syria and are closing in on Damascus. It is possible that Assad’s regime may fall as Russia is too weakened by its war with Ukraine, and Iran is too vulnerable to extend resources to its proxy.
Islamic Republic of Iran
The leading state sponsor of terrorism is fully exposed after Israel launched a massive air strike in late October. While Israel has not followed up with additional attacks to remove the Iranian nuclear weapons program at this time, Iran has pulled back on its attacks against Israel, out of fear of being highly vulnerable.
What began as a massive war of Iran and its proxies to eradicate the Jewish State and prevent its integration with Sunni Arab countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is becoming a rout of the jihadi regimes. The “axis of resistance” is vanishing into the “axis of nonexistence.”
It remains to be seen if the vanquished jihadists will repeat the “three Nos” slogan from 1967, or consider accepting the basic human rights and dignity of the Jewish State. Unlike 57 years ago, the incoming US president and Saudi Arabia will be important factors in shaping the contours of the regional relationships into the future.
Yet no one seems to give a lick about 40,000 women and children who are rotting in camps in Syria, because of their familial ties to ISIS.
Children gather at the al-Hol camp, which houses families of ISIS members, in Syria’s Hasakeh province in May 2021. (photo: Baderkhan Ahmad / AP file)
Over 40,000 people live in the al-Hol and Roj detention centers in northeast Syria, of which 62% are children. Almost all of the others are women in what is described as “one big prison.” They hail from 60 different countries (mostly Iraq and Syria) but their governments have been slow to repatriate them because of their ties to ISIS, and of how they might be perceived upon returning home.
While ISIS was defeated in Iraq on December 9, 2017, the group continues its attacks, with over 150 in the first half of 2024. As such, the women and children of ISIS fighters continue to find themselves in limbo FOR THE PAST SEVEN YEARS.
Al Hol Detention camp in northeastern Syria houses roughly 40,000 women and children for several years
The crux of the problem is that many of the women and children share the ideology of their ISIS relatives, as conveyed in the CNN report below. It has made the situation complicated for countries like France to repatriate these women and children for fear that they will foment terrorism back home.
In May 2022, France repatriated 51 women and children. In October 2022 the country brought back another 55 and in April 2023, another 35. It has been an extremely slow process. Upon arrival in France, minors were handed over to child care services while the adults were handed over to the relevant judicial authorities, as joining ISIS is considered a criminal act.
Some countries, like the United Kingdom and Denmark, have revoked the citizenship of people who went to fight with ISIS. Those countries have left people to rot in the detention camps for years.
Beyond the ISIS war, western countries have expelled hundreds of non-citizens for expressing extremist ideology, and stripped citizenship of women and children affiliated with terrorists. All in the name of ensuring the protection and security of their country.
While the UK, France, Denmark and other western countries took such actions, they voted for a UN resolution for Israel to “repatriate” and to “exert efforts toward the implementation of paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III)” which calls for moving millions of Arab descendants of the 1948/9 Arab-Israeli war INTO ISRAEL, even though those Arabs have never lived in nor have citizenship in Israel.
And the western countries did so in the middle of Hamas’s genocidal war to eradicate the Jewish State.
Western countries prioritize national security over the rights of women and children tied to radical jihadists, but simultaneously call for Israel to admit millions of radical jihadists while it is at war against those same people. It is worse than hypocrisy; it is an attempt to sacrifice Jews to the angry jihadi gods to save themselves.
