There is a growing movement around the world to label the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. It is a cause whose time has come — and whose passage is long overdue.
The Muslim Brotherhood is not merely a political or religious movement. It is the ideological parent of countless extremist groups, from al-Qaeda to Hamas. The Brotherhood’s goal has always been clear: the creation of an Islamist world order governed by sharia law and fueled by perpetual jihad. It is the intellectual engine behind modern Islamic terrorism.
Hamas — officially designated by the United States and European Union as a Foreign Terrorist Organization — is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Its 1988 charter cites the Brotherhood as its ideological and organizational source. The brutal October 7 massacre, the ongoing rocket attacks, and the indoctrination of Gazan youth into genocidal hatred all stem from this same poisonous root.
Several nations – Muslim Arab nations – understand the threat. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain have all formally banned the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity. So have other responsible actors in the global north, including Austria and Russia. Yet the group still finds safe haven in Qatar and Turkey — two countries that finance, arm, and politically shield Hamas.
These sponsors of Islamist militancy must not be allowed any role in Gaza’s future. To invite them into post-war planning is to guarantee the next war. As Khaled Abu Toameh says “Inviting Qatar and Turkey to play a role in the Gaza Strip means again bringing Iran in through the back door.” To empower these countries diplomatically is to ensure that peace will never take hold. The Brotherhood’s network thrives on chaos, martyrdom, and perpetual victimhood; its ideology is incompatible with coexistence or modernization.
Turkey’s first lady, Emine Erdogan, was recognized with an award by the US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) in New York in 2022. The award was personally delivered by Ousama Jammal, a key Muslim Brotherhood figure in the US. USCMO has been accused of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
If the international community truly seeks an enduring peace in the Middle East, it must begin with moral clarity. The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates must be banned — everywhere. Those who fund or defend them must be excluded from the table. Only when the root of jihadist ideology is removed can the region finally begin to heal.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan shake hands. Turkey’s involvement in Gaza with Trump’s blessing guarantees future bloodshed with Israel; and the next US president may not care.
If one were to build a museum chronicling how a people educated generations toward hatred and eradication, the Palestinian Arabs would tragically merit their own institution. The Museum of Genocidal Intent would not showcase armies, the tools of genocide. It would display ideas, laws, sermons, and schoolbooks that made destruction a virtue and coexistence a sin.
Entrance Hall – The Charter of Death
Visitors first encounter the founding documents: the Hamas Charter (1988) and early Fatah Constitution passages promising Israel’s annihilation. There are ballots underneath from the 2006 parliamentary elections with articles alongside showing the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) electing Hamas to 58% of parliament as a first action of breathing self-determination. As one leaves the room, leaders—from Arafat to Abbas to Haniyeh—chant “From the River to the Sea” and “We love death more than you love life.“
Gallery I – Educating for Erasure
School desks and children’s cartoons line the room. In cases, textbooks from the Palestinian Authority show lessons which erase Israel from maps. UNRWA teachers like Afaf Talab have Facebook posts featuring wishes that God kills the Jews. A 9th grade lesson calls the firebombing of an Israeli bus a “barbeque party.” There is a coloring book hanging on the wall used in a fifth grade class in an UNRWA school which has a flag dripping in blood in front of the al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, with a map of Israel alongside, erased into “Palestine.”
Coloring book from an UNRWA fifth grade class tying religion, prayer, death and destruction of the Jewish State
A television plays cartoons from Hamas TV shows, showing ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli soldiers digging under al Aqsa mocking Arabs and Muslims who are “asleep” as the crooked nosed-Jews threaten the mosque.
Interactive displays allow visitors to click on various videos from summer camps in Gaza and east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL/ “West Bank”). Young girls sing about “igniting an intifada,” encouraged “to shoot all the Jews” and taught if the Jews don’t leave Palestine, all of them should be “slaughtered.”
And the music. Popular Arabic songs play throughout the museum. They call for Jews to leave the land or be killed or kidnapped.
Gallery II – Icons of Murder
Here hang portraits of those celebrated for killing Jews: Dalal Mughrabi, Yahya Ayyash, and others. Under each image scroll the names of their victims—families, schoolchildren, passengers. Nearby, official “martyrs’ fund” ledgers show stipends paid to convicted attackers from the Palestinian government. In the center of the room are mock ups of the various schools, public squares and soccer tournaments named for the “martyrs.”
Gallery III – International Complicity
Painted UN blue, this hall traces how global institutions enabled indoctrination. Pictures of leaders of various European countries including Belgium and Norway that fund the schools and squares named after terrorists. Copies of numerous United Nations resolutions cover the walls, which condemn Israel but not Hamas, which make it illegal for Jews to live in the Old City of Jerusalem, and illegal to pray at their holiest site on the Temple Mount.
A large picture of the entrance to the UN-run “refugee” camp in Bethlehem with a key on top of a keyhole portal emphasizes that the international community is the vehicle for Arabs to eradicate the Jewish State.
Gallery IV – Blood Narratives
Walls of newspapers and posters accuse Jews of medieval crimes: poisoning wells, harvesting organs. Animated panels compare Nazi caricatures to modern Palestinian cartoons—the imagery identical. Loudspeakers replay sermons calling Jews “descendants of apes and pigs.”
Interactive charts present PCPSR and other surveys over time:
December 2023 – about three-quarters of Palestinians called the October 7 attack “correct.”
Majorities favored continued “armed struggle.”
Roughly two-thirds support killing Jewish civilians in Israel in every poll since 2000
Gallery VI – Jerusalem: The Theater of Denial
A model of the Al-Aqsa plaza plays footage of Murabitat women harassing Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas and other PA officials can be seen on videos claiming “Jews have no history in Jerusalem.” Audio of chants—“With blood and soul we will redeem you O Aqsa”—fills the room. Hamas leaders promise to repeat the October 7 “al Aqsa flood” massacre “again and again.”
PA president Mahmoud Abbas glorifying death on behalf of Jerusalem
Gallery VII – The Forgotten Ethnic Cleansing of Jews
Artifacts from before 1967 tell the story before the story:
The massacre and expulsion of Jews from Hebron in 1929
Synagogues Destroyed: photos of Jerusalem’s Old City after Jordan’s takeover—58 synagogues razed.
Expulsion: maps marking every Jewish family removed from the Old City.
Jordan’s illegal annexation of part of Israel in 1950.
Gallery VIII – Lynching: Public Violence as Spectacle
The public spectacle of the killing for the crowds is highlighted in the last room of the permanent collection.
Hebron 1929 – photos and testimonies of the massacre where 67 Jews were murdered
Ramallah 2000 – two Israeli reservists beaten to death by a mob; a photograph of a man showing blood-stained hands became an icon of the Second Intifada. The crowd cheers.
Gaza, 2023 – pictures of Gazans cheering as dead Israeli women are paraded through the streets.
The bloody hands of a Palestinian man after lynching an Israeli in Ramallah has become a symbol of the genocidal intent
Special Exhibit – The Sbarro Massacre: Innocence Targeted
At the museum’s center stands a quiet, glass-walled room marking August 9, 2001, the bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem.
Bombing at Sbarro restaurant in the Palestinian terrorist war on Israeli Jews
Artifacts include: fragments of the restaurant sign and surviving menu board; the broken guitar of 15-year-old victim Malki Roth; children’s shoes and schoolbooks retrieved from the site.
Chronology Panel: maps trace the attacker’s route and later trials of the planners.
Testimony Wall: written reflections from victims’ families—the Roths, Greenbaums, Schijveschuurders—describe loss and their ongoing quest for justice.
Media Archive: displays neutral summaries of press interviews and court transcripts noting the convicted organizer’s open lack of remorse, contrasted with international outrage and U.S. extradition efforts.
A video concludes with the terrorist Ahlam al-Tamimi stating how proud she was to have killed “religious Jews” and eight children.
Her words hang over the door as one leaves the building: “the philosophy of death is very difficult to understand.” She lives as a free woman walking the streets of Jordan today, a hero to millions.
Interview with terrorist Ahlam al Tamimi who has no regrets for killing women and children at a pizzeria
Epilogue
The Museum of Genocidal Intent does not exist, yet its exhibits do—scattered through classrooms, speeches, and monuments. Each artifact documents a choice: to teach vengeance or to teach life. Only when the real-world versions of these exhibits are dismantled will the possibility of peace move from behind glass into the open air.
In Lebanon and Syria, senior terror leaders keep disappearing. Israel’s intelligence services have shown that even far from home, their reach is absolute. Hezbollah commanders vanish without warning. Iranian coordinators meet “accidents” in Damascus. Israel’s eyes are everywhere — east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL / “West Bank”) and far beyond.
Inside Israel and the territories under its vigilance, that network of informants has kept the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) from unleashing the kind of barbarism seen under Hamas. The true security barrier is not made of concrete or wire — it is people: HUMINT, human intelligence, the whispers that prevent slaughter.
But Gaza became a black hole the moment Israel withdrew in 2005. Every soldier, every Jew, every Israeli presence was uprooted — and with them went the eyes and ears that had kept the region stable. Hamas seized power through blood, executing its rivals and every suspected collaborator. What followed since 2007 was not liberation but suffocation. Gaza became a fortress of fanaticism, sealed off and armed to the teeth.
Hamas interrogates suspected informants in 2014
The legal Israeli blockade was not enough. While Israel and Egypt controlled the borders, Hamas tunneled beneath them — smuggling Iranian rockets, explosives, and even the raw materials to build new weapons. Gaza transformed from a strip of land into a terrorist enclave. By 2023, it was not just armed — it was indoctrinated, radicalized, and ready for mass murder.
Israel will not make that mistake again.
Among the newly released SAP prisoners, there are almost certainly Israeli plants — men and women turned during interrogations or cultivated long before. They will slip back into Gaza’s shattered neighborhoods, listening, watching, feeding intelligence. Every conversation, every weapons cache, every hint of reorganization could be the thread that prevents the next October 7.
Hamas knows this. Its paranoia will turn inward. Accusations will fly, confessions will be forced, and public executions will become commonplace to the shouts of “Allahu Akhbar.” The group will again devour its own, because it cannot rule without fear.
Hamas executes suspected informants in front of crowd of children
Any new ruling authority that replaces Hamas will need to coordinate with Israel. There can be no “independent Gaza” left to rot in secrecy. Deradicalization cannot be trusted to glossy NGOs or “neutral” foreign agencies alone. It must be verified — by intelligence, by informants, by those who know the difference between reform and camouflage.
[As for the Arab propaganda outlets, none of the public executions are discussed on Qatari-owned Al Jazeera. It is busy selling Gaza and Hamas as peace-loving.]
The intelligence war has already begun. The question is not whether Israel has plants among the returnees — it is how many will live long enough to stop Gaza from sinking back into the darkness it dug for itself.
For decades, Palestinians have believed there were three paths to statehood—and they pursued them simultaneously.
1. Violence. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah’s militias and several Palestinian Arab terrorist groups waged terror wars, convinced that bloodshed brought gains: the First Intifada led to the Oslo Accords; the Second Intifada drove Israel from Gaza and parts of the West Bank; the 2021 riots were hailed for halting evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. The October 7 massacre, backed by roughly 75% of Palestinians, was the latest in that grim pattern.
2. International Pressure. Even as rockets fell, Palestinian allies abroad pressed boycotts, divestment, sanctions, and United Nations resolutions, seeking to isolate Israel diplomatically and economically until it yielded territory.
3. Negotiations. The Palestinian Authority claimed to prefer talks to gain legitimacy and foreign aid—but insisted on maximalist demands: all the West Bank, all of eastern Jerusalem, a Jew-free Palestine, and a mass “right of return.” Yasser Arafat walked away from a state in 2000 and launched the Second Intifada instead. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, also spoke of peace while undermining it—keeping the notorious “pay-to-slay” stipends for terrorists’ families and, in a January 2018 speech, blessing those who chose violence even as he professed support for diplomacy.
Polling has consistently shown the order of Palestinian preference: violence first, global pressure second, negotiations last.
The Cost of Failed Strategies
Both violence and sanctions have brought suffering to Palestinians themselves. Suicide bombings and rocket wars prompted Israel to build the security fence, which restricted movement and economic activity. The October 7 attack provoked a massive war in which Gaza was devastated and Hamas decimated. Attempts to use international pressure backfired as well, leading Israel to withhold funds from the PA and tighten restrictions.
Israel fights like a cornered raccoon—fiercely, without backing down when attacked. Every round of violence has left Palestinians weaker and poorer.
In the recent war, Israel scored a double victory: It destroyed Hamas’s military capability, killing an estimated 25,000 fighters, and it refused to bow to global pressure, pressing on despite UN condemnations, ICC threats, and warnings of diplomatic isolation.
This shattered the long-held belief that if terror failed, the world could still coerce Israel into retreat.
A New Reality — and a Call to the Arab World
The old strategies of terror and economic warfare have failed and only deepened Palestinian misery. The third path—real negotiations—remains the only way forward.
Israel and the United States now hope the Arab world will engage Israel constructively, encouraging Palestinian leaders to abandon impossible UN demands and accept the reality of Israel’s permanence. Clinging to maximalist positions will only bring more rounds of bloodshed and despair.
And an Alternative Reality — Coming for Diaspora Jews
While Israel feels that it may have finally fought a war that could lead to long-term peace, there are those who still cling to eradicating the Jewish State. The international “Free Palestine” fighters do not want to see Israel holding onto the Old City of Jerusalem nor limiting the entry of millions of Arabs who claim UN’s mantle of “refugees.” The light at the end of the tunnel for them is not coexistence but a continued “Nakba,” a disaster.
So they are revamping the second front of international pressure, from targeting Israel to the soft targets of diaspora Jews.
They are chanting to “globalize the Intifada” to bring the war to every Jew and pro-Israel person and organization. The incineration of the kibbutzim in Israel on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah was echoed in the burning of the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania’s home on the holiday of Passover. Burning Jews alive in Kibbutz Be’eri was mirrored in burning Jews in Boulder, Colorado.
Burned kibbutzGov. Shapiro burned home
While Israel sees that it is in a strongest position in the region since its reestablishment which may finally enable an enduring peace, the anti-Israel horde has opened a new front on the global diaspora.
The international pressure of the BDS camp has not been defeated but inflamed. They are ratcheting up their smears of “apartheid” to “genocide,” and marking local Jews as co-conspirators.
While Israel won the Iranian proxies war, the Free Palestine camp is taking millions of new hostages – diaspora Jewry. Who will fight for them?
“Well, thank you for asking that. To make sure I answer you fully, let’s first be clear on what a Zionist is. It’s someone who believes in two facts and one principle.
The first fact is that Jews are a people. The second fact is that the Jewish people originate in the Land of Israel.
The principle is that Jews should have self-determination in their homeland, the Land of Israel.
Yes, I believe in both of those facts and that principle. You can plainly see that nothing about Zionism has anything to do with any particular government, leader, or policy.”
That’s it. Calm, factual, and impossible to refute without revealing one’s true bias.
Now, it can very well be that some people simply believe Israel shouldn’t exist — and therefore call themselves anti-Zionists. But as Israel is a living, breathing reality today, to oppose its existence is not a theoretical stance about 1948; it’s a desire to dismantle a sovereign Jewish nation. That’s not political criticism — that’s eliminationism. That’s the desire of many groups including the People’s Forum, Within Our Lifetime and the Democratic Socialists of America.
In today’s world, anti-Zionism isn’t just a philosophical disagreement. It’s an active hostility toward Jewish self-determination, an echo of the same hate that fueled the October 7 massacre. It’s far more lethal and toxic than opposing the idea of creating another Arab state in the Middle East to be called “Palestine,” especially one that has opposed coexistence with the indigenous Jews for over a century.
To deny Jewish peoplehood, heritage, and rights in their homeland is not progressivism — it’s prejudice wrapped in the language of activism.
So, the next time someone smugly demands you “renounce Zionism,” repeat the verses above. Because once you strip away the slogans and hashtags, all that’s left of anti-Zionism is anti-Jewish animus.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has perfected the art of self-deception — and the spectacle has become an embarrassment to watch. Its leaders trade in fantasies while their people – and the entire region – suffer the consequences of their delusions.
When President Donald Trump released his 20-point Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict, it was explicit: the focus was on fixing Gaza and the PA would have no role. The document said in plain language that the PA would need to be overhauled and reformed before it could ever be trusted as a partner for peace. It deliberately withheld any credit or recognition for the current leadership, recognizing its corruption, incitement, and support for terror. “A technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee” headed by Trump himself would be the day-after plan for Gaza. Only “qualified Palestinians” would get to sit on such committee, not the UN-lauded PA.
President Trump’s peace plan specifically did not hand control of Gaza to the PA and said the group had to “complete its reform program.”
The plan’s very structure was layered with conditionality — each potential step toward a Palestinian state contingent on verifiable reforms, renunciation of violence and demilitarization. Even then, the most it offered was that maybe one day, post-reform, there could be a pathway to a two-state solution.
The Trump plan layered conditions of “when,” “may” and “pathway” to Palestinian “statehood”
And yet, in a surreal twist, the official PA news agency WAFA ran an article in which Mahmoud Abbas claimed that Trump stood ready to endorse a Palestinian state with “East Jerusalem” as its capital. It was an astonishing fabrication — a complete lie, meant to mask Abbas’s very public humiliation and preserve his illusion of relevance.
Official PA media lied that Trump’s peace plan would establish a new Palestinian State which would follow the “June 4, 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital”
This distortion was not a misunderstanding; it was intentional misrepresentation, propaganda designed to convince Palestinian Arabs that Abbas still holds the key to their future. But everyone can see through the act. All Abbas and Hamas have delivered is destruction, division, and hatred.
The PA’s falsehoods no longer even convince its own people. Each new lie only underscores its impotence — a government in name only, ruling by inertia and deceit. The tragedy – like the lies – has layers of corruption, hatred, murder and deceit.
The Palestinian people, too, bear responsibility for their choices. They voted for Hamas, a genocidal terrorist movement to 58% of the parliamentary seats which brought death and destruction not only to Israelis but to Palestinians themselves – which the vast majority supported. They elected Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denier and an ineffective president, and now watch him recycle lies and propaganda instead of leadership and reform. The Palestinians voted for failure — and the region has paid the price.
WAFA called the Israeli government an “occupation government”, clearly showing the PA was upset by being sidelined because it sorely needs reform
The Trump plan recognized that hard truth. It was not a welcome mat for Fatah or Hamas, nor a reward for decades of violence and corruption. The plan envisioned a different future entirely. The “day after” will not be another PA regime or HAMAS ruling Gaza, but the first step in a new chapter of deradicalization, where education replaces indoctrination, coexistence replaces hate, and peace is no longer a slogan but a shared reality.
Trump’s plan – as endorsed by Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt – states clearly that a possible Palestinian State will come as a BYPRODUCT of deradicalization and peace, not in order to CREATE the forum for coexistence as offered by France and the United Kingdom. All of which may or may not happen, and most likely after Abbas is long gone.
Words earn their meaning in how they are used. When a slogan is repeatedly screamed as an incitement to burn, stab, gun down, and terrorize people because of who they are or whom they support, it ceases to be mere rhetoric. It becomes a battle cry — and its meaning is what the battle cry does.
We have painful, recent proof of the sickness. In several separate, well-documented attacks in the United States, suspects shouted “Free Palestine” while carrying out murderous attacks. Investigations and prosecutions have treated these shouts not as abstract political slogans but as part of a violent intent to harm people identified as Jewish, Zionist, or supporters of Israel.
Man shoots people, killing one in New Hampshire yelling “Free Palestine”
When the slogan is used repeatedly for arson, firebombs, knives and bullets, its practical meaning is indisputable: it is a call for violence against Jews and Israel supporters. Institutions that track antisemitic violence warn that normalizing chants tied to violence contributes directly to more attacks. We see that “Free Palestine” is a call to murder.
Man burns people alive, killing one in Boulder, CO, shouting “Free Palestine”
That ugly truth cannot be dressed up in euphemisms or by pleading free-speech. “Free Palestine” is the current moment’s “Allahu Akbar,” the chant of radical jihadists intent on killing “infidels.” For the assailants, today’s infidels are Jews and Israel supporters.
Couple killed in Washington, DC by man yelling “Free Palestine”
It begs the question of what a “Free Palestine” means when used so frequently in murderous rampages. Are there zealots killing because they want a peaceful Palestine, or is it more likely that they seek a Palestine that is free to kill Jews the way thousands of Gazans did on October 7, 2023?
Man tries to kill Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family on Passover over “Palestine”
The one area that became a “Free Palestine” was Gaza when Israel left the region in 2005. Within a year, the political-terrorist group Hamas won 58% of the Palestinian parliament election and a year later took over Gaza. In the aftermath of the October 7 massacre in Israel, 72% of Palestinian Arabs supported the attack and the majority still want Hamas to rule according to Palestinian polls.
“Free Palestine” means death to Israel supporters outside of Israel, and death to Jews inside of Israel. Knowing this, are western countries recognizing a Palestinian State to both get a more proportionate death toll in the war and to kill more Jews in their own countries?
Palestinian terrorism has gone global. The question is whether the Palestinian Authority’s “Martyr’s Fund” start to pay killers of Israel supporters globally (as predicted on these pages in August 2023).
In an astonishing development, a majority of U.S. Senate Democrats voted to withhold “offensive weapons” from Israel. It was a symbolic vote — the measure failed with Republicans opposing the bill — but the message is clear: Israel may block rockets but not destroy the launchers. Defense in this new moral order means absorbing blows gracefully, not ending the threat.
At the same time, France — home to the third-largest Jewish population in the world — announced it will recognize a State of Palestine without requiring demilitarization. Paris is prepared to bless a future Palestine that could legally import tanks, rockets, and drones — even as its largest faction, Hamas, wages a genocidal war.
The Illusion of Morality
This is not a call for peace but a demand that Israel remain permanently in the center of the bullseye. Washington Democrats and European leaders want to look moral by limiting “excessive force,” but they are scripting a world where Jews may bleed — just not too much at once.
Recognizing a Palestinian state without disarming it legitimizes Hamas’s war aim. It signals that mass murder, hostage-taking, and open calls for Israel’s destruction do not block your path to statehood — they accelerate it. That is appeasement, not diplomacy.
Hamas kidnapping Israeli women on October 7, 2023
The Right to Finish the Fight
Israel was built on thousands of years of history, and the vow “never again.” That means more than survival — it means the right to end the threat. Defensive weapons stop today’s rockets; offensive weapons prevent tomorrow’s.
If Democrats in Washington vote to deny Israel offensive weapons, and if Paris recognizes an armed Palestine, the message is the same: the Jewish state must fight forever.
True peace will not come from tying Israel’s hands — it will come from removing those committed to its destruction and extinguishing their dream.
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There are contests in which people do not simply want to beat their opponents but to so thoroughly dominate them that the opponent never dares to rise again. In sports, the knockout punch sends a boxer down and the victor up the rankings and into bigger purses. In war, nations aim not just to win but to deter future attacks.
But there is such a thing as “overwinning” — appearing so dominant that it does a disservice to the victor’s own long-term cause.
The Historical Lesson: Versailles
Many historians argue that France and its allies so humiliated Germany at the end of World War I that they guaranteed the next war. The Versailles Treaty stripped Germany of territory, imposed crushing reparations, and forbade them from rebuilding their military. Rather than simply deterring aggression, it created a nation humiliated and seething for revenge.
Instead of permanent peace, Versailles delivered two decades of festering resentment and, ultimately, World War II.
The Modern Parallel: Politics
Overwinning plays out in politics as well. Consider the Democratic primary in New York’s 16th District in 2024. Jamaal Bowman was a polarizing, unpopular incumbent facing a strong challenger, Westchester County Executive George Latimer, who had deep local support. Latimer was likely to win on his own — but AIPAC decided to spend a reported $20 million to ensure Bowman’s defeat.
The message was not just about removing Bowman; it was a flex. It told every other member of Congress: oppose us and we will spend you into political oblivion. It told donors: your money buys results.
But in doing so, AIPAC risked looking like a bludgeon rather than a scalpel. It gave critics a perfect narrative — that elections can be bought — and turned a local race into a national referendum on outside influence. Instead of simply retiring an unpopular incumbent, AIPAC risked martyring him.
The race became a rallying cry for left-wing radicals to claim that “AIPAC and their right-wing billionaires” were buying elections, and not about the disgraceful track record of Bowman
Netanyahu and the World’s Judgment
Israel faces a similar dilemma. After Hamas’s barbaric October 7 massacre, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed “total victory” to “destroy Hamas.” The Israeli Defense Forces have pounded Gaza, killing thousands of Hamas fighters and dismantling its command structure. Militarily, the campaign has been successful.
But “overwinning” here carries a different risk — alienating allies. Every bombed-out building and civilian casualty is broadcast globally. Allies that initially backed Israel’s right to self-defense have begun to call for restraint. What began as a just war risks being reframed as collective punishment.
Israel’s goal is security, not global isolation, especially amongst key allies. Overwinning could leave the country victorious on the battlefield but embattled diplomatically — pressured by allies, condemned in international forums, and stripped of the legitimacy it needs to deter future threats.
The Lesson: Win, But Don’t Become the Villain
Overwinning can turn clean victories into Pyrrhic ones. When the punishment becomes the story, the victor risks losing the moral high ground — and with it, the support of allies, donors, and history itself.
The job is to win, not to look like a bully. Versailles turned victors into jailers and fueled the next world war. AIPAC’s $20 million victory made a single congressional seat a national controversy. And if Israel destroys Hamas but is seen as destroying Gaza itself, it may win the war and lose the world.
True victory must be measured beyond the battlefield, especially when that war is basically won.
Ki Teitzei’s Call for Dignity vs. Hamas’ Celebration of Desecration
Parshat Ki Teitzei commands something extraordinary:
“If any party is guilty of a capital offense and is put to death, and you impale the body on a stake, you must not let the corpse remain on the stake overnight, but must bury it the same day. For an impaled body is an affront to G-d: you shall not defile the land that your G-d is giving you to possess.” – Deuteronomy 21:22-23
Even the guilty must not be left hanging overnight. The Torah demands swiftness in burial, even for one who deserved execution.
The biblical commentator Rashi (1040-1105) spells out the reason: “a degradation of the Divine King, for man is made in His image.” Since man is made in the image of G-d, it would be an insult to G-d to continue to embarrass the dead, even one who deserved capital punishment. The focus should be about restoring public order and nothing more.
Hamas: Desecration as Policy
Contrast that to Palestinian political-terrorist group Hamas. On October 7, terrorists not only murdered, but dragged Jewish bodies through the streets of Gaza, spat on them, and beat them before crowdscheering “Allahu Akhbar” – G-d is Great. Their deaths became props for Hamas’ theatre of hate.
Hamas took the dead and mutilated body of German-Israeli Shani Louk to Gaza, where the crowds spat on her body and beat her. Her head was later chopped off.
To this day, Hamas holds the bodies of Israeli hostages, denying their families the ability to bury them, to say Kaddish, to mourn. It is deliberate, drawn-out torture.
The Law of Nations Agrees
This is not only a biblical imperative — it is a universal one. Article 17 of the Geneva Convention states plainly “Parties to the conflict shall ensure that the dead are honorably interred… and that their graves respected and properly maintained.”
Even in war, even between enemies, the dead are to be treated with dignity.
Hamas has made clear it recognizes no such obligation. It does not simply kill — it advertises cruelty, turning murder into propaganda and humiliation into spectacle.
The Moral Divide
Ki Teitzei calls us to a higher standard. To quickly bury even the criminal, to shield the image of G-d from public shame. The radical Islamist group calls its people to something else entirely: to spit, to drag, to desecrate. To turn death into a carnival. Jews believe sanctifying G-d means sanctifying the human body, even a murderer. Fanatical jihadists believe that Gd wants the community to mock the dead, even a female dancer.
This is not just a fight over land. It is a war between those who sanctify life — even those they must punish — and those who have turned death into a brand identity.
The choice before the world could not be clearer: stand with those who respect the divine image, even in death — or with those who trample it.
First One Through 
