On June 18, 2025, Columbia University announced that it had produced its third report on antisemitism. One would imagine that it would give people hope that the administration was seriously tackling Jew hatred on campus.
Alas.
The “Task Force On Antisemitism” did not focus on Jew hatred at Columbia; it did a poll of ALL students about how they felt about the anti-Israel encampments on campus during the 2023-2024 school year. The “antisemitism” task force wanted to understand everyone’s feelings. It was as though the Black Lives Matter movement put out a research paper that ALL Lives Matter. Not incorrect, just deaf, dumb and blind to the mission.
The report was called “Student Belonging and Exclusion Survey Report,” and polled 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the university in the summer of 2024. The responses were broken down between Jewish, Muslim, Christian, None and Other religious groups.
Jews fared the worst on each question.
Whether the question was about “a sense of belonging at Columbia” where only 34% of Jewish students felt welcome (compared to 41%, 54%, 51% and 49% for each of the other religious categories), or don’t feel accepted because of one’s religion where 62% of Jews felt unwelcome (compared to 53%, 13%, 3% and 11%), Jews were outliers, with Muslims trailing.
Jews were the most likely to have felt discrimination (53% versus 43%, 6%, 1% and 7%) and were uncomfortable sharing their beliefs (87% versus 82%, 64%, 58% and 58%). The fact that the majority of Columbia students were uncomfortable expressing their beliefs – including atheists – is a damning finding about university culture, beyond antisemitism.
Jews lost the most friends because of the encampments and campus environment (29% versus 16%, 7%, 6% and 9%) and had strained relationships (53% versus 30%, 27%, 22% and 20%). That is a sad state that extends to the personal student level, passed the administration and faculty.
And while Jews felt the most stress over the period, they are learning the least. The campus protest barely taught them anything about the regional dynamic. But Christian and other faiths learned a lot – of pro-Palestinian narrative.
How does one know that students have only been absorbing a pro-Palestinian narrative from a year of encampments? While half of the student body participated or supported the protests, virtually none supported Israel. The pro-Israel protests were almost exclusively Jewish. While 21% of Jews sided with the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs), a mere 1% of Christians, atheists and other faiths supported Israel. No Muslims supported the Jewish State.
Israel is a pariah at Columbia University. It is only supported by a number of Jews.
How can an institution that claims to champion an open exchange of ideas have a majority of students afraid to express their beliefs? How is it that only Jews support Israel on campus?
It is obvious why nearly two-thirds of Jews at Columbia feel unwelcome on campus. It is unclear why any Jew continues to attend.
Banner hung at Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall supporting “intifada,” violence against Jewish civilians
For centuries, antisemitic violence has been a grotesque feature of Jewish history—pogroms in Tsarist Russia, inquisitions in Catholic Europe, and, ultimately, the Holocaust engineered by Nazi Germany. These atrocities were largely confined to the Global North, where much of world Jewry lived and where the modern tools of mass murder were industrialized.
Global North in blue, Global South in red
But on October 7, 2023, the locus of mass antisemitic violence shifted decisively. The massacre orchestrated by Hamas, the ruling authority of Gaza, against Israeli civilians was not merely another terror attack—it was the first state-sponsored pogrom to originate from the Global South on the Global North in centuries. It marked a turning point in the nature of antisemitic violence: no longer the work of loosely organized mobs in the South or repressive imperial regimes of the North, but the deliberate, systematic assault by a democratically-elected government in the Muslim world, targeting Jews as Jews, and Jews and “colonizers.”
A Historic Shift
Historically, Jews living under Muslim rule experienced discrimination and periodic violence, but the scale of the bloodshed never approached that of Christian Europe. Pogroms in places like Fez (1912), Constantine (1934) and Baghdad (1941), were undeniably horrific, but they typically resulted in the deaths of dozens, not thousands. In most cases, these events were local eruptions of violence, not centrally planned exterminations.
That changed dramatically in the 1950s. The rise of Arab nationalism, fused with pan-Islamic identity and antisemitic European ideologies, led to the near-total ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Muslim world. From Iraq to Egypt, from Yemen to Libya, ancient Jewish communities were uprooted. Between the late 1940s and 1970s, over 850,000 Jews were forced to flee Muslim-majority countries. They resettled primarily in Israel, France, and North America. But while the Jews left, the hatred remained. For Jews, and for Western “imperialism.”
Hamas and the Theology of Erasure
Hamas is not just a terrorist organization; it is the elected governing body of Gaza, a polity not recognized by much of the Global North but very much embraced within the Global South. Its 1988 charter is steeped in genocidal antisemitism. It doesn’t distinguish between Israeli combatants and civilians. It doesn’t merely call for “resistance” against Israeli policy—it calls for the annihilation of Jews in the land, whom it labels foreign interlopers and infidels contaminating Muslim soil.
On October 7, 2023, this ideology became mass action. Roughly 1,200 Israelis were slaughtered—women, children, the elderly—tortured, raped, and mutilated in their homes and at a music festival, and 250 people were taken captive. The violence wasn’t spontaneous. It was premeditated, coordinated, and state-executed. It echoed the darkest moments of European Jewish history, but this time the origin was a Muslim-ruled territory in the developing world.
Hamas had launched many wars against Israel since it took over Gaza in 2007, most notably in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021. But it never did a mass coordinated invasion of Israel. It never took hundreds of hostages. It never counted on regional allies of Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamic Republic of Iran to join the jihad.
While Muslims are a minority in the Global North, they are the plurality on the Global South
A Government Pogrom
What separates October 7 from prior attacks is its nature: it was not a riot nor mob action. It was not a fringe group operating in defiance of authorities. It was the government. Hamas planned the massacre for years. It diverted foreign aid and resources meant for schools and hospitals to build tunnels, train fighters, and manufacture weapons. And then it unleashed them— on civilians.
The western world has been slow to reckon with this fact. The idea of a pogrom—an antisemitic mass killing—carried out by a government of the Global South against the Global North challenges dominant narratives in international politics, which often frame power dynamics as North exploiting South, not the other way around. But facts do not bend to ideology.
The Silence and the Hypocrisy
Western voices that once said “Never Again” have hesitated to name October 7 for what it was. Some have even rationalized it as “resistance,” blurring the line between anti-Zionism and rank Jew hatred. But no cause justifies the butchery of innocents. No political grievance legitimizes the burning of children or the beheading of elderly Holocaust survivors.
October 7 was a pogrom. Not the first in Jewish history, but the first of its kind, launched from the Global South by a sitting government, acting with genocidal intent against a Jewish population it deems foreign and expendable.
It will not be the last. Members of the Global South have been moving to the Global North post de-colonization. The numbers have ramped considerably over the past decade, as the poorly named “Arab Spring” and civil wars launched tens of thousands of people from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) into Europe and North America.
The First Pogrom from the Global South was greeted in western city streets with chants to “Globalize the Intifada,” because this war of annihilation is infused with radical Islamism and nationalism. The first battle is against the perceived island of the Global North inside the Muslim Global South: Israel. Europe and the United States are to follow.
Antisemitism is not bound by geography or ideology; it infects the right and left around the world. But the Muslim Crusade of colonizing the Global North is very much a function of region and philosophy. It is coming for a broad redistribution of power and wealth from North to South, and indoctrination of Islamic principles from South to North. It will achieve its aims through force of arms and diplomatic cover of an altered United Nations.
“the Jewish people suffering the worst and most murderous pogrom since the Holocaust.
Thinking of October 7 in terms of the worst slaughter of Jews since the European Holocaust blinds people to the tectonic earthquake that is taking place. History is not simply repeating itself in killing Jews. A new chapter of crusades is upon us in which Jews are the first victims but will not be the last.
In November 2023, the French Parliamentary Delegation for Intelligence (DPR) identified Russia, China, Turkey and Iran as the primary countries involved in “omnipresent and lasting threat[s]” of foreign interference in France and Europe. The committee pointed to “fake news is a weapon of war against the West,” and noted that China has about 250,000 agents on the ground.
The DPR report chastised French society for not doing more, noting “the first vulnerability is naivety, which stems from a lack of awareness of the danger. This concerns public decision-makers (elected representatives and senior civil servants) as well as businesses and academic circles…. These foreign powers are also taking advantage of a form of naivety and denial that has long prevailed in Europe.”
The threat is more than “fake news.” Russia was accused of paying three Serbian nationals of anti-Jewish vandalism in France last week. This is similar to the October 2023 situation of Russians accused of paying Moldovan nationals of antisemitic vandalism.
The French government has not been unaware. In January 2023, France forced Russian-owned media RT to shut down to curtail its negative influence on French society. In October 2020, President Emmanuel Macron announced plans to deport 231 foreigners who held radical Islamic beliefs, two days after a Russian-born Islamist beheaded a teacher in France. The country has continued the policy, expelling a Tunisian imam in February 2024 who had “backward, intolerant, and violent conception of Islam, likely to encourage behaviors contrary to the values of the Republic, discrimination against women, identity retreat, tensions with the Jewish community, and jihadist radicalization.”
Macron announced plans to fight radical Islamism after beheading of a teacher who showed a picture of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, a year after calling Islam a “religion in crisis.”
In May 2025, the French government declassified a report titled “The Muslim Brotherhood and Political Islam in France.” The 73-page document describes how the organization is destabilizing French society through schools, mosques and community centers. The group is funded by foreign governments and has an estimated 100,000 members in France (about 0.15% of the population).
The French government knows of the dangers of radical Islam outside of the country as well. Hamas, the Palestinian arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, is a designated terrorist group by the European Union, and France stated in December 2023 that it would work with the EU to dry up the terrorist group’s funding. Yet France encourages “inter-Palestinian reconciliation” which would include Hamas in the Palestinian Authority government. France also backs UNRWA, the agency that seeks to move millions of Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) into Israel, despite them seeking the end of the Jewish State.
So despite France fighting the dangers of radical Islam and foreign influence inside France (which make up a miniscule percentage of the population), it seeks to use the June 2025 United Nations conference it will co-chair, to have several nations pressure Israel to embed radical jihadism inside the Jewish State.
According to Jewish Insider, French conservative intellectual Michel Gurfinkiel said that “the main point of the [French Muslim Brotherhood] report is not what it says about the Muslim Brotherhood. The real point is the conclusion that the French government should make efforts to bring French Muslims into the French fold, and that means … to recognize a state of Palestine. There is a kind of interplay here: the interior minister wanted to publish the report in order to give legitimacy to his own policy against Islamism in France. But it was published with the approval of President Macron … and obviously, the real goal of the president was to tell everybody, ‘I must recognize a State of Palestine because it is the only way for us to fight the Muslim Brotherhood.‘”
French President Emmanuel Macron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strained relationship over the Hamas war
Macron’s “France First” policy will attempt to sacrifice Israel to radical Islamism in an effort to buy a few years of peace with the small but growing Muslim Brotherhood in France. He may believe that such move will curtail attacks against the 450,000 Jews in the country as well, despite such maneuvers forcing Israel to continue to battle Hamas, yielding more global attacks against Jews.
There are constructive things that France can do with Saudi Arabia to fight foreign influence and radical jihadism, and it is not to recognize a Palestinian state:
France and Saudi Arabia should clearly state that they define all aspects of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood to be terrorist organizations. It would be banned and a criminal offense for anyone to voice or express support or solidarity with those entities. Consequently, any Palestinian government that included Hamas would be isolated and not receive any funding or support. Both countries will encourage other countries to do the same.
The SAPs so-called “Right of Return” to homes where grandparents lived will only be settled via financial mechanisms, and no SAPs will have an “inalienable right” to move to Israel. Israel will be the sole party which decides who enters its borders, as every sovereign nation does.
These two steps lay the groundwork for SAPs to reorient their culture from the destruction of Israel towards building a new country. It would be the correct and consistent path for France to combat foreign influence and extremist Islamism, both in France and in Israel.
The United Nations Security Council is comprised of five permanent members (P5) and ten elected members (E10) who try to pass resolutions to promote global and regional peace and cooperation. It fails repeatedly regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict as it prioritizes protecting the political-terrorist group Hamas above all else.
On June 4, 2025, E10 put forward a draft resolution which “demand[ed] an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza; the immediate, dignified, and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups; and the immediate and unconditional lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into the territory.”
The acting US Representative Dorothy Shea vetoed the draft resolution saying “US opposition to this resolution should come as no surprise – it is unacceptable for what it does say, it is unacceptable for what it does not say, and it is unacceptable for the manner in which it has been advanced. The United States has been clear: we would not support any measure that fails to condemn Hamas and does not call for Hamas to disarm and leave Gaza.” She added “We cannot allow the Security Council to award Hamas’ intransigence. Hamas and other terrorists must have no future in Gaza. As Secretary [Marco] Rubio has said: ‘If an ember survives, it will spark again into a fire’.”
Knowing that the United States would use its veto right to reject the resolution, one is left with two conclusions: the rest of the Security Council wanted the US to veto the resolution, or they care more about protecting Hamas than civilians in Gaza.
Perhaps the fourteen UNSC countries want Israel to continue the war but want to placate their pro-Palestinian constituents, appearing to support Gazans while knowing that no relief would happen until Hamas is defeated. Maybe the countries want Israel and the United States to both look isolated – the “little Satan” and “Big Satan” as the Islamic Republic of Iran calls them – hoping to curry favor among the Global South, with 80% of the world’s population.
Either way, the world cannot really believe there is a genocide happening in Gaza, if the path to a ceasefire was simply adding two lines calling for Hamas to surrender.
As the war from Gaza continues to take its devastating toll on everyone involved, the road to peace remains blocked by a singular, stubborn obstacle: Hamas. The group’s leadership refuses to accept ceasefires not out of strength, but from the conviction that they can endure, rearm, and fight again. The violence will not end as long as Hamas is allowed to believe it has a future.
It is time for the international community – particularly Western democracies – to take an unambiguous stand. Hamas must be permanently banned—not just its military wing, but its entire structure. There can be no meaningful peace, no rebuilding of Gaza, and no credible peaceful future while Hamas continues to hold power and wield influence.
Despite the mounting civilian cost, Hamas has shown no intention of disarming. The group openly positions itself as a perpetual “resistance force” rather than a governing body accountable to and respecting the people of Gaza. Its survival strategy is predicated on suffering—banking on civilian casualties to inflame global opinion while preserving its own arsenal in tunnels and bunkers. This is not governance. This is terrorism dressed in political clothing.
Hamas official boasts of sacrificing his own civilian population to slaughter Jewish civilians, shortly after the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel (source: MEMRI)
Yet in Europe, the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization remains inconsistent. Some countries distinguish between its so-called “military” and “political” wings, an artificial and dangerous separation. This division gives cover to operatives, fundraising networks, and propaganda arms that prolong the conflict and contribute to ongoing suffering.
Now, there is growing concern in the United Kingdom, where a legal effort is underway to challenge Hamas’s terrorist designation. This must not be allowed to succeed. On the contrary, the UK should lead Europe in reaffirming that Hamas is a terrorist entity in its entirety. Such a stance must be echoed by Germany, France, the Netherlands, and the rest of the EU. It must happen in Canada and Australia and throughout the Global North.
UK lawyers are fighting to get Hamas removed from the list of terrorist groups
Riverway Law submitted a 106-page filing in the UK which argued that Hamas is a local “resistance movement… which has won the only free and fair election in the occupied Palestinian territories” and it “poses no threat to the UK people.” The submission argued that “the legitimacy of the struggle of the Palestinian people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and alien domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle, is moral [and] legitimate.”
Lost in this filing is that the legal definition of terrorism is about targeting civilians for political aims. That is the core mission of Hamas. Its stated purpose and actions on, before and after October 7, 2023 is to attack Jewish civilians inside Israel and around the world.
To wit, in April 2022, Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who would later spearhead the October 2023 massacre in Israel said “Whoever makes the decision to repeat this desecration of the Al-Aqsa Mosque will be making a decision to desecrate thousands of synagogues and Jewish temples all over the world,” explicitly saying that actions done by the Israeli government would be reason to take actions against Jews around the world, including in the UK.
The invective is a grisly echo of the 1988 foundational Hamas Charter which explicitly cites the antisemitic forgery Protocols of the Elder of Zion about the supposed vile nature of Jews everywhere. It claims that Jews conspire to control the world and “Islamic groupings all over the Arab world should… fight with the warmongering Jews (Article 32).” The Hamas charter uses the word “world” twenty-five times. “Globe” is used twice. “Jew” – not “Zionist” – is used twelve times, including stating “Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people, (Article 28)” targeting Jews everywhere and the religion itself as a permanent offense to 1.9 billion Muslims.
It was with this antisemitic genocidal charter that Palestinians voted Hamas to the majority of parliament in 2006. That this vile party won elections – like the Nazi party in Germany – is not a defense of its legitimacy but a condemnation of the “deformity in Palestinian culture,” to quote James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute comment at the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023.
Banning Hamas is not only a matter of principle, but of practical necessity. No group that openly glorifies violence and opposes basic coexistence can have any legitimate role in governance.
Ghazi Hamad of the Hamas political bureau said in an October 24, 2023 show on LBC TV (Lebanon) that Hamas is prepared to repeat the October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood” Operation time and again until Israel is annihilated. (source: MEMRI)
A political party that glorifies the death of its own population with public declarations “we are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs,” shows no value for the lives of its own civilians, let alone of others. The Global North must lead with moral clarity and urge the Arab League to follow suit.
When people on the streets and campuses in the Global North yell “Free Palestine,” they are doing so under the banner of Hamas in a call to eradicate the only Jewish State and to attack Jews globally. If people want to make the argument that the statement is for coexistence, then fight to end Hamas, argue for a Free Israel and to Create Palestine, and condemn the heinous attacks on Jews happening all over the world.
To end this war, we must end Hamas. Ban them—politically, financially, and globally. Only then can people talk about “the day after,” and the longer future.
When she stood in Congress on Israel’s May 14 Independence Day to introduce an “Ongoing Nakba” resolution because the State of Israel continues to exist, she decided to open by quoting Peter “AsAJew” Beinart.
Rep. Tlaib introducing the “Ongoing Nakba” resolution on May 14, 2025
Beinart is not a famous diplomat or philosopher. He’s not a celebrity or TikTok star. He’s not a Palestinian or Muslim. Most of the people in Congress never heard of him.
Yet Tlaib chose to quote him as a comrade in the effort to destroy the modern Jewish State.
Most left-wing Jews left their socialist-jihadi colleagues in the wake of the October 7, 2023 massacre, like rats fleeing a sinking ship. They were appalled at the moral depravity of people shouting to “Globalize the Intifada” and “Glory to the martyrs” after the savage killing of 1,200 people in Israel. Only the most radical fringe of the fringe remained; those who could bury their being a Jew and a human being far below the thrill of being beatified as a living saint by jihadists.
Those seeking the destruction of Israel have migrated from quoting the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion to Amnesty International to “AsAJew”s. The anti-Israel antisemitism has transmogrified from niche raw Jew hatred to generally accepted at the United Nations to Jewish-endorsed with a kosher seal of approval.
The crucification of the Jewish State may not have started with Jews, but the jihadi gospels being written now are putting AsAJews front-and-center nailing it to the cross.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres is first and foremost a politician, not a human being. What else can be the reasons behind his ignoring the slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel, burning entire towns, raping women and kidnapping 250 people, other than serving his constituents of the Global South whom he has learned are rabid antisemites?
When a radical socialist-jihadi gunned down two young Israeli diplomats outside a Jewish event in Washington, D.C. in May 2025, Guterres immediately issued a statement condemning the murders. It was something he did not do after the massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023. Or October 8. Or October 9. Or October 10.
But he rose to the occasion in May 2025 after the targeted killing of the Israeli couple by a lunatic yelling “Free, free Palestine,” as if he were surrounded by fantom college campus agitators. Perhaps anticipating blowback from the anti-Israel horde he leads (read serves), Guterres explained this statement “reiterat[ing] his consistent condemnation of attacks against diplomatic officials.”
THIS particular antisemitic murderer should be “brought to justice” because he killed diplomats, a Bozo no-no. In this circumstance, the UN “extends sympathies to the Government of Israel,” because members of the sacred circle of high brow governmental officials were gunned down, not Jews having breakfast with their kids in their kitchens.
The thousands of butchered and injured people in Israel by over 3,000 Gazans in October 2023 were just Jews and therefore deserved no sympathy from the United Nations. Guterres could not offer any words of condemnation or consolation to the Jewish State for such barbarity; he has been so trained by the Global South. His office would not demand that thousands of Gazans “be brought to justice”; they are the UN’s protected wards.
When the head of the United Nations explained to the world that he decided to quickly condemn the murder of two Israelis when he ignored the butchering of 1,200, because of unity among diplomats, he further exposed the profound inhumanity of the cancerous global institution.
On May 23, 2025, France said it is “determined to advance the implementation of the two state solution.” The June conference in New York that it will chair with Saudi Arabia titled “the International Conference for the Peaceful Settlement of the Palestinian Question and the Implementation of the Two-State Solution” is designed to focus on IMPLEMENTATION. France made clear that it expects “Irreversible steps and concrete measures for its implementation” to make the future a reality.
The combined effort of a western country and the dominant force in the Arab world to spearhead the effort, might lead to a balanced consensus that can help the parties forward. To be successful, the team must be realistic about the goals and constraints of both Israel and Palestinian society, and move on a realistic timeframe. Most importantly, it must work on an ENDURING peace that will last, not simply getting to an agreement.
Here are seven constructive steps that could lead to a stable two-state solution:
1. Disarm All Palestinian Militias
Peace starts with law and order. The Palestinian Authority has no monopoly on violence in the territories it claims to govern. Hamas and Islamic Jihad still run Gaza. In the West Bank, terrorist groups like Lion’s Den and the Jenin Brigades run wild with guns and explosives.
France needs to lead an international push to fully disarm all terrorist militias, not just generic phrases of “condemning violence.” All arms must be placed under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA), or there’s no point in talking about sovereignty. No state — and certainly not Israel — can accept a terror enclave as its neighbor, as has existed in Gaza since 2007.
2. Elections With Rules
The last Palestinian elections were held when Justin Beiber became legally allowed to drink alcohol. Mahmoud Abbas was elected in 2005… for a 4-year term. He’s now on year 20.
New elections must be held, but not every group gets to play. Hamas — a terrorist organization by U.S., EU, and Israeli designations — should not be allowed to run, just like Nazis weren’t allowed to run in post-war Germany. The party should be outlawed.
France and Saudi Arabia should insist on clear criteria: no party that promotes violence, antisemitism, or the destruction of Israel gets a seat at the table. There is no pathway to an enduring peace if there is an underlying state of war.
3. Reform Education — Stop Teaching Hate
An Enduring Peace isn’t signed on paper; it’s taught in classrooms and instilled in society.
As part of de-Hamasification of Palestinian society, schools — especially and including those run by UNRWA — a complete overhaul of Palestinian education, with international oversight to remove antisemitic and violent content. IMPACT-SE has written about this problem for years, and concrete steps must be taken to allow a future of coexistence.
4. Stop Treating Jews Like Foreigners in Their Homeland
Palestinian schools aren’t the only problem. The United Nations is rank with Jew-hatred and one cannot expect Palestinians to be less anti-Israeli Jews than the global body.
UN Security Council Resolution 2334 outrageously declared that Jews living in eastern Jerusalem and east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan (E49AL) are somehow illegal — a modern form of antisemitism dressed up in legalese. UNSC 2334 should be renounced and rescinded as part of the steps towards an enduring peace.
France must reject the idea that Jews should be banned from parts of their ancestral homeland. At the same time, to facilitate compromise, a cap on Jewish residents east of the 1949 lines — say 15% of the overall population — could be introduced to avoid major demographic shifts in a future Palestinian state.
5. End the So-Called “Right of Return”
The Palestinian demand that millions of descendants of refugees be allowed into Israel is not about peace — it’s about destroying Israel demographically. It’s a fantasy rooted in grievance, not reality.
France must take the lead in declaring the Palestinian “right of return” over. In its place, a compensation fund should be set up — funded by Israel, Arab countries that started the 1948 war, and international donors. A similar fund should be set up for the descendants of Jews from Arab countries which were expelled in the decades after 1948. Work should begin now to compile a list of the properties which were lost and the related descendants who will collect associated reparations.
6. tighten the border framework, including jerusalem
The Saudi Peace Plan of 2002 suggested that Israel retreat to the 1949 Armistice Lines — a temporary ceasefire line, not a border. That’s not a starting point. That’s a non-starter.
France and its partners should endorse a realistic territorial framework: borders will fall somewhere between the current Israeli security barrier and the 1949 lines, through mutual negotiations. Land swaps are fine — as long as they reflect demographic realities and security needs.
UNRWA, the UN agency that was supposed to help refugees, has become a sprawling, corrupt bureaucracy that perpetuates dependency and fuels incitement. Its existence undermines the Palestinian Authority and entrenches the myth of perpetual refugee status.
France and Saudi Arabia should lead the call for a phased shutdown of UNRWA, starting in Gaza and the West Bank. Services should be handed over to the PA — and resettlement should begin for Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, with annual caps to avoid regional overload.
UNRWA offices in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
Bottom Line
France says it wants permanent changes on the ground. Good. The Middle East has had enough of circular negotiations, terrorism-as-usual, and international hypocrisy.
If France is ready to be honest, clear-eyed, and courageous, it can help move the region toward peace. But if it sticks to the same old script — blaming Israel, indulging Palestinian rejectionism, and hiding behind the UN — then we’ll just keep getting the same instability, bloodshed, and failure.
Peace will not be achieved overnight and “concrete” steps must be phased with reality. France and Germany gradually became allies after World War II with the benefit of the deNazification of Germany. Germany even made peace with the Jewish State over time once it was committed to avoid the hatred of its past. An overhaul of the Palestinian mindset and rejection of radical jihadism and goal of eliminating the Jewish State, under the sheepherding of Saudi Arabia can help map a better course for the region.
France must internalize the needed overhaul of the “deformity in Palestinian culture,” to quote James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute who spoke to the UN in June 2023. Saudi Arabia must overlay the Abraham Accords on top of its 2002 Peace Plan to refine it to account for the reality of the last several years.
The emphasis of the France-Saudi chaired conference must be on the direction, not on the permanence of “concrete” and “irreversible” steps, to find a less violent and just future for the region.
How many generations should someone be called a “refugee?” Two? Ten? My parents were refugees and I consider myself the son of refugees. But not a refugee. To do so would be a mockery of millions of people fleeing homes to faraway lands where they have no family, infrastructure or knowledge of the local language.
Alas, while every year the world adds and removes refugees from the global tally, there is a permanent exception.
There are roughly 122 million displaced people worldwide (68 million internally displaced, 38 million refugees and millions of others seeking protection), and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is tasked with helping them. Its mission is clear: assist people fleeing conflict or persecution to either return home when it’s safe, or resettle in a new country where they can rebuild their lives and become citizens. Refugee status, according to UNHCR, is meant to be temporary. A tragic but manageable step toward normalcy.
But for one group of people, the rules were rewritten.
In 1949, the United Nations created a separate agency: the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Its job was not to help all refugees, but a specific set—Arabs who left or were displaced from what became the State of Israel during the 1948 war.
Unlike the UNHCR, UNRWA never intended to help these refugees resettle or gain citizenship elsewhere. In fact, when Jordan annexed the to be named “West Bank” in 1950 and granted full Jordanian citizenship to the Arabs living there in 1954 (Jews were specifically excluded from Jordanian citizenship) —including the so-called refugees—UNRWA still kept them on its refugee rolls. Why? They were no longer stateless, no longer displaced from their community, and in most cases, were living just miles from where they or their families once resided.
No other refugee population in the world is treated this way.
The Palestinians under UNRWA are not counted based on where they live or whether they’ve rebuilt their lives. They’re counted based on ancestry—any descendant of someone who lived in Mandatory Palestine in 1946 and left during the war is considered a “refugee.” That includes people who are now citizens of Jordan who have never set foot in Israel, and those who live under Palestinian rule in the West Bank and Gaza.
This isn’t about resettlement. It isn’t about a “two-state solution.” It’s about return. Not return to a country they fled—but to homes where their grandparents once lived, in a country that has since fought multiple wars for its survival and established itself as a sovereign nation.
This has locked the Middle East into a perpetual state of conflict. UNRWA doesn’t just preserve the status of Palestinian refugees—it amplifies it, funds it, and builds an international bureaucracy around it. It has denied Israel’s right to control its own immigration, and basic principle of sovereignty.
Worse, the UN’s actions have turned a situation normally considered a humanitarian issue into a real estate dispute. By insisting that people return to a house—not a country, as outlined in international human rights law—the global political body has exceeded its own mandate. This isn’t a question of national self-determination, but one of personal property claims. UNRWA isn’t so much a champion of the creation of a state beside Israel; it champions individual return to specific homes, decades abandoned or destroyed, now occupied by others in a sovereign country.
Meanwhile, the descendants of every other refugee group in the world—from Sudan to Ukraine—are helped by the UN to find a path forward. Only the Palestinians are encouraged to walk backward, into the houses of their grandparents.
UNHCR helps refugees stop being refugees. UNRWA helps them stay that way.
Every year, new wars create new displaced people. But only one group stays on the list year after year, generation after generation.
For Palestinian Arabs, the 1948 war is still being fought. Generations of people haven’t been birthed into refugee status as much as the region is in a 100 years war. While the world may use political terminology of an UNRWA ward who has never been to Israel as a descendant of a “refugee,” Palestinians simply see a permanent property right which will never be forfeited. The UN simply provides cover under the “refugee” monicker.
America is now home to a deadly literary genre: the antisemitic manifesto. Each one is a twisted cocktail of conspiracy, borrowed slogans, and rage—crafted by individuals from vastly different backgrounds but united by one target: Jews. The authors shoot in synagogues, storm kosher markets, take hostages, and justify it all in screeds that dress up genocidal hatred as “resistance.”
These murderers come from various corners, dressed as isolated incidents. But the actors aren’t truly lone wolves when they borrow from a common playbook, one that has now become widespread and familiar to everyone.
White in Pittsburgh: “All Jews Must Die”
In 2018, a white supremacist stormed the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh during Shabbat services and gunned down eleven worshipers. His manifesto was steeped in the “Great Replacement theory” accusing Jews of orchestrating a “white genocide” by bringing immigrants into the U.S. through humanitarian organizations like HIAS. His worldview was that Jews are global saboteurs, aiding an invasion. His solution was simple: exterminate them.
Memorial outside Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA
Black in Jersey City 2019: Killing the “Infiltrators”
A year later, in 2019, two Black extremists of the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology shot up a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, NJ killing three people. They believed that Jews were economic infiltrators and exploiters, encroaching on Black communities. In their eyes, a Jewish storefront was a symbol of oppression and they turned it into a morgue.
Islamist in Colleyville 2022: Jews As Power Brokers
In 2022, a British Islamist traveled to Texas and held four Jews hostage inside a synagogue. He wanted the release of Aafia Siddiqui, a convicted al-Qaeda operative being held in prison. Siddiqui believed that Jews control the government, the banks, the courts. So if you want America to listen, best to grab some Jews. This wasn’t about a local grievance. It was international antisemitism dressed up as activism.
Leftist in Washington, D.C. 2025: Killing International “Genocide” Enablers
In 2025, another Jewish cultural center was targeted. Two people believed to be Jews (one was a Christian Israeli) were murdered by a man whose manifesto was saturated with the language of international NGOs. He wrote of Israeli “genocide,” and declared himself a soldier for Palestinian justice. Except he didn’t go to Gaza. He went to Washington. And he didn’t shoot soldiers. He shot civilians under the framework that “the perpetrators and abettors have forfeited their humanity.”
Two people killed outside Jewish event in Washington DC, May 2025 (photo: Rod Lamkey, AP)
Their Common Delusion: Jews as the Evil Power Behind Everything
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: every single one of these killers thought they were acting in defense. Of their race. Of their people. Of the oppressed. And in each case, they believed that Jews were behind their suffering. The puppet masters. The infiltrators. The warmongers. The colonizers. The landlords. The cabal. It’s the oldest lie in the world—crafted for modern rage packed in a holster.
Our Common Delusion: They are not Identical. Some of Them Are Right
These attackers may look like lone wolves, but they aren’t howling alone. They are members of ecosystems—8chan threads, Telegram groups, Reddit subs, Twitter/X echo chambers. They are fed a steady diet of Holocaust inversion, “Zionist” conspiracies, blood libels, and genocidal memes. And increasingly, they’re finding validation from public-facing NGOs and international institutions whose language about Israel normalizes antisemitic tropes.
PBS did in depth documentaries about “White Supremacy” groups and their echo chambers on Telegram. When a killer shot a synagogue in Poway, CA in 2019 killing someone, the media reviewed his White supremacy manifesto, as it did when a shooter in Texas in 2023 killed eight people, covering the shooter’s extensive “antisemitism, misogyny and White Supremacy” rants on social media.
But one couldn’t find such analyses or scathing rebukes of non-White Supremacy groups. Black Israelites were pardoned by the Southern Poverty Law Center as merely having a few bad apples. Islamists and leftists were criticized – but rationalized – as being upset about the bleak situation of Muslims around the world.
The media had two principle reasons for the soft coverage of non-White killers: protecting those racial and ethnic groups, and agreeing with the underlying grievance. In the first, the SPLC and other liberal groups make the argument that highlighting violence from minority groups leads to their being over-policed and ultimately police violence against them. In the second, the media are the disseminators of the anti-Jewish and anti-Jewish State narrative so why self-incriminate.
Internationally Approved Manifestos
White supremacist “lone wolves” crafted manifestos and called out fellow “martyrs” designed to inspire followers and provoke copycat attacks, like Brenton Tarrant, Anders Breivik, Dylann Roof and Patrick Crusius. Non governmental groups like Amnesty International and the United Nations publish their own scathing reports (more official sounding than “manifesto”) to initiate action against Israel.
The non-White supremacist antisemites worship from these third party bibles. They can read The New York Times that tells them about the “Powerful” Jew and listen to liberal politicians list reasons why Jews don’t deserve to be defended. They can cite the International Criminal Court about Israel committing a “genocide” of Gazans, or Amnesty’s report on Israel practicing “ethnic cleansing.” These antisemites are spared the slog of penning a long manifesto like the Poway shooter about the “tyrannical and genocidal Jew.”
The antisemitic forgery “Protocols Of the Elders Of Zion” is no longer only being quoted in the Hamas Charter and sold at shadowy flea markets. It is retold in officially approved manuscripts quoted on global platforms with the same conclusion about Jews.
Jew Hate into the Vernacular
The steady diet of Jew bashing has become fully normalized. Rep. Rashida Tlaib calling out global Jewry “from Gaza to Detroit… [operating] behind the curtain… to profit off of racism,” could have been lifted from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Yet it got no pushback. It did not take long for Kanye West to publish a song called “Heil Hitler.”
The hatred that was once peddled in the shadows of 8chan and Telegram to hundreds of people is now in the open to millions. Their conspiracy theories and Jew hatred remain the same but the taboo of enlisting in the pogrom has been lifted.
Antisemitism isn’t coming from one direction anymore. It’s everywhere. The right, the left, Islamist circles, anti-colonial extremists. They may appear different but they end up with the same conclusion: Jews are causing a genocide of my favorite group. They must die.
Their manifestos, colorful as they may be, all write the same sentence in the end.
