Tag Archives: jihadi terrorism

Jihadi Protection Bills

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Congress did not arrive at legislation protecting Hamas overnight. It arrived there one bill at a time.

For decades, debates over Israel revolved around diplomacy. Republicans and Democrats argued over settlements, negotiations, Jerusalem, and the contours of a future Palestinian state. Even lawmakers sharply critical of Israel generally framed their proposals around advancing a negotiated two-state solution. The disagreement was over how peace should be achieved, not whether Israel had the right to defend itself against terrorist organizations.

In 2020, as the Trump Administration unveiled its peace plan and Israel considered extending sovereignty to portions of the West Bank, progressive lawmakers introduced legislation preventing American assistance from supporting annexation. Whether one believed annexation was prudent or unwise, the objective remained fundamentally political. These bills sought to influence the outcome of negotiations and preserve the possibility of a future Palestinian state. The debate was about borders, diplomacy, and competing visions for peace.

That bill did not stand in isolation.

In 2019, Representative Betty McCollum (D-MN) also introduced legislation prohibiting U.S. assistance from supporting the military detention of Palestinian minors. On its face, the proposal carried moral appeal. No civilized society wants children caught in war, and few slogans resonate more powerfully than protecting minors.

Yet the legislation missed the point. Israel’s military justice system does not prosecute minors because they are children. It prosecutes minors accused of security offenses, including violent rioting, firebomb attacks, shootings, stabbings, and participation in terrorist organizations. Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have all recruited teenagers into violent activity for decades.

Arab minors caught on camera right before they stab Israelis

The debate was no longer centered on where Israel’s borders should ultimately lie. It was becoming a debate over whether Congress should restrict Israel’s ability to prosecute those participating in terrorism.

That evolution became unmistakable after October 7.

The largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust might reasonably have been expected to produce overwhelming congressional support for dismantling Hamas. Instead, it accelerated an entirely different legislative movement.

Arabs in Gaza take the body of Israeli woman they had just killed into Gaza where the crowds pelted her body and spat on her

One proposal after another sought to block the military tools Israel argued were necessary to fight the war. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) repeatedly forced votes to halt major arms sales. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Representative Delia Ramirez (D-IL), and others introduced the Block the Bombs Act. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) sought to impose additional legal restrictions before military assistance could proceed.

US Senator Chris Van Hollen attends a Senate subcommittee on the Justice Departments proposed 2027 budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 19, 2026.

Supporters presented these bills as humanitarian safeguards designed to protect civilians and uphold international law. Their practical effect, however, would have been to deny or delay weapons while Israel was engaged in combat against a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that had murdered, raped, tortured, kidnapped, and burned civilians alive.

Congress was no longer principally debating the contours of a future peace agreement. It was debating how much of Israel’s wartime capability should be withheld while the war itself was still being fought.

And it continued.

In July 2026, Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced an amendment eliminating the entire $3.3 billion annual Foreign Military Financing package for Israel. Previous proposals had sought to condition aid or block particular weapons systems. Massie’s proposal went much further. It would have ended America’s regular military assistance altogether.

The amendment failed by a wide margin. But 104 members of Congress voted for it, including 103 Democrats alongside the bill’s Republican author.

That vote tells a larger story than the amendment itself.

Over the course of a few years, the legislative progression moved from opposing territorial annexation, to restricting Israeli counterterrorism practices, to limiting the weapons available to fight Hamas, and finally to questioning whether the United States should continue military assistance at all. Each bill built upon the political space created by the one before it. What once occupied the outer edge of congressional debate gradually became part of mainstream legislative discussion.

The coalition itself is unusual. Rashida Tlaib approaches the issue through Palestinian nationalism. Bernie Sanders emphasizes humanitarian law and civilian casualties. Chris Van Hollen argues for greater legal oversight of military assistance. Thomas Massie opposes foreign aid as a matter of constitutional principle. They arrive from very different ideological traditions, yet increasingly find themselves casting the same vote.

For generations, support for Israel was one of Washington’s few enduring bipartisan constants. That consensus has not disappeared; overwhelming majorities in Congress still support the alliance. But the terms of the debate have unmistakably changed.

Six years ago, Congress debated how American policy might influence a two-state solution. Today, members openly introduce legislation that would limit—or eliminate altogether—the military support Israel says it needs to defeat jihadist organizations committed not to coexistence, but to its destruction.

That is the real story of the Jihadi Protection Bills. Not that any single measure became law. But that, one bill at a time, the center of the American political conversation migrated from shaping the peace process to constraining Israel’s ability to wage war against jihadist movements to its basic ability to protect itself in a deeply hostile region.

Related

Nobody Protests the Military Bases in Germany (May 2026)

You No Longer Have to Listen Closely

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When I wrote I’m Offended, You’re Dead in 2015, I argued that the West fundamentally misunderstood violent jihadism. It was routinely described as the work of a tiny fringe because Western observers were looking almost exclusively at Europe and North America. But that was never where most Muslims lived or where most of the violence occured.

The view that a few “extremists” have hijacked Islam and are attacking the freedom of press is both myopic in terms of history and geography, and hazy in terms of numbers and scope. 

In the Global North, Muslims make up only about 2.6% of the population. Across the Global South, they account for roughly 28%. Excluding Latin America and China, that figure rises to about 42%. The attitudes that gave rise to violent jihadism were therefore never confined to a handful of isolated extremists. Across large parts of the Muslim world, Islamist movements and deeply illiberal religious doctrines already exercised enormous influence and persecute people attempting to live with basic human rights. The West mistook a geographic illusion for an ideological one.

Terrorist movements do not emerge in an ideological vacuum. An ideology does not need majority support to convince a determined minority that violence is both righteous and necessary.

And you no longer have to listen carefully to hear that message.

Over the past decade, migration, social media, and global communications have brought that ideological current into the daily background of Western life. Many will be alarmed and others will feel called. Either way, it has become ever-present and one no longer needs to search to find it.

The attacks increasingly follow a familiar pattern because they spring from the same worldview.

The gay patrons of the Pulse nightclub in Orlando were condemned as morally corrupt and massacred by a man with ties to al Qaeda and Hezbollah. This week, a Berlin Pride parade became the target of a man who had reportedly sought to join ISIS. Christmas markets in Germany have repeatedly been attacked by men invoking Islamist causes. Trucks and cars have been used as weapons against civilians in France, Germany, and Israel. In Manhattan, a deranged man allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar” while carrying out a stabbing spree.

Moses Grunhaus after he was stabbed by a man yelling “Allahu Akbar.” He was in New York City to clear out his apartment to move to Florida because of the election of Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Different countries. Different perpetrators. Different personal histories.

Official Palestinian media produced cartoons calling for Arabs to run over Jews

Yet the underlying message is strikingly similar: for the jihadists, those who offend do not merely deserve criticism – they deserve elimination.

That is the lesson many in the West still refuse to absorb. We continue to interpret these attacks through the lens of isolated extremism, mental illness, or individual grievance. Those factors may help explain why one person acts and another does not. They do not explain why the same religious slogans, the same enemies – the West, and the same methods appear again and again across continents.

The lesson of I’m Offended, You’re Dead is even more relevant today than it was a decade ago. The argument was never that every Muslim is a jihadist. It was that an ideology can become pervasive enough to inspire violence far beyond the ranks of organized terrorist groups. Even beyond “lone wolves.” It becomes the default language of the street.

Islamic radicals riot in Paris, France

The West believes it is engaged in an argument over speech and tolerance. About the quantitative size of immigration and the culture of new arrivals. Because that is the culture of the West – to debate, to find compromise, to coexist.

But violent jihadism is engaged in something else entirely. It is not trying to persuade those it finds offensive. It seeks to destroy them.

A decade ago, you had to look for that message, to parse that difference. Today, you don’t.

The call of “Allahu Akbar” is no longer confined to jihadi groups or even “lone wolf” radicals as they commit attacks. Because the anti-West lexicon has become normalized on the angry streets, hunting people perceived of as “monsters.”

Trading Antisemitism in US For Help in Foreign Wars?

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Al Jazeera is the global media company funded by Qatar, governed through a board appointed by the Qatari state and used to project Qatari influence around the world. Its digital arm, AJ+, was built in 2013 specifically for younger Americans who consume news through social media rather than television. By the late 2010s, it had become one of Facebook’s largest news-video publishers, generating billions of views and millions of followers while focusing heavily on race, social justice and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a peculiar cocktail of a socialist-jihadi alliance at that time, which is now mainstreamed.

AJ+ has a long history of peddling Hamas propaganda

In September 2020, the Trump Justice Department concluded that AJ+ was acting on behalf of a foreign principal and ordered it to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Registration would not have restricted its journalism, but simply would have required public disclosure of its relationship with Qatar and periodic reporting similar to that required of other foreign state-backed media organizations like those from Turkey (TRT), China (CGTN) and Russia (RT).

AJ+ refused to register. Republican lawmakers including Chuck Grassley, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz and Todd Young pressed DOJ to enforce its own determination.

Then, in May 2022, the Biden Justice Department withdrew the order after reviewing additional information submitted by AJ+. What changed has never been publicly explained. DOJ has not identified the decisive new facts, released its legal analysis or explained why AJ+ was treated differently from other foreign state-funded broadcasters.

“AJ+’s reporting ‘supports an inference’ that its broadcasts are ‘designed to influence the opinions and perspectives of its U.S. audience as directed by the foreign principals and for their principal benefit.’…

Given Al Jazeera’s and TikTok’s public prominence in the U.S., mounting evidence of their use to advance foreign agendas, and the Biden Administration’s own national security concerns with the two companies, the Committee is puzzled that the Department appears to have either ceased or paused enforcement of FARA registration requirements for the companies without explanation.” – February 8, 2024 letter from the Committee on Oversight and Accountability

The timing naturally raises questions.

Only months earlier, the United States had completed its withdrawal from Afghanistan. Qatar had become indispensable to Washington—hosting negotiations with the Taliban, assisting the evacuation from Kabul and serving as one of America’s principal diplomatic intermediaries in the region.

There is no public evidence that the FARA reversal was connected to Qatar’s diplomatic role but it is reasonable to ask whether a government relying heavily on Doha’s cooperation became less interested in forcing Qatar’s flagship media network to register as a foreign agent.

The same question now confronts the second Trump administration. Although Trump’s first Justice Department initiated the FARA action, his current administration has not publicly reopened the case. That may simply reflect DOJ’s legal judgment or competing priorities. It may also reflect Qatar’s continuing importance as a partner in addressing Iran, Gaza and other regional crises.

A final question – closer to home – may be the most consequential. During this same period, antisemitism reached levels not seen in decades while anti-Israel activism surged across American campuses and social media, principally from young people. And AJ+ was one of the most influential foreign state-funded digital news brands reaching young Americans, peddling such hatred over this time.

The unanswered question is whether Washington accepted greater Qatari influence inside the United States – including directly and indirectly promoting antisemitism – in exchange for Qatar’s assistance abroad.

Whether making Al Jazeera and AJ+ register under FARA would suddenly change these trends is unknown. But it is also unknown and curious why the government stopped asking the Qatari media powerhouse to do so.

The OIC’s Hamas Exception

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Founded in 1969, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is a coalition of 57 Muslim-majority nations, making it the second-largest intergovernmental organization in the world after the United Nations. Stretching from Morocco to Indonesia, and from Kazakhstan to Nigeria, it represents roughly a quarter of the world’s countries and speaks collectively on issues affecting the Muslim world.

OIC Member states

One of the organization’s longstanding positions is that extremist groups claiming to act in the name of Islam do not represent Islam. Over the years, the OIC has repeatedly condemned organizations such as:

  • ISIS (Daesh) — for attacks across Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Nigeria, all OIC member states.
  • Al-Qaeda — for attacks in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, and other Muslim-majority countries.
  • Boko Haram — for its insurgency in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, and Cameroon.
  • Al-Shabaab — for attacks centered in Somalia and extending into neighboring countries.
  • ISIS-K (Islamic State Khorasan Province) — for terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
  • Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — for its campaign against the government and civilians of Pakistan.

The common thread is unmistakable. Every one of these organizations has waged war against governments, civilians, or institutions in Muslim-majority countries, mostly members of the OIC itself.

The OIC has consistently argued that Muslims have been among the principal victims of jihadist terrorism. These groups bomb mosques, seek to overthrow Muslim governments, and destabilize OIC member states are denounced as terrorists and rejected as contrary to Islam.

Yet one jihadi terrorist groups is not called out. It is embraced.

Hamas is an Islamist movement whose founding charter and rhetoric have long drawn on jihadist themes and whose October 7, 2023, attack deliberately targeted civilians. Nevertheless, the OIC has not designated Hamas as a terrorist organization or issued the kind of sweeping institutional condemnations that it has directed at ISIS, al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Al-Shabaab, ISIS-K, or TTP.

The most obvious distinction is not the use of Islamist ideology or armed violence. It is the target: Israel, the Jewish State.

For an organization that frequently states that terrorism has no religion and that Muslims are among terrorism’s greatest victims, its record reveals a clear pattern. When jihadist groups attack the Muslim world, the OIC is unequivocal in its condemnation. When an Islamist movement wages jihad against the Jewish state, the organization’s response is support.

Choosing Love After the Pain

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On December 6 and 7, 2015, U2 finally took the stage in Paris.

The concerts had originally been scheduled for November 14 and 15, just one day after Islamist terrorists murdered 130 people across the city in coordinated attacks, including the massacre at the Bataclan concert hall. Less than a year earlier, Paris had already endured the Charlie Hebdo and kosher supermarket attack. Fear had become the city’s soundtrack.

Standing before a grieving audience, Bono argued that the terrorists wanted more than bodies. They wanted souls. They wanted free people to surrender their openness, joy, and humanity. His message was simple: we cannot become monsters to defeat the monsters.

But that never meant the monsters should be left undefeated.

A decade later, Bono’s words resonate with renewed force. Islamist terrorists butchered hundreds at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7, 2023, turning a celebration of life into a killing field. Yet Nova has refused to surrender. The festival has returned, even as Hamas and its supporters continue to mock the victims and celebrate the massacre.

That is the challenge every free society faces.

Love is not an alternative to defeating evil. Without security, there can be no concerts, no festivals, no freedom to gather. Evil must be confronted and defeated, or it will make love, music, and joy impossible.

The West must therefore pursue twin imperatives: defeat those who seek to destroy civilization, while steadfastly embracing the values of love, creativity, and human dignity that make civilization worth defending. Terror must never be allowed to decide either who lives or how we live.

Noa Beer, one of the SuperNova X music and arts festival organizers.

Coming Soon: Certified Jihadist-Free™

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A satire.

Shopping used to be simple. You bought food because it tasted good.

Today, every purchase arrives with a moral résumé.

  • The coffee is Fair Trade.
  • The chocolate is Rainforest Alliance Certified.
  • The eggs are Cage-Free.
  • The tuna is Dolphin Safe.

Soon the carton will tell you whether the chicken enjoyed equitable access to leadership opportunities.

With such established groundwork, the assertive red-green alliance / socialist-jihadi umbrella will undoubtedly develop a new standard for consumers to evaluate purchases:

Ethical Jihad Certification™

I imagine the following questionnaire for companies and organizations to complete, developed by the International Ethical Jihad Standards Council (IEJSC).

Supplier Ethics and Sustainability Review

If your organization employs child soldiers, is recruitment gender-balanced?

☐ Boys and girls equally represented
☐ Nonbinary recruitment targets adopted
☐ Diversity metrics forthcoming

If child brides are supplied, are they ethically sourced?

☐ Local
☐ Organic
☐ Family-owned supply chain

If weapons are stored among civilians, are they distributed equitably across community institutions?

☐ Hospitals
☐ Schools
☐ Mosques
☐ Balanced portfolio across all three

If hostages are held underground, are the tunnels built with recycled concrete?

☐ Yes
☐ Carbon offsets purchased
☐ Sustainability consultant retained

If civilians are used as human shields, has the organization achieved demographic representation?

☐ Women included
☐ Children included
☐ Elderly included
☐ Fully inclusive shielding policy

When invading another country, were low-emission vehicles prioritized?

☐ Bicycles
☐ Electric scooters
☐ Hang gliders
☐ Carbon-neutral pickup trucks

If rockets are launched from residential neighborhoods, has the launcher committed to Net Zero by 2040?

☐ Yes
☐ 2050
☐ Targets pending Qatari-donor approval

If propaganda calls for genocide, is the language gender-neutral?

☐ Yes
☐ Pronouns included
☐ Available in multiple languages

If a terrorist organization takes hostages, are accommodations culturally sensitive?

☐ Dietary needs considered
☐ Prayer space available
☐ Captivity experience survey administered

When returning hostages, was a positive community engagement experience provided?

☐ Parade route optimized
☐ Cheering crowds strategically positioned
☐ Children included for authentic community participation
☐ Environmentally-friendly branded backdrop prominently displayed

If civilians are murdered, was the operation at least locally sourced?

☐ Indigenous weapons
☐ Community-based perpetrators
☐ Minimal imported inputs

If rape is used as a mode of mass “resistance,” are the targets well represented?

☐ Young women
☐ Elderly women
☐ Trans-women
☐ Boys
☐ Sheep and goats

If burning a family alive in their home, what methods were used to assess environmental impact?

☐ Carbon emissions measured
☐ Certified sustainable ignition sources
☐ Recycled accelerants
☐ Ashes recycled in accordance with circular economy principles

If political opponents require corrective kneecapping, please confirm that your organization follows an equitable enforcement policy.

☐ Applied without regard to race, religion, gender, or political affiliation
☐ Accessibility accommodations provided during the disciplinary process
☐ Impact assessment completed
☐ Stakeholder feedback incorporated into future kneecappings

If political opponents are subjected to “involuntary rooftop relocation,” (tossed off of rooftops) please indicate which governance standards were followed.

☐ Community stakeholders notified
☐ Staff received annual safety training
☐ Proper signage installed
☐ Liability waivers completed

How does your organization incorporate the LGBTQ+ community?

☐ Rainbow headbands replace green ones during Pride month
☐ Local imams considering ordaining transwomen
☐ Gay men’s decapitated heads disposed of in another jurisdiction

Palestinian man, Ahmad Abu Marhia, beheaded because he was gay

Have you established regular communication with:

☐ International NGOs
☐ Foreign correspondents
☐ Western university researchers
☐ Social media advocacy networks

Has your organization retained celebrity spokespersons to improve international brand perception?

☐ Actor
☐ Musician
☐ Influencer
☐ Climate activist

Has your organization demonstrated continuous improvement in expanding the number of international agencies, committees, or special offices devoted exclusively to your cause?

☐ Year-over-year growth achieved
☐ Additional mandate secured
☐ Dedicated rapporteur established
☐ Additional entities under consideration

Before issuing historical claims, has your organization completed a Heritage Simplification Assessment?

☐ Archaeological evidence destroyed
☐ Conflicting evidence omitted
☐ Timeline reduced to a convenient starting date
☐ Approved historical narrative distributed
☐ Site renamed in Arabic with only Islamic grounding

Has your organization’s founding charter undergone an independent review for language that may be inconsistent with modern human rights standards?

☐ Terminology modernized without changing intent
☐ Currently undergoing reputation management with select NGOs
☐ Using reputational management software to block viewers from finding foundational charter
☐ We prefer not to revisit founding documents

Has your organization successfully persuaded international stakeholders that your adversaries have no legitimate historical connection, cultural heritage, or rights associated with the land?

☐ Global awareness campaign exceeded expectations
☐ Educational materials updated accordingly
☐ Approved terminology adopted
☐ Further stakeholder engagement required

Has your organization successfully repositioned itself from perpetrator to primary victim in international discourse?

☐ Independent observers persuaded
☐ Media narrative successfully reframed
☐ Stakeholder sympathy increased
☐ Further communications investment required

Successful applicants receive one of four ratings:

Bronze: Mass violence, in recyclable packaging.
Silver: Child soldiers recruited inclusively.
Gold: Hostage facilities powered by solar panels.
Platinum: Calls for genocide delivered with a complete ESG report.

For foods, there is an addition to the consumer label. For example:

Nutrition Facts

Calories: 140
Protein: 4g
Sodium: 120mg
Carbon footprint: Low
Gender equity: Certified
Child soldiers: Inclusive
Child brides: Ethically sourced
Weapons near civilians: Institutionally diversified
Support for genocidal jihadists: Values-aligned

May contain traces of sesame.

May also contain an entire moral civilization that has forgotten the difference between auditing evil and opposing it.

“Are You Going to Hamas Me?”

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The English language is constantly changing. Sometimes a person’s or group’s name becomes a verb.

We boycott because of Charles Boycott. We lynch because of William Lynch. We pasteurize because of Louis Pasteur. We sandwich because of the Earl of Sandwich.

The verb survives because it captures something distinctive that no existing word quite conveys.

What if the same happened with Hamas?

At first glance, someone might say, “We already have a word. It’s called pillaging.”

But pillaging isn’t nearly enough to convey the particular depredation.

The Vikings pillaged. They raided villages, stole livestock, carried off treasure, and sometimes took captives. Their brutality was driven by conquest and material gain. History rightly remembers them as ruthless raiders.

Yet even “to pillage” fails to capture what the world witnessed on October 7.

If “to Hamas” became a verb, it would not simply mean to rob, raid, or kill.

It would mean to deliberately massacre civilians, rape and murder, burn families alive, and carry away even the bodies of the dead – not merely to deny burial, but to torment loved ones and use the dead as bargaining chips. It would mean celebrating those acts publicly, then, when the victims fight back, proclaiming yourself to be the true victim. It would mean embedding fighters among civilians, hiding like cowards behind women and children while forcing every effort to rescue hostages or defeat you into another propaganda opportunity.

Dead Israeli woman hauled back to Gaza by Hamas, spat on by local Gazans on October 7, 2023

The cruelty is not only in the violence itself. It is in the inversion.

“To Hamas” is to attack and demand sympathy for committing crimes against humanity. The hostage-taker claims oppression. The organization that began the war insists the people searching for their murdered and kidnapped relatives are the real aggressors.

Hamas genocidal jihadist in Israeli kibbutz, celebrating killing families

“To Hamas” is to invite the world to join the crime and taunt the victims. To call “globalize the Intifada” in the streets of the Global North. To say the victims are not welcome on street signs. To taunt worshippers working into prayer halls.

Language evolves because sometimes old words are no longer enough.

If someone someday asks, “Are you going to Hamas me?” they would not be asking whether you’re going to steal from them or rape them. They would be asking something far darker.

Vikings pillaged. English already has a word for that.

“To Hamas” is to commit heinous atrocities, run for physical and emotional cover, and call for support to exploit the victims further.

Many Jews are being Hamased daily. It is time to label it clearly.

American Hamas

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Social scientists have long observed that ideas do not need majority support to transform a community. Research on social norms has repeatedly found that once a committed minority reaches roughly 25 to 30 percent of a group, opinions once considered beyond the pale can become normalized. The Overton window shifts. People become more willing to voice views they once kept private because they no longer fear social disapproval.

That is what makes Pew Research Center’s July 2026 findings so alarming.

In 2024, Pew found that 37% of American Muslims viewed Hamas favorably. Two years later, that figure has risen to 44%.

July 2026 Pew Poll showing 44% of American Muslims support Hamas, almost the same as the Palestinian Authority. This is a gross outlier relative to all other Americans.

Vile extremism has not only been mainstreamed in the American Muslim community, it is accelerating.

Hamas is not merely another Palestinian political movement. It is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that carried out the October 7 massacre. Its members murdered civilians, took hostages, committed widespread sexual violence, and burned families alive. Hamas has long promoted antisemitic ideology, seeks Israel’s destruction, refuses to disarm or allow civilians to use its protective shelters, and has repeatedly embedded military operations among civilians, leaving Gaza’s population to be destroyed.

Forty-four percent is not a fringe. It is well above the level social scientists associate with changing social norms. It IS the norm.

Viewed through that lens, the chants heard on American streets become easier to understand. “Globalize the Intifada” is no longer merely the slogan of isolated radicals. Celebrating the killing of Jews no longer needs to be hidden but can be posted on social media.

For American Jews, this is not an abstract polling result. Hamas and “Globalize the Intifada” mean antisemitic violent jihad. It is the embrace of a death cult. A poll showing growing favorability of Hamas inevitably deepens fear that the moral barrier has been broken and violence is near.

But this is not only a Jewish concern.

No society should become comfortable with growing support for a terrorist organization whose defining acts include the deliberate murder of civilians, hostage-taking, and an explicitly antisemitic ideology. When favorable views of such an organization increase rather than decline after its atrocities, the implications extend beyond the community it targets. They speak to the moral health of the the American Muslim community.

Every community contains extremists. The defining question is whether they remain isolated or become influential enough to reshape what is considered acceptable. Pew’s findings suggest that sympathy for Hamas is no longer confined to the margins of American Muslim opinion. It has become substantial enough to influence public discourse and to shape the boundaries of acceptable speech, and likely action.

The Hamas Charter is the most antisemitic governmental charter ever produced

The issue has grown beyond Hamas in Gaza. It is American Hamas – the normalization of support for a terrorist organization within American society. If support for Hamas among American Muslims has risen from 37% to 44% in just two years, Americans should ask not only what this means for Jews, but what it says about the values we are willing to tolerate in America.

The greatest danger is not merely that extremists exist. It is that extremism ceases to be recognized as extreme.

The Flag, the Staff, and the Fight for Civilization

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One of the most enduring images of the American Revolution is not a musket fired at Lexington or a cannon at Yorktown. It is a flag.

“Spirit of ’76” by Archibald Willard, 1875

In paintings celebrating the American Revolution, men advance carrying banners while drummer boys beat the cadence beside them. Often these figures are unarmed or lightly armed. To a modern observer, this seems irrational. Why would an army send men into battle carrying flags and drums instead of rifles?

Because they were not there to fight but to remind others why the fight mattered.

The flag represented the regiment, the cause, and the emerging nation. The drum provided rhythm and cohesion amid the chaos of battle. Neither was a weapon. Yet both were indispensable.

While tools like weapons help achieve an objective, symbols give meaning to the objective.

The Declaration of Independence was not a weapon. Neither was the America flag. Yet without them, the American Revolution would have been little more than a military rebellion. The cause and symbols transformed a collection of armed colonists into a people united by a common purpose.

The same lesson appeared thousands of years earlier in the Torah.

Moses’ staff began as an ordinary shepherd’s stick. In Egypt it became a symbol of divine authority. It was present during the plagues, at the splitting of the sea, and throughout Israel’s journey in the wilderness.

Similarly, during the battle against Amalek, Moses stood on a hill overlooking the fighting. When he raised his hands, Israel prevailed.

The rabbis famously ask whether Moses’ hands actually won the battle. Of course not. Joshua and the soldiers were the actual fighters. Like the flag carried by a Revolutionary soldier, the Moses’ raised arms pointed upwards. It reminded the warriors that victory depended not only on military strength but on the faith that united them.

Moses’ arms raised during fight with Amalek

Unfortunately, Moses later forgot the important distinction between symbol and tool. In Numbers 20, God instructs Moses to speak to a rock to make it produce water but instead Moses used the staff to hit the rock.

“And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Take the tent and gather the congregation together, you and Aaron your brother, and speak to the rock before their eyes, and give them water from it,… And Moses lifted up his hand, and smote the rock with his rod, and there came out abundant water,… And the LORD said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Because ye believed me not, to sanctify me in the sight of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them.”

Had Moses held the staff and spoken to the rock, it would have been clear that Moses was acting as an agent of God. However, by using the staff to hit the rock, the appearance to the congregation was that Moses produced the water through his physical actions. The important symbol was converted into a mere tool.

That temptation remains with every generation.

Today, neither America nor Israel doubts the superiority of its weapons. The United States and Israel possess military capabilities far beyond those of the jihadist movements that seek their destruction.

But this war is not only about weapons and short-term military victory.

The jihadists understand the power of symbols. They flew their flags over burned civilian homes and corpses of families. Their propaganda celebrates martyrdom of their own people. Their movements are built around vile narratives and identity.

So the engagement with the enemies must be beyond tools and include symbols.

The challenge facing America as it approaches its 250th birthday, and Israel as it continues its long war against jihadist movements sworn to its destruction, is not merely maintaining military superiority. It is ensuring that the superiority of their cause is just as visible.

For Israel, that means rebuilding the communities of the Gaza Envelope, returning families to their homes, raising the flag over places terrorists tried to erase, and celebrating Jewish life where jihadists sought death.

For America, it means reclaiming the language of the Declaration of Independence, speaking unapologetically about liberty and human rights, and using international forums not merely to condemn violence in general but to condemn noxious jihadist violence specifically.

The free world must repeatedly denounce genocidal jihadists like Hamas and Hezbollah and pass resolutions that celebrate democracy, defend religious freedom, and affirm the dignity of every human being.

The current fight matters more than military victory. It requires weapons, and also a proud display of enduring Jewish and Democratic values.

Tools win battles. Symbols sustain civilizations. They are both distinct and required at pivotal moments like today.

No Hashtag for Khartoum or Mogadishu

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Before October 7 reordered the world’s attention, a war in Sudan had already begun killing at scale. April 15 marked the three year anniversary of the latest incarnation of war. It has since produced one of the largest humanitarian crises on earth—millions displaced, famine conditions spreading, entire cities shattered. Over 2,000 healthcare workers killed. And yet it has generated almost none of the global mobilization that defines our era of outrage.

No encampments. No slogans. No sustained moral urgency that travels.

Two forces—the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces—fight for control. Civilians are not incidental to the conflict; they are its terrain. Hospitals are looted, neighborhoods erased, aid convoys blocked. Darfur, a name once synonymous with “never again,” has quietly returned to the same vocabulary of mass killing.

The scale should compel attention. It doesn’t.

For years, much of the global discourse—across media, universities, and international institutions—has sorted conflict through a particular lens: Global North and Global South. The North is cast as inherently evil, colonial and imperial. The South as perpetual victim.

Sudan does not fit neatly inside such lens. There is no clear external oppressor to anchor outrage, no simple narrative that translates easily into the moral shorthand of our time. The violence is internal, complex, resistant to reduction. And so the system hesitates. Attention drifts. Outrage never organizes.

Look at the response architecture. The United Nations convenes, issues appeals, and struggles to convert urgency into action. Funding remains short of need. Access remains constrained. The gap between rhetoric and relief is not marginal—it is structural. Mechanisms that elsewhere become focal points of accountability have not galvanized comparable pressure here. Even institutions like the International Court of Justice sit far from the center of global attention on Sudan, not because the crimes are lesser, but because the political energy that drives action is missing.

Attention follows narrative. Narrative follows familiarity. Sudan offers neither.

The victims do not map cleanly onto categories that travel well. There is no easy compression into a slogan or a symbol. And in a world that increasingly organizes around moral shorthand, what cannot be simplified is often ignored.

This is not only about Sudan. Or Somalia where war has also ravaged the landscape. It is about how the past is taught—and how its lessons travel.

Holocaust education stands as a cornerstone of moral instruction across much of the Global North. Its lessons are intended to be universal. But when it is absorbed as a contained European tragedy, rather than a case study in how societies turn inward, weaponize identity, and destroy their own, its warning loses portability. It becomes history, not instruction. The Global South doesn’t bother to listen to the lesson, and the Global North is focused elsewhere.

In Sudan, mass violence is just statistics without racism and a colonial script. Here is a catastrophe that should activate every alarm built in the twentieth century—and does not. An estimated 400,000 killed in Sudan. Over 500,000 killed in nearby Somalia.

Reducing these to “internal conflicts” explains nothing. It does something worse. It lowers the urgency. It signals, quietly, that this is a tragedy the world can observe rather than confront.

Universities that mobilize rapidly around conflicts that fit prevailing frameworks struggle to sustain engagement here. Media cycles that can fixate for months elsewhere let Sudan and Somalia slip into the margins. International bodies calibrated to respond to pressure find little of it applied.

Sudan is a statistic. Somalia is a statistic. Yet Gaza has a narrative.

Victims should not need a more compelling narrative. They need corridors that function, aid that arrives, and accountability that does not wait for a more convenient story. They need a world capable of responding to human suffering even when it does not fit the frameworks that dominate discourse.

Gazans who launched a genocidal jihadi war never deserved particular sympathy. Especially compared to nearly a million killed in Sudan and Somalia.