President-elect Donald Trump issued a warning to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas to release the 101 hostages it stole from Israel on October 7, 2023, or “all hell will break out” for them and the region. He would not comment further on what that meant for Hamas or its allies but reiterated that it would be severe.
Below are some thoughts on what actions the Trump administration might take, which fall into two principal categories: military and non-military.
Military
Trump’s first term in office did not see much activity in the way of American forces and action. While he did increase spending for the military over the Obama administration, his actual use of force was targeted and limited to particular strikes, such as the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and missile strikes on Syria for using chemical weapons. It is possible that Trump would order targeted attacks on Hamas operatives as well.
The general argument against this is that Israel has already pulverized Hamas in Gaza and there is little else that the U.S. could do. That is not true.
The United States has several things that Israel doesn’t have: massive bombs; incremental intelligence; and global influence.
At various points of the Hamas-initiated war, the Biden administration withheld some armaments to Israel, fearing it would harm civilians. Those bombs and other tools of warfare could be used against Hamas and its allies. Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon and Iran’s nuclear program could be eviscerated with advanced weaponry, whether given to and launched by Israel or used by American forces directly.
U.S. intelligence and reach spans beyond the immediate actors. One of Hamas’s leaders, Khaled Mashal lives openly in Qatar, where the US has its largest military base in the Middle East. The Trump administration may give Qatar the option of green-lighting the elimination of Mashal and his associates or watch the US move its over 10,000-person force to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the administration advances the Abraham Accords with a normalization agreement between Israel and KSA.
Non-military
The United States power can bring the world to pressure Hamas through political, economic and judicial actions. This is the opposite approach of the Biden administration and the world which put pressure on Israel to the detriment of the hostages. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted as much that “every time we put pressure on Israel, Hamas backed off from the hostage deal.”
The initiatives start with a simple order: label every government, agency, business or person associated with Hamas a terrorist entity.
The Palestinian Authority‘s parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council, is led by Hamas. The PA would immediately become a designated terrorist group unless it fires every member of Hamas. All members of the PA would be subject to arrest and no organization would be permitted to send material support to the PA. Every US charity that sends money to the PA would lose tax-exempt status and/or be shut down.
The United Nations considers Hamas a legitimate political Palestinian party and its main agency in the region, UNRWA, closely coordinates with Hamas. UNRWA offices in the United States would be closed and the US would push allies to similarly halt funding to UNRWA and close its offices. UNRWA would not only lose all US funding and standing, but possibly the United Nations as well, if the organization continues to legitimize Hamas.
In addition to the “axis of resistance” of the Iranian proxies already on the terrorist list, Qatar and Turkey would be forced to chose between the United States and Hamas. Each would see its economies and regional aspirations quickly collapse should they side with terrorists. Ramifications could include not only moving all US assets out of Qatar to Saudi Arabia, but also supporting Israel and Cyprus to all energy claims in the Mediterranean Sea which Turkey covets.
In the United States, people who provide material support to not just Hamas, but the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA would be committing a criminal act. People would go to jail for up to 20 years or be deported. Entire groups, or perhaps just senior leadership of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, Students for Justice in Palestine and others could be impacted, depending on their level of support.
In April 2024, Congress enacted the Hamas and Other Palestinian Terrorist Groups International Financing Prevention Act which requires the executive branch to impose sanctions on foreign states or persons that provide certain types of support to Hamas, and other Palestinian terrorist groups. Trump’s version of “hell” for Hamas supporters will be to not only enforce the will of Congress but to expand its targets by capturing the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA as Hamas affiliates.
Henri Dunant (1828-1910) was a humanitarian who created the International Red Cross in 1863 which helped lead to his selection as the first winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901. He is also known (although such mention has been stripped from Wikipedia) for being a strong Christian Zionist, as far back as 1866 when he advocated for “the re-settlement of Palestine by the Jewish people.” His advocacy led Theodore Herzl to invite him to the first Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1897.
The dream of Jews returning to their homeland gathered momentum in the second half of the 19th century, despite the Ottomans making it hard for Jews to move to Palestine. In 1800, Jews made up about 3% of the region of Palestine, growing to 8% by 1882 and nearly 14% by the close of the Ottoman period in 1914.
Jews have moved to the land of Israel in far greater percentages than either Christians or Muslims since 1800
This predated the Balfour Declaration of 1917, when the British government appreciated the Zionist Federation’s appeal to reestablish their national home in Palestine.
“His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”
Despite Zionism being about the GOAL of creating a Jewish national home in Jews’ historic homeland, the term continues to be used decades after the modern State of Israel was established in 1948.
Gil Troy, a historian and author of “The Zionist Ideas,” explained that Zionism has three principle components: that Jews are a nation; that Jews have ties to their particular homeland in the land of Israel; and that Jews have a right to establish a state in that homeland, much like other people have rights to their own country. The first two principles are simple facts while the third is a matter of rights, not aspirations. Such definition makes Zionism an ongoing principle rather than that a mission which was accomplished in 1948.
Pro-Israel books using “Zionist”
The view of Zionism as a relevant reality or historical ideology arises in the national anthem, “Hatikvah”, written in 1877 as the Zionist movement gathered initial momentum.
“As long as within our hearts / The Jewish soul sings, / As long as forward to the East / To Zion, looks the eye / Our hope is not yet lost, / It is two thousand years old, / To be a free people in our land / The land of Zion and Jerusalem”
Today, some object to the lyrics speaking of Israel from a purely Jewish perspective when 25% of the population is not Jewish. Others do not like the fact that it has no religious foundation and only speaks of being “free” in the land. I would add that the text is inherently dated with words like “our HOPE” and “TO BE a free people” when Israel has long been a reality.
Israeli flag at the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
Significantly, discussions around “Zionism” have continued in political fora as if the world is still debating the FORMATION of Israel.
In November 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed Res. 3379 which stated “zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” by lumping it into a category of trespasses including “colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, apartheid and racial discrimination.” The resolution was rescinded in 1991 through the efforts of the United States.
Keith Ellison, Minnesota’s attorney general and one-time member of Congress once said “Zionism, the ideological undergirding of Israel, is a debatable political philosophy,” making the foundation of the Jewish State a questionable endeavor.
Linda Sarsour, a member of the anti-Israel Democratic Socialists of America said that “nothing is creepier than Zionism,” invoking the old UN resolution that Zionism is a form of racism.
Steve Erlander wrote in The New York Times that “Zionism was never the gentlest of ideologies. The return of the Jewish people to their biblical homeland and the resumption of Jewish sovereignty there have always carried within them the displacement of those already living in the land,” repeating the stale U.N. slander.
Israel’s enemies continue to call it a “Zionist entity”, refusing to mention the name of the country, as if to do so recognizes its existence or right to exist.
The continued use of the word “Zionism” today by anti-Israel agitators is not a theoretical review of Jewish aspirations to return to their homeland in the 19th century and early 20th century, but a concerted effort to demonize and/or destroy Israel today.
For starters, by attempting to define Zionism as a form of racism, people mark Israel as a racist and apartheid state regardless of its actions. While it is the most liberal country in the entire Middle East, if Israel’s underpinning ideology was built on “colonialism” and “racial discrimination,” then its existence is a continuation of the racist ideology, permeated by original sin.
Secondly, if Israel is not viewed as a functioning liberal and democratic reality but merely a vehicle of “Zionism,” its existence entails the continued “displacement of those [Arabs] already living in the land.” When Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced a resolution in Congress about the “Ongoing Nakba,” she was not discussing 1948 history but a belief in the “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for illegal settlements.” She imagines the entire history and ongoing reality of the reestablished Jewish State as a “catastrophe.”
Further, anti-Israel people believe that when JEWS use of the word “Zionism,” it means that the goals of the Jewish State are far from completed. Not only does Israel seek the land east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL/ “West Bank”) and Gaza, but it seeks “Greater Israel” encompassing “the area from the Nile to the Euphrates,” as speakers at the United Nations contend. It means Jews want to see a third Temple built on the Temple Mount in place of the Dome of the Rock.
In short, when anti-Israel people use the term “Zionism,” they are discussing more than a philosophy but an evolving reality. Anti-Israel activists seek a future which resembles 1947 or 1917, when there was no Israel and no international support for a Jewish State. When those same people hear Jews use “Zionism,” they believe that Jews want a future which looks like 2,000-plus years ago, with a Jewish Temple and sprawling Jewish kingdom.
In other words, Zionism is not just a highly charged word for some, but conjures up the perception of ongoing goals as opposed to actual present facts.
The facts are that Israel is the most pluralistic society in the Middle East where Arabs have more rights and a higher standard of living than in neighboring Arab countries. Israel has shown its willingness to SHRINK its borders for peace. Israel has proven that it can create a viable, functioning economy and society, despite regional actors refusing to accept its existence.
The plain truth is that Israel is a model state to be replicated, while cast as a Zionist ideology to be terminated.
Zionism was a dream and Israel exists. The transition was marked in the last line in Israel’s Declaration of Independence, “the realization of the age-old dream – the redemption of Israel.” Israel supporters should acknowledge Israel’s declaration and stop calling themselves “Zionists” as it enables anti-Israel fanatics to whitewash their desire to destroy the Jewish State.
A proud “Zionist” woman at the Celebrate Israel parade in New York City in 2019 (photo: First One Through)
People are pro-Israel, anti-Israel or Israel-ambivalent today. Do not let those who seek the destruction of Israel to hide behind a “debate” about the “political philosophy” of Zionism.
The sorry state of Columbia University’s treatment of Jews is apparent to all. The administration, teachers and student-led groups have participated in the harassment, intimidation and assault on Jews and Jewish life on campus before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre and very significantly thereafter.
It is now manifest that graduates of the school – including some Jews, remarkably – have bonded with Hamas and rationalized its barbarism and whitewashed its antisemitism.
Consider anti-Israel Jewish alum Anna Baltzer. According to her Wikipedia page, Baltzer has written a number of books, and it seems that Noam Chomsky is a fan of her 2014 book “Witness in Palestine,” which details “Palestinian resistance” against the existence of Jews in the land of Israel. On November 12, 2023, shortly after the Hamas-led massacre, she wrote on the socialist-jihadi site Common Dreams an opinion piece titled “Hamas Didn’t Attack Israelis Because They Are Jewish,” in which she attempted to argue that Hamas killed Israelis because Israeli Jews are White supremacist colonial invaders, not because of their religion.
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
“raise the banner of Jihad in the face of the oppressors, so that they would rid the land and the people of their uncleanliness, vileness and evils.” (Article 3)
“Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
“Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land” (Article 12)
“In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)
The Charter would go on to spin a bunch of Jew-hatred conspiracy theories lifted from the forgery Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which has NOTHING to do with the conflict in the land.
“In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money” (Article 20)
“With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein…. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.” (Article 22)
“The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion… using all evil and contemptible ways… infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations… aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion…. Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people.” (Article 28)
“the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control.” (Article 30)
“The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… here is no way out except by concentrating all powers and energies to face this Nazi, vicious Tatar invasion. The alternative is loss of one’s country, the dispersion of citizens, the spread of vice on earth and the destruction of religious values… fight with the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)
So how does this Ivy League-educated anti-Israel Jew deal with these facts? She pointed to Hamas’s revised charter of 2017 which says in Article 16 “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion. Hamas does not wage a struggle against the Jews because they are Jewish but wages a struggle against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Yet, it is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity.”
The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli physical attacks is long.
Hamas and its leaders have long denigrated Jews, calling them “the brothers of apes and pigs,” and told their followers that “Jews are a people who cannot be trusted,” among many other insults.
The list of Palestinian anti-Jewish non-Israeli verbal attacks is long.
Surely Baltzer knows all of this. So why make an argument that is plainly untrue, and why do it to fellow Jews?
While not all Jews are pro-Israel (or eat kosher, live in Israel, celebrate Jewish holidays or a variety of things that are inherently Jewish), some – like Baltzer – are anti-Israel. They may hate some government policies, the entire government, or the entire state. They may actually not hate Israel but are eager to see local Arabs achieve a state of their own.
So how can people like Baltzer willfully ignore the deep Jew-hatred of Hamas? How and why do they try to convince fellow Jews that despite everything Hamas says and does, its radical views of Islam and jihad are somehow not toxic to Jews everywhere?
It’s a variant of the Stockholm Syndrome. In the case of Stockholm, an abused person develops a strong bond with their abuser and defends their actions in a strange twist of empathy. In this iteration, which I call the Columbia Syndrome, the root source is not purely from the ABUSER’S actions, but from the desire of someone to purge a part of their identity.
In an effort to rid oneself of a component of the Jewish collective – Israel in this case – a person bonds with someone who similarly attacks that element (Hamas, here). The fact that the abuser is not solely focused on that narrow element, or gives some soft talking points as cover to mask the general hatred in order to enlist people to the cause, is excused. The person suffering from Columbia Syndrome wants to expunge a core association so profoundly, that they will empathize with groups or people who despise them completely.
Columbia University did not originate this phenomenon and the phenomenon is not confined to anti-Israel Jews. People like Peter Beinart (Yale alum) have long been attempting to shield antisemites like Rep. Rashida Tlaib of charges of Jew-hatred. Brown University held a panel discussion about antisemitism which included Jews and non-Jews that echoed each other that Jews are not indigenous to the land of Israel, and to combat antisemitism one needed to be anti-Israel. Student groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow routinely link arms with those with extensive antisemitic credentials.
But Columbia stands above the rest.
Home to Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, the school has long served as a fountain of denial of Jewish history and heritage. Today it is home to Joseph Massad, who celebrated the October 7 massacre of Jews and said that the Jews of the Old Testament are really “Palestinian Hebrews.”
Columbia is where students hoist banners calling for an “intifada” and point to Jews to be the next victims for Hamas.
Columbia is where socialist-jihadi politicians come to fawn on students harassing Jews.
Rep. Ilhan Omar at Columbia “encampment”
And Columbia is located in the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world, New York City. The university has the largest percentage of Jews of all the Ivy League schools, according to Hillel, and likely the largest Jewish alumni network of the Ivies.
Jews on campus and Jewish alumni witness the vocal anti-Israel fervor and must make a decision of how to respond: fight, flight, join or ignore. Many students worked very hard to gain admission to the institution to get a good education, and are loathe to leave the school or exert the physical and mental energy required to fight the tide of hatred. The majority of Jewish students are left with the choice to either listen to the toxicity or join the seemingly popular horde.
The Columbia environment echoes the school curricula of UNRWA, the temporary United Nations agency to care for descendants of Palestinian Arabs who left Israel at its founding. They are lied to that Jews are “colonialists” and “invaders” who “stole the land” from local Arabs. They are taught that all of Israel is an illegal “Zionist project” which should be terminated and handed to the stateless Arabs of Palestine (SAPs).
In such framework, Columbia Jews hear teachers and students echo the Democratic Socialists of America who argue that every Israeli Jew cannot be considered a civilian and is fair game for Palestinian Arabs “deploying violence to liberate themselves.”
Israeli Jews are no longer victims and Palestinians can longer be considered terrorists in such mindset. Even Arab men stabbing children to death while they slept, as happened in 2011, was supported by 51% of Arabs in Gaza. Some Columbia allies of SAPs may find the actions and associated support for killing children abhorrent but believe it has context for which Israel is solely to blame.
The depravity is appalling but it is part of the culture; it is deeply embedded in the Palestinian historical narrative at this point. The “allies” of SAPs have ingested the toxicity, including anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian Jews. What may have begun as just wanting SAPs to have freedom or an objection of Israeli policies, became a marriage made in hell.
Anti-Israel Jews try to cleanse Palestinian terrorists of antisemitism to rationalize their allegiance and to get fellow Jews to join the self-immolation. Rather than rethink the dangerous dynamic, the anti-Israel Jews affix themselves to people who want to see them dead – after they help destroy Jewish relatives.
People suffering from Columbia Syndrome are not only convinced that they are acting rationally but also morally. Like Jews who push for laws to ban the ritual slaughter of meat or circumcision, they concoct moral arguments for such actions. Driven by their profound desire to amputate part of their ethnicity and culture, they embrace people and movements which want to decapitate them.
Too many Jews are suffering from Columbia Syndrome in which they join forces with Hamas and other vicious antisemites to amputate any tinge of Zionism in their comportment. While Stockholm syndrome is understood by society to develop from a trauma-related experience, unfortunately, Columbia syndrome is viewed by a socialist-jihadist culture as a form of moral awakening.
Ireland and eight other countries decided to recognize Palestine in 2024. Should the borders of Palestine follow the contours of the 1949 Armistice Lines that Israel agreed to with Transjordan and Egypt, there would be roughly 720,000 Jews inside Palestine, of which 220,000 would be in “East Jerusalem” and 500,000 in communities east of the 1949 lines, commonly referred to as the “West Bank.”
What do Ireland and the other countries think should be the rights of these 720,000 Palestinian Jews?
Should they be allowed to become full Palestinian citizens with all relevant rights? Should they be allowed to take on permanent residency status? Should they be forced to renounce their Israeli citizenship?
Should they be allowed to live in the homes they purchased and live in? To keep the schools and synagogues open for education and prayer?
Should Palestinian Jews have their guns confiscated? Should the protective fences around their communities be dismantled?
Should they be forced to abandon their homes and property in East Jerusalem? Should they be evicted from the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem?
Should Jews be allowed to pray freely on the Jewish Temple Mount? To rebuild their holy Temple?
On December 28, 2016, departing US Secretary of State John Kerry said “Does anyone here really believe that the [Jewish] settlers will agree to submit to Palestinian law in Palestine?” He made it sound like there was no way Jews could accept Palestinian rule because Palestine would be ruled as a radical Islamic state which would subjugate Jews.
Are Ireland, Spain and Norway recognizing a radical jihadist State of Palestine which will subjugate and torment Jews? A government which will support October 7-type massacres again-and-again against Palestinian Jews inside its new borders?
When Norway recognized the Palestinian unity government which included Hamas in 2007, it urged “Palestinian authorities to respect basic international standards as regards compliance with previously concluded agreements, renunciation of violence and recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” Will it similarly demand that all Palestinian Jews be afforded every basic human right?
When Spain voted in favor of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 in 2016 making it illegal for any Israeli Jew to live in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, did it support ethnically cleansing all Jews from the Old City or did it imagine that all of the Jews would be free to live there and worship on the Temple Mount under Palestinian rule?
When countries vote in favor of a Palestinian State, they should make clear what rights – if any – nearly three-quarters of a million Palestinian Jews should have in such new country. If they deny Jews the right to live and pray everywhere in this new Palestine, their recognition of Palestine in the shadow of the October 7 slaughter is a noxious endorsement of jihad. If there is any justice in the world, that jihad should swallow their countries first.
On September 15, 2020, the Trump Administration announced the Abraham Accords which included the normalization of relations between Israel and both Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. Within a few weeks, Israel normalized relations with Sudan, and then with Morocco.
The agreements were mocked by socialist-jihadi media, including Al Jazeera and Vox. They maintained that regional agreements without addressing Palestinian Arabs were destined to fail. So eager to discredit Republicans Donald Trump and his champion for normalization in the region, Jared Kushner, they forgot that Democratic presidents started the “outside-in” approach, with Jimmy Carter spearheading peace between Israel and Egypt in 1979, and Bill Clinton bringing Israel and Jordan together in 1994.
Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, US Jimmy Carter, Israel’s Menham BeginIsrael’s Yitzhak Rabin, US Bill Clinton, Jordan’s King Hussein
Even as the latest Palestinian war against Israel rages, the various peace and normalization agreements Israel struck with nearby Arab countries has held, to the dismay of the socialist-jihadist platforms like Time Magazine which urge the cancellation of the Abraham Accords.
Israel has repeatedly shown that it can compromise for peace while the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) have shown themselves incapable of breaking from their toxic narrative that Israel doesn’t deserve to exist, making it an impossible negotiating party.
Democratic and Republican administrations have shown leadership in bringing Israel into the regional community withhold being held hostage to the intransigence of inept Palestinian Arab leadership. Hopefully the next Trump administration will continue to build on viable paths to stability.
In the middle of a multi-front war that Israel was fighting against Iranian proxies, the Jewish State decided to ban Qatar’s Al Jazeera media because of its positive depictions of Hamas and Palestinian terrorists groups, and negative stories about Israel. The New York Times ran many stories about Israel’s ban.
Last week, the Palestinian Authority also acted to ban the Hamas-supporting news company, as the PA began to arrest various terrorist groups in the West Bank in an attempt to show that it can be a trusted party to rule in Gaza. The story was picked up in a few publications, including Reuters, Variety, The Jerusalem Post, JNS and many other organizations such as i24News, Haaretz and the New Arab.
Yet The New York Times has still not covered the story, despite heavily covering Israel’s ban.
Al Jazeera has long tried to inflame a global jihad against Israel and instigate a Shiite-Sunni war in the Middle East, under the veneer of a legitimate news agency. Perhaps the New York Times is trying to both support the anti-Israel propaganda – which the grey lady echoes – by not covering the PA’s ban of Al Jazeera which would further delegitimatize AJ, and to paint Israel as anti-freedom of the press, which no one bothers to consider for the PA.
Columbia University is all about “constructive dialogue.” It believes in a “learning environment” infused with “civility, tolerance and respect.”
The school’s Gay and Lesbian Studies section of the English Department has a professor who has written extensively on the deep mental illness of transgender people, and another who has written several books with heroes who butcher lesbians, despite protests from the LGBTQ+ community.
Columbia’s African American and African Diaspora Studies Department has one professor who denies that there ever were slaves in the United States, another who has given speeches on the valuable lessons learned by African slaves in the South and another who teaches that today’s African Americans who were descended from slaves are incapable of learning or being productive members of society. While Black students were incensed, the school was adamant about showcasing a range of viewpoints.
The wide range of scholarship sought by this Ivy League institution includes tenured professors in Islamic Studies who have written extensively about the barbarism in Islamic culture, including genital mutilation, forced marriages of young girls, honor killings, and the cutting off ears and noses of women who embarrass men. One tenured professor has written many articles on the violent nature of religious imams who teach jihad against infidels. Some authors who are apostates – have left Islam for Christianity – are the most frequent visiting lecturers. The department hopes to host Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Salman Rushdie to teach about the underpinnings of Islam. Elsewhere, the art department is hosting a symposium about the depiction of the Islamic prophet Mohammed in the arts through the centuries, over the objections of the Muslim student body.
When some gay, Black and Muslim students complained about teachers who are openly hostile to their communities, Columbia assured them that all was fine since the courses are not mandated for graduation.
If that sounds too ridiculous or far-fetched to comprehend, I suggest you review the official Columbia University statement about its professor Joseph Massad who referred to the October 7 rape and massacre of 1,200 people and taking of 250 hostages as a moment of “Jubilation and awe.” He’s called the Jews in the Bible “Palestinian Hebrews” denying Jews their history and heritage. He has done this to strip any claims of Jewish indigeneity in the Jewish holy land (35:00).
If Columbia truly believes that denying Jews their history and heritage, as well as celebrating their massacre is a sign of “civility, tolerance, and respect,” one should expect to see Andrew Tate give a class on Women’s and Gender Studies, and David Duke to lecture about the history of Blacks in America.
The United Nations’ operation in Gaza is almost completely staffed by local Arabs. Since Hamas’s takeover of the coastal strip in 2007, UNRWA, the UN agency which runs schools and hospitals in the area, have operated in tandem with Hamas. The school circula is approved by the US-designated terrorist group and its facilities operate with Hamas’s oversight.
After Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023 and butchered 1,200 people, Israel sought to bring the perpetrators to justice, to save the 250 hostages stolen by the Gazans militant groups, and ensure that the terrorist groups could never attack again, as they had promised to do.
As Israel has been decimating Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist groups and their infrastructure in Gaza, local armed Arab gangs have been stealing aid being delivered into the strip.
The New York Times blames Israel for making Gazans hungry.
December 23, 2024 New York Times article about looting in Gaza
The article squarely put blame on Israel for: 1) its “bombardment and invasion of Gaza”; 2) its limiting flow of goods around Gaza; and 3) not putting a new government in charge of Gaza.
How absurd.
Hamas launched the invasion, not Israel. Hamas took hundreds of captives into Gaza, demanding Israel’s counter-invasion. Hamas’s history of importing and moving vast weapons of war and terrorists around Gaza necessitates Israel’s control of goods and people.
And it is the Palestinian Authority that is supposed to govern Gaza, not Israel. The world demands that Israel leave the strip so how does it simultaneously demand that its should put in place a new government?
The Times shared that UNRWA decided that it would no longer deliver aid through one of the major entry points into Gaza, and that relief is piling up at the crossings. It acknowledged that the Gaza police force is an arm of Hamas but they are rarely seen in Gaza these days.
The Times inadvertently highlighted the farce of the entire situation stating that “The United Nations does not allow Israeli soldiers to protect aid convoys, fearing that would compromise its [the UN’s] neutrality.” Unsaid, is that only under the protection of Hamas and other Gazan terrorist groups can UNRWA operate freely, showing that the UN group has always been extremely biased.
The article moved beyond the lawless areas without Hamas or Hamas’s police ruling the area to sectors “fully controlled by the Israeli military. UN agencies have been able to avoid looters and deliver some relief.” However, not enough according to the UN: “‘There is continued tolerance by the Israel Defense Forces of unacceptable amounts of looting.”
According to the article, Israel is responsible for the entire situation in Gaza. Not the Gazans who are doing the actual looting. Not Hamas which refuses every ceasefire and to return all the hostages. Not UNRWA, the joint venture between the United Nations and Hamas, which teaches Gazans that Israel is an illegal entity which should be destroyed and replaced with a purely Arab Palestine.
UNRWA collapsed because Hamas is defeated. Local Arab gangs steal humanitarian relief because Iran, Turkey and others have been smuggling in vast amount of weaponry into the region, despite the official Israeli and Egyptian blockade of the terrorist enclave.
Gazans are hungry today DESPITE the efforts of Israel, and because of the toxic policies of the United Nations and local Arab warlords for the past decades.
The story of Chanukah happened in 164 BCE. The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes had defiled the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and enacted several laws against Judaism, including banning circumcision, celebrating Shabbat and Jewish holidays, forcing Jews to eat pork, and making it a capital offense to have a torah scroll. The Jews of the holy land revolted against the Syrian-Greek king and got rid of all the anti-Judaism decrees and rededicated the Temple.
This was a war of pagans against the Jewish religion, before Herod built the expanded Temple Mount plaza and before Christianity.
Over the following centuries, King Herod (72 BCE – 4 BCE) built the expanded Temple Mount and Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem by the Romans. Jewish revolts against the Romans in 66CE-70CE and 132-135CE led to the destruction of Jerusalem and expulsion of Jews from the area, renaming the city to “Aelia Capitolina” and the region to “Palestina.”
This was a war of pagans against Jews and Christians, before the birth of Mohammed and creation of Islam.
Mohammed’s quest to bring Islam from the Arabian Peninsula to the world brought a Muslim invasion into the Jewish holy land in the 7th and 8th centuries. Muslims built their third holiest site on top of Herod’s Temple Mount, the Al Aqsa Mosque. Christians and Muslims waged several wars over the holy land between 1095 and 1291.
Those battles between Christian crusaders and Muslims, were over the Jewish holy land and Judaism’s holiest location.
In 1948, Muslim Arab armies invaded and tried to destroy the newly declared State of Israel. The Jordanian army ethnically cleansed all of the Jews on the western bank of the Jordan River all the way through the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1954, it granted citizenship to all Arabs, as long as they were not Jewish.
This was a war of Arab Muslims countries against the physical presence of Jews in the Jewish holy land.
From the Chanukah story to the creation of Israel in 1948, many groups laid siege to Jerusalem, often attacking Jews through anti-religious actions, or lumped in with other religious groups. Since 1948, the war has been about the physical presence of Jews in Jerusalem, a place where Jews have been the majority since the 1860s.
At the story of Chanukah, there was no Temple Mount, no Christianity and no Islam. It was a battle of pagans against a small local tribe’s religion, who lived at the intersection of Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Chanukah marks the beginning of Jews in the holy land being attacked for their religion. The successful battles proved to be short-lived, as most Jews were forced into the diaspora over the following centuries, until the recent past. Celebrating the holiday today amidst a multi-front defensive war and global antisemitic chants that Jews are “European settler colonialists” is a chance to reassert Eight Attestations On Jerusalem:
Jews have an Inalienable right to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount
Banning Jews from living and praying in their holiest city is blatant anti-Semitism, as is denying Jewish history
There is no “Judaizing” Jerusalem, as Jews have been the majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s, and have devoted themselves to the city since 1000BCE
The security of Israel demands that its capital sit well within its borders
Divided capitals are a function of war, not peace. The place known as “East Jerusalem” only existed for a few years, 1949-1967
No part of Jerusalem was ever contemplated to be part of Palestine. Not only is “East Jerusalem” not an actual city, but there is no basis to call it “Occupied Palestinian Territory”
Jerusalem Arabs have been and are continued to be offered Israeli citizenship
There is no ethnic cleansing of Arabs. The Arab population in Jerusalem has grown faster than Jews since Israel reunited city
On Chanukah, diaspora Jews should pay particular attention to the direction of their prayer, the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel, as Jews have done for thousands of years.
Happy Chanukah signs on the walls of Jerusalem, 2021
Some groups like Amnesty International and countries like South Africa have drummed up the idea that Israel is committing a ‘genocide’ against the people of Gaza, or Palestinian Arabs, or the Arab or Muslim world, depending on how narrow or broad the defaming party chose to go. They have ignored the lowest civilian-to-militant death ratio in any urban war, the declining number of women and children killed as the war moved on to a ground invasion, and many other statistics in Israel’s defensive war in making the accusation.
It is curious that people have also not considered the basic fact that Israel has offered many ceasefires to Hamas since the war started in October 2023. No target of a genocide has ever been offered a ceasefire.
Let alone reject it.
Yet Hamas has rejected one ceasefire after another since the war started.
If an army was intent on slaughtering a group of people, would it offer a ceasefire every month?
If a persecuted population felt like it was desperate for the killing to stop, would it reject offers to stop the fighting?
Jews in the Holocaust were not offered a ceasefire. They were defenseless. They had no army. They had no government advocating on their behalf to stop the slaughter.
The heavy loss of life among Gazans is because of a war they started and refuse to cease. It is the deep-seated antisemitic genocidal intent of Gazans to destroy Israel that has perpetuated the war, not Israel’s desire to eliminate Gazans as declared by know-nothings under heavily tarnished brands.
After fourteen months of refusing ceasefires, it is time for the Arab and Muslim world to force Hamas to admit defeat and surrender so that the killing can stop and the day after can begin.
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