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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.

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Artificial Intelligence and The Civic Bargain

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For most of human history, people did not belong to countries. They belonged to tribes.

Family came first. Then clan. Then religion. Then ethnicity. Your protection did not come from an impartial government but from the people who shared your blood and your history.

The modern nation-state asked humanity to do something profoundly unnatural. It asked millions of strangers to trust one another more than they trusted their tribe.

That may be civilization’s greatest political achievement.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama has argued that human beings are naturally wired for tribalism. The genius of the modern state was not that it erased those instincts, but that it redirected them. Loyalty shifted from clan to constitution, from ancestry to citizenship, from family name to the rule of law.

No nation embodied that experiment more successfully than the United States.

America was never united by blood. It became a nation because generation after generation chose to believe that citizenship mattered more than ancestry. Irish immigrants, Jewish refugees, engineers from India, scientists from Taiwan, and millions of others came from different histories but increasingly shared one future.

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.” – George Washington’s letter to the synagogue in Newport, RI in 1790

George Washington’s letter to the synagogue in Newport, RI in 1790

America never eliminated tribes. It simply made being American more important than belonging to one.

But that civic bargain rested on something deeper than patriotism. It rested on hope.

America has never been a perfect nation. It never claimed to be.

Slavery contradicted its founding ideals. Women were denied the vote. Segregation mocked the promise of equal protection. Entire groups were excluded from opportunities others took for granted.

Yet what distinguished America was not the absence of injustice. It was the belief that injustice could be corrected.

The nation repeatedly expanded the circle of citizenship. Slavery was abolished. Constitutional amendments extended the franchise. The civil rights movement dismantled legalized segregation. Immigration laws evolved. Opportunity broadened. Each generation inherited an imperfect republic and, however incompletely, tried to leave it more just than it found it.

People can tolerate inequality longer than they can tolerate hopelessness. They can accept that today’s America is imperfect if they believe tomorrow’s America will offer greater opportunity for themselves and for their children.

For much of our history, that belief proved remarkably resilient. Yet today it is under strain.

The reason is not simply that inequality has grown. It is that many Americans increasingly question whether the civic bargain still works.

Over the past two decades, extraordinary wealth has accumulated among roughly the wealthiest one-tenth of one percent of American households—families whose wealth is roughly $50 million and more. Together they now control a remarkable share of the nation’s wealth, much of it held not in homes or factories but in ownership stakes in software companies, semiconductor firms, and cloud infrastructure.

The question for ordinary Americans is whether they believe they have a realistic chance of becoming tomorrow’s winners.

Yet much of the political debate on the left uses the moral vocabulary of the twentieth century to explain the economics of the twenty-first. Progressives point to slavery, segregation, redlining, and inherited privilege. They therefore demand reparations. But that’s the lexicon and proposals of a period past.

Today’s economy is not dominated by inherited railroad empires or industrial monopolies. It is dominated by technological innovation.

According to Forbes, roughly two-thirds of America’s 400 richest people built their fortunes themselves rather than inheriting them. Many of the largest fortunes were created within a single generation through software, semiconductors, venture capital, and artificial intelligence. America continues to produce extraordinary upward mobility. Immigrants account for roughly one in seven American billionaires, and more than nine in ten of those immigrant billionaires are self-made, many arriving from India, Israel, Taiwan, and China before building companies at the forefront of the technology revolution.

America is still the land of remarkable opportunity for all but it is predominantly happening inside an innovation economy that relatively few people understand—and even fewer know how to enter.

That distinction changes the political conversation. And it is magnified by the fear of artificial intelligence.

As the AI economy concentrates wealth, the identities of many of its most visible participants also become politically salient. Many of America’s leading technology founders, investors, and executives are white, Asian, or Jewish—groups often associated with educational and entrepreneurial success. That should be irrelevant in a civic republic. But in a society increasingly tempted by tribal politics, economic frustration is often translated into identity politics. The result is a dangerous feedback loop: the far left explains disparities through privilege and oppression, while the far right responds with conspiracy theories about ethnic or religious elites. Both abandon the American principle that citizens should be judged primarily as individuals rather than as members of competing tribes.

Alexandr Wang, 29, Chief AI Officer at Meta, worth an estimated $3.3 billion

And the concern is no longer merely that the rich will become richer. It is that AI will automate millions of middle-class jobs. Lawyers, accountants, software developers, analysts, designers, customer service representatives, and countless others increasingly wonder whether they are watching the economic ladder disappear beneath them. That is not just the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. It is everyone below the 0.1% – the entire lower, middle and upper middle class – becoming significantly poorer.

That anxiety helps explain proposals such as far-left Senator Bernie Sanders’ American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act. Sanders argues that because artificial intelligence is trained on humanity’s collective knowledge, the extraordinary wealth it creates should not belong solely to a handful of technology companies and investors. Whether one agrees with that proposal or not, it marks a profound shift. The political debate is moving beyond redistributing wealth after it is created, toward seizing and controlling the technologies that create the wealth in the first place.

Never has the U.S. government considered inserting itself so forcefully into the leading drivers of innovation, jobs and wealth, and pitted itself against those “elites” spearheading the effort.

On one side, the far-left is organizing around tribalism focused on race, gender, and “privilege,” which produces a counter-movement on the far-right around White nationalism. Both movements are inherently anti-American and undermine the founders’ ideals of a grand civic bargain. Each tells its followers that the other tribe is responsible for the country’s decline. Both play a part.

America fractures as both right and left move towards tribalism, and no longer trust the “establishment” political class, mainstream media and failing schools. Meanwhile, the real enormous promise and fear of the future for both groups is playing out in real-time before everyone: that AI will exacerbate the inability to trust people, information and institutions, while simultaneously creating a cohort of individuals – seemingly of only a few tribes – with remarkable wealth as the middle class loses its wealth.

If AI becomes a dominant technology that only a tiny club understands, owns, and profits from, the civic bargain weakens. Citizens begin searching for smaller communities that promise protection and belonging. Race becomes more important than citizenship. Class becomes more important than opportunity. Tribe becomes more important than country.

That is a future we can, should and must avoid.

America has solved this problem before. Every great technological revolution—from the steam engine to electricity to the internet—created extraordinary fortunes for its pioneers. Yet each ultimately generated industries, professions, suppliers, entrepreneurs, investors, educators, and workers whose prosperity far exceeded that of the original inventors. The wealth did not remain confined to those who built the breakthrough. It spread through the countless derivative businesses, careers, and opportunities that followed.

Artificial intelligence should be no different. America should not punish the innovators building the future or discourage the investment and risk-taking that made these breakthroughs possible. The challenge is to ensure that the AI economy develops the same broad ecosystem that previous technological revolutions produced—new companies, new professions, new skills, new services, new capital formation, and new pathways into prosperity for millions of Americans.

Just as importantly, we must prevent the far left and the far right from hijacking this technological revolution for their own political ends. The left should resist reducing innovation to a story of privilege and oppression, while the right should resist turning successful innovators into symbols of ethnic or cultural conspiracy. Both narratives encourage Americans to see AI through the lens of tribe rather than citizenship, resentment rather than opportunity.

For 250 years, Americans repeatedly chose the civic bargain over tribalism because they believed each generation would inherit greater opportunity than the last. Artificial intelligence now puts that bargain to the test. The defining question of the AI age is not whether America can continue producing extraordinary innovators. It is whether the prosperity they create becomes the foundation for millions of new success stories.

The American experiment has never depended on preventing greatness. It has depended on ensuring that greatness inspires opportunity rather than resentment, and that every generation believes it still has a place in the nation’s future. If AI expands opportunity as dramatically as previous technological revolutions ultimately did, it will strengthen the civic bargain that has made America history’s most successful multiethnic republic.

America’s next century can be truly remarkable, if we avoid the partisan pitfalls that plague us.

The Iran War Reveals The Two Jihadi Wars On America

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When Iran offered condolences after the death of former Qatari emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the gesture appeared incongruous. Iran had recently been firing missiles and drones at Qatar and across the Gulf. So why the words of consolation?

Iran was not primarily attacking Qatar as a Muslim or Arab society. It was targeting the American military presence on Qatari soil. The same pattern has extended across the region: U.S. facilities and assets in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan, as well as American positions in Iraq and Syria, have come under Iranian attack. Recent strikes included an early-warning installation in Qatar, Patriot systems in Kuwait, a U.S. fuel depot in Bahrain and military facilities in Jordan.

That reveals the real fault line in the Middle East.

It is not simply Sunni against Shia, Arab against Persian or even Muslim country against Muslim country. It is increasingly a divide over how to handle the United States: between governments and movements determined to expel American power and those that invite it in and then seek to shape it.

Iran represents the first model. Since 1979, its hostility has been explicit. It calls America the enemy, demands the removal of U.S. forces and uses missiles, drones and proxies against American military positions. Its war is visible. It announces its contempt and fires at the flag.

Qatar perfected a more nuanced model.

Under Sheikh Hamad, Qatar financed and expanded Al Udeid Air Base, which became central to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Iraq and across the region. At the same time, Doha built influence inside the United States, financing American university campuses, purchased entry into American television distribution, invested in think tanks and businesses, hired lobbyists and cultivated political relationships. It also hosted anti-Western terrorist groups including Hamas leaders and Muslim Brotherhood figures, and used Al Jazeera to broadcast narratives often deeply hostile to the West and its allies.

Iran attacks American power from the outside. Qatar embraces it corrodes it from within.

anti-American Iranians

Iran seeks direct confrontation; Qatar seeks leverage.Iran’s weapons are missiles and militias. Qatar’s are money, access, prestige and indispensability.

The West is naturally more alarmed by Iran’s model. And Qatar’s model is harder to confront because it arrives as partnership.

The military base protects American interests. The university campus carries a prestigious name. The investment creates jobs. Each relationship is defensible in isolation. Together, however, they create influence on a scale no tiny monarchy could achieve through military power alone.

The broader contest is therefore not between countries that love America and countries that hate it. Iran and Qatar represent different tactics of genocidal jihadists. One strategy attacks the fortress. The other purchases rooms inside it.

Iran’s war is louder. Qatar’s may prove more insidious and enduring.

Lindsey Graham Died Suddenly. Expect Two Kinds of Conspiracy Theories

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Just before his death, Senator Lindsey Graham returned from Kyiv, where he had met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

It was a fitting final foreign trip. Graham had long been one of America’s strongest advocates for Ukraine against Russia and for Israel against Iran and its proxies.

Then he died suddenly.

Sometimes, sudden death is simply that. But conspiracy theories rarely leave a vacuum unfilled.

The first kind of conspiracy theory follows ordinary logic. It begins with motive.

If someone believes Lindsey Graham was murdered, the obvious suspects would be the governments whose interests he spent years opposing: Russia or Iran, or some combined efforts by both. Perhaps it was an American anti-war agitator. Whether true or false, at least the theory follows a recognizable chain of reasoning.

The second kind works very differently.

It begins with a worldview that history is shaped by hidden forces operating behind governments and public events. Facts are gathered afterward to support that assumption.

For centuries, one of the most enduring versions of that worldview has been antisemitic: the claim that Jews secretly manipulate governments, wars, finance, or the media. The alleged hidden actor changes with the era, but the underlying story remains remarkably consistent.

Antisemites from Nazi Germany to Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) talk about Jews operating in the shadows

That helps explain why some recent conspiracy theories about the murder of Charlie Kirk have implicated Israel or Mossad where the alleged motive is counterintuitive. The target is chosen less because of the evidence than because it fits an existing narrative about hidden power.

One conspiracy theory asks, “Who had the motive?” The other asks, “Who do I already believe secretly runs the world?”

The first can be tested against evidence, the second is designed to survive it.

Today’s front pages will convey that a strong advocate of American allies’ defense against common American foes has died. He will be mourned by conservatives in the United States and supporters of Ukraine and Israel. In the not too distant future in our crazy conspiratorial-laden present, new distinct strains of headlines are likely to emerge.

America’s Greatest – and Quietest – Military Victory in Nearly a Century

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The debate over American support for Ukraine and Israel has largely focused on the cost. Politicians argue over billions of dollars appropriated, weapons transferred, and whether American taxpayers are carrying too much of the burden. Far less attention has been paid to the return on that investment.

Since 2022, the United States has authorized roughly $195 billion related to Ukraine and approximately $16–22 billion in supplemental wartime assistance for Israel. Critics see enormous expenditures. Strategically, however, those dollars have enabled two allies to inflict historic damage on two of America’s principal adversaries – Russia and Iran – without the United States deploying large combat formations or suffering the thousands of battlefield casualties that defined Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

That comparison matters.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the United States more than $5 trillion in direct and related costs, with broader post-9/11 war obligations rising above $8 trillion when future veteran care, interest, and long-term commitments are included. Nearly 7,000 American service members were killed. More than 52,000 were wounded.

And what was the lasting strategic benefit?

Afghanistan ended with the Taliban back in power. Iraq removed Saddam Hussein, but the aftermath empowered Iran, fractured the region, drained American credibility, and produced years of instability. The United States paid in terrible blood and treasure, and the final balance sheet is hard to defend.

Ukraine and Israel present a very different model.

Consider Russia.

More than four years after launching its invasion of Ukraine, Russia has suffered an estimated 1.4 million military casualties, including approximately 450,000 dead. Its armored forces have been severely depleted. The Black Sea Fleet has largely been driven from its historic operating areas. Ukraine has repeatedly demonstrated the ability to strike deep inside Russian territory. The military once regarded as NATO’s greatest conventional threat has been dramatically weakened.

“The number of Russian casualties and fatalities are astonishing. Since World War II, no major power has suffered anywhere near these numbers of casualties or fatalities in any war…. Russia’s economy is in distress, and Russia’s wartime spending may be increasingly untenable.” – Center for Strategic and International Studies July 2026

Now consider Iran.

For four decades the leading state sponsor of terrorism invested billions of dollars constructing what it proudly called the “Axis of Resistance” – a network stretching from Iran through Iraq and Syria to Lebanon and Gaza. Hamas, Hezbollah, Shiite militias, the Houthis, and the Assad regime were components of a single strategy designed to project Iranian power, surround Israel and challenge American influence in the region and threaten much of the global oil supply.

That strategy has suffered a tremendous setback.

Hamas has lost much of its military and infrastructure. Hezbollah has absorbed devastating blows to its command structure and missile capabilities. The Assad regime in Syria – Tehran’s indispensable Arab ally and the geographic bridge connecting Iran to Hezbollah – has fallen, shattering the land corridor that Iran spent decades building. The regional network that once appeared to surround Israel and terrorize America’s Arab allies now is dramatically weakened.

Iran’s nuclear ambitions have suffered major setbacks as well. Israeli and American strikes severely damaged key nuclear facilities, disrupted important elements of Iran’s enrichment infrastructure, and forced Tehran to devote enormous resources simply to rebuilding capabilities it once assumed were secure. Intelligence agencies continue to debate precisely how long the program has been delayed, but there is broad agreement that it suffered one of the most significant setbacks in its history.

None of this diminishes the immense human suffering. Ukraine has endured staggering casualties and destruction. Israel suffered the deadliest attack in its history on October 7 and has paid a heavy military, economic, and emotional price ever since.

But viewed through an American lens of grand strategy, another reality emerges.

Rather than sending hundreds of thousands of American troops to fight Russia or Iran directly as was done in Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States enabled allies already under attack to defend themselves. Those allies have imposed extraordinary military and strategic costs on governments that have spent decades challenging American interests.

This is what is so often missing from the public debate.

The wars are typically discussed separately. Ukraine is presented as a European conflict while Israel is portrayed as a Middle Eastern conflict. Yet both Russia and Iran were strategic partners, cooperating militarily, economically, and diplomatically while sharing an interest in weakening the United States and the Western alliance. Seen together, Ukraine and Israel have not merely been fighting for their own survival, they have been successfully degrading two pillars of a powerful anti-Western axis.

The long-term upside could be enormous. A surviving, Western-aligned Ukraine would become one of Europe’s most battle-tested militaries, a major reconstruction market, an energy and agricultural partner, and a permanent barrier to Russian expansion. A stronger Israel, with Iran weakened and Syria and Lebanon no longer functioning as Tehran’s strategic bridge, could help reshape the Middle East around technology, defense cooperation, energy corridors, trade, and normalization with Arab states that increasingly fear Iran more than they resent Israel.

That is the opportunity Iraq and Afghanistan never produced. Those wars consumed American power and America left no assets behind. These wars, fought by allies, may extend American power with powerful allies at the vanguard.

History may conclude that this period represents one of the most effective uses of American alliance power in generations. For roughly $215 billion – less than one-twentieth of the direct and related cost of Iraq and Afghanistan – the United States helped enable allies to severely weaken Russia’s conventional military, fracture Iran’s regional proxy empire, remove Syria and Lebanon from Tehran’s sphere of influence, and significantly set back Iran’s nuclear program, all without committing large American ground forces or sustaining the massive battlefield casualties that characterized previous generations of U.S. warfare.

America’s greatest military victory in the past 75 years may ultimately be its most subtle.

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.

The Missing Jews at Tikvah’s Celebration of America

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The Tikvah Society recently gathered in lower Manhattan to celebrate America’s 250th birthday and make the Jewish case for American exceptionalism.

It was an impressive gathering. Jonathan Silver moderated a conversation between Ruth Wisse, Bret Stephens, and Eric Cohen. Yet as the evening unfolded, a question lingered:

Who was missing?

Not from the audience, but from the conversation itself.

The answer matters because the people in the room represent a remarkably small slice of both America and American Jewry. Jews comprise roughly 6 million people in a nation of 330 million (1.8%). Within American Jewry, the Modern Orthodox and strongly Zionist non-Orthodox communities that dominate much of American Jewish intellectual life represent only a fraction of the next generation. And the attendees represented the most engaged of that small sliver.

The setting itself made the omission more striking. The discussion took place in the very neighborhood where some of the foundational events of the American Republic unfolded. Within walking distance stand the sites of Washington’s inauguration, the first Congress, and the earliest experiments in American self-government. Yet for an event dedicated to celebrating America, surprisingly little attention was paid to the place itself.

American flags on Fifth Avenue (photo: First One Through)

Instead, the conversation focused on the future of Jews, universities, religion, and politics.

The panelists disagreed on important questions. Wisse argued that Jewish unity is not paramount if unity comes at the expense of conviction: better a smaller community of committed Jews than a larger one saturated in ambivalence. Stephens returned to a theme he has emphasized before: stop obsessing over the haters and invest in Jewish education. Cohen broadened the argument, suggesting that both Jewish and Christian religious education are essential to strengthening America itself. The country’s experiment with secularism, he argued, has weakened the civic and moral foundations on which the Republic depends.

Jonathan Silver, Eric Cohen, Bret Stephens and Ruth Wisse address audience at Tikvah Society event on June 9, 2026 in New York City (photo: First One Through)

Both Stephens and Cohen spoke favorably about Chabad. It is not difficult to see why. Chabad has become one of the few institutions capable of reaching Jews across virtually every level of observance. The Rebbe’s army continues to grow because it understands something many institutions have forgotten: people are attracted to confidence, purpose, and personal relationships. Tikvah has absorbed this – it is curious how it plans on applying it.

Education

The discussion of education was compelling. Nothing is more important than good teachers, and few things are more destructive than bad ones. The panelists lamented the continuing flow of Jewish philanthropy into institutions such as Columbia University, where many faculty members and students openly disparage Zionism, America, and increasingly Jews themselves.

Yet the evening largely avoided a more uncomfortable reality.

In the greater New York area, roughly 490,000 Jewish students attend K-12 schools. Only about 40,000 (8.2%) are found in the Modern Orthodox and Zionist day-school ecosystem (“The 8%”) that forms the backbone of many organizations such as Tikvah. The largest and fastest-growing populations are elsewhere. The majority remain in public and secular schools. Even more significant is the extraordinary growth of Chassidic and Yeshivish communities, which now educate approximately 145,000 students (“30% and Growing”).

Those numbers matter.

Ultra-Orthodox

A strategy centered solely on strengthening the already committed may preserve one segment of Jewish life. It does not answer the larger demographic question facing American Jewry. The central challenge is will Tikvah and “The 8%” engage the overwhelming majority of Jewish children who are either in public schools or in the rapidly growing ultra-Orthodox world.

The same demographic blind spot appeared later in the discussion. Cohen argued that religious Jews and religious Christians should work more closely together to defend the values that built America. There is logic to that argument. Tikvah itself appears to be moving in that direction through its decision to award its Herzl Prize to U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, one of Israel’s most outspoken Christian supporters.

Yet there is a striking irony here. As Jewish leaders search for allies among millions of religious Christians, they overlook the “30% and Growing” communities. Leaders commend Chabad for successful outreach to the secular but don’t consider building bridges to the Chasidic and Yeshivish communities, and engaging the majority of students in public and secular schools.

Public Schools

The challenge facing American Jewry is therefore not simply how to build alliances with Christians who share Jewish concerns. It is also how to build relationships among Jews whose lives increasingly unfold in separate educational, cultural, and social worlds.

The same issue applies to America’s educational crisis. If America is worth saving, public schools matter. Any serious defense of American exceptionalism must include an effort to improve the institutions educating most American children. Reforming public education should not be viewed as somebody else’s problem. It is central to the future of both America and American Jewry.

American Jews need to become highly engaged in local school boards. They need to help moderate and defend the institutions form the worst influences which are overwhelming America’s public schools, poisoning America’s future. The evening was silent on this crucial point.

Universities

The conversation about universities also requires greater precision.

Harvard is not a monolith. Columbia is not a monolith. Administrations, trustees, faculty, students, and donors often have different interests and agendas. Too often Jewish philanthropists write nine-figure checks in exchange for buildings bearing their names. It is a poor investment.

The activists and professors who dominate many campuses are not impressed by another Jewish donor’s name on a wall. In some cases, they actively mock the very people who funded the buildings in which they teach.

A better approach would be to invest in people rather than structures: scholars, faculty, teachers, fellowships, civic education programs, and scholarships for students committed to the values that made America successful. Buildings create monuments. Educators create generations.

AreaTikvah ApproachRealityBetter Tactic
Ultra-OrthodoxIgnore. Focus on Christian groupsFastest growing population Engage, perhaps via important issues for both like public funding for religious schools
Public SchoolsUnaddressedLargest current segmentEngage school boards
UniversitiesDon’t fund or send students / make new onesStill prevalent and dominantRedirect contributions

Perhaps the most important lesson from the evening is that preserving American exceptionalism requires more than celebrating it.

American exceptionalism was never simply a belief that America was superior. At its best, it reflected an understanding that liberty is fragile and must be constantly renewed by citizens willing to sacrifice for something larger than themselves.

The people gathered in that room care deeply about America and about the future of the Jewish people. Their commitment is admirable. But commitment alone is not enough. The arithmetic cannot be ignored.

A movement centered on “The 8%” in a community of 1.8% of Americans (0.15%) cannot secure the future.

The challenge is larger than preserving one vision of Jewish life. It is rebuilding the institutions that form Americans in the first place: families, schools, synagogues, churches, civic organizations, and local communities. That is where outreach to BOTH Christian and Ultra-Orthodox groups matters.

And that work begins with Humble Faith. Humble faith built the America being celebrated in lower Manhattan. Humble faith may also be the only way to bridge the growing divides within the Jewish community itself. As we search for a better America, American Jews may first need to rediscover one another.

Dead and Dying: Joe Lieberman, Ben Sasse, and the Politics We Are Losing

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Three people sat beneath words that Jews have been reading for more than three thousand years.

Rabbi Ethan Tucker, Hadassah Lieberman and Rep. Ritchie Torres at SAR High School on May 26, 2026 (photo: First One Through)

Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) held a microphone. Beside him sat Hadassah Lieberman, widow of Senator Joe Lieberman. Next to her sat Rabbi Ethan Tucker, her son and Joe’s stepson. Behind them rose towering Hebrew letters from the Torah, framing a conversation about faith, citizenship, and public life.

The audience at the SAR High School had just watched Centered, a documentary chronicling the remarkable political career of Joe Lieberman. Yet as the discussion unfolded, it became clear that the evening was about something larger than one senator.

It was about a style of politics that increasingly feels as though it belongs to another country.

The film recounts the milestones most Americans remember. Lieberman became the first Jew nominated to a major party national ticket when Al Gore selected him as his running mate in 2000. He served decades in the Senate. Forty years in public office. He championed causes that frequently crossed ideological lines. He possessed a rare ability to frustrate Democrats and Republicans in equal measure.

But Centered is not ultimately a story about elections, legislation, or political strategy.

It is a story about a worldview.

Joe Lieberman belonged to a generation that regarded compromise as a civic achievement. In today’s politics, compromise often carries the stigma of surrender. Politicians fear being labeled weak. Activists reward purity. Social media celebrates confrontation.

Lieberman viewed compromise differently.

For him, compromise was almost a sacred act: imperfect people finding enough common ground to govern a free society. The goal of politics was not personal victory. The goal was preserving a country in which millions of people with competing interests and beliefs could continue living together.

That conviction repeatedly led him down unusual paths. In 2006, after losing the Democratic primary, he successfully ran for reelection as an Independent. In 2008, he endorsed Republican John McCain for president despite decades of Democratic affiliation. These decisions angered former allies and delighted opponents.

Yet they were never acts of political opportunism. They reflected a deeper conviction that principle mattered more than party and that loyalty to country could occasionally require disappointing one’s own side.

As Hadassah Lieberman and Rabbi Tucker reflected on his life, another theme emerged. Joe Lieberman never viewed Judaism and America as competing loyalties.

To him, they were inseparable. Orthodox Judaism did not pull him away from American life. It pushed him deeper into it.

The covenant at Sinai teaches obligations. It teaches that freedom carries responsibilities. It teaches that human beings answer to standards beyond personal preference or political convenience. Lieberman carried those lessons into public service. Citizenship was never merely a collection of rights. It was a series of duties owed to neighbors, institutions, and future generations.

At a moment when religion is often portrayed as a force that divides citizens into competing tribes, Lieberman embodied a different possibility. His faith expanded his sense of responsibility. It compelled him to engage people who disagreed with him. Religious conviction gave him confidence in his beliefs without requiring contempt for those who held different ones.

The discussion in Riverdale felt less like a political event than a remembrance of a disappearing civic culture.

A few weeks earlier, another screen had presented a similarly painful reflection.

On 60 Minutes, former Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) discussed the devastating illness that has transformed his life. Viewers could see the physical toll. The interview was heartbreaking.

Yet there was another loss visible beneath the medical diagnosis.

Sasse spent much of his public career defending a style of politics that increasingly feels endangered. A committed Christian, a constitutional conservative, and an intellectual by temperament, he repeatedly challenged members of his own party when he believed they were wrong. He valued debate. He welcomed disagreement. He seemed genuinely interested in understanding opposing arguments rather than simply defeating them.

Watching Sasse confront mortality was difficult.

Watching the worldview he represents fade from public life may be even more painful.

Joe Lieberman and Ben Sasse.

One was an Orthodox Jew from Connecticut. The other an evangelical Christian from Nebraska. One progressive frequently frustrated progressives. One conservative frequently frustrated conservatives.

Both believed faith should make a person more secure, more curious, and more capable of engaging opponents with dignity. Both understood politics as a means rather than an identity. Both believed citizenship imposed obligations. Both sought to persuade rather than humiliate. Neither confused cruelty with strength nor public shaming with moral courage.

Most importantly, both loved America in a way that transcended election results.

That form of patriotism increasingly feels like an endangered species.

The disappearance of politicians like Lieberman and Sasse did not happen by accident.

The institutions that helped produce them have weakened. Religious participation among America’s youth has declined significantly. Americans increasingly inhabit separate informational universes. Politicians answer national activist audiences rather than neighbors gathered in town halls, churches, synagogues, and community organizations.

Every one of these changes rewards performance over persuasion.

The result is a politics rich in outrage and poor in trust.

Compromise becomes betrayal. Nuance becomes weakness. Certainty becomes a substitute for wisdom. Political identity expands until it consumes every other identity.

And yet the deepest irony is that many of the figures who shaped America’s democratic traditions understood politics very differently.

They believed vigorous disagreement strengthened democracy. They expected conflict. They accepted that free citizens would hold competing visions of the good society. What mattered was preserving enough mutual respect to continue sharing a common future.

Lieberman and Sasse more than understood this; they lived it.

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

As America approaches its 250th birthday, the nation will spend the coming year celebrating constitutional structures, founding documents, and historical achievements. Those accomplishments deserve celebration.

But republics survive on more than institutions.

They depend on habits of character.

They require leaders willing to lose arguments without losing respect for opponents. They require citizens capable of disagreement without hatred. They require people whose religious convictions deepen their sense of obligation to their country rather than narrowing it. They require men and women who view compromise as an honorable necessity in a diverse democracy.

Joe Lieberman spent his life trying to embody those virtues. Ben Sasse has spent his public career defending them.

One man is gone. The other is fighting for his life.

Watching them forces an uncomfortable question upon the rest of us.

Perhaps what is dead and dying is not merely a generation of public servants.

Perhaps it is the civic faith they carried with them: the belief that America is strongest when principled people of different convictions sit together, argue honestly, listen carefully, and leave the room still recognizing one another as fellow citizens.

As the audience filed out into the night in Riverdale, the Torah verses still stood behind the empty chairs. The conversation had ended and the questions remained.

The country that will celebrate its 250th birthday next year must decide whether those virtues are merely aging – or whether we are preparing to bury them alongside the generation that practiced them.

Bring Israel Into NATO’s Orbit

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Wars do not simply end; they force institutions to confront whether they still address the world they are meant to secure.

As the regional war against Israel recedes from its most intense phase, one conclusion is increasingly difficult to ignore: Israel has been operating inside the West’s security perimeter while remaining formally outside the principal institution designed to defend it.

That institution is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO.

This gap is structural—and increasingly consequential.

When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, crippling access to one-fifth of the global oil supply, the countries inside of NATO barely budged. Spain went so far as to send the United States a big middle finger.

Only Israel worked together with the U.S. in managing this global threat.

Israel already maintains deep bilateral ties with key NATO members, particularly the United States. Intelligence sharing, joint exercises, and technological collaboration are well established. The problem is that this cooperation remains fragmented, dependent on individual relationships rather than embedded within NATO’s institutional framework. In an era defined by interconnected threats, fragmentation is a liability.

Those threats no longer arrive neatly organized by geography. For more than two decades, Europe has experienced the effects of Islamist extremism within its own borders. Attacks tied to networks such as ISIS in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin were not isolated events. They reflected a broader system—ideological, financial, and operational—that crosses borders with ease. That same ecosystem includes actors such as Hamas, whose attacks triggered the current war.

These are not separate challenges. They are different manifestations of two networks confronting the western world: the jihadi axis of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and Houthis, as well as the national threats from Russia, China and Iran.

Israel has been confronting the jihadi network as a whole—mapping it, disrupting it, and adapting to it in real time. Europe, by contrast, has often encountered it in fragments.

Memorial for people killed from jihadi bombing at Ariana Grande concert

The two confrontational axis are linked by Iran. A NATO established to be a defense against Russia and communism must adapt to the new reality that the Russia-China-Iran alliance is buttressing jihadi regimes and terrorist groups to destabilize the west.

NATO, as currently structured, is positioned to respond to effects—naval patrols, sanctions, diplomatic signaling—but lacks a formal mechanism to integrate with the actor most deeply engaged in countering the source.

Israel is not a peripheral partner. It is a central node of capability.

Its missile defense systems operate under continuous pressure. Its counter-drone technologies are refined in live environments. Its intelligence capabilities integrate multiple theaters into a single operational picture. Its cyber operations are embedded directly into conflict environments that NATO is still working to fully integrate.

This is a partner NATO needs.

Geography reinforces the argument. NATO’s traditional focus on its eastern flank remains essential, particularly in relation to Russia. But the critical infrastructure of modern security—energy routes, maritime corridors, and digital networks—runs through the Eastern Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Gulf. Stability in these regions is now directly tied to European and transatlantic security.

Israel sits at that intersection with capability, proximity, and alignment.

At the same time, pressures within the alliance itself are becoming more visible. U.S. political leaders—most notably Donald Trump—have underscored a structural imbalance: the United States continues to underwrite a disproportionate share of European defense while facing expanding global demands. That pressure reflects a broader need for NATO to adapt—both in burden sharing and in how it structures partnerships to address evolving threats.

Parallel to this, U.S. policy has begun to shift in the Middle East. Efforts to draw regional actors, including emerging leadership in Syria, away from Russian influence and toward Western engagement signal a changing geopolitical landscape. The region is no longer peripheral to transatlantic security. It is central to it.

Against that backdrop, integrating Israel into NATO’s partnership structure is not an isolated step. It is part of a broader realignment responding to the growing influence of Russia and Iran across multiple theaters.

This does not mean that Israel should join NATO as a full member with Article 5 protections. This proposal refers to formal integration within NATO’s Enhanced Opportunities Partner framework. It does not create automatic military obligations, nor does it commit NATO forces to regional conflicts.

It creates structure where there is currently fragmentation.

NATO should take three immediate steps.

  • First, designate Israel as an Enhanced Opportunities Partner, formalizing its integration into NATO planning, intelligence, and interoperability frameworks.
  • Second, establish a standing NATO–Israel coordination mechanism focused on counter-drone warfare, missile defense, cyber operations, and maritime security.
  • Third, integrate Israel into NATO’s southern and maritime operational planning, particularly in relation to the Eastern Mediterranean, Red Sea, and Gulf energy corridors.

These steps would not expand NATO’s defense obligations. They would enhance its operational effectiveness.

Wars clarify.

This one has clarified that European security is shaped by forces operating far beyond its borders and that the countries are not up to the task of dealing with their own security needs. That terrorism, energy coercion, and hybrid warfare now form a single continuum. That regional boundaries no longer define strategic risk.

And that Israel is already operating at the center of that reality.

NATO was built to defend the system. It now needs to include those already defending it.

The Pressure Carrot

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The talks in Gaza are stuck on a single question: when does Hamas disarm? Hamas wants Israeli withdrawal first. Israel wants the dismantling of Hamas’s military capacity. Gazans want Hamas to retain weapons. Every side is waiting and pointing.

So the sequence matters.

In Washington, the argument has hardened around pressure on Israel. Democratic senators like Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, Tim Kaine, and Chris Van Hollen have pushed versions of the same idea: use U.S. leverage to change Israeli behavior now. The assumption is clear. The U.S. can influence Israel. It cannot influence Hamas.

It is backed by far-left pro-Palestinian groups like J Street. It is juvenile, dangerous and devoid of critical strategic thinking.

J Street, once again, on the wrong side of history

If all the pressure is on Israel, Hamas learns the simplest lesson in negotiation: wait. Let outside actors squeeze your opponent. Hold your position. Time becomes leverage.

That is where the current approach sits and breaks. And everyone suffers.

A negotiation like this needs a visible incentive on both sides. Hamas has faced pressure only from Israel – military and economic – but almost no credible pathway that links its own actions to a reduction in the conflict.

That is the missing piece.

Set a clear rule: as Hamas verifiably disarms, Israel correspondingly reduces its military posture and need for resupply. Less threat, less armament.

Now the logic runs forward, and resets the debate in Washington. The current fight among Democrats—arm Israel or restrain it—misses the hinge. If Hamas is disarmed, Israel needs fewer arms. That is mechanics, not politics.

Using a pressure stick as the far-left senators are attempting, rewards the antisemitic genocidal terrorist group, ensuring the fighting never ends. Using a pressure carrot entices Hamas to give up its weapons, allowing the US to pull weaponry from Israel.

The world has long only thought of pressure as a stick with the only variable being to whom to apply it. It is time to imagine a pressure carrot, especially when the party with the greatest power believes it has no influence on the entity that blocks every path forward.