Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Friday, February 20, 2026

A School Without Hate in Gaza — And Why That's Newsworthy

The New York Times ran a remarkable front-page story this week about Dr. David Hasan, a Palestinian American neurosurgeon from Durham, North Carolina, who has built a growing network of free schools in Gaza called Academies of Hope. Nine thousand children — war orphans and displaced youngsters — are now attending classes in tent campuses across southern Gaza, receiving hot meals, medical care, and something extraordinary: a curriculum purged of antisemitism and hate.

Dr. Hasan deserves enormous praise. He went to Gaza on medical missions when most of the world was arguing about the conflict from the comfort of their living rooms. He watched a ten-year-old girl take charge of her younger siblings after their parents were killed. And rather than turn away, he built something. He raised money — largely from Jewish donors — hired teachers over WhatsApp, coordinated with Israeli authorities, and replaced lessons glorifying killers with lessons about tolerance, coexistence, and conflict resolution. A math problem that once compared the number of "martyrs" in the first and second intifadas now asks about soccer match attendance. A reading that praised Dalal Mughrabi — who led the 1978 coastal road massacre that killed 38 Israelis, 13 of them children — has been replaced with a reading about a pioneering Palestinian educator. An Islamic studies lesson about Jews trying to kill the Prophet has been replaced with one about the Prophet's expressions of respect for Jews.

The children love it. "No drones or bombs," one 12-year-old told the Times. "The best thing is sitting at a desk and seeing the teacher and the board, and holding a pencil again."

This raises an obvious question: why is this so rare?

The Palestinian Authority's curriculum — the one taught in both the West Bank and Gaza — has been criticized for decades by Israel, the United States, and the European Union for inculcating hatred and antisemitism. That criticism has been thoroughly documented and is not seriously disputed. Yet in all that time, with billions of dollars in international aid flowing to Palestinian educational institutions, no one — not the PA, not UNRWA, not Qatar, not the EU — has made systematic hate-removal a condition or even a priority. Dr. Hasan, a private individual with no background in humanitarian work, did it anyway, and the PA's education ministry reportedly threatened him for doing so without permission.

Think about that: the official custodians of Palestinian education threatened a man for teaching children not to hate.

Which brings us to the social media reaction. Some Gazans have questioned whether Dr. Hasan is "overly aligned with Israel" — because he works with Israeli donors, coordinates with Israeli authorities, and has stripped anti-Jewish content from the curriculum. Others, described as embittered by Hamas, have pushed back and said teaching tolerance is better than teaching children to sacrifice themselves.

Notice what the objectors are actually objecting to. It isn't the food. It isn't the medical care. It isn't the fact that children are learning to read and write again. The complaint is that Jewish people are funding the schools and that hatred of Jews has been removed from the lessons. In other words: the mere participation of Jews in a humanitarian project is treated as a form of contamination. The removal of antisemitism from a classroom is treated as ideological subversion.

This tells you something important about the cultural environment in which these children are being raised — an environment so saturated with the premise that Jews are the enemy that any Jewish generosity is automatically suspect. It also tells you something about what "peace building" is actually up against. Dr. Hasan isn't just building tent classrooms; he's fighting an entire ecosystem of dehumanization that has been deliberately cultivated and institutionally maintained for decades.

That is precisely why what he is doing matters so much — and why the question of its rarity should be answered honestly. It is rare because powerful institutions — the PA, Hamas, the UN, and their international funders — have not wanted it. The hate in the curriculum was not an accident or an oversight. It was a policy. Dr. Hasan's schools prove that it was never a necessity.

Most of all, this is a damning indictment of UNRWA. A man managed to build a network of schools in months, with thousands of students and vetted teachers, that don't teach hate. UNRWA has spent decades arguing that such a thing is impossible in Gaza and that the lessons of hate they teach - which violate UN standards - are necessary (or they deny it.)

Dr. David Hasan's schools prove that all the excuses that justify antisemitism in Gaza are nonsense.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

A newer kind of philosophical antisemitism comes from Egypt

I have been arguing for nearly a year now that the common denominator of antisemitism - left, right, Arab, Christian or whatever - comes from Jews not fitting inside the paradigms of each group's philosophies. Jews, or Judaism, or Israel are particularistic when philosophies demand universalism, victims who became victors which makes binary frameworks break, or simply a people who survived when other philosophies predicted they cannot last. Philosophers prize cohesiveness in their theories, and Jews often prove the thinking is incoherent. Rather than update their frameworks to explain Jews, philosophies would rather get rid of the Jews to keep their frameworks intact.

But there is another response that can be made in response to those pesky Jews: create a cohesive philosophy whose entire purpose is to demonize Jews.

This is what Abdul Wahab al-Messiri has done.

The brilliant Hussein Aboubakr Mansour traces the ideology of al-Messiri as described in his eight volume Encyclopedia of Jews, Judaism, and Zionism, and what emerges is not crude prejudice but a fully systematized metaphysical indictment. Messiri did not stumble into antisemitism. He built it.

Critical Theory provides a particularly fertile environment for this dynamic, not because it is inherently antisemitic but because of its structure. Its central move is unmasking. It claims surface appearances conceal hidden domination and institutions encode power. The moral hero exposes the concealed logic beneath the visible order. Once this becomes the default intellectual posture, anomalies do not falsify the framework; they intensify the search for deeper concealment.

If applied to Jews, this sounds a lot like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, doesn't it?

Messiri takes the crude antisemitism of 19th century Eastern Europe and makes it compatible with the most trendy philosophical theories. Drawing on Karl Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge, the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason, and Heideggerian and existential critiques of modernity, he relocates the source of Western domination from abstract rationality to Judaism itself. The hidden structure that Critical Theory sought to expose becomes Jewish metaphysics. Zionism becomes the distilled expression of modernity’s will to dominate. The Jewish narrative of chosenness is recast as the original civilizational pathology from which Western imperialism, capitalism, liberalism and even Nazism supposedly flow.

This is not medieval demonology in religious language. It is medieval demonology translated into the vocabulary of twentieth-century critical philosophy.

The result is a philosophy in which antisemitism is not an emotional reflex but the organizing principle. Jews do not merely fail to fit the paradigm. They explain why the paradigm is necessary. They occupy the structural position of hidden power more elegantly than any other candidate, precisely because antisemitic tradition has prepared that slot for a thousand years. Critical Theory’s emphasis on concealed domination and antisemitism’s emphasis on clandestine Jewish influence converge with remarkable ease.

Before reading this article, I had thought that this encyclopedia was just an encyclopedia. It is often reviewed and referenced in Arabic news media and op-eds. I didn't realize there was an entire philosophical framework behind it.

Messiri’s influence matters. His encyclopedia is widely cited in Arab intellectual circles and has shaped this generation of educated discourse. He provides a coherent architecture in which hostility to Israel and Judaism is not simply political but metaphysical. In his system, opposing Zionism is an act of universal emancipation. Violence becomes resistance against the Logos of domination. The Palestinian cause becomes a transcendent symbol around which history itself is morally organized.

So far, I see little evidence that Messiri's philosophy has been accepted in Western universities. It is still relatively new. When he is studied it is usually in Middle Eastern Studied departments. But the fact that it is coherent means there is little in the way of "progressive" scholars to start adopting it - it is a socially acceptable philosophy to justify Jew hatred, and something like that will not remain isolated for long.

When that happens, the antisemitic Right might be in the forefront of its mainstreaming, since it is already close to their conspiracy theories about Jews.

I began my philosophical project in order to dismantle antisemitism by identifying the broken assumptions that generate it. What Mansour’s essay reveals is a different challenge. There exists an intellectual tradition in which antisemitism is not a byproduct of philosophical incoherence but its deliberate center. Instead of eliminating Jews to preserve a theory, Messiri reconstructed theory to eliminate Jews conceptually. He did not defend a fragile paradigm against anomaly. He designed a paradigm in which the anomaly becomes the ultimate explanation.

If antisemitism can arise from philosophical systems that cannot tolerate Jewish particularity, it can also arise from systems that define Jewish particularity as the concealed engine of evil. The first problem is rigidity. The second is design. Both demand response, but they are not the same adversary.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/19 Links Pt2: Tucker Carlson's detention claim shattered by viral video; Bari Weiss’ Daniel Pearl Memorial Lecture canceled; Why I acquired the whiteprint of the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematoria

From Ian:

Noah Rothman: The Revolt of the Revolting

Review of 'The Revolutionists' by Jason Burke
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez was jubilant upon his return to London in 1971. When the Venezuelan national’s parents had last seen their son, he and his brother had just secured positions to study at Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University—the front from which so much Soviet-sponsored radicalism and militancy was cultivated, refined, and exported. But that had been years earlier. On arrival, Ramírez was chided by a family friend for failing to tell his worried family where he’d been, but the reason for his prolonged absence was simple. “I’ve been in the Middle East,” he confessed, “learning how to kill Jews.”

That certainly explained the low profile. Ramírez embarked on that project under an assumed name, “Carlos,” to which the appellation “the Jackal” would soon be indelibly appended. Although he was perhaps the most famous revolutionary left-wing terrorist and assassin of his generation, Carlos actually had serious competition for the title. He would, however, make an outsize contribution to the bloodshed that bathed the decade to follow.

Although they talked a good game about proletarian solidarity and compassionate self-sacrifice, the violence that the Jackal and his terrorist allies dispensed was more often an outgrowth of narcissistic self-reverence that masqueraded as altruism. The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s, by the British author and journalist Jason Burke, tells Carlos’s story and those of many others like him.

Burke’s rich narrative distills a violent decade to its intellectual concentrate. He chronicles the international Marxist left’s turn from socialist ardor toward nationalism and Islamism. It was a transformation that occurred in tandem with Israel’s progression from a fledgling state into a regional power. The Communist East and its fellow travelers turned on Israel as it evolved from an incipient socialist experiment into a Western-oriented capitalist democracy—one that had had the temerity twice to defeat the coalition of Arab nations in whose success Moscow had ill-advisedly invested substantial sums. The international left’s bitterness did not die when the Warsaw Pact pivoted late in the Cold War from confrontation to accommodation with the West, leading the global Marxist vanguard to throw their chips in with the Islamist radicals still in the fight.

It’s only proper, then, that Burke’s story begins not with the rash of civilian-aircraft hijackings that closed out the turbulent 1960s and set the stage for the violence to come, but in 1948, with the Jewish state’s founding. The birth of Israel was accompanied by the rise of a particular radicalism in the region influenced by “Marxist ideology,” one of the earliest expressions of which was George Habash’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, founded in 1967.

Seth Mandel: The Problem With ‘Epstein Class’

Back in 2017, during the heady days of the Trump-Russia “collusion” accusations, the release of the Steele Dossier supercharged the story. A former British spy had been very clearly duped by the Russians into putting together a file of colorful and compromising tales about Trump. The main effect this had was to turn the American political discourse into a conspiracist circus.

And when that happens, it’s only a matter of time before the sleuthing public finds a way to make it about the Jews.

Sure enough, in April 2017 Politico ran one of the wackiest articles about Jews to appear in a mainstream publication in years. Under the headline “The Happy-Go-Lucky Jewish Group That Connects Trump and Putin,” the article intimated that Chabad-Lubavitch institutions were the link between Trump and Putin’s oligarchs. The piece never establishes this, of course, because it’s nonsense. But it conjured a false picture that many people, eager to get Trump on collusion, bought into.

It is an iron rule that conspiracy theories find their ways to Jews if left to fester in the public’s imagination. So while the dossier’s intent had nothing to do with Jews, the irresponsible collation of rumors inevitably ended up there.

So it is with the Jeffrey Epstein files. Led by the bipartisan duo of Ro Khanna and Thomas Massie, Congress forced open the files relating to the well-connected financier who was convicted of sex offenses. Epstein has been the subject of endless but groundless speculation by conspiracy theorists that he was working for Israel.

The Times of London provided a perfect example of the type of conspiracy mongering enabled by the mass release of the Epstein files. “Was Epstein a Mossad agent? New files deepen mystery over Israel links,” the headline promised. Several paragraphs into the story we get this: “An FBI report from the Los Angeles field office written in October 2020 said the bureau’s source had become ‘convinced that Epstein was a co-opted Mossad agent.’”

So now the reader has imbibed this rumor along with terms like “FBI report” and descriptions of certain messages as Department of Justice documents. Which they are—technically. But the “source” is a Holocaust denier and all-around disgraced kook—the report protects his identity, but it is not a secret. Still, the Times gets to play games by painting them as official documents coming from the feds.

Nicole Lampert: The pro-Gaza luvvies are engaged in their nastiest purity spiral yet

Towards the end of China’s Cultural Revolution, those who had dared to indulge in wrongthink were forced to wear signs around their necks detailing their alleged crimes and dragged into public stadiums. They were tortured and some of them were even the victims of ritualistic cannibalism.

Though not as extreme as the gruesomely violent aspects of the Cultural Revolution, some of the intolerance that characterised that movement can now be found in response to Israel. This week, 80 actors and directors, including Javier Bardem (a keffiyeh-clad poppinjay), Tilda Swinton, Brian Cox and Mike Leigh, denounced the Berlin Film Festival in Variety magazine because its organisers dared to say that not everyone has to express an opinion on Gaza.

They are furious that the Berlinale’s mild-mannered German jury president, Wim Wenders, voiced his belief that filmmakers should stay out of politics. “We have to do the work of people and not the work of politicians,” he said when asked repeatedly about Gaza. In 2026, this counts as bravery.

But the furore was immediate, with Indian novelist Arundhati Roy storming out of the festival, which was due to present a 1989 film she wrote. She described Wenders’ comments as “unconscionable”.

Then came the letter, which had the frankly breathtaking audacity to compare the Berlinale’s stance with that of Germany in the 1930s, because the previous year it had tried to stem the anti-Semitic impulses of too many righteously insane filmmakers who wanted to denounce the Israeli state for daring to defend itself.

What is more, the letter did not just have the usual lie that the war in Gaza is a “genocide”, but the kind of claim that only people who spend too much time in the land of make-believe could come up with – that Palestinians had been “evaporated” by the IDF.

These puffed-up self-righteous celebrities, who have forgotten we only want to see them crying on film and wearing nice clothes on the red carpet, are becoming dangerous with their anti-Zionist conspiracies.

While we may not be quite at cannibalism in this new attempted cultural revolution, in which everyone should bow down to the victimhood of the Palestinians, I fear we are getting ever closer.

02/19 Links Pt1: Trump announces $10 billion U.S. investment in Gaza, 10-day timeline for Iran; Hamas Debunks the ‘Genocide’ Narrative; The Lancet’s dubious Gaza casualty figures

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Hamas Debunks the ‘Genocide’ Narrative

Hamas has wrapped up its latest revision of casualty data in the Gaza war, and it makes clear why Israel’s critics have been flailing since the end of the war.

The list has enough information to cite 68,800 deaths. Hamas has lost 25,000 fighters, which leaves 44,000 war deaths to account for. Included in that 44,000 are about 10,000 natural deaths. The remaining 34,000 would include civilians killed by Israel and those killed by Hamas and associated militant groups—either by execution, rocket misfires, turf wars, and the like.

The result is that even when using Hamas’s numbers, Israel’s civilian-to-combatant death rate is close to 1:1, an unheard-of accomplishment in an urban war setting, let alone one in which much of the territory has been turned into Hamas human shields. Given that Hamas started the war, refused to surrender, and fired at Israel from civilian homes, the terrible tragedy of Gazan lives lost is laid at Hamas’s feet.

It feels pretty silly at this point to even consider the “genocide” accusation, but this is another opportunity to note that Hamas goaded its defenders out on that limb and then personally cut it off under their feet. While plenty of bad-faith actors have been accusing Israel of genocide since the war started, and are therefore immune to facts, I’m sure there are a number of decent folks who fell into the “genocide” trap because they followed a trend in the name of “human rights.” I do not envy the humiliation they are experiencing now, but neither do I find such people particularly sympathetic. They ought to feel bad about what they’ve said and done, and I hope they do.

The reason people were willing to believe it is twofold. First, it is the quintessential example of the Big Lie. Hitler’s belief was that the bigness of the lie not only lends it credibility but serves as an emotional, rather than rational, appeal. As we watch Israeli companies flood Gaza with sweets and drinks for Ramadan, we cannot maintain any rational, conscious interpretation other than Israel won a defensive war while protecting civilians to an extent never seen before. But those who shape their beliefs based on subconscious appeals to emotion? Who knows what contradictions they can maintain.

The other reason is, yes, anti-Semitism. The public’s willingness to believe the worst about Jews is not new, and it’s not an accident. Those who have participated in the “genocide” Big Lie have not made an honest mistake. A mistake, perhaps—but not an honest one.

Colonel Mike Kelly: Debunking the Gaza Genocide Myth Overview
Dr Mike Kelly AM examines why a finding of genocide against Israel by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is highly unlikely under international law.

Drawing extensively on the 1948 Genocide Convention and relevant ICJ jurisprudence, he argues that genocide requires proof of a specific intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part, and that this must be the only reasonable inference from the evidence.

Kelly analyses the ICJ’s current proceedings, prior genocide cases, and the Convention’s drafting history to demonstrate the high legal threshold required.

He contrasts the definition of genocide with the realities of urban warfare, reviewing casualty claims, humanitarian aid flows, medical operations, IDF precautions in attack, and internal investigative mechanisms.

He further critiques reliance on unverified casualty data and partisan UN reports, arguing that they fail to establish the specific intent required under the Convention.

The article concludes that, whatever criticisms may be made of particular incidents or conduct in the war, the legal standard for genocide has not been met, and that expanding the Convention beyond its original scope would require a formal international renegotiation of its terms. Download PDF Trump announces $10 billion U.S. investment in Gaza, 10-day timeline for Iran

President Donald Trump used the occasion of the first meeting of the Board of Peace in Washington on Thursday to announce significant monetary and troop commitments from the U.S. and other countries to stabilize Gaza, as well as lay out a timeline for military action against Iran.

“I want to let you know that the United States is going to make a contribution of $10 billion to the Board of Peace,” Trump said at the United States Institute of Peace, where several foreign leaders gathered for the meeting.

The president also named, for the first time, which countries have agreed to make additional financial contributions to the reconstruction of Gaza: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan and Kuwait “have all contributed more than $7 billion toward the relief package,” Trump said.

The meeting comes as the administration works to address several issues in the Middle East, including rising tensions with Iran. The U.S. has amassed a large collection of military assets in the region in preparation for a potential strike, as the two sides attempt to negotiate a nuclear deal.

Trump said in his remarks, “Now we may have to take it a step further or we may not. Maybe we are going to make a deal [with Iran]. You are going to be finding out over the next probably 10 days.” Last June, Trump said he would decide whether to take action against Iran within two weeks, and carried out strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities two days later.

Trump also called on Iran to “join” the board “on a path that will complete what we’re doing.”

“If they [Iran] join us, that will be great. If they don’t join us, that will be great too, but it will be a very different path,” the president said. “They cannot continue to threaten the stability of the entire region, and they must make a deal. Or if that doesn’t happen, I maybe can understand if it doesn’t happen, but bad things will happen.”

On February 16, an Israeli airstrike killed Hezbollah operative Ahmad Hussein Termos in the southern Lebanese town of Tallousa. Termos was trying to rebuild Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon after Israel destroyed it.

Unlike most assassinations, the IDF gave Termos a warning.

Lebanese journalist Radwan Mortada tells the amazing story of what happened, even as he tries to twist it as Israeli evil and a terrorist's "heroism."

When reality is harsher than fiction.

Yesterday, in the town of Tallouseh, the martyr Ahmad Termos (62) was on a family visit. He was sitting with his wife in her brother's house. The sound of a drone overhead, then another. He had barely stepped inside to sit when his phone rang.

Ahmad answered.

The voice on the line was cold and clear:
"Is this Ahmad Termos?"
"Yes", he replied.
"This is the Israeli army, Ahmad. You either die with those around you… or alone."

Without hesitation, he answered: "Alone."

He hung up. His face changed. His brother-in-law, Salim, looked at him and asked, "What happened, Ahmad?"
Calmly and decisively, he said: "The Israelis. Get up and leave. They say either you die with me… or I die alone."

He did not beg. He did not shout. He asked them to leave, to survive, to let him face his fate alone. They refused at first, insisting they would not leave him, that they would die with him. He steadied them, then convinced them to go.

For a moment, he forgot he wasn't in his own home. Then he realized it. He did not want death to come in a house that was not his. He chose to take death away from them. He asked them to stay while he left. He said goodbye. He got into his car, started the engine, drove away from the house, then parked.

Seconds passed. The drone fired two missiles.

The car burned. Ahmad's body was torn apart. He burned… but his story remains. He is one of the heroes of our time.

Take away the rhetoric, and the story is clear: Israel wanted to eliminate one of the key people breaking the ceasefire agreement, and went through great pains to ensure that no civilians would be hurt.

Calling Termos a hero for choosing not to let his family die and his brother-in-law's house be destroyed is a very low bar for heroism.

Apparently, this happens often. Mortada adds:

Before Ahmad, another young man was driving with his wife beside him. He received the same call. He stopped the car. He helped his wife out. He moved her away. Then he drove on alone, toward the missile.

These are scenes that repeat themselves in the South [of Lebanon].

It never occurs to these Hezbollah groupies that if the terror group would have followed the ceasefire agreement and dismantled its military infrastructure in southern Lebanon, even their own terrorists wouldn't be killed today.

One commenter realized that the story was not quite the story if sadistic psychological torture of innocent Lebanese as it was written:

Your statement contradicts the claim that the occupation army targets civilians. May God have mercy on the martyrs and accept them, but be careful when phrasing news so that you do not serve their enemy.

In fact, this is a story of heroism - Israeli heroism in saving innocent Lebanese lives while eliminating those who are trying to murder Jews. No amount of flowery language around how "heroic" Hezbollah terrorists are takes that away.

(h/t Ali)

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Part 4 of a series on the 2026 Palestinian draft constitution

The 2026 Palestinian draft constitution contains a clause that most Western observers will read past without a second thought. Article 4, under "General Provisions," states: "The principles of Islamic Sharia are a primary source for legislation."

That sounds moderate and pluralistic. It doesn't say "the primary source," just "a primary source." Many constitutions name religion as a source among others. The phrase suggests balance — Sharia alongside secular law, democratic norms, international obligations.

But that is not how the Palestinian Authority has ever interpreted the identical language in its 2003 Basic Law. And one of the men who drafted this constitution has said so explicitly.

In 2020, Mahmoud al-Habbash, the Chief Justice of the Palestinian Authority's Sharia Court, addressed the question directly. Although the PA had signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), he stated:

The Palestinian Constitution expressly states that Islamic Sharia is the primary source of legislation and that everything must be in harmony therewith. There is also a decision by the Constitutional Court whereby international agreements prevail over local laws, provided these are consistent with the Palestinian religious and cultural legacy.

The State of Palestine may not be an Islamic state, but none of its laws may contradict Islamic religious law.

This was not the opinion of an outside critic or a religious hardliner operating at the margins. Al-Habbash is the most senior Sharia judicial official in the Palestinian Authority. He is also member number six on the committee that drafted the 2026 constitution.

The man who articulated the operative doctrine — that Sharia functions not as a source but as a supreme veto over all other legal obligations — is one of the document's authors. The constitution is not ambiguous on this point. It is telling you exactly what it means through the person who helped write it.

The gap between Palestinian signature and Palestinian implementation is not speculation. It is a documented pattern spanning more than a decade.

In April 2014, the State of Palestine acceded to seven of the nine core UN human rights treaties — notably, without entering a single reservation. This was widely praised. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights called it a "significant step." International human rights organizations celebrated Palestine as the only state in the Middle East and North Africa to sign CEDAW (for women's rights) without carve-outs.

The seven treaties were: CEDAW, the ICCPR (civil and political rights), the ICESCR (economic and social rights), CAT (convention against torture), CERD (racial discrimination), the CRC (rights of the child), and the CRPD (rights of persons with disabilities). All were signed "without reservations."

Under Palestinian law, a treaty gains binding domestic legal force only when published in the Official Gazette. Only CRC and CERD were published and are actual law under the Palestinian Authority. The rest of the treaties were signed, but never implemented in law.

The pattern requires no elaborate interpretation. The two treaties published are the two with the least direct conflict with Sharia. The five treaties that remain legal dead letters are precisely the five that most directly challenge Sharia-grounded practices: the prohibition on torture and cruel punishment, equal rights for women in marriage and inheritance, freedom of religion including the right to change one's faith, and equal civil and political rights regardless of sex.

The 2026 constitution enshrines this hierarchy as supreme law.

Article 82(2) establishes the legal order explicitly: ratified treaties sit above domestic legislation but below the constitution. Sharia, as Article 4, sits within the constitution itself. Therefore Sharia permanently outranks every international treaty obligation the PA has ever signed or will sign.

Article 16, the constitution's gesture toward international law more broadly, says only that the state "respects international law and the UN Charter." The language of "respects" has no legal force. It doesn't say that the state "is bound by," or "incorporates," or "applies." This is diplomatic language dressed as a legal commitment. It gives international law no enforceable domestic status whatsoever.

The PA's own Supreme Constitutional Court closed any remaining gaps in 2017 with two rulings that built a second layer of filtration. Decision No. 5 held that international conventions must be actively incorporated into national law to have any domestic force — effectively giving the PA permanent discretion over which obligations to activate. Signing treaties by itself is legally meaningless. Decision No. 4 held that implementation of conventions depends on consistency with "the national, religious, and cultural identity of the Palestinian people" — a formulation that is, in practice, a Sharia filter with additional steps.

The architecture is complete. Treaties sit below the constitution. Customary international law is something the state merely "respects." The courts have reserved a religious identity veto over whatever survives. And the man who articulated the doctrine governing all of this helped draft the document.

The practical consequences of Sharia supremacy over all legal obligations are not theoretical. They are visible in existing Palestinian law.

Under the personal status laws that govern Muslim Palestinians, inheritance follows Sharia rules: women receive half the share of male relatives. Polygamy is permitted for Muslim men. Marital rape is not a crime — the 1960 Penal Code that applies in the West Bank defines rape as applying only to a woman who is not the perpetrator's wife. The Family Protection Bill, which would have addressed domestic violence, was blocked on the grounds that it conflicted with Sharia. None of this has been amended.

Non-Muslim citizens exist within a legal framework whose primary source is explicitly not their faith. Article 37 guarantees freedom of religious practice for "followers of monotheistic religions" — but the legislation their rights depend on is shaped by Sharia. The constitution provides no mechanism by which this changes.

And for anyone who might leave Islam: the ICCPR — the treaty the PA signed and never published — guarantees the right to change one's religion. Under classical Sharia jurisprudence, apostasy is a capital offense. The PA has not published the ICCPR. It has not abolished the death penalty. The Second Optional Protocol committing it to do so was also never published.

The constitution's treatment of genocide crystallizes the entire problem in its starkest form.

Most states prohibit genocide as part of customary international humanitarian law that they automatically support in their constitutions. The Palestinian constitution only says that it "respects" international law, which is legally meaningless. So any prohibition of genocide must fit with Sharia law.

The word "genocide" does appear throughout the document, but only to accuse Israel. The preamble declares as constitutional fact that genocide is being committed against Palestinians. Article 24 mandates prosecution of the perpetrators. Article 69 states that genocide is a crime not subject to a statute of limitations. The constitution is constructed, from its preamble through its criminal law provisions, as a legal instrument for prosecuting genocide committed by others.

Nowhere in the document is there a legal path to prohibit Palestinians from performing genocide against Jews.

A constitution that weaponizes the accusation of genocide as its foundational premise — while blocking the legal mechanisms that would make the prohibition on genocide binding on itself — tells you that it understands international law as only applicable on others.

This is Part 4 of a series on the 2026 Palestinian draft constitution. Part 1 examined how the constitution makes peace illegal. Part 2 analyzed "pay for slay" under the constitution, Part 3 explored how it deals with armed groups.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

An interactive map of Hezbollah human shields

The Alma Research and Education Center has released an interactive map that shows, using open sources, many of the weapons found in civilian buildings in Lebanon by the IDF.

So for example, click on a spot in the map and you can find a video of weapons stored in a mosque.

The wooden crate contains 12 rounds of large caliber PGТ-AP2 Russian armor-piercing (AP) projectiles.

Those must be some explosive sermons given in those mosques.

Hamas' strategy of using human shields is well known and documented, but Hezbollah is ususally characterized more as a professional militia. Obviously, they are just as guilty of war crimes as Hamas is in endangering their own people.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/18 Links Pt2: US likely to attack Iran, but Trump has not yet decided to do so; Jesse Jackson and the betrayal of the civil-rights movement; Eli Sharabi’s ‘Hostage’ memoir named Jewish book of the year

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: Two Cases Demonstrate How Anti-Zionist Propaganda Undermines Liberal Democracy

The significance of the Palestine Action case, in fact, threatens to obscure the importance of the fight over the hostage posters. But the hostage posters arguably represent the problem at the root of all this activism.

The Palestine Action non-convictions were made possible by a campaign for what activists called “jury equity.” The defendants’ own lawyer argued that they should be treated like suffragettes, not criminals. But how does a society—in a democratic country, with a free press—come to embrace that idea widely enough to nullify the law? And to apply it only when the motivating factor is Jew-hatred?

To answer that, we only have to listen to the people who tear down hostage posters. In the case cited above, here’s how the defendant, Fiona Monro, explained her destructive actions:

“The board was clearly there to justify the genocide that was happening. A large laminated board with a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory to many people in that community clearly found it very upsetting to have that constantly thrust in our face daily.”

This is genuinely insane. The central claim of hers is that “a photograph of a hostage was highly inflammatory” and that people understandably “found it very upsetting.”

It is a picture of a Jewish person who was kidnapped during a pogrom and then murdered by his kidnappers.

You cannot get to the Palestine Action acquittals until your society produces enough people like Fiona Monro and those she claims to represent.

The people who tear down hostage posters represent a genuine threat to the functioning of a free society. They are an indication that the virus of anti-Semitism has metastasized to the point at which self-government becomes imperiled. As Britain is the first to belatedly realize.

NGO Monitor: Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor

Introduction
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor’s current and former Board Chairs appear on a 2013 list, published by Israel, of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe.

Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor appears in the European Union’s transparency register, a “database listing ‘interest representatives’ (organisations, associations, groups and self-employed individuals) who carry out activities to influence the EU policy and decision-making process.”

In their own words “youth-led independent, nonprofit organization that advocates for the human rights of all persons across Europe and the MENA region, particularly those who live under occupation, in the throes of war or political unrest and/ or have been displaced due to persecution or armed conflict.”

Funding
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor does not publish any financial date on its website, reflecting a complete lack of transparency and accountability.

According to its website, “Since the establishment of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, we have completely refused all offers of funding, sponsorship or support from government and faction bodies to protect our vision and narrative, to ensure an unbiased perspective and to resist external influences and pressures. We, however, rely on individual donations, project funding by independent international organizations, as well as crowdfunding campaigns, which are launched by our crowdfunding team several times a year.”

Euro-Med Monitor’s program “We are not Numbers,” which provides “training to developing storyteller–journalists in Palestine,” is fiscally sponsored by Nonviolence International.
Nonviolence International co-founder Jonathan Kuttab is also co-founder of Palestinian NGO Al-Haq. On October 22, 2021, the Israeli Ministry of Defense declared Al-Haq a “terror organization” because it is part of “a network of organizations” that operates “on behalf of the ‘Popular Front’.”

Ties to Terror
Ramy Abdu, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor Founder and Chairman
In November 2020, Israel Minister of Defense Benjamin Gantz signed an administrative seizure order against Ramy Abdu under Israel’s anti-terrorism law. The order was issued “in relation to his work with the [Israeli]-designated terrorist organization ‘IPalestine- International Platform of NGOs Working for Palestine…that belongs to and acts on behalf of…Hamas” Abdu served as a Board member.
The order was in effect until August 1, 2022.

Ramy Abdu appeared on a 2013 list, published by Israel, of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe. The institutions included The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG), European NGOs Empowerment Services (ENES), and the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR).
A 2011 publication by Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center described Ramy Abdu as ECESG’s coordinator.

In 2013, Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR) and PALThink organized an event, “Hamas Movement within the International Context,” featuring Hamas leader Osama Hamdan. At the event, Ramy Abdu, then CEPR’s Palestine Office Manager in Gaza, sat next to Hamdan and was a keynote speaker.

Mazen Awni Issa Kahel (Mazen Kahel), Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor chair 2015–2019 Mazen Kahel appeared on a 2013 list, published by Israel, of Hamas’ “main operatives and institutions” in Europe. The institutions included The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG), European NGOs Empowerment Services (ENES), and the Council for European Palestinian Relations (CEPR).

02/18 Links Pt1: Israeli soldier killed by friendly fire in Gaza; Israel, US envoy reject Tucker Carlson’s claim he was detained and interrogated at airport; Spike Lee’s ‘Upper Class Habits’

From Ian:

Pierre Rehov: The 'Other Side' Turns Against the Jews

This chill is often dressed up as "just asking questions" or "anti-globalism". How come there never seem to be similar "questions" about Qatar, China, Turkey, Nigeria or Pakistan?

The problem is not about failing to tolerate "free speech." The problem is about failing to examine what is said with follow-up questions. The great Edward R. Murrow invited Senator Joseph McCarthy on CBS television's See It Now not to give him the run of the corral but to challenge his remarks. The problem is a pattern of tolerating an intolerance that would not be accepted if it were aimed at any ethnic group other than Jews.

There is a gulf between arguing to cut foreign aid and amplifying blood-libel smears.

Criticism is not censorship, decency is not "consensus" and the Jewish people are not "clicks."

Contrast the fringe to actual governance. Under President Donald J. Trump, the U.S. moved its Embassy to Jerusalem (2018), recognized Israeli sovereignty on the Golan Heights (2019), and brokered the Abraham Accords — historic normalization agreements reshaping the strategic map. These facts remain the gold standard for a pro-ally foreign policy grounded in U.S. interests.

Whenever Washington projected resolve rather than courting applause in European salons, anti-terror alignment, economic growth and Western values have advanced.

The newly vocal antisemitic "Right" seems to represent regress masquerading as rebellion. They do not actually speak for the "Right;" they speak for themselves and for the social media algorithms that reward outrage and sounding outrageous.

Many – maybe most -- prominent members of the "Right" — from Trump to Pastor John Hagee, Thomas Sowell and Marco Rubio — stand with Israel because they stand with the West, with victims of jihad, and with a commitment to preserve the values of individual freedom, economic opportunity, quality education, freedom of expression and equal justice under the law. The "Right" would do well say so — clearly, repeatedly, and without apology — and should quarantine the grifters who would trade civilization for "clicks."

Melanie Phillips: The plot against the British mind

The British government is determined to introduce a measure outlawing “Islamophobia”. Since this nonsensical neologism was coined by the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood to suppress any criticism of Islam or the Muslim world, this is causing justifiable alarm in many quarters.

Last week, three Muslims were jailed for a planned terrorist attack that would have killed hundreds of Jews in Manchester in what would have been one of the worst ever such atrocities on British soil.

Despite the potential enormity of this attack and its chilling implications about the nature and extent of Islamist extremism in Britain, it’s given rise to virtually no anxious analysis or impassioned commentary in the mainstream media following the ending of the trial last December. That relative silence would be muted even further by the proposed outlawing of “Islamophobia”.

Prejudice against any group is to be condemned. But the informal use of “Islamophobia” as a smear inflicting reputational damage has long acted as an effective tool to stifle essential public discourse.

Defining it and formalising it as a form of banned speech would censor vital information and comment about political jihadi Islam — the attempt by Islamists to conquer the west by terrorism, an expanding birthrate and cultural encroachment through weaponising the democratic process. It would also silence all-too necessary discussion about the Jew-hatred that’s a staple of the Islamic world.

In February last year, the Labour government set up a working group to deliver a definition of “anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia”. As the Free Speech Union (FSU) has noted, the group is believed to have reached a conclusion in October, although its report hasn’t seen the light of day.

Leaks confirmed by one group member suggest that, instead of using the term “Islamophobia,” it’s trying to deflect the hostility against that word by defining instead “anti-Muslim hostility”. Since that would capture in the same trap much if not most of the necessary discourse about the Islamic world, it would scarcely represent any improvement.

Alarm is also being generated by the attempt to use the definition to invest Muslims with the status of a people in order to provide them with even more impunity, even though Islam is merely a religion and not an ethnicity or a nation.

New York Times Columnist Tom Friedman Plays His Readers for Fools—Again

"Netanyahu Plays Trump and American Jews for Fools—Again" is the headline over Thomas Friedman's latest column in the New York Times. I read the "again" part as an admission by Friedman that he's been writing the same column for decades. It's been consistently wrong, so the real "fools" are any remaining readers who take what he says seriously.

A decade or so ago, when Friedman was less washed-up than he is now, someone built a computer program that would auto-generate a Tom Friedman column. This latest one reads like Friedman had his news assistant train an artificial intelligence model on a bunch of old Tom Friedman columns, then fed in the latest Times front-page headlines and Harvard-PLO-Al Jazeera-Rockefeller Brothers press releases to generate a new column so that Friedman could spend his time golfing or giving honorarium-generating speeches.

Friedman begins the column by saying, "I cannot put it any more succinctly than Ehud Olmert, the former Israeli prime minister, did." That could have been a good signal to Friedman's editors to spike the Friedman column and ask for a piece from Olmert instead. Or to tell Friedman, "Hey, you already quoted Olmert in a Nov. 13, 2024, column, in a May 27, 2025, column, and mentioned him, describing him as one of 'two friends of mine,' in a Sept. 24, 2025, column. Maybe give Olmert a rest?" The May 27, 2025, Friedman column includes a correction: "A correction was made on June 12, 2025: An earlier version of this article misquoted an opinion essay by Ehud Olmert in Haaretz. It reads, 'What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of devastation: indiscriminate, limitless, cruel and criminal killing of civilians,' not 'What we are doing in Gaza now is a war of extermination.'"

In not a single one of the columns reliant on Olmert does Friedman mention that his source spent 16 months in prison after being convicted in a bribery and corruption scandal in which he pocketed cash to promote a Jerusalem construction project. Olmert's cash-strapped brother got in on the bonanza too. Tom Friedman is serving as a one-man prisoner-reentry rehabilitation program for Ehud Olmert, and the Times is all-in, or at least reluctant to exercise any editorial control over Friedman that would involve asking him to disclose to readers that Friedman's "friend" is a discredited figure in Israel.

The column proceeds to another hoary Friedman move, the comparison of Israel and apartheid-era South Africa. He warns that Israel's government will "make today's Israel permanently indistinguishable from apartheid South Africa," writing of "an apartheidlike Israel" and asserting, "Israel is becoming an apartheid state."

Disclaimer: the views expressed here are the sole responsibility of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

On February 15, 2026, readers of the New York Post encountered a story that captured a peculiar moment in contemporary identity politics: the Coalition of National Racial and Ethnic Psychological Associations (CONREPA) firmly opposed the creation of an Association of Jewish Psychologists as an official Ethnic Psychological Association within the American Psychological Association. Their reasoning was straightforward and revealing. Jews, they argued, are not underrepresented in the field—the majority of Jewish Americans identify as white, and Jewish psychologists of color already have representation in existing ethnic associations. Conflating religion, race, and ethnicity would blur the focus on racism and white supremacy as harms directed at people of color.

Just one day later, on February 16, The Algemeiner published a starkly different account. Beejhy Barhany, the Ethiopian-Israeli owner of Tsion Cafe in Harlem—a restaurant celebrating Ethiopian Jewish cuisine that had recently gone fully kosher and vegan—detailed years of escalating harassment that forced its closure on February 12. Swastikas scrawled on the building, threatening phone calls (“We’re going to come and shoot you all”), and intensified attacks after October 7, 2023, when Barhany embraced her Jewish heritage more openly by making the restaurant kosher. The focus of the hostility was three-fold: Barhany's Jewish identity, her Israeli background, and the restaurant’s kosher certification; her Ethiopian heritage and the color of her skin offered no insulation—meant absolutely nothing to them. “It became unbearable,” she said, citing safety and mental health concerns after repeated, unaddressed complaints to authorities.

These two stories, separated by a mere 24 hours, form a chilling juxtaposition that exposes the fickle, convenience-driven way Jewish identity is racialized in today's discourse. Call it Schrödinger's Jew—a status that shifts depending on the observer's agenda. On one day, Jews are deemed "white" enough to be excluded from minority protections and coalitions, too privileged and overrepresented to warrant their own space in professional bodies addressing oppression. On the next, a black Jewish woman (Ethiopian-born, Israeli-raised) is marked as unmistakably "other" and Jewish—threatened, vandalized, and driven out of business precisely because of that Jewishness, her choice to make her restaurant kosher, and her cultural expression of heritage.

Jewish identity is fluid in the eyes of others: white and assimilated when it serves to block access or deny solidarity, alien and threatening when it manifests in visible traditions, pride, or connection to Israel. Historical echoes abound—Jews were racialized as non-white outsiders in early 20th-century America (facing discrimination, quotas, and violence like the lynching of Leo Frank), then granted conditional "whiteness" post-World War II through socioeconomic assimilation and suburban integration. That status, however, has always been revocable, especially amid rising antisemitism. Today, in progressive spaces, the label snaps back to "white" to justify exclusion from intersectional frameworks, even as real-world threats ignore skin color or background.

The timing of these articles—published one right after the other—serves as a mirror to this societal volatility. In academia and professional guilds, Jews are too white to be minorities. In the streets of Harlem, or online, or anywhere hatred flares, Jewishness overrides any perceived racial assimilation, rendering even Jews of color targets. Barhany's experience highlights the harm embedded in such shifting perceptions.

As indigenous rights activist Ryan Bellerose, a Métis from the Paddle Prairie Metis settlement in Alberta, Canada, and a Zionist, has long argued, Jews should reject this imposed "whiteness" framework altogether. He frames Jewish peoplehood through an indigenous lens: rooted in ancient ties to the land of Israel, shared history, culture, and continuity—not Western racial categories. Regarding the opposition of CONREPA to the formation of an association for Jewish psychiatrists, Bellerose put it succinctly: "If we accept that only a group has the right to decide who is a member of that group, then you gotta ask yourself if white people ever accepted Jews as white. The answer is clearly no."

Ryan is right (he usually is). By accepting conditional whiteness, Jews remain trapped in a binary that others control, always vulnerable to redefinition and exclusion.

The back-to-back headlines that were striking in their irony and juxtaposition, reveal a pattern where Jewish minority status is granted or revoked based upon convenience—denied when seeking inclusion, weaponized when expressing distinct identity. Until Jews reclaim a narrative beyond these shifting labels—as an indigenous people with a resilient, multifaceted identity—the threats, whether professional gatekeeping or death threats over a plate of injera, are likely to continue unchecked.

The “who is a Jew” question was settled well before those headlines existed, in biblical times, by God. Our Jewish identity is not predicated on the color of our skin and never was. And Jewish identity is not subject to reassignment, either by committee or mob. News cycles change quickly. The headlines will be forgotten, and the Chosen People will endure—as they always have.

The haters are jealous of us. Because they weren’t chosen. But perhaps instead of being green with envy and seething with resentment, they should try to be more like us and less like themselves.

That would certainly go a long way toward making our world a better place.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Throughout 2024, I reported on the UN admitting there was sexual abuse by aid workers in Gaza but how it admits that it does not want to publicize the issue.

A year later, on September 30, 2025, AP published its own investigation confirming everything — and going further. Buried deep in the story are details that should have been an international scandal.

Two UNRWA workers are directly implicated.

A 35-year-old widow gave her number to a man in a UNRWA uniform while standing in an aid line. He made sexually explicit late-night calls. When she refused him, she got no aid. She complained to UNRWA — and was told she needed a recording as proof in order to report it. Her phone couldn't record, so she could not file a formal complaint. (UNRWA headquarters told AP they don't require proof.)

Sounds like something worth investigating, no?

But the second case is worse. A 38-year-old mother of six was promised a job by a man who drove her in a UN-marked vehicle — not to an office, but to an empty apartment. He told her to remove her hijab. He said she couldn't leave until she had sex with him. She complied out of fear.

The "job" materialized as a six-month UNRWA contract. He also gave her 100 shekels ($30) and a box of food. He was still contacting her with sexual demands as recently as summer 2025.

She never reported it: "I told myself that no one would believe it. Maybe they would say I am only saying this so that they would give me a job."

UNRWA's response was boilerplate deflection: "zero-tolerance policy," can't comment on individual cases, will "seek more information." Meanwhile their own PSEA network acknowledged 18 formal allegations of sexual exploitation linked to Gaza aid in 2024 — which their coordinator called "the tip of the iceberg." Four psychologists told AP they'd heard from dozens of women, some of whom became pregnant.

No major news organization - The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, BBC, Guardian - ran the story. No feminist organizations issued statements. No "pro-Palestinian" groups amplified it. No academics studied it - I cannot find any academic papers on sexual abuse in Gaza by aid workers.

AP deserves credit for at least reporting it, but even so, it buried the lede. Its headline was "Women in Gaza say they were promised food, money or work in exchange for sexual interactions" That implies the threats came from random men - not UNRWA and other aid workers.

And AP never followed up, probably because so few of its affiliates decided the storywas important enough to run in the first place.

Even worse is other people quoted in the story, the very people who should be protecting women in Gaza. A Palestinian women's activist told AP, "Most of us prefer to keep the focus on the violence and violations committed by the Israeli occupation."

The director of the same organization went further: "Israel's siege on the Gaza Strip and the restrictions on humanitarian aid are what's forcing women to resort to this."

A UNRWA worker drives a woman to an empty apartment in a UN vehicle, tells her she can't leave until she has sex with him — and this is Israel's fault according to Gaza women activists. If this is support for Gaza women, I hate to know what reckless disregard looks like.

The contrast with how news media report on allegations of sexual abuse by Israel is striking. When allegations emerged from Sde Teiman detention, CNN produced seven investigations, the UN issued a dedicated report, academics published papers, Wikipedia created an article, and legal institutes published analyses.

But when UN and other aid workers sexually abuse women in Gaza - virtual silence, or blaming Israel.

These women are being failed three times — by the men who exploited them, by the UN and other Gaza NGOs, and by every international NGO and news media that decided their stories weren't worth telling. And it is hard to escape the conclusion that the reason for this suppression of coverage is exactly what the Gaza aid worker said - everyone prefers to keep the focus on Israel, and helping these women is seen as supporting Israel's case.

Which is how antisemitism hurts even the women of Gaza.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Part 3 of my analysis of the 2026 Draft Palestinian Constitution

Hamas senior official Bassem Naim denounced the new Palestinian draft constitution as "a violation of the noble rights of our Palestinian people" and "a failed attempt by the PA to save itself from the developments of history."

Why does Hamas object to a constitution that is designed to destroy Israel? Because its structure bans Hamas from having weapons - but allows terror groups under the PLO umbrella to continue to murder Jews.

And to Hamas, that's not fair.

Article 154 of the constitution states: "It is prohibited to establish any military or security formations or organizations or military or semi-military groups outside the scope of the security forces, whether they are individuals or units."

At first glance, this sounds comprehensive and reasonable - the state must have a monopoly on arms. This is pretty standard. (Let's ignore that Abbas promised European leaders that his state would be demilitarized altogether.)

But Article 154 is a state law. It binds entities operating within the state framework. And the constitution allows an entire tier of authority that operates above the state: the PLO.

Article 11 declares that the establishment of the state "does not diminish" the PLO's status (until Israel is destroyed via "right of return") The preamble specifies that the PLO "continues to perform its national responsibilities according to the National Covenant." The PLO operates under its own charter, not under the constitution. The state has no authority over it.

This distinction determines which armed groups the constitution can touch — and which it can't.

The PLO is an umbrella organization made up of constituent factions. The major ones with active armed wings include:

Fatah (Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades) — Abbas's own movement
PFLP (Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades) — a Marxist-Leninist organization designated as a terrorist group by the US, EU, Canada, Japan, and others
DFLP (National Resistance Brigades)
Various smaller factions

But these groups are not PLO members:

Hamas (Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades)
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (Al-Quds Brigades)

The constitutional logic is straightforward. Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades can be characterized as a PLO faction activity. The PLO operates above the state, under its own charter. Article 154 doesn't reach it. The same applies to the PFLP — an organization that has carried out airplane hijackings, assassinations, and suicide bombings, and whose armed wing continues to operate. Under this constitution, its militia enjoys the same PLO shelter as Fatah's. The DFLP is not a designated terror organization under the US and EU, but it participated in the October 7 attacks. But - it's legal.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have no such shelter. They are not PLO members. Their only legal existence is within the state framework, where Article 154 explicitly prohibits their armed wings. Hamas is a political party, Islamic Jihad is not. They can be disarmed, disbanded, and prosecuted — constitutionally.

Abbas told Macron he would ensure that Hamas disarms. The constitution delivers on that promise — and only that promise. It provides a constitutional basis for suppressing Hamas and Islamic Jihad while preserving the armed capacity of Fatah and every other PLO faction through a loophole the size of the PLO charter.

This isn't an accident or an oversight. It allows the Palestinian leaders to say that the constitution "prohibits militias." It provides a legal framework for disarming Hamas, which is what the US, France, and Israel all demanded. It checks those boxes.

But it also preserves Fatah's and the PFLP's armed capability entirely. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades have carried out shootings, bombings, and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians — yet they operate under PLO authority, not state authority, and are constitutionally untouchable.

And it ensures that if Hamas ever tried to join the PLO — as various reconciliation talks have proposed over the years — its armed wing would suddenly acquire the same constitutional protection as Fatah's. The door isn't closed; it's a mechanism for future leverage.

The irony is that Hamas's objection — that the constitution was "written under French supervision" to meet the demands of outsiders — accidentally highlights the real problem. The constitution was written to appear to meet French demands while actually doing the opposite. France wanted demilitarization; it got selective disarmament of Abbas's rivals. France wanted democratic reform; it got a democratic mirage under a PLO dictatorship. France wanted an end to pay-for-slay; it got pay-for-slay as an unamendable constitutional right.

The PFLP hijacked an Air France plane and separated Jews from non-Jews at Entebbe in 1976. A PFLP operativ, Carlos the Jackal, bombed Paris in the 1980s. . The PFLP participated in the October 7 massacre that killed 42 French citizens. And France helped draft a constitution that gives the PFLP's armed wing a constitutional safe harbor.

Someone should ask Macron how he feels about that.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)