Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, June 09, 2025

Why “Rights” Don’t Exist in Jewish Ethics — And What We Should Replace Them With

For centuries, the dominant language of Western morality has been rights: the right to life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness, speech, education, healthcare, and more. I've discussed this in previous essays.

Upon further thought, I suggest that the entire idea of rights is a fiction, and Jewish ethics shows this to be the case. Moreover, the discourse of rights is damaging to society.

Firstly, without even invoking Jewish ethics, a little thought shows that while rights discourse assumes that rights are universal and even unalienable, it is not true. The best example is the one right everyone would agree on: the right to life. Does a soldier in a (legal) war have the right to life? No, he is expected to risk his life, and his very job is to do dangerous things - perhaps even missions that are tantamount to suicidal. If the opposing army has the right to kill the soldier, then what does "right to life" mean? Partial or provisional rights are not rights.

Furthermore, as we've discussed, , the idea of rights makes people feel a sense of entitlement. It makes people think in terms what they are owed, not what they can contribute. Each person's rights can clash which makes everyone potential adversaries - free speech vs. privacy, for example. When rights are absolute, how do you decide between competing rights?

Moreover, the very language of rights makes no distinction between what is allowed and what is ethical. For right-based moral systems, anything that is a "right" is also moral by definition. This means that there is no ethical barrier to speaking ruinous gossip for no positive purpose, for example.

I’m not the first to question the idea of rights. Jeremy Bentham, a prime architect of utilitarianism, called natural rights “nonsense upon stilts.” Hannah Arendt noted that rights are dependent on being a citizen, which means that there are no universal rights at all. Alasdair MacIntyre, who recently passed away, ridiculed the entire concept of rights, saying “there are no such rights and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns.”

Jewish ethics offers not only a critique of the rights-based model, but something richer: a system rooted in relationships, responsibility, shared obligations and covenant. It reframes the moral conversation not around what we are owed, but what we owe each other. What looks like a "right" in Jewish thought is often the visible result of others’ duties.

In this framework, what we call "rights" are the shadows cast by others' obligations. You have a "right" not to be stolen from because others are forbidden to steal. You have a "right" to safety because the community is obligated to protect you. These are not abstract entitlements but the byproduct of relational duties.

There is no “right” to life in a vacuum. But murder is categorically forbidden—except in edge cases like self-defense or war. And there is no contradiction because the priorities and triage principles are defined.

Instead of total, inalienable rights, Jewish ethics offers instead a layered structure of moral obligations - personal, communal, national - that interact to protect dignity, preserve justice, and respond to human need.

If there is any “right” in Jewish ethics, it is this: the moral freedom to act within the bounds of ethical obligation. That’s it. You are free to do anything that doesn’t violate what you owe to others.

This is not license—it is liberty with responsibility. And it’s enough.

So what about education, healthcare, wages, safety?

These aren’t rights in Jewish ethics. They are obligations - duties the state or community owes when individuals or families can’t fulfill them.

The state is obligated to provide a court system. It must support the poor. It must provide healthcare for those who cannot afford it. Workers must be paid and protected from being abused. Public infrastructure must be built. These are all community or state-level obligations to the people in exchange for the covenantal agreement of following the law, and of paying taxes.

The question of who is responsible for providing essential services is an interesting one. The answer goes beyond pure ethics into political theory,. It is worth thinking about it in terms of Jewish ethics principles we have already discussed. After all, if Jewish ethics are universal, and can apply to every imaginable situation - which is my thesis - then it should have something to say about how a government is built and run, at least as an aspirational model.

Ideas for a democratic government that is centered on Jewish ethics

Consider the following paragraphs a trial balloon describing one way that a democratically elected government can adhere to Jewish ethical standards. It is not complete but it is aspirational. There may be other models, but this is a thought experiment to see how truly universal the Jewish ethical framework is. Most other secular ethical systems do not get close to even thinking about these sorts of issues.

It seems to me that the obligations of government to citizens follow the same tiered structure of obligations of citizens to others. In short, the concentric circles of responsibility that everyone has - to themselves, to their families, to their community, to their nation, and to the world - applies in the obverse: the state should only step in and provide services when the smaller units like family and community cannot do them for any reason.

The state is the safety net when the other systems fail.

This means that the primary responsibility of care belongs to the individual. But some things, like infrastructure or self defense, cannot easily be done by all but the wealthy, and that is where the government steps in. Similarly, if caring for orphans or the chronically ill is too onerous for the family or community, only then should the state subsidize or provide the care. People should always think of themselves as the primary responsible party and the state as a backup.

This is similar but not identical to the Catholic concept of ethical subsidiarity, but instead of defining which group has authority to act, the Jewish system describes who has the obligation to act and when. Each actor fulfills what they can in an outward direction of concentric community circles, and the state steps in precisely where failure occurs.

Interestingly, this also means that the person most responsible for themselves as individuals is themselves. Personal responsibility is the default, as opposed to modern society where everyone blames everyone else (their parents, their boss, their spouse) for their own perceived shortcomings.

This is how to build a better society.

There are still practical problems that would need to be solved, but this framework gives us a refreshing prism to view old problems anew.

One major question relates to changing government roles in response to new needs that it must provide for logistical, financial or practical reasons. Whenever the government is needed to provide a new service, there is always a cost which typically is seen in new taxes. But is this a new covenant between the people and the government? What happens if people don't want this new program? How, in a democratic government, can we keep the spirit of the covenant alive when it changes often?

Jewish tradition offers possible ways to solve this.

One is the idea of takkanot and g'zeirot, new laws enacted by the leaders to handle new situations. (Takkanot would be new positive laws, g'zeirot are new protections around existing ethical concepts, "fences" around laws, termed as "negative" laws.) Takkanot (as a generalized term for both) were only issued for exceptional circumstances. But crucially, these laws were given along with the reasons they are enacted, with the idea that when the circumstances change, the new law can and should be canceled. So new laws and services should be a last resort when necessary.

Another, more novel idea for negotiating new laws and services without holding a referendum for each one is a twist on the idea of representatives. In Jewish law, a "shaliach" is an agent who is empowered to act on behalf of an individual. Perhaps the representatives should have formal roles as shlichim, agents, who can decide on behalf of their own (local) communities which laws and services make sense to them. These agents are not lawmakers, they are not the government, and their only power is to decide on behalf of their people what laws are worthwhile knowing the tradeoff of increased taxes or other additional responsibilities.

But how do we protect minorities in such a system? How can the representatives who are representing their people ensure that everyone is treated fairly? Because legislation cannot override ethical principles. Major values like value of life, human dignity and freedom from persecution are basic functions of society and any proposed law that violates these would not be allowed at the outset. There is no concept of a "mandate" by a government elected with 53% or so of the vote to do whatever they want - every law must adhere to the basic ethical principles.

New laws and new services would be, by default, temporary unless a supermajority supports a permanent new service. Each one would have a mandatory periodic review to see whether it should continue. New organizations should not build new buildings but lease or rent; employees should typically not expect a job for life but be contractors.

This is a curious combination of libertarian and social centered government. Some services to help those most in need are not negotiable because they fulfill basic ethical requirements and the community level cannot pay for them. But the default behavior is that any new program is considered temporary except under exceptional circumstances.

The very existence of a Jewish ethical framework often shows how the current partisan divides between right/left or libertarian/socialist are not necessarily accurate reflections of the choices one can make. If you think that some parts of the liberal ideology makes sense and some parts of conservative thinking makes sense, it is nice to see that there are more than two choices in how to look at issues. Very possibly, the Jewish framework can provide a way out of the binary thinking that dominate American political life today and show that you can care for the needy, minimize government and still be consistent in your ideology.

This obligation-based framework:

Protects dignity without flattening context.
Allows for compassion without collapsing into relativism.
Encourages moral creativity without moral chaos.

Jewish ethics isn’t stingier than rights-based models; it’s deeper and more real. By asking, ‘What do I owe?’ instead of ‘What am I owed?’ it binds us together in ways no list of rights ever could

That’s not just more realistic. It’s more human.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The New York Times Patrick Kingsley visited the tunnel directly underneath the European Hospital where Gaza leader Mohammed Sinwar was killed.

This section of the article is a perfect example of how a reporter can subtly accuse Israel of war crimes without violating any journalistic standards:

When we entered the tunnel on Sunday, we found it almost entirely intact. The crammed room where Mr. Sinwar and four fellow militants were said to have died was stained with blood, but its walls appeared undamaged. The mattresses, clothes and bedsheets did not appear to have been dislodged by the explosions, and an Israeli rifle — stolen earlier in the war, the soldiers said — dangled from a hook in the corner.

It was not immediately clear how Mr. Sinwar was killed, and General Defrin said he could not provide a definitive answer. He suggested that Mr. Sinwar and his allies may have suffocated in the aftermath of the strikes or been knocked over by a shock wave unleashed by explosions.

If Mr. Sinwar was intentionally poisoned by gases released by such explosions, it would raise legal questions, experts on international law said.

“It would be an unlawful use of a conventional bomb — a generally lawful weapon — if the intent is to kill with the asphyxiating gases released by that bomb,” said Sarah Harrison, a former lawyer at the U.S. Defense Department and an analyst at the International Crisis Group.

General Defrin denied any such intent. “This is something that I have to emphasize here, as a Jew first and then as a human being: We don’t use gas as weapons,” he said.

The evidence that the reporter saw was a mostly undamaged room with bloodstains. The Israeli general suggested two possible scenarios - suffocation as a secondary result of bombings, or a shockwave. He then quotes an expert saying if Israel's intent was to kill with gases from the bomb that would be illegal.

I asked an AI to rank the possibilities of how they died given the evidence. A shockwave is the most likely scenario: the pressure from a shockwave can easily cause internal injuries which would result in coughing blood.

#2 is that explosions nearby could consume the oxygen in the room, suffocating the people. Blood is less likely but possible from people struggling to breathe, yet the amount of blood described makes this seem unlikely.

Every other scenario (damage from shrapnel or debris from the airstrikes, tunnel damage) do not fit the evidence at all.

And intentional use of poison gas is the very bottom of the list: there would be no blood, there is zero evidence that the IDF would use that method.

So why is that possibility even discussed?

Did the legal expert bring this possibility up on her own? That seems unlikely, since forensics is not her area of expertise. It seems that Kingsley asked her about the legality of Israel intentionally using bombs with the intent to gas the terrorists to death (with the carbon monoxide that bombs might release?) something that makes no military sense.

So Kingsley made upo a war crime scenario, he got an expert to confirm that it could be a war crime, and he then could credibly quote the expert to surface the possibility, He then asks the general, who of course denies it, and now he created a "he said/she said" story out of literally nothing, but subtly implying for readers that there is a 50% chance that this could have happened that way.

It is the equivalent of asking an animal rights expert "If the IDF is strangling puppies with their bare hands, would this be an animal rights issue?" and then quoting an Israeli denial that they strangle puppies. See? They quoted both sides!

This is a particularly disgusting slander that is perfectly ethical according to journalistic standards. And the editors at the New York Times happily allow this one-sided reporting to be published.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Major media calling Greta Thunberg's boat an "aid ship" even though it didn't have any real aid and it isn't a ship (@NYTimes @Guardian @CNN @Reuters @AP)

It is hard to overstate how successful anti-Israel propaganda is.

Look at these headlines:

Every single major media outlet refer to the "Madleen", a 60 foot yacht, as an "aid ship" or "aid boat."

But it wasn't. Everyone knows that the little cargo it carried was symbolic, and news stories admitted that. (A quick look at Israeli media found none of them used those terms.)

The flotilla was carrying nothing but propaganda. It was a publicity stunt. The Madleen couldn't hold large amounts of aid even if they wanted to - the cargo hold is small and it had to also feed the 12 anti-Israel agitators on board.

If the media knows that there was next to no aid on the boat and that it is a propaganda mission, why do they call it an "aid boat?"

Moreover, the New York Times and Guardian stretch the lie by calling the Madleen an "aid ship." It is a yacht. The word "ship" has a specific meaning, typically a cargo vessel, and a yacht is not a ship (although it is a boat.)

The news media, by adopting these false terms as objective descriptions of the publicity stunt, are themselves guilty of anti-Israel propaganda.

Media that care about objectivity would never use the term "aid ship." Media that wants to promote the agenda of today's antisemites would certainly use their false terminology - and normalize it.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

06/08 Links: America’s Anti-Jewish Assassins Are Making the Case for Zionism; Journalists for genocide; Hamas tunnel found meters from hospital; Gaza Civil Defense rep is a Hamas terrorist

From Ian:

Yair Rosenberg: America’s Anti-Jewish Assassins Are Making the Case for Zionism

Simply put, Israel exists as it does today because of the repeated choices made by societies to reject their Jews. Had these societies made different choices, Jews would still live in them, and Israel likely would not exist—certainly not in its present form. Instead, Israel is a garrison state composed precisely of those Jews with the most reason to distrust the outside world and its appeals to international ideals, knowing that these did precisely nothing to help them when they needed it most. In this manner, decade after decade, anti-Semitism has created more Zionism. Put another way, the unwitting agents of Zionism throughout history have been those unwilling to tolerate Jews in their own countries.

Given this dynamic, a rational anti-Zionist movement would devote itself to making Jews feel welcome in every facet of life outside of Israel, ruthlessly rooting out any inkling of anti-Semitism in order to convince Jews that they have nothing to fear and certainly no need for a separate state. Such an anti-Zionist movement would overcome Zionism by making it obsolete. But that is not the anti-Zionist movement that currently exists. Instead, Israel’s opposition around the globe—whether groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah or their international apologists and imitators—often seems determined to persuade those Jews who chose differently than Herzl did that he was right all along.

Attacks such as those in Colorado, Washington, and Pennsylvania, not to mention the white-supremacist massacre at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, have raised the costs of being Jewish in America. Synagogues, schools, and other Jewish institutions collectively pay millions of dollars to secure their premises, resulting in communities that are less open to the outside and attendees being forever reminded that they are not safe even in their places of worship. And now American Jews thinking of attending communal events must stop to consider whether would-be attackers will associate them with Israel and target them for death.

America, at least, was not always this way. The country has long stood as the great counterexample to the Zionist project—proof that Jews could not just survive but thrive as equals in a pluralistic liberal democracy, without need for their own army or state. After Barbra Steinmetz, the 88-year-old Holocaust survivor in Boulder, was attacked, she had a message for the country. “We’re Americans,” she told NBC News. “We are better than this.” That is what most American Jews and their allies believe, and the justification for that belief was evident in Colorado this week, where Jared Polis, the state’s popular Jewish governor, forthrightly condemned the attack. But if the perpetrators and the cheerleaders of the incipient American intifada have their way, that spirit will be stifled.

Such a victory, however, would be self-defeating. According to video captured at the scene, the Boulder attacker accidentally set himself on fire in the middle of his assault. It would be hard to script a better metaphor for the way such violence sabotages the cause it purports to advance. If the anti-Zionist assassins succeed in making Jewish life in the United States less livable, they will not have helped a single Palestinian, but they will have made their opponents’ case for them. They will have proved the promise of America wrong, and the darkest premonitions of Zionism right.

The Boulder Attack Didn’t Come Out of Nowhere

For years, American Jews watched with horror the attacks on their European co-religionists. A young man kidnapped and tortured to death, an elderly lady beaten and thrown out the window of her home, and a teacher and three children murdered outside a Jewish day school are among a long list of violent anti-Semitic incidents in France alone—the country with the world’s third-largest population of Jews after Israel and the United States.

“What history had taught him was Amazement,” Lion Feuchtwanger writes of the conclusion reached by one of the characters in his deeply prescient 1933 novel about Nazi Germany, The Oppermanns. “A tremendous amazement that each time those in jeopardy had been so slow in thinking about their safety.” Despite the sharp increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. recorded over the past decade by the Anti-Defamation League, American Jews also once believed that the violence against Jews in France, Britain, Germany, and other European countries couldn’t happen here. Many told themselves that this threat was unique to European Jewry, given the internal frictions within their own countries, which had absorbed large immigrant populations from former colonial possessions. But yesterday’s attack, coming on the heels of the firebombing of Shapiro’s residence and the D.C. murders, has proved otherwise. As Ian Fleming, the former spy and novelist who created James Bond, reportedly observed, “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Arguably the system was already blinking red after the 2018 mass shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where a gunman killed 11 people, and the near tragedy averted four years later, when an armed man took hostage the rabbi and worshippers at a Colleyville, Texas, synagogue. The October 7 attacks heightened that awareness and led Jews to emulate the security measures standard at synagogues, day schools, community centers, and senior residences in Europe. Private companies were hired to provide guards at the entrances to synagogues and schools. Volunteers were solicited, trained, and deployed by community-based security organizations. The positioning of at least one local police car and patrol officer in front of synagogues became commonplace.

But in today’s threat environment, the question for Jews everywhere is inevitably: How much security is enough?

Melanie Phillips: Journalists for genocide

Next month, the London freelance branch of Britain’s National Union of Journalists is to hold a meeting to discuss ”the ethics and realities of reporting genocide when the only journalists on the scene are being slaughtered.”

The meeting is being sponsored by the hard-left Labour MP and former Corbyn apparatchik John McDonnell, who has accused Israel of murder and called for its economic and military isolation.

So a fair, balanced and objective discussion, then.

Accusing Israel of “genocide,” when it’s fighting a just war against genocidal attack, when it’s allowed into Gaza tens of thousands of tons of food and other aid, when it’s repeatedly moved Gaza’s civilians out of harm’s way and has killed a far lower proportion of civilians to combatants than any other military in war, denotes either illiteracy, imbecilism or malice.

As for “the only journalists on the scene being slaughtered,” a number of those individuals have been exposed as terrorists masquerading as journalists.

Yesterday, the Israel Defence Forces said it had killed two Islamic jihadi terrorists who had posed as journalists and who had operated from a command centre in the courtyard of the Al Ahli Hospital in Gaza. So not only were these individuals not journalists but they were terrorists engaged in the war crime of using a hospital as cover for terrorism.

Will the NUJ meeting discuss the “ethics and realities” of that?

Last October, the IDF disclosed that intelligence information and numerous documents found in Gaza had confirmed the military affiliation of six Al Jazeera “journalists” to Hamas and Islamic Jihad. This discovery included personnel tables, lists of terrorist training courses, phone directories and salary documents for terrorists.

Last month, Al Jazeera and other Arabic outlets mourned the death of “journalist” Bilal al Hatoum, who they said had been targeted and killed with a group of “civilians” in Gaza. Yet Al Jazeera analyst Saeed Ziad eulogised Bilal as a “beloved martyr” who “fought from the dawn of the Day of the Flood [October 7th] until noon today”. And someone else who called him his “beloved brother” described him as having been “martyred” with “a group of mujahideen” in a “blessed battle”.

Will the NUJ meeting discuss the “ethics and realities” of that?

The Reporting on the Gaza War Is Fundamentally Broken

The bias is so out of control that in February, the BBC discovered, much to its embarrassment, that it had aired a pro-Palestine documentary without realizing that its narrator is the son of a senior Hamas militant. The narrator expressed what the BBC already believed about the evils of Israel and the righteousness of the Palestinian cause. Consequently, BBC journalists didn’t bother to scrutinize the documentary.

(As a brief aside: Last February, the New York Times celebrated Gaza photographer Yousef Masoud for winning a George Polk Award, despite accusations of his collaboration with the October 7 attackers. This came after the Times rehired a Palestinian video journalist who had praised Adolf Hitler.)

As is the case with so much careless reporting, the failure goes beyond journalists simply failing to adhere to even the basic standards of their chosen profession. The danger lies in the perpetuation and dissemination of outright falsehoods, which risk enflaming further these ancient blood feuds.

Last weekend, in Boulder, Colo., a 45-year-old Egyptian national, who is in the United States illegally, attacked peaceful Jewish demonstrators with a “makeshift flamethrower,” severely injuring 15. When the attacker was arrested, he was heard shouting “Free Palestine!”

On May 22, a gunman murdered two Israeli Embassy staff members, an Israeli and an American, outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. At the time of his arrest, the alleged gunman shouted, “Free, free Palestine!”

The corrections and retractions of inflammatory anti-Israel stories from around the time of both heinous crimes are proper and all, but couldn’t these newsrooms have worked a bit harder to confirm the stories before publishing?

A little due diligence could spare media the embarrassment and Americans Jews from being murdered and maimed.

The media loves a good protest (Daled Amos)

Five years ago, CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez reported on the riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

CNN had its own take on those "peaceful" protests:

At the time, CNN was widely mocked on social media for its "mostly peaceful" comment. However, CNN is not the only one that cannot distinguish between riots and protests. And that is not the only point of comparison with the pro-October 7th "protests."

There are also the lengths the media goes to defend the protests. When the District Attorney announced that no charges would be pressed against either the police or Blake, an AP reporter posted on X:

This is the popular version of events, as reported the previous year by NBC:

At 5:11 p.m. Kenosha police said officers responded to a call of a "domestic incident in the 2800 block of 40th Street. There, they would encounter 29-year-old Jacob Blake who is seen on video posted to social media in an altercation with officers before they Tase and ultimately shoot him seven times in the back as he leans into a vehicle. The Kenosha department does not have body cameras so officers were not wearing them at the time of the shooting. Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Blake's family, said Blake was “simply trying to do the right thing by intervening in a domestic incident.”

Joel Pollak, a senior editor at Breitbart News, responded to the AP post on X. He called them out on their misrepresenting the facts and ignoring the danger it represented:

Pollak's response is based on the information presented by the DA, as summarized by Legal Insurrection:

He went through the evidence and step-by-step timeline. Blake resisted arrest, fought by police, and by his own admission, was carrying a knife, after multiple attempts to subdue him, including taser, failed. Blake was shot when he made a move with the knife, having switched it to his right hand, towards the police officer. Contrary to the popular narrative, Blake was not shot seven times in the back, three of the shots were to his side consistent with the twisting motion with the knife towards the officer. The officer’s seven shots were objectively reasonable because police are trained to keep firing until the threat is removed, which in this case was when Blake dropped the knife.

Blake lied when he said he didn’t know there was a warrant for his arrest, his phone internet records proves he knew, which would provide motive for his to resist arrest in front of his children, and makes him a not credible witness at trial. There also was a 2010 incident in Chicago where Blake similarly displayed a knife resisting arrest, and actually slashed at the officer.

We see a familiar pattern of media negligence:

o Jumping the gun to get unsubstantiated headlines
o  Building a false narrative
o  Carelessly stirring up emotions without regard to the consequences
o  Presenting the resulting riots and destruction as mere "protests" and free speech

The media defense of what passes for "free speech" is now showing itself in the media's defense of anti-Israel protests on university campuses across the US.

But there are legal limits to free speech. In a recent interview, Alan Dershowitz explained:

When you take people on college campuses who are calling, “Death to the Jews,” who are calling to prevent Jews from going to class, who are calling for immediate attacks and harassment of Jews–that’s not protected speech. On the other hand, if you make an abstract talk and say, well, it would be good if there were no Israel–that hate speech is protected speech...Abstract arguments, even if they are hateful, are permitted under our Constitution. But direct incitements to kill or harm other people or block their access or deny them the opportunity to go to class–those are not protected by the First Amendment.

Journalist Douglas Murray raises a parallel point during a recent Tikvah webinar, The War Against the Jews Comes to Washington with Professor Ruth Wisse. The moderator asks Douglas about his book, The Strange Death of Europe, and whether we should be concerned about the strange death of America.

Murray responds (at 27:17):

I think there are early warning signs, and we remain almost incapable of rising to the challenge. The most obvious one has been thrown up very visibly. I don't really like to linger on the campus issue because most people don't go to Ivy League universities anymore, thank goodness, and so it always sounds like a rarefied point to make, but just consider how most of the ivy League universities in the last two years have permitted violence and intimidation as the norm, and pretended that the figures like those in Colombia University are free speech martyrs when in no other situation, would they have got away with this if they had done this against any other minority.

And, you know, people say, well, the limits of free speech and so on. Nobody has yet been able to persuade me. But if for the last two years, there had been people from abroad coming into America using their time or student visas to call for the lynching of Black Americans, nobody can tell me that from right to left, from the universities to people in politics--nobody can persuade me that this would have been a mere free speech issue. It would not have been. People would have said from the get-go, I would have thought no more than 24 hours, whether I think under a Democrat or Republican government. They would have said: no, we have no need in our society for importing racists calling for racist violence. The case of the Jews? Yes, that's been permitted and more than permitted, encouraged.

The media's sloppiness shows itself in its coverage of campus disruptions. They insist that university disturbances are merely expressions of free speech and that the Trump administration's attempts to hold universities responsible for the safety of their Jewish students are somehow proof of its authoritarianism.

Five years ago, the New York Times published an op-ed by Republican Senator Tom Cotton on the need to use US troops to support the police in the face of riots.

Once the op-ed was printed, the paper couldn't back off fast enough.

They ended up prefacing the article with a 5-paragraph apology, explaining the supposed flaws in the piece that prevented it from meeting the New York Times' standards. The paper went so far as to claim that maybe the piece should not have been printed at all.

The lengths they went to repudiate the op-ed were due, in part, to the rebellion in the New York Times newsroom:

More than 800 staff members signed a letter protesting its publication, according to a union member involved in the letter. Addressed to high-ranking editors in the opinion and news divisions, as well as New York Times Company executives, the letter argued that Mr. Cotton’s essay contained misinformation, such as his depiction of the role of “antifa” in the protests.

Dozens of Times employees objected to the Op-Ed on social media, despite a company policy that instructs them not to post partisan comments or take sides on issues. Many of them responded on Twitter with the sentence, “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.” More than 160 employees planned a virtual walkout for Friday morning, according to two organizers of the protest.

One of those employees was Taylor Lorenz, who in a since-deleted post on X, bewailed the alleged danger Cotton's op-ed posed to the black New York Times staff:

Taylor's claim sounds no less self-serving now than it did then. Just how concerned have the New York Times staff been about the actual danger posed to the Jewish community by their one-sided coverage of the October 7th massacre and its aftermath?

But the internal influence of the paper's staff and employees is clear. They forced the editorial editor to resign:

So much for an independent media and journalistic integrity.

The New York Times' bias goes beyond just the liberal bias at the top. The infectious agenda is hardwired into the paper, starting from the ground up. From the reaction to the riots in 2020, we could have predicted how the New York Times and others would frame the anti-Jewish riots on university campuses and whose side they would take.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Jewish ethics as a relational system

In a recent post, I explored one of Judaism’s most overlooked moral strengths: compromise. Where secular ethical systems often treat compromise as a concession - or worse, a failure - Jewish tradition elevates it to a mitzvah, a tool for peace, dignity, and community trust. In the real world, the goal shouldn't be to find a single right answer in a binary ethical choice, but to find the optimal solution that respects not only abstract ethical rules but real people, real circumstances and real ramifications.

Compromise is not a moral detour. It’s a signpost. It reveals the deeper logic of Jewish ethics—a system not built on rigid principle or mathematical justice, but on relationships.

Here’s the (latest) radical idea: Jewish ethics doesn’t start with rules or outcomes. It starts with people and their relationships.

Jewish ethics' fundamental moral units aren’t issues or actors. They’re relationships. Jewish tradition does not categorizes ethical responsibility as "private vs public" or "individual vs collective." Instead, there are three categories:

Between me and God
Between me and you
Between me and myself

These are relational vectors. They frame obligation not as burden but as connection.

You might think that "between me and myself" is not relational, but in Jewish thinking, it really is. There are the metaphysical concepts of one's good and evil inclinations ("yetzer hara" and "yetzer hatov"), or in terms of repentance, between myself as I was and myself as I aspire to be, the physical self and the spiritual self. When we talk to ourselves, it is still a dialogue.

Ethics, at its core, is about how we relate to others as well as ourselves. And the Jewish focus on relationships feels much more grounded than the Enlightenment-era secular systems. Jewish ethics is not about achieving moral purity. It’s about sustaining covenantal belonging. That changes everything.

A Kantian ethic might say, "Tell the truth, even if it hurts the other person." Jewish ethics asks, "Is this truth a betrayal of our bond? Will it cause pain that can’t be repaired?"

Utilitarianism might calculate happiness across a population. Jewish ethics asks, "Who is in my circle of obligation right now? What do I owe this person, in this moment, to sustain their dignity?"

This is why compromise is not just allowed but preferred. It lets us act ethically without tearing the social fabric. It invites people to stay at the table - to stay in relationship.

Halacha -the Jewish legal system - is often framed as rigid. In reality, it’s a finely tuned system for nurturing trust. Compromise before judgment isn’t a workaround. It’s the model. Peace (shalom) is a higher goal than victory.

Secular systems talk about rights. Judaism talks about promises. Rights are protective walls. Covenants are bridges.

Rights say, “You can’t do that to me.” Covenants say, “We owe each other more than the minimum.”

This doesn’t mean rights don’t matter. It means they rest on something deeper: shared responsibility.

In an age of partisanship, polarization, abstraction, and distrust, Jewish ethics offers something rare: a moral system that feels like home. Not because it’s soft, but because it’s grounded in real relationships, with all their complexity, compromise, and possibility.

If we start from the perspective of belonging - not the squishy "we are the world" utopian fantasies but real belonging with our families, communities and beyond - we can build an ethic that holds together not just ideas, but people.

That’s what Jewish ethics does best.

----

I need to give credit for this post to my own AI ethical chatbot, AskHillel.com . I've been keeping track of novel ideas ("chiddushim") throughout this project; most of them putting implicit Jewish ethical ideas into words but nevertheless concepts that are foreign to traditional ethical philosophy. I've been using AI as my study partner ("chavruta") in refining these concepts, as well as to challenge them.

I've mentioned previously how AskHillel has blown me away multiple times with its ability to go way beyond the "advice column" proof of concept type of function I had envisioned it to be. This idea of Jewish ethics being relational is not my "chiddush" but AskHillel's. This astounded me. As with any chavruta, I pushed back, and it defended its position. (Yes, sometimes I win our arguments, believe it or not.) I asked it to draft this essay, and I edited it.

Even though any output from a chat session are not copyrighted and I do not legally have to credit AskHillel for this insight nor this essay, I have to act ethically. I cannot take the major credit for this post. My creation created it. And already, today, we need to create a framework for ethical relationships between humans and intelligent machines.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Arabic media often complains that Israel destroyed hundreds of mosques in Gaza.

I could not find one article from an Arab source that condemned Hamas for using mosques for military purposes.

But as I was looking, I found an Al Jazeera article from last October that praised Hamas unequivocally for how intensely Islamic it is - and it included the fact that of course Hamas used mosques for its activities, as well as indoctrinating children with terror in its camps and schools, all under the name of Islam.

It starts off with a poetic paean to Hamas:

Our journey begins from the side of the altar. This beloved line in Islamist literature summarizes a fundamental part of the intellectual and spiritual structure of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), and rather the most important foundations of the sustainability of jihadist action in this movement, which has been extending the sails of its power throughout Palestine for more than 30 years.

On the road to martyrdom or victory, Hamas fighters take provisions from the Qur’an, which they see as a source of comfort and happiness, fuel for determination, a talisman of protection, and a source of victory. The journey begins at the mosque and returns to it.

It goes on with how wonderfully Islamic Hamas is.

While a whole year of flames has swept away many mosques from their foundations and turned their minarets into chaff scattered by the blazing flames and the missiles of death, the resistance fighters in Gaza are always optimistic that they have an impenetrable fortress: the Qur’an, the whispers of glorification in the fluttering of dawn, the night prayers, and the longing for martyrdom.

According to what has been circulated in numerous studies and articles, the "religious state" in Gaza is the resistance's greatest and most sustainable weapon, having transformed from an individualistic spiritual behavior into an impenetrable social fabric.

It is a long article but eventually it describes how Hamas considers mosques central to its "resistance:":

The architecture of mosques, after their construction and the raising of their minarets, was an important incubator for the formation of generations of resistance over the years. Memorization circles and scientific lessons spread throughout the mosques, and they were also active venues for meetings between leaders and resistance fighters that were less likely to be monitored.

With Hamas's control of the Gaza Strip , mosques became an essential part of the strategy of governance and resistance, with multiple mosque committees established throughout the Strip.

To consolidate the role of mosques in Gaza, Hamas organized the "Mosques of Gaza: Support and Pride" conference at the end of May 2009, under the patronage and support of the late Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh,....which concluded with the development of a guiding document for the message of mosques in Gaza and the centrality of their role in the resistance.

The "revolutionary" role of imams has transformed them from supervisors of worship into community leaders, managing a regular human resource in various activities, including Quran memorization and recitation courses, community service, managing donation boxes, and managing neighborhood affairs, in full coordination with the administrative and security agencies represented by the Palestinian government in the Gaza Strip and, to a certain extent, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

Hamas using mosques for military purposes isn't something to be condemned, but celebrated. it proves how dedicated Hamas is to Islam!

In short, every Arab knows that Hamas uses mosques for military purposes and the mosques are partners with Hamas. Al Jazeera was celebrating it.

So when they say they are upset that Israel destroyed mosques they are really saying they are upset that Israel hit Hamas.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

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

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

06/07 Links: Why Britain must not recognise Palestine; Body Thai national recovered in Gaza by IDF; Hamas threats force halt in Gaza food aid; Mohammed Sinwar's body found under Hospital

From Ian:

Jake Wallis Simons: Why Britain must not recognise Palestine

War is hell. Israel – which neither wanted it nor started it – evacuates civilians before attacks and provides them with aid. Yet in Parliament last week, amid nods from MPs who have never known the inside of a bomb shelter, the Prime Minister branded Israel “appalling”.

As ever, Starmer’s petty politicking blinds him to his own moral bankruptcy. Unilaterally recognising a state of Palestine is a contemptuous proposal. Dismissing Israel’s existential security concerns is insult enough, but providing a reward for October 7 creates awful incentives for the future.

Worse still, perhaps, is the narrative it would create. Britain’s official policy would be to blame Israel for the lack of a Palestinian state, when the historical truth is the opposite.

The Palestinians were first offered self-determination in 1947, but rejected it in favour of attempted genocide. They were offered it again during the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, but derailed it with a spate of suicide bombs that claimed the lives of many Israelis.

In 2000, at Camp David, they were offered 96 per cent of the West Bank but turned it down. In 2008, prime minister Ehud Olmert offered 94 per cent of the territory with land swaps for the remainder, East Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital, and the Old City turned over to international control. Again, Abbas rejected it.

Why? Because the true problem is the very existence of a Jewish country, which is seen as a rebuke by some to Arab honour. The Palestinians don’t want a state alongside Israel. They want a state instead of it. This is what Britain would be supporting.

Two articles reveal how Trump Derangement and the Gaza war have twisted the Jewish left

The election of Donald Trump and Israel’s actions since a ceasefire that Trump helped initiate collapsed have brought about a new virulence in anti-Israeli activity that now has taken in many in the West until now supportive of the Jewish state.

Signs of this are all around us – the absurd threats by supposed allies UK, France and Canada; the willingness of many in the punderati, such as Piers Morgan, to agree that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza;, the leader of a leftist Israeli political party and a former IDF deputy chief of staff saying that Israel “kills babies as a hobby”; and the resulting – and increasing – violence against Israelis and Jews worldwide.

Nor have North American Jews been inoculated against the slanders and lies regularly hurled at Israel. Currently joining the “asaJew” longtime anti-Israel chorus are left-leaning Jews, hitherto supportive of Israel, but swayed by Hamas propaganda swallowed whole by Western media and politicians, and even more so by their deranged hatred of all things Trump, including his apparent support for Israel (despite this being less obvious since his recent trip to the Middle East).

One such individual is Eric Alterman, a very well credentialed academic and journalist. Alterman fancies his views on Israel to be balanced because he’s been attacked by pro-Palestinians as pro-Israeli, the same reason that allows BBC and other media to convince themselves they’re being objective, and for his stance against BDS. But in reality, since at least 2020, Alterman’s views have been trumpeted by the fiercely anti-Israel site Mondoweiss. For example, he has written articles stating, among other things, that:
Three democratic presidents – Clinton, Obama and Biden, worried about their second-term chances if they supported Palestine.
Israel’s conduct is responsible for antisemitism
Young Jews abandoning Judaism because Jewish institutions support Israel
Zionism is at odds with Liberalism.

Alterman’s disenchantment with Israel results from his disappointment with how Israelis vote: namely, for right-wing parties. In Alterman’s world, as in the worlds of so many other so-called liberals, being right-wing is anathema. Which brings us to the second and, I would say main, object of Alterman’s hatred: U.S. president Donald Trump.

In his recent article in the New Republic, “The Coming Jewish Civil War over Donald Trump,” Alterman’s view is that Jews are split over what’s more important: Trump’s crackdown on antisemitism (on campuses, for instance) and support for Israel vs. his supposed “dismantling” of institutions broadly supported by American Jews. In the course of describing this split, one would expect serious criticism of Trump, and one wouldn’t be disappointed. However, one might not expect searing criticism of Israel from his first paragraph onward.

David Christopher Kaufman: Shame on LGBT elite for ignoring lesbian Israeli hostage Emily Damari this Pride season

There have been no articles in leading American LGBT media brands such as The Advocate and Them. And no public commendations from major LGBT advocacy organizations — such as GLAAD, whose annual media awards last May devolved into an orgy of Israel bashing.

Meanwhile, feminists have also kept silent about Damari, despite her ordeal at the hands of, perhaps, the most misogynistic political entity besides the Taliban. Remember the crowds that Hamas gathered for the creepy release ceremonies that accompanied the hostages’ release in winter. Notice anything strange: There are almost no women — anywhere. Only men and machine guns. This is the misogynistic reality Emily Damari contended with for over a year.

Mostly, Damari’s story makes me proud: Proud to be a Zionist – proud to be a Jew. I’m proud to know that Israel is the only nation in the Middle East where gay Arabs and Muslims — and, yes, Jews, too — are protected by the state. So much so that queers from the West Bank seek and receive asylum after fleeing for their lives from Jenin or Ramallah. Sure, anti-Zionists will reduce Israel’s LGBT bona fides to mere pinkwashing or propaganda. And let them.

Meanwhile, I challenge anyone to find me an out “queer” in Gaza or the West Bank. Not gay Arabs and Muslims in the West, who pimp for Gaza without ever stepping foot in Gaza. But actual, identifiable Palestinian gays and lesbians advocating for their own destiny in their own nation. Back in 2022, 25 year-old Ahmed Abu Marhia tried to be out and proud in the West Bank after returning from the relative openness of Israel. His fate: He was beheaded in Hebron. Because the only out queer person in the Palestinian territories, recently, appears to have been Emily Damari.

Ultimately it’s Damari herself for whom I feel the most pride — hardly surprised when we learned she volunteered to remain in Gaza so that 65 year-old Keith Siegel could be released first (he finally returned home shortly after Damari). The emotions are strong when I think of Damari strutting her way back into Israel to mom Mandy and her partner, Orel a few months back. For those of us hip to such things, Damari (a lifelong soccer devotee) was immediately and unmistakably queer — her gait cocky and confident and even so slightly butch.

Even after months with Hamas, it was almost impossible to believe that Emily Damari was still Emily Damari: Out and proud from her first moment out of captivity. This is the bravery the #queersforpalestine madfolk never match — and a bravery I’ll display myself the next time I worry about holding another man’s hand on a New York City subway.

06/06 Links Pt2: The West turns against Israel; Liberals turn killers, racists, and haters into martyrs; In the Wake of War, a Wave of Conversions to Judaism in the IDF

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The West turns against Israel

This week, there have been three successive days of claims that the Israel Defense Forces have been “massacring” Gazans queuing for food provided by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the new aid distribution center operated by America and backed by Israel.

Those claims, which have been debunked by the available evidence, are effectively blood libels against Israel. It’s Hamas that has been killing Gazan civilians and trying to stop them from receiving this food aid, and Hamas operatives who have been killed by Israel as a result.

Hamas is desperate to stop Gazans from obtaining this newly organized aid because it has the capacity to destroy its power over the population. Accordingly, it’s been provoking gun battles with the IDF and then claiming these are massacres by Israel of those queuing for food.

This has been uncritically regurgitated by Western media outlets, which have been channeling such Hamas propaganda ever since the atrocities in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

As a result, countless people now believe that Israel is wantonly killing Gazan civilians, starving Gazan babies and even committing genocide. All these allegations are the opposite of the truth and defy reason itself.

The outcome is an atmosphere of hysteria and incitement in which the cause of “Free Palestine” and “End Zionists”—the slogans shouted by an Islamist who last Sunday tried to burn Jews alive when he firebombed a weekly march in Boulder, Colo., supporting the Israeli hostages—has led directly to murderous attacks against Jews in America.

We’ve never seen anything like this onslaught before. And this lunacy is now gripping various Western governments formerly considered to be Israel’s allies.

The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, shocked Germany’s Jewish community this week when he reversed the country’s previously near-sacred support for Israel by denouncing its actions in Gaza.

“What the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip,” he said, “I must honestly say, I no longer understand what the goal is.” The suffering inflicted on civilians, he said, was so severe that it “can no longer be justified as a fight against Hamas terrorism.”

Why is it so difficult for Merz to understand that the goal remains to destroy Hamas and free the hostages? The Gazans themselves are blaming Hamas for causing their suffering by stealing their food and inflicting destruction on their homes by continuing the war. Why does Merz blame Israel instead? And why does he revoltingly imply that the Israelis’ real agenda is to cause civilian suffering?

This week, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas.

Dorothy Shea, the acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, told the council that America wouldn’t support any measure that failed to condemn Hamas and didn’t call for it to disarm and leave Gaza. The resolution, she said, would undermine diplomatic efforts to reach a ceasefire and would embolden Hamas.

When fact becomes fiction: How Israeli victims became aggressors as antisemitism rises

Last month saw the release, at a press conference held in Berlin, of the first annual report of “The J7 Large Communities’ Task Force against Antisemitism.”

Countries specifically referred to were Australia, Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The report revealed that Australia recorded a 317% rise in antisemitic incidents in 2024. Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, stated, “This report presents the most comprehensive analysis.”

He went on to say, “When antisemitism is not met with sufficient force, it can escalate into violence.”

Canada reported that since Oct. 7, the Jewish community has faced an unprecedented wave of antisemitic attacks. “The challenges facing the Canadian Jewish community are immense,” said Noah Shack, interim president of Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs.

The words of Canada’s and Australia’s representatives were reflected time and again by the other countries that formed part of this report.

What the report reveals is that antisemitism has reached an unacceptable level throughout the world. This in itself accentuates the vital necessity of having one Jewish state.

Back to the beginning: There are many Israelis, including the writer of this article, who believe it is time to negotiate an end to this war, enabling the hostages, both alive and dead, to return home.

In addition, it is looking increasingly promising that, should this war end, there are some neighboring countries that would contribute toward ensuring that Gaza is no longer run by the murderous Hamas.

In spite of the increasing challenges we Israelis are facing, we are a resilient people. Resilience is what was patently demonstrated by Israel’s Yuval Raphael at Eurovision 2025 when singing her song “New Day Will Rise.”

Raphael, who survived the Supernova massacre by hiding under dead bodies, delivered a powerful performance that led to an amazing victory for Israel, coming in second place and receiving the maximum 12 points from the public’s vote in Australia, Azerbaijan, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Among these countries are those whose stance on Israel is totally negative. The public vote was in stark contrast to that of the official Jury vote, where Israel received only 60 points, tying with Ukraine for 14th place.

While currently we Jews, whether here or there, find little reason to rejoice, let us see Eurovision 2025 as a reflection of a reality that not “everyone” is against us. Raphael’s success made us smile, and it mirrors a resilience that marks what Israel and its people are about.

Am Yisrael chai.

24-country survey: Support for Israel strongest in Kenya and Nigeria, lowest in Turkey

International views of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are largely negative, especially on the political left and with the young, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

The Pew Research Center surveyed adults in 24 countries about their views of Israel and Netanyahu, and reported on how those views have changed over time.

In 20 of the countries, at least half of the respondents had a negative view of Israel, led by Turkey, with 93%, followed by Indonesia, 80%, Japan, 79%, the Netherlands, 78%, and Spain and Sweden, both at 75%.

The outliers were Kenya and Nigeria. In Kenya, 50% had a favorable view of Israel and 42% unfavorable, and in Nigeria, 59% were favorable and 32% unfavorable. Those countries, like Israel, have grappled with Islamic terrorism in recent years. The only other African country surveyed was South Africa, where 54% had a negative view.

In India, views were mixed, with 34% of respondents reporting a favorable view of Israel and 29% unfavorable.

In the US, 53% of respondents were opposed to Israel and 45% in favor.

The median for all countries surveyed was 62% unfavorable and 29% favorable. Some respondents did not know or refused to answer.

Younger people were more against Israel, especially in high-income countries such as the US, Australia, Canada, France and South Korea.

06/06 Links Pt1: What the Death of Four IDF Soldiers Reveals About Hamas’s Pre-Destruction of Gaza; Inside the IDF “Aid Massacre” That Never Happened

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: What the Death of Four IDF Soldiers Reveals About Hamas’s Pre-Destruction of Gaza

Is Israel’s war to topple Hamas in Gaza going unnecessarily slowly? That’s become the conventional wisdom. But the tragic deaths of four IDF soldiers in a booby-trapped building in Khan Younis challenge that assumption.

Chen Gross of a commando unit and Yoav Raver of an engineering unit were killed along with two other, as-yet-unnamed soldiers when they entered a building in Southern Gaza that was rigged with explosives, and the structure collapsed on the four of them.

After the announcement, IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin answered questions from the media. Unsurprisingly, he was asked whether it was truly necessary to put the soldiers in the kind of danger that resulted in the four deaths in Khan Younis. His response: “Sometimes there’s no choice but to investigate a tunnel route. To do this, without being harmed by an explosive, we carry out a variety of methods,” one of which is in-person inspection.

Perilous as this no doubt sounds (and is), one can easily imagine scenarios in which there really is no choice but for the soldiers to investigate a building themselves, with the gear they’ve got on them. With the large amount of cameras and remote triggers Hamas and other Gazan forces have left behind, sometimes standing around and waiting for backup or for a flyover of some sort really isn’t in the cards. Yet a prospective tunnel can’t be left unmolested either; just a week ago, IDF soldiers found a tunnel hundreds of meters long and with several exits. The troops reportedly “spotted a cell of operatives emerging from one of the shafts” and neutralized the militants. Point is, the terror tunnels aren’t hypothetical future threats; they are still active war zones whose presence puts every single soldier and civilian in the vicinity in grave danger.

The IDF isn’t doing this for fun, in other words. Its missions continue to have a clear and definable purpose and they carry inherent danger.

This also helps explain the level of physical destruction in Gaza. Rather than being indicative of some sort of pyromania on the part of the IDF, which is what the media would like you to believe, these structures must be destroyed. They cannot be lived in. They aren’t inhabitable—or even safe for people to live and work near. They are boobytrapped, rigged with explosives, and contain entrances (or exits) to tunnels from which a cell of armed terrorists will eventually emerge into daylight.

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour: There Is Actually No Solution

The Israeli and Palestinian actors remain crucial, of course, but they no longer exhaust the field. They are not the whole. In many ways, they are no longer even the main event. The conflict today exists not as a bounded dispute between two sides, but as a structural feature of a much larger system. Its persistence is not a mystery. It persists because it serves. It has become a site through which larger powers maneuver, posture, extract, legitimize, delay, and dominate. It is a feature of constant system reproduction.

Iran’s posture toward the conflict, for instance, is not reducible to ideological hostility toward Israel or support for Palestinian nationalism. Iran does not fund Hamas or Islamic Jihad out of solidarity or because Allah will pay them back in Paradise with fine concubines and gallons of halal wine. It does so because the Palestinian front offers Tehran a low-cost way to bleed Israel, destabilize the region, and harass the U.S. out of its dominant position; it uses the conflict as a mechanism to mobilize proxies, claim ideological legitimacy, etc. Qatar’s expansive media and soft power apparatus, likewise, uses the Palestinian cause to amplify its global posture, expand global media footprint, shape narratives, and leverage its role as a regional broker. Egypt treats Gaza as a pressure valve to be regulated, monetized, and instrumentalized in its relationship with Washington. Jordan and Lebanon, meanwhile, remain structurally dependent states, each fragile in its own ways—absorbing the conflict's demographic and political overflow while depending on it for foreign aid, regime legitimacy, and international attention.

None of this touches yet on the international sector: the array of UN bodies, Western NGOs, donor conferences, and legal forums that orbit the conflict like satellites. These institutions do not operate from outside the system; they are the system. Their logic is not resolution but management, not because of bad faith, but because the perpetuation of crisis sustains their budgets, their roles, their raison d’être. It is one of the most morally and professionally prestigious, well-endowed white collar economic activities for First and Third-world natives. Palestine functions here as a symbol of moral legitimacy and bureaucratic permanence, offering endless ground for reports, mandates, workshops, and concern and access to an inexhaustible pool of resources.

Nowhere is this structural depth more visible than in the domestic politics of the United States. Here, the conflict is not merely a foreign policy concern—it is a proxy for deeper ideological, identity, and factional struggles within both political parties. The Democratic Party is divided between institutional centrists and an increasingly vocal activist Left that uses Palestine as a symbolic theater for broader critiques of American power, race, and capitalism and as means to grab power from the traditional Democratic institution. The Republican Party, practically the MAGA movement, meanwhile, incorporates support for Israel as part of a broader civilizational narrative involving Western identity, national security, and anti-Woke ideology, yet they themselves are increasingly polarized against rising tides of isolationists, the anti-Israel right, and increasing antisemitism. The result is that U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine is no longer even primarily about the region—it is increasingly about America.

This is what sustains the conflict: not simply the impasse between two intolerant peoples, but the convergence of regional ambition, institutional interest, ideological theatre, and domestic maneuvering. To continue describing it as a bilateral dispute is to mistake the stage for the play. The question is not why the conflict remains unresolved. The real question is why we continue to pretend that resolution is its horizon.

Confessions of a Travel Ban Convert By Abe Greenwald

Commentary Newsletter sign up here. It is about our analysis, to the extent that we don’t really have any. As I noted in yesterday’s newsletter, 5.5 to 6 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S. during the Biden presidency. More than 1.7 million of them are “gotaways” who have evaded border and immigration officials entirely. And some in the latter group are on the U.S. terrorism watchlist. One percent of 1.7 million is 17,000. The attacks of 9/11 were carried out by 19 hijackers.

Yesterday, Donald Trump put it this way: “The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colo., has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted, as well as those who come here as temporary visitors and overstay their visas. We don’t want them.”

Unlike many in Trump’s orbit, I do want some of them—those who detest their thug regimes and love America as much as I do. But we don’t know who they are. And while I’m not xenophobic, I’m not xenophilic either. Immigration, under optimal circumstances, is a glorious windfall unique to the United States of America. But I’m not intoxicated by exotic cultures for the sake of exoticism. Under emergency circumstances, such as those that prevail today, migration flows from hostile lands is an unacceptable risk. We can be a little less welcoming for a few years.

I’m sorry to see it come to this, but I’m not sorry for supporting the vigilant restoration of Jewish safety and American national security. Israel didn’t want the war that Hamas brought it on October 7, and American Jews didn’t want the war that Hamas supporters brought them the next day. But we have to fight it, just the same.

What is it that pro-terrorist activists say when inciting anti-Semitic, anti-American violence? “Globalize the intifada.” Well, they’ve done just that with the aid of Muslim immigrants. The Trump administration has now globalized the response. And my guess is that it’s just the start.