Mustafa Barghouti, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, is one of the most moderate Palestinians on the scene. he condemned Hamas' murder of Israeli civilians on October 7 (yes, this is a very low bar.) He says that he wants a non-violent intifada. He has been interviewed on Western media.
Yet even he is dead set against saving the lives of Gazans under fire.
In September, before the ceasefire, Barghouti traveled to Indonesia and gave a press conference where he urged the Indonesian government not to "transfer Palestinians," allowing injured or fleeing Gazans to take refuge in Indonesia, calling it an act of participation in "ethnic cleansing."
"Israel will perceive it as participation in the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. You should not allow the Israelis to cheat you by claiming that this is a humanitarian act," Barghouti stated.
This is the Palestinian mentality. If Israel gains, then it is by definition bad - even if Palestinians die because of that policy.
Even if the Gazans themselves want to leave and save their families!
Barghouti holds no government position. He can say that he supports saving Palestinian lives and not get fired by Mahmoud Abbas. But even the thought of allowing Gazans to save their own lives is anathema if it means that Israel is less likely to bomb them while attacking Hamas. Dead Palestinians are an asset, not a liability, for even the most Western oriented, English speaking Palestinian.
It is truly a sick culture.
There is one other thing this supposedly peaceful politician said that is notable.
On the role Arab and Muslim countries, Barghouti said, "I am a realistic person. We do not ask them to send armies to fight Israel, but at least they should send a humanitarian convoy representing the 57 Arab and Muslim countries to break the siege in Gaza."
He didn't say "I am against war." He is saying, "Realistically, they won't start a war, but I would prefer that they do attack Israel."
Of course, Barghouti also is a strong supporter of destroying Israel via the "right of return." he wants Palestinians not to build the Palestinian state but to move to the very Jewish state he claims is genocidal towards them.
This is why peace is impossible. There is simply no partner for peace on the Palestinian side who is willing to accept Israel's existence as a Jewish state. But worse than that, there are no Palestinian leaders who even prioritize the lives of their own people over making things marginally more difficult for Israel.
Western extremist ideologies, whether they come from the Far-Left or the Far-Right, have made antisemitism central to their philosophies.
Read that again. They aren't "philosophies that tolerate antisemitism" or even "philosophies that include antisemitism." They are dependent on antisemitism for the movements to be successful.
They rely on antisemitism in a way that is not incidental but structural. It plays the same role in both cases, even though the surrounding language and theatrics are different. These movements all operate on a single, rigid frame that divides the world into a simple binary. The labels differ – oppressed and oppressor, pure and corrupt, patriot and parasite – but the architecture is the same, and it cannot tolerate complexity. When the real world refuses to fit neatly into their categories, they do not adjust their framework. They look for an external energy source that can sustain the fiction. That source, today, is the Jews.
Hating Jews is a recruitment tool. Antisemitism is a feature, not a bug. Neither the Groypers nor progressive groups can survive without making Jews a defining part of their narratives and the main objects of their hate.
The Jewish people do not fit the prefab slots that these ideologies depend on. They are indigenous to the Middle East but often identified as “white.” They are a global minority but numerically a majority in one small country. They are historically persecuted yet statistically successful. They are religious, cultural, and national all at once. They refuse to sit obediently in anyone’s political taxonomy. For any worldview that insists on reducing history, power, and morality to a tidy binary, this is a serious problem. And instead of rethinking the system, the system redefines the Jews as the very thing the ideology opposes.
To the far-Left, today, Jews are white supremacists. To the far-Right, today, Jews are outsiders who support illegal immigration of people of color. Jews are endlessly malleable Play-Doh to fit whatever the haters need to hate.
The modern Left has a large portfolio of causes, many of them only loosely connected of at all. Climate activists, police abolitionists, anti-capitalists, housing activists, and gender theorists do not share much naturally. Yet when Israel enters the picture, suddenly the various components behave as if they belong to one organism. Anti-Zionism becomes the connective tissue. It provides the emotional intensity and pretense of moral clarity that none of the other issues reliably deliver on their own. Protests about local policy questions are sporadic, but protests about Israel produce an almost guaranteed turnout. The movement’s diffuse parts cohere around a single, simple storyline, and once someone absorbs that storyline, the rest of the package flows to them in short order. The antisemitism is not the conclusion. It is the entry point.
On the Far-Right, the pattern is older but functions similarly. Antisemitism has always existed there, but for a long period it remained socially embarrassing to say out loud. All it took was a bit of political permission and a culture of online performative defiance to turn private bigotry into a public organizing principle. Once the taboo evaporated, people who had previously stayed quiet now treat antisemitic speech as if it were an act of courage. The language of “fighting the elites” or “exposing the truth” gives personal resentment the appearance of moral heroism. The ideology suddenly gains mass not because it has improved or clarified anything, but because it has normalized the one element that insulates it from contradiction. By shifting the blame for every failure, disappointment, or social anxiety onto a small, imagined cabal, the movement protects its worldview from scrutiny and converts old hatreds into new political energy.
Is it not strange that campaigns for local office are obsessed with the candidates' view on Israel? Isn't it odd that both the far-Left and the far-Right claim that the Jews are silencing them? And at the same time both sides also do everything they can to silence and marginalize Jews?
In both cases, there is literally nothing the Jews can do, short of public suicide, that will mollify them. The biggest massacre of Jews in nearly 80 years causes more antisemitism. A ceasefire that they claimed they wanted for two years prompts more antisemitism. Jews as victims, or Jews as wanting peace, is not the narrative they want the world to see; since demonizing Jews is so central to their worldviews they use these situations as springboards for more hate.
And it works. Hating Jews publicly has become not just bravery, but a recruitment tool. The newly indoctrinated antisemites and the publicity that hate receives from social media algorithms form a feedback loop where that the Jews actually do becomes irrelevant - they have become the faceless, evil Other and whatever Jews do is by definition evil.
Jew-hatred is not peripheral nowadays. It is as central to these movements as it was in 1930s Germany, in 1950s Soviet Union. Facts are considered aggression and aggression is recast as justice.
And dismissing these as fringe phenomena, with only 5% or 15% of their movements who really are antisemites, is very shortsighted.
The old brain teaser about the bacteria in the jar is the right analogy: if it doubles every minute and fills the jar in sixty minutes, it will be only half full at minute fifty-nine. At minute fifty-five, it looks nearly empty. That illusion is what makes exponential growth so dangerous.
Antisemitism today feels like minute fifty-five. Yes, the hardcore antisemites are still a minority, but the rate of growth is steep. The normalization is accelerating. The political oxygen is rich. We are watching both the Far-Left and the Far-Right fill the jar rapidly.
This is not the time to relax because “only a small percentage” is openly hateful. It is the time to recognize how fast the cancer is metastasizing. We may have only a few minutes left on the clock before disaster.
Two recent stories demonstrate how this realization is settling in across the broader Jewish community. One is the recent account of Rahm Emanuel, the former Democratic congressman and Chicago mayor who is contemplating running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, speaking to the Jewish Federations general assembly. Emanuel made the case for adapting to the new political narrative around Israel: “For the generation under 30, the last two years will be as seminal a definition as what the Six-Day War was for those six days for a generation. We have our work cut out for us.” It was an attempt to warn the Jewish American audience that 2028 is going to be, especially on the Democratic side, a parade of anti-Israel rhetoric. But it was also an acknowledgement that we aren’t the naive fools our pursuers think we are.
Another story is in the Times of Israel, and it’s about that erstwhile Diasporic golden land of Canada: “According to a report published by B’nai Brith Canada in April, Canadians experienced 6,219 antisemitic incidents in 2024, or an average of about 17 incidents of harassment, vandalism and violence per day. That was 125% higher than in 2022, and about 7% higher than in 2023, when hatred exploded after October 7.”
Says Noah Shack, the CEO of Canada’s umbrella organization for Jewish federations: “Now, we’re seeing synagogues firebombed, shootings at schools, people assaulted, and discrimination and hate in schools, universities and in the workplace. This isn’t just about our community, it’s about the threat that this extremism poses to the Canadian way of life.”
Solutions are harder to come by than realizations, but the realizations are the essential first steps. As expected, the post-Oct. 7 world is a different place, and navigating that new world requires every Jewish leader and organization to acknowledge what has changed.
We see one example of this playing out right now. The Anti-Defamation League has taken steps to refocus on anti-Semitism after years of sacrificing its founding mission for a chance to be part of the progressive political coalition. ADL launched a “Mamdani Monitor” which consists of an anti-Semitism tipline for New Yorkers and a pledge to scrutinize the Mamdani administration’s actions and appointments. It’s an entirely reasonable, moderate approach, and it could be useful so long as the ADL follows through. The emerging Jewish consensus that bad actors must be held to account is healthy.
But it has inspired anger from, for example, the Nexus Project, a liberal critic of attempts to fight anti-Semitism and, though young, a relic of the pre-Oct. 7 status quo. Jill Jacobs, an activist with another progressive Jewish group, called the ADL “Islamophobic.”
Still, these attempts to conjure the naive and dangerous fantasies that were shattered on Oct. 7 haven’t had much effect; reality is reality, and the Jewish community has been clear-eyed. As Emanuel said, “[I]f we don’t understand the depth of where we are, we’re never going to fix the problem.” The new normal isn’t pretty, but we don’t have to let it become permanent.
CAIR doing its best Nick Fuentes impression is as good an example of the “horseshoe effect” as one will find.
But the real icing on the cake came just a few hours later. According to the New York Post, a new report by the Network Contagion Research Institute and the Intelligent Advocacy Network, two anti-extremism groups, reveals that CAIR has been subsidizing pro-Hamas violence on campus. As the Post reports:
“In California, the largest arm of the CAIR web of nonprofits, affiliates in San Francisco and Los Angeles raised more than $100,000 in donations for campus radicals, while the main group solicited $64,000 in donations, records show.
“The money was then offered as interest free loans in grants of $1,000 to students who lost ‘scholarships, housing or other support because of their advocacy,’ according to CAIR’s website.
“In October 2024, CAIR-CA awarded $20,000 in loans and scholarships to 20 student protestors from the ‘Champions of Justice Fund.’”
Such punishments were so rare, of course, that to qualify for CAIR’s apparent subsidies, one would have had to be among the students causing real harm to those around them.
Anti-Semitism alone has rarely been enough to cost groups like CAIR their political influence. Perhaps now they have finally crossed too many lines.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, California (CAIR-CA) systematically misused millions of dollars in government grants while concealing extensive lobbying activities, according to findings released by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN).
The organization has received over $26 million in state and federal funding since 2022, even as it now faces investigations by both the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review and the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
Circular Funding Scheme and Accounting Failures
The investigation uncovered what researchers describe as a circular funding scheme: CAIR-CA redirected over $3.7 million back to two of its own offices in Los Angeles and San Diego through subgrants, despite requirements mandating at least $5 million go to independent providers. Public records show these offices are not separate legal entities but operate under the same tax identification number as CAIR-CA, making the transfers effectively self-payments.
Independent auditors conducting CAIR-CA’s 2023 Single Audit identified significant deficiencies that prevented verification of how federal funds were spent. The findings indicate CAIR-CA failed to record grant expenditures in its accounting system and did not retain required reports on service delivery or proof of submission to regulators.
Undisclosed Lobbying Activities
Between 2013 and 2023, CAIR-CA spent over $3.8 million on lobbying expenses while reporting only $672,537 to the IRS—leaving $3.13 million undisclosed, according to the report. The largest spike in undisclosed lobbying coincided with increased federal funding in 2023. Federal law prohibits using federal funds for lobbying activities.
Beginning in late 2023, CAIR-CA’s advocacy became increasingly dominated by anti-Israel political mobilization. The organization’s 2023 annual report prominently featured a “STOP THE GENOCIDE” banner, marking a shift from previous years. Recent lobbying efforts in 2025 include campaigns to influence California legislation on redistricting and school discrimination protections—all conducted while receiving federal funds.
Despite receiving millions in government grants, the findings show CAIR-CA did not properly report them on IRS Form 990 filings, instead obscuring them under general contributions. The organization also failed to disclose subgrants to regional chapters and omitted required related-party transaction disclosures.
When the UN Security Council approved a U.S.-backed resolution Monday to deploy an International Stabilization Force in Gaza, it acknowledged a core truth: The security vacuum that enabled Oct. 7 cannot be allowed to return. Two realities must remain immovable as the world designs Gaza's future: Hamas cannot retain any foothold, and Israel cannot be expected to outsource its security to external actors.
Last week I traveled to Kibbutz Nir Oz, where 117 of its 415 residents were murdered or kidnapped on Oct. 7. I walked around with Irit Lahav, who hid in her home with her daughter for 12 hours as Hamas terrorists tried five separate times to break down her door. She jammed a boat oar beneath the handle and prayed it would hold.
Before the attack, Irit believed deeply in coexistence. She was one of the many Gaza-border Israelis who advocated for Palestinians and regularly drove sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals. "I thought the Palestinians were good people like me who want peace," Irit told me. "Now I understand they really, really hate us - and they think that rape, murder, and kidnapping are legitimate."
Two days later, I stood in Sajaiya in Gaza, a former Hamas stronghold. From Sajaiya, I could see the homes of Nahal Oz, another Israeli border community a five-minute drive away. The distance between a Hamas command complex and the homes of Israeli families is measured in minutes.
What happened in Nir Oz and the other border communities was the predictable result of leaving a heavily armed, ideologically-driven movement embedded minutes from Israeli homes. Two years later, the threat remains. Tunnels still run beneath Gaza, weapons caches remain, and Hamas's ideology is wholly intact. No international plan can succeed while this reality persists.
Donald Trump once confessed he was "drawn almost pathologically to complex deals, partly because they tend to be more interesting." This approach succeeded spectacularly in securing the release of hostages from Gaza, both living and deceased.
Yet Phase 2 of the Gaza ceasefire agreement has emerged so far as an illusion. Hamas, just like Hizbullah, harbors no dreams of disarmament. It shows absolutely no interest, and its leaders discuss this candidly. Hamas is reconstructing command and control systems, having already redeployed 7,500 operatives across the Gaza territory remaining under its authority.
It has resumed street patrols, salary payments, and tax collection. Its members break arms and legs of anyone questioning their continued rule, restore tunnels, manufacture weapons anew, and settle accounts with armed clans that assisted Israel before the ceasefire.
Gaza isn't simply a minor irritant, it constitutes the core issue because from there was launched October 7's "gospel" and Israel's destruction blueprint, coordinated with Iran and its proxies. A senior military intelligence official recently informed cabinet ministers that "the plan to annihilate Israel remains alive and operational, with October 7 continuing to inspire all Israel's regional enemies."
Trump's America presumes that economic enticements provide the key, and that every problem features a deal awaiting signature once proper incentives materialize. But business principles don't govern everything. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict encompasses identity, religion, security, and national aspiration dimensions, and that Gaza residents and Hamas are essentially identical.
The hatred culture centered on Israel's destruction cannot be eliminated through financial means. Israel and its military possess genuine motivation and capability - now with no living hostages remaining in Gaza - to complete the mission there and strip Hamas of weaponry. Trump's peace vision might potentially materialize only after Hamas's Gaza elimination.
The Palestinian Authority nearly doubled the payments it issued in 2025 to convicted terrorists and to the families of those killed while carrying out attacks, despite its repeated claims to have halted the practice, Israel’s Foreign Ministry revealed Wednesday.
Last year, Ramallah disbursed $144 million in payments rewarding attacks against Israelis. In 2025, it has already committed $214 million, “and the year isn’t even over,” Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar tweeted.
“I call on Europe and the world to hold the P.A. accountable for funding terrorism. Stop Pay-for-Slay NOW!” Jerusalem’s top diplomat added.
Last week, Sa’ar accused Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas of attempting to “fool the world” by firing his finance minister, reportedly over “unauthorized payments” to Arab terrorists and their families.
Ramallah’s official Wafa news agency reported that P.A. Minister of Planning and International Cooperation Istifan Salameh would replace Omar Bitar, though it gave no reason for Bitar’s dismissal.
According to local reports, Bitar had transferred funds to terrorists in Israeli prisons through a mechanism Ramallah had ostensibly reformed under pressure from the United States and Europe.
The revamped mechanism Bitar allegedly bypassed rebrands the stipends as “welfare support,” shifting the system from an official ministry to an “independent” foundation controlled by the P.A.
Sa’ar told reporters in Budapest on Oct. 27 that “contrary to the P.A.’s promises in English, they are continuing their pay-for-slay policy.
We’d spent a lovely evening with old family friends — the
kind of people who’ve been part of your life for so long that conversation
feels natural, no matter how many years have passed. I think we could have
talked forever and never run out of things to say. So we talked for hours about
our memories from a different time and place, about the people we’d loved and
lost, and about what it means to revisit a world that lives now only in the
stories we share.
But as we walked back toward our car, I had a sudden flash of inspiration. Up until now, the
conversation had been about our shared past, but here beside me was a Reform
rabbi in the flesh. I wasn't going to miss the opportunity to learn how Reform Jewry felt about Israel in relation to Gaza and the war.
“How does the Reform community view the war in Gaza? Do they
think it’s a genocide?”
He looked down and gave a small, quizzical smile — the kind
people get when they’re about to explain something to you. “You have to
understand. The Palestinian people are oppressed.”
Somehow, the conversation had shifted. I was told that
Israel had withheld aid from Gaza. I asked if he knew that since October 7, Israel
has facilitated the delivery of over
two million tons of aid, including 1.3 million tons of food. I asked if he
knew of any other country that supplies aid to the enemy in wartime.
He was unimpressed. Jews, in his view, are supposed to be
different.
It didn’t matter to him that historically, the enemy is
never fed in wartime, let alone sent massive amounts of aid. His answer was
that we’re supposed to be fighting Hamas, not the Gazan people. “Do you think
all of Gaza is Hamas?” he asked.
“Actually, yes,” I told him.
His face lit up. He thought I’d just proven his point. To
him, my answer meant I was a hater, that the war was all about hate, and that
Israel was punishing the Gazan
people for what Hamas did.
But it’s nonsense, of course. The people of Gaza are with
Hamas all the way, and the latest poll from the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and
Survey Research back me up. As the New York Post reported this week,
Hamas’ popularity has surged:
— 51% of Gazans now approve of Hamas’ performance, in
spite of its violent “crackdowns” that amount to public executions.
— A year ago, Hamas’ approval was just 39%, and Gazans were protesting
in the streets, calling on the terrorists to give up power.
There’s no way around it. The trend is clear: support for
Hamas is not shrinking — it’s growing.
And let’s not forget: the people of Gaza overwhelmingly voted
Hamas into power in democratic elections overseen by the UN. I asked the rabbi
if he knew that not everyone who killed, burned, raped, and beheaded Israelis
on October 7 was a Hamas operative. Had he seen the footage of the crowds
spitting on and kicking the bodies of murdered Jews dragged into Gaza?
“Yes, yes,” he said. “I’ve seen all that.”
The implication being that even so, not all Gazans are
Hamas.
But it doesn’t matter if they’ve signed a pledge or worn a uniform. It’s all
the same — they drink in Jew-hatred with their mothers’ milk. Little girls sing
antisemitic jump-rope rhymes. And the so-called “regular people of Gaza” didn’t
just celebrate the massacre on October 7. They took hostages into their homes.
They held them, hid them, used them. They made them cook and clean. They helped
keep them captive. They gave terrorists cover and stored weapons for them under
baby cribs.
One of the things our rabbi friend said to me was that Bibi
says one thing in English and another in Hebrew. “I’ve heard him,” he said.
I wasn’t sure what he meant, and I didn’t much care. But the
irony was hard to miss: it’s the enemy, people like Abu Mazen who talks about
peace in English and killing “Jew
dogs” in Arabic.
I asked him where he gets his news. “Everywhere from Al
Jazeera to the Jerusalem Post,” he said, as if those two outlets
covered the entire gamut of views on Israel and Gaza. I must have smiled,
because he quickly expanded his list: “Israel National News.”
I asked him if he’d seen the New York Times article
with the skeletal
child who turned out not to be starving at all. “I know about that,” he
said — he knew it had been a manipulated, false report. So I asked, “But when
you first saw it, did you believe it?”
He looked down, a little sheepish. “Sure, there’s some
misreporting,” he said. “But it’s undeniable that people in Gaza were
starving.”
“Uh huh,” I told him. “That’s because Hamas steals the aid —
they even ate it in front of the hostages.”
I asked if he’d scanned the QR code* Bibi wore during his address to
the UN.
He said he hadn’t watched the speech.
So I explained that Bibi had worn a badge on his lapel with
a QR code, inviting the audience to zoom in with their phones and see the
footage and still photos of the October 7 carnage for themselves — to finally
understand why we went to war, and why Hamas has to be destroyed.
Within 24 hours, the QR code had been scanned over a million times,
with roughly 30 percent of the scans coming from Iran and Gaza.
Our rabbi friend said he wouldn’t have looked at the photos
or videos anyway. He doesn’t need see these things to understand what happened,
that there would be no value for him in looking at the gruesome images. He
knows what happened.
I knew I was blowing up the evening a bit, and I felt bad
about that. I’d genuinely wanted to know what the Reform community thinks, not
pick a fight with him. I told him so, and I thanked him.
But on the way home I kept thinking: here was a Reform rabbi who is unaware
that the Gazan people support Hamas even now and that Israel has sent in
massive amounts of aid nonetheless. His concept is that Gazans are oppressed.
That Israel withheld allow aid from Gaza. That Bibi says one thing in English
and another in Hebrew. And anyone who believes that all of Gaza is aligned with
Hamas is, by definition, a hater.
I don’t mind that designation at all, because I hate evil and I especially hate
Amalek. Take that as you will.
I left with the sense that the rabbi was trying to sound
more reasonable than the people who openly accuse Israel of genocide. And I
appreciate that. I know he believes the Gazans are oppressed, and that Israel is
oppressing an oppressed people by “withholding” aid — which seemed to be a quiet
way of suggesting deliberate starvation. He won’t say the word genocide, but
the implication is there. If indeed, this reflects the views of the wider
Reform Jewish community, I think it is very sad.
There was a time when American Jews reflexively stood with
Israel. Now, too many are eager to criticize Israel. They think this is a virtue, a kind of healthy introspection. And it's obvious they want to blend in with wider society, especially within the progressive movement. But they don’t even have the facts.
*Note that Israelis are blocked from seeing this content,
because it’s too difficult for us to bear. Some do it anyway, accessing the
website through a VPN. And then they are sorry. I saw the following comment
on Facebook from an Israeli who succumbed to the temptation: “I used a
VPN...you don't want to see it.”
The ICRC just introduced a new commentary on the 1949 Fourth Geneva Conventions, and surprise! It contains language written specifically to apply to Israel.
The original language of Article 49(6) in the Conventions says, "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." This was written as a result of Nazi German forcibly transferring parts of its population to territory, and displacing the existing residents there, to assert control.
This article has been widened and widened consistently all because of Israel, in various international instruments. And now the ICRC is finishing the job, saying in its new commentary,
it is irrelevant whether parts of the Occupying Power’s population have been compelled to settle in the occupied territory or whether they have done so voluntarily but with the support and/or encouragement of the Occupying Power.... The very concept of transfer suggests that there must be some involvement of the Occupying Power, to which the prohibition is addressed (‘The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer’ (emphasis added)). Such involvement may take a variety of forms, both direct and indirect. Indirect support or encouragement may include building roads leading to settlements, providing military security for settlements, supplying electricity or offering tax incentives relative to nationals living in the Occupying Power’s own territory.
So, according to these oh-so-legal writers, Israel would be violating international law by trying to protect its own citizens - the number one priority of every state on the planet. (They can try to thread the needle by saying protecting civilians is also part of Geneva, but exactly how to do so when the presence of soldiers or police is considered illegal is a bit muddled.)
And:
Conversely, the wording of the provision (‘transfer’) does not allow mere inaction – even if benevolent and acquiescent – to qualify as a violation of Article 49(6). However, depending on the circumstances, such inaction may constitute a violation of Article 43 of the Hague Regulations, which obliges the Occupying Power ‘to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and civil life’. If, for instance, under the prevailing circumstances, the voluntary relocation of the Occupying Power’s own population amounts to a threat to public order and civil life, the Occupying Power would be obliged to prevent such movements.
Who decides whether the Jews - nearly all of whom live in remote areas far away from Palestinians - are a threat to public order and civil life? The Palestinians, of course.
Notice that under this definition, Turkey is unquestionably violating 49(1) and 49(6). It has encouraged Turks to settle in Northern Cyprus and it has seemingly forcibly transferred Syrian refugees into Kurdish areas in northern Syria.
Yet there is no language here that seems to have been written for Turkey, or any of the other long term occupations in the world. Practically no one protests against Turkey's violations. All the respect for international law seems to disappear when Israel isn't twisted to become the violator.
This is not international law, but it is heavily influential within IHL. It is just one more of an endless effort over decades by Israel's enemies to weaponize the law against the Jewish state - and changing the law when they can.
As I've mentioned, I've been working hard on my Derechology book (and not blogging as much.) I have a workable manuscript but I still have a lot of editing to do and many appendices to add.
But since Google just released its latest AI model for Gemini, I thought I would feed the entre manuscript (currently some 350 pages) into the AI and ask for a book review. This give me ideas of what needs to be done yet but also helps me see the forest while I work on the trees.
This review gives you a good idea of the scope of my project, although I actually think it is even bigger than this review indicates.
The Engineering Manual for Morality
A Review of Derechology: The Science of Human Morality by Eldad Tzioni
We live in an era of institutional vertigo. Universities, media organizations, and public health bodies—once the bedrock of social trust—seem to be collapsing under the weight of their own incoherence. In Derechology, Eldad Tzioni argues this isn't a personnel problem; it’s a software problem. Western civilization is running on a corrupted operating system, one that has been crashing with increasing frequency since the Enlightenment tried to reboot it without its original kernel.
Tzioni’s ambitious, sprawling, and often brilliant book offers a replacement OS. He calls it "Derechology" (from the Hebrew derech, meaning "path" or "way"). It is an audacious attempt to reverse-engineer the survival strategies of Jewish ethics, strip them of their theological casing, and offer them as a universal architecture for a secular world that has forgotten how to function.
Athens vs. Jerusalem: The Core Conflict
The book’s central thesis is a high-stakes revisiting of the ancient tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Tzioni argues that Western philosophy, dominated by Greek thought, committed a foundational error by treating the isolated individual (the atom) as the fundamental unit of reality. This choice led to a 2,500-year struggle to solve insoluble problems: logic that breaks when values conflict, "rights" that have no mechanism for adjudication, and a definition of truth that demands impossible perfection.
In contrast, Tzioni posits a "Relational Ontology." The fundamental unit of reality, he argues—supported by metaphors ranging from quantum entanglement to mycelial networks—is not the particle, but the relationship.
From this pivot, the book constructs its most valuable contribution: the Ethoskeleton. Tzioni suggests that trustworthy systems (whether individuals, corporations, or nations) must possess specific structural components to survive entropy. These include "Override Logic" (a transparent hierarchy for resolving value conflicts), "Corrigibility" (the structural capacity to admit and repair error), and "Relational Integrity" (obligations that scale with proximity).
It is a compelling argument. By shifting the focus from content (what values we hold) to architecture (how our systems process those values), Tzioni offers a way out of the culture wars. He doesn't ask us to agree on every political outcome; he asks us to agree on a structure that makes disagreement survivable.
The Physics of Good
Perhaps the book’s most daring leap is its attempt to bridge the gap between "is" and "ought" using the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Tzioni defines "Good" not as a matter of preference or divine command, but as anti-entropic direction.
In a universe continually sliding toward disorder, "Good" is the creative, energy-consuming act of building and maintaining complex relationships over deep time. Evil is not a force, but the surrender to entropy—the dissolution of bonds, the degradation of systems, the slide into chaos. It is a definition that feels rigorous and surprisingly intuitive, grounding ethics in the physical reality of the universe rather than abstract idealism.
The "Antisemitism Diagnostic"
One of the book's sharpest tools is its analysis of antisemitism. Tzioni reframes antisemitism not merely as racism, but as a "system error flag." He argues that ideologies turn antisemitic precisely when Jews—who stubbornly refuse to fit into neat binaries like "white/non-white" or "oppressor/oppressed"—break the ideology’s categorical framework. When a system cannot tolerate complexity, it tries to eliminate the anomaly. Thus, antisemitism becomes a diagnostic tool: if a movement hates Jews, it is structurally incapable of handling complexity and will eventually turn on itself.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Derechology is not a light read. It is dense with coined terminology ("Yesod Ethics," "The Falsification Audit," "Secular Covenantalism") that can occasionally feel overwhelming. The author asks the reader to learn a new language to understand his new world.
Furthermore, while the book explicitly claims to offer a secular system, the final act makes a sophisticated pivot back toward theology, arguing that the structure of the universe implies a "Unbound Domain" (God). While logically consistent with his arguments, this may alienate the strict materialists the book works so hard to court in its opening chapters.
However, the "proof of concept" chapters—specifically the section detailing "AskHillel," an AI programmed with these ethical rules—are fascinating. They demonstrate that this is not just high-minded philosophy; it is computable logic. Tzioni shows that an ethical system with clear "override logic" can navigate complex dilemmas (like triage or self-driving car ethics) better than our current vague notions of "do no harm."
The Verdict
Derechology is a work of significant intellectual engineering. It moves beyond the tired "faith vs. reason" debates to offer something more practical: a blueprint for building institutions that don't collapse.
It is a book for the institutional homeless—those who find the rigidity of the far-right and the incoherence of the far-left equally uninhabitable. Tzioni offers a "place to stand," a foundation built on humility, transparency, and the relentless, anti-entropic work of keeping promises. It is a demanding book, but for a civilization currently crashing, it might just be the manual we need.
Rating: 4.5/5
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If any philosopher, theologian or other credentialed thinker is interested in seeing the book as it stands now and is willing to give me feedback, let me know!
It's been many years since I looked at British journalist Jonathan Cook, but his latest revisionist self-serving tweet excerpt from a recent speech rankles:
When I worked at the Guardian, the foreign editor – now a major columnist – once told me that he did not like his correspondents to spend more than a few years in difficult posts like the Jerusalem bureau because, given time, they were likely to “go native”. At the time I did not understand what he meant. But I learnt soon enough.
I moved to cover the Israel-Palestine beat as a freelance journalist in 2001. I had no editors breathing down my neck. I based myself in Nazareth, a Palestinian community inside Israel, thinking that taking a different approach – my colleagues were in Jewish areas of Jerusalem or in Tel Aviv – would make my journalism distinctive and interesting to editors back home.
In fact, my different perspective made me far less interesting to them. Indeed, as quickly became clear, it made them extremely nervous of me.
But the point is this: despite my unique circumstances, it took me years to fully “deprogramme” and emerge the other side relatively whole.
I first had to unravel the conditioning and training – both ideological and professional – that had encouraged me to assume Israelis were the Good Guys and Palestinians … well, they must be something less than the Good Guys.
And then I had to rebuild my ideological and professional worldview from scratch – like a child, trying to make sense of all the new information I was absorbing. Although I hid it at the time, the truth is it was a slow, frightening and painful awakening. Everything I believed in and trusted had crumbled to dust.
Is it any surprise that the vast majority of journalists never make such a transition.
They are highly unlikely to have the opportunity to immerse themselves deeply in the lives of those “natives”.
They are rarely allowed the time to step off the journalism treadmill to develop a bigger perspective.
They are surrounded by family, friends, colleagues and bosses, who constantly reinforce received wisdom or enforce “professional” standards that shore up the existing consensus.
They are disincentivised from straying off the path, when they have a salary to earn, a career to develop, bills to pay, a family to feed.
And ultimately, of course, there is the prospect of a terrifying journey ahead, down a dark tunnel to a destination unknown.
Now, let's fact check:
Jonathan Cook never wrote a pro-Israel article before he moved to Nazareth. He mostly wrote about domestic British topics. He went to SOAS and his MA thesis was on Israel allegedly confiscating land from Israeli Arabs in the Galilee. His entire reason for moving to Nazareth was to write a book (finished in 2006) about how Israel mistreats Israeli Arabs, a different angle than the "occupation" narrative that was and is so popular. There was no "deprogramming" in Nazareth - it was all confirmation bias.
He positions his colleagues as being motivated by money while he is pure. But he found plenty of outlets to buy his articles from Nazareth - hundreds of pieces in Al Ahram, Counterpunch, Electronic Intifada and, yes, The Guardian. His supposedly fearless reporting, riddled with errors and bias, gave him prestige and awards.
And where are all of these pro-Israel articles his fellow journalists are writing? The occasional article on Israeli victims of terror hardly counter the tsunami of articles that by default trust terrorist sources and doubt Israeli statements.
Cook talks about his colleagues being infected with pro-Israel bias, "going native" by living in Jewish areas for so long. Yet Cook married an Arab Christian shortly after moving to Nazareth, they have children together and he even received Israeli citizenship because he was married to an Israeli. His colleagues bend over backwards not to appear pro-Israel, but Cook pretends to be immune from any bias while living among Israeli Arabs - most of whom reject the label he gives them of "Palestinians."
Cook's tweet does not hold up to simple facts. He is rewriting history and positioning himself as some kind of fearless, objective hero who managed to learn the truth by his dogged determination. In fact he was biased from the start and he himself has "gone native" far more than any of his journalist colleagues.
A would-be congressional candidate from the North suburbs who has an extensive history of antisemitic social media posts was removed from ballot consideration Tuesday.
Zion resident John Minarcik won’t appear on spring 2026 Democratic primary ballots for Illinois’ 10th District seat because he didn’t gather enough petition signatures to qualify, the Illinois State Board of Elections ruled.
Only three people signed Minarcik’s petition, an elections board spokesperson said. Nearly 1,000 signatures were required to qualify in that primary race.
A fellow Democratic candidate, Mundelein’s Morgan Coghill, had formally objected to Minarcik’s petition.
Minarcik is a well regarded pathologist - and a completely obsessed Jew-hater.
His Facebook feed is filled with anti-Israel and antisemitic posts, along with videos of cute babies and dogs.
Minarcik is the horseshoe theory personified. He loves Zohran Mamdani - but also Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. The only consistent pattern is his hate for Jews.
Here are posts of his from only the past few weeks.
I don't think Minarcik even campaigned for the signatures. One would think a Facebook page of a candidate would be filled with campaigning, but there's nothing but hate (and puppies with babies.) My guess is he only filed his petition to get publicity for his antisemitic positions.
Solutions are harder to come by than realizations, but the realizations are the essential first steps. As expected, the post-Oct. 7 world is a different place, and navigating that new world requires every Jewish leader and organization to acknowledge what has changed.
We see one example of this playing out right now. The Anti-Defamation League has taken steps to refocus on anti-Semitism after years of sacrificing its founding mission for a chance to be part of the progressive political coalition. ADL launched a “Mamdani Monitor” which consists of an anti-Semitism tipline for New Yorkers and a pledge to scrutinize the Mamdani administration’s actions and appointments. It’s an entirely reasonable, moderate approach, and it could be useful so long as the ADL follows through. The emerging Jewish consensus that bad actors must be held to account is healthy.
But it has inspired anger from, for example, the Nexus Project, a liberal critic of attempts to fight anti-Semitism and, though young, a relic of the pre-Oct. 7 status quo. Jill Jacobs, an activist with another progressive Jewish group, called the ADL “Islamophobic.”
Still, these attempts to conjure the naïve and dangerous fantasies that were shattered on Oct. 7 haven’t had much effect; reality is reality, and the Jewish community has been clear-eyed. As Emanuel said, “[I]f we don’t understand the depth of where we are, we’re never going to fix the problem.” The new normal isn’t pretty, but we don’t have to let it become permanent.
Late last month, Variety broke the story that IDFA was joining the boycott-and-blacklist trend aimed at the Jewish state. DocAviv, the main documentary film festival and organization in Israel, gets some public funding, as is common in the industry. So DocAviv, along with Kan and CoPro, were banned from IDFA. According to DocAviv artistic director Michal Weits, the groups received a letter from IDFA saying “that they are not going to provide us accreditation since we are complicit with the genocide, which is obviously not true.”
The Israeli government has no say in what DocAviv does or does not screen. Indeed, the dark irony in all this is that, if art is as powerful as we are told by the pompous anti-Israel industry figures, then the blacklists undoubtedly harm the Palestinian “cause” and do nothing to help it.
That’s not to say that there won’t be plenty of anti-Zionist agitprop at the festival. There will be. If you’ve made a documentary with the word Gaza in the title, as long as you’re not an Israeli Jew you’ll get your piece shown like everybody else.
But the festival will not have Israeli projects intended to drum up empathy for Gaza or make the case for coexistence because that would acknowledge the fact that Israelis are people. The flat-minded artistic activists at IDFA need Israelis to be a concept—faceless and devoid of humanity, no matter the subject. “Culture and films are the only way to communicate with each other,” Weits says. “But the boycott wants us to be isolated and disappear, and yet I think our voice is important.”
But it isn’t—not to the art world, anyway. The entire focus of anti-Zionist activism is the erasure of the Jewish state. If it’s any consolation, there will continue to be plenty of Chinese films to see.
What keeps me up at night is not the campus hordes. As I have tried to explain, I worry mostly about Hillel’s reaction to them. That is, I worry about the internal slackening of the Jewish attitude toward survival.
The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat observes that humankind is passing through a civilizational bottleneck. AI, social media, and accelerating digitization, alongside the deleterious social consequences of these phenomena, put all of what has passed for human culture at risk. The digital age “is killing us softly,” he writes, “by drawing people out of the real and into the virtual, distracting us from the activities that sustain ordinary life, and finally making existence at a human scale seem obsolete.”
What if we looked at the rise of campus anti-Semitism not as a threat but as a measure of internal strength in the fight for human culture? On the surface there are plenty of successes, in large part thanks to the efforts of the current administration to hold universities accountable. Internally it’s a different story.
The equation of Judaism with social justice is a key spiritual failing of Hillel. It has the unforgivable consequence of tying Judaism’s significance to Jews’ adherence to ever-changing moral litmus tests du jour, up to and including hatred of Jews. But Judaism as a civilizational project has survived in large part because of the steadfastness of its moral vision, often despite being in opposition to mainstream cultural mores. Its enduring teachings, including the gifts of hospitality and charity and profound respect for one’s parents, are not modeled after what is normal or popular at any given moment.
In 1924, the year after Hillel was founded, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act, limiting immigration. The number of legal Jewish immigrants dropped from 119,000, in the year before the bill’s passage, to 10,000 the following year. The gates were closed. Instead of the status quo of mass immigration, which for 40 years led American Jewry to believe that its native-born population would be continually renewed and replenished from abroad, now the existing population was all that Jews could practically rely on. American Jewry would have to renew itself.
Hillel, then, didn’t just provide young Jews with social and spiritual community in an era of incipient assimilation; it gave American Jewry a tool to fashion new generations to lead and sustain the community. In those years, Hillel believed in the future. Today, still, Hillel is uniquely constituted to lead American Jewish youth, the rising generation.
But to do so, Hillel must embrace the gifts of the past, and recognize that civilizations can die; history is littered with the corpses. The Jews are a small people, vulnerable to destruction along with their ideas. That is not to say that extinction is their fate—but, to borrow a line from Charles Krauthammer, “only that it can be.”
Hillel has a decision to make. Whether to face not only Lasch’s question, but Hillel the Elder’s—If I am not for myself, who will be for me?—as well as the choice Moses put before the People of Israel long ago, as recorded in Deuteronomy: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day: I have put before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life—if you and your offspring would live.”
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he and Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman have "reached an agreement" for Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords, bringing the region’s central power broker closer to normalizing relations with Israel.
Tuesday marked the first time both leaders confirmed that Saudi Arabia seeks to join the Abraham Accords, which initially included Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Kazakhstan became the latest Muslim-majority country to join the pact earlier this month.
"We want to be part of the Abraham Accords," bin Salman said during a joint press conference with Trump at the White House. "But we want to be sure we secure a clear path towards a two-state solution. We had a good discussion about moving forward."
"We want peace for Israelis," he added. "We want peace for Palestinians. We want peace for the region."
The Saudi crown prince’s statement came on the heels of his country’s decision to support the U.N. Security Council resolution endorsing Trump’s plan for post-war Gaza. It also follows Trump’s announcement that he plans to sell Saudi Arabia F-35 fighter jets, advanced planes the United States has only sold to Israel.
While the Israel Defense Forces opposed the Saudi F-35 deal, arguing it has the potential to erode the Jewish state’s air superiority in the region, Trump hinted that Israel will be happy with the eventual terms of the deal.
"Israel’s aware, and they’re going to be very happy," he told reporters in the Oval Office.
Trump did not elaborate on the terms of the tentative deal, but it is expected to couple the F-35 sale with Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords, and may also involve a path toward a Palestinian state.
Even assuming the Saudis have the best of intentions—that is, they’re not simply using the White House to get a leg up on their Gulf rival—the problem is that the Palestinian file can’t be wrested from regional troublemakers since it was designed by bad actors to be used for bad purposes. The Saudis understand this in part: For instance, they don’t want Gazan refugees because the Palestinians have brought chaos and violence to every state they’ve inhabited (Jordan, Lebanon, and Kuwait, as well as Gaza and the West Bank), and a Palestinian presence in Saudi Arabia would therefore destabilize the kingdom and spell the end of the reform program of the 40-year-old crown prince. But Riyadh seems not to have gamed out other imminent risks.
Let’s say, for instance, that the Israelis did accommodate Saudi Arabia’s demands, even though there’s no good practical reason for Netanyahu to pursue a normalization agreement with the Saudis; the prospects of him winning a Nobel Peace Prize are slim, whereas detonating his own domestic political coalition in the effort is a certainty. But suppose that, for sentimental reasons, Jerusalem wanted to pocket Riyadh’s promises to use its wealth and global influence to nurture a more moderate Islam and embrace the Jews as part of the Abrahamic covenant. Some Israelis might like the sound of that, however meaningless those pledges might be in reality. Still, those empty phrases would immediately supply the pretext for the next Qatari-Muslim Brotherhood information operation targeting the Saudi kingdom and the crown prince who, in Qatar’s telling, betrayed the Palestinians to the Zionists.
For Israel, a normalization deal with Saudi is worth little more than the paper it’s written on. For Saudi Arabia, especially if it gets Israel to agree to a two-state framework, a normalization agreement could cause large and unforeseeable dangers. The Palestinian file has proven itself to be a curse to those who wield it, like the Soviet Union, Nasser’s Egypt, the Assads’ Syria, and Saddam’s Iraq, all of which have faded from history even as the Islamic Republic of Iran now teeters on the abyss.
As for Trump, he’s already had his big Middle East victory—a win much more significant and durable than a normalization agreement. Not only did he, in partnership with Netanyahu, eliminate the Iranian threat, but also he revived the U.S.-led regional order that is crucial to American peace and prosperity. Israel is America’s regional enforcer, and a good destination for tech investors. The Saudis pump cheap oil to stabilize global energy markets, buy U.S. arms systems, and invest in U.S. industry. That’s a regional order that works well for everyone—starting with the United States. Now it’s time to get the Middle East and the black hole in the middle of it, the Palestinians, off the front page and turn to the bigger issue on which Trump’s historical legacy will rest: China.
Here’s the brutal truth everyone knows but pretends not to: Hamas will not disarm. The countries supposedly contributing to the ISF? They have no intention of disarming Hamas. That leaves one actor capable of removing Hamas—and the only actor who can bring about the “peace” everyone claims already exists: Israel.
You cannot have peace with Hamas in power. And removing Hamas will not be peaceful.
These are not opinions. They are facts. Mutually exclusive realities. No amount of wish-casting, press releases, or glossy declarations can change that.
A “peace plan” that leaves Hamas in charge is not a plan.
A “peace agreement” that forces Israel to tolerate a genocidal militia on its border is not an agreement. It is political fantasy, being marketed as reality.
If the world wants peace, it must start with an adult premise: obstacles must be removed. The obstacle here is clear. The only one capable of removing it? The IDF. The only one willing to do so? Also the IDF.
So go ahead: say “peace” three times into a mirror. Wave your glossy resolutions. Print your headlines. Hope really hard. But unlike Beetlejuice, peace will not appear until reality does—and reality does not negotiate with Hamas.
Until that truth is faced, talk of “agreements,” “plans,” or “historic deals” is just theater. An expensive and dangerously misleading theater.
Re-indigenising feminism: gender, genocide and Gaza
Banah Ghadbian
Abstract
In this article, I analyse why the ongoing genocide in Gaza is a feminist issue. I reflect on the term ‘reproductive genocide’ as defined by the Palestinian Feminist Collective and situate how genocidal violence is gendered, while remaining critical of the ways in which gender is deployed to essentialise oppression. I explore how colonial, imperialist feminists use the discursive strategy of purplewashing and deploy notions of gender to justify genocide. I locate my analysis in Third World feminist frameworks which understand how colonial structures use heteropatriarchy and sexual violence as part of their conquest of Indigenous people. I draw from Black, Indigenous, transnational, Third World, Palestinian and inter/national feminisms that insist on remembering decolonisation and re-indigenisation. I conclude by centring calls by Palestinian feminists in Gaza themselves, including Gazan feminists calling for an international strike on Women’s Day, arguing that they embody an intersecting critique of capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy and state violence simultaneously that insists on remembrance and reindigenisation.
Just more anti-Israel propaganda dressed up as feminist studies. It doesn't take much effort to see that anyone can claim anything in an academic paper.
Her first footnote says:
I use the term Zionist entity instead of Israel intentionally, as Israel has violated international law since its inception.
So Third World Quarterly knowingly allows its papers to single out Israel as the only nation that is so heinous that its name must not be mentioned - the Voldemort of nations.
By singling out and denying the Jewish State altogether, the paper is functionally antisemitic.
It is hardly the only one - there are dozens of academic papers in respected journals over the past year that don't debate "Gaza genocide" but use it as an assumed fact to expand it into even more bizarre areas as if "genocide" is an axiom, not a lie and not even disputed. after all, they have footnotes to other papers that accuse Israel of genocide! That's "science!"
What does this have to do with Tucker Carlson?
As bad as Carlson's platforming neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers is, he is still a media personality. His promotion of toxic hate is irresponsible and must be condemned, even if the President supports his right to host whomever he wants. (There is no contradiction there. He can say what he wants and everyone can condemn him.)
But which is worse - an influential podcaster platforming Jew haters, or academic journals mainstreaming antisemitism in the guise of scholarship?
The journals wear the costume of objectivity. They cloak ideological hostility in peer-reviewed legitimacy. And they go unchallenged , not despite the academy’s moral standards, but because of how those standards have collapsed. The very ethical frameworks used to detect bigotry and bias in other cases are suspended when the subject is Jews or Israel.
Even the media has mechanisms for correcting mistakes. these journals are building a pseudo-intellectual infrastructure for antisemitism that remains in the academic ether forever. Newspapers are forgotten but researchers continue to cite these papers as if they are proven theories to build upon decades after they are written.
Where are the Leftists railing against the hijacking of academia by antisemites?
Yes, this article only has a few dozen views and Carlson reaches millions. In that sense there is no comparison. But unlike Carlson, academic journals are supposed to have standards, and social science journals pretend that their papers have the same rigor as scientific papers.
Hate like this lives on forever in the dusty corners of universities, waiting to be resurrected when a new toxic theory emerges. And a hell of a lot of those theories happen to center on Jews.
The apparent language in the US Peace Plan for Gaza UN Security Council resolution seems to make Palestinian statehood a distant possibility rather than a requirement.
UNSC Resolution 1397 (2002) affirmed a "vision of a region where two states, Israel and Palestine, live side by side within secure and recognized borders."
UNSC 1515 (2003) "Endorses the Quartet Performance-based Roadmap to a Permanent Two State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict."
But this resolution steps back from those ideas, and weakens them significantly. It says (based on the draft text, the full resolution text has not been released at this writing):
Welcomes the establishment of the Board of Peace (BoP) as a transitional administration with international legal personality that will set the framework, and coordinate funding for, the redevelopment of Gaza pursuant to the Comprehensive Plan, and in a manner consistent with relevant international legal principles, until such time as the Palestinian Authority (PA) has satisfactorily completed its reform program, as outlined in various proposals, including President Trump’s peace plan in 2020 and the Saudi-French Proposal, and can securely and effectively take back control of Gaza. After the PA reform program is faithfully carried out and Gaza redevelopment has advanced, the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood. The United States will establish a dialogue between Israel and the Palestinians to agree on a political horizon for peaceful and prosperous coexistence.
This means that the PA must show it can govern Gaza and it must go through a significant reform program before we can even think about a Palestinian state. Only after that may the conditions be in place - not for a state, but for a credible pathway that could lead to self-determination (which can mean autonomy) and a state.
That's a lot of steps. And the extremely tentative language indicates, as international law expert Eugene Kontorovich points out, "there is no legal or practical obligation to create a Palestinian state" according to the Security Council. If there way, it wouldn't have used this tentative language.
And although Russia and China opposed it, they didn't veto it because Arab states - including the PA itself! - supported the resolution.
So even the entire Arab world does not support a Palestinian state as something that should happen unilaterally. Also, the UK and France voted for this resolution, even though they recognized "Palestine" earlier this year with far fewer preconditions. While there is a lot of leeway in how diplomats word things, this seems to indicate that their recognition was more performative than legal.
From what I can tell, this resolution is just about as good as Israel could ever hope for. It makes clear that Israel must approve any Palestinian state - which always was the case but it enshrines it. This is a completely different trajectory from what we've been seeing internationally over the past year, and it is a refreshing return to reality.
This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.
Hoping that "The Good" Guys Win!
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Dry Bones Golden Oldie, by Sali the LSW. (Long Suffering Wife) Here is a
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Thursday, November 20, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
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