In its death throes, the West wants to see Israel destroyed so it can get on with the business of dying from Islamization in peace. What passes for Western Civilization will never live to see that happen. Haaretz has reported that Harvard has a secret archive of Israeliana in the event Israel ceases to exist, like Hitler’s projected “Museum of an extinct race.” Der Fuhrer never lived to see that happen and neither did his thousand-year Third Reich. The same fate awaits the West as it—in vain—congratulates itself for its moral probity. And so does Harvard. Am Yisrael Chai🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱
Thank you, Aaron - powerful thoughts, and I appreciate you taking the time to write them.
The instinct you’re pointing to is real: parts of the West would like Israel to disappear so their own self-image never has to be challenged again. Israel’s existence exposes the moral contradictions they’d rather not face. If Israel survives, their worldview doesn’t. That’s why the pressure to conform, surrender, and “be reasonable” is so relentless.
But I don’t believe Western civilization is finished yet. It’s in a dangerous moment - maybe the most dangerous in our lifetime - but history isn’t written in advance. Decline becomes destiny only when no one resists it. And not everyone here has lost the will to fight for sanity, truth, and the values that built the West in the first place.
If Harvard really does have an archive ready “in case Israel ceases to exist,” they are preparing for the wrong future. Israel is not going anywhere. And the West doesn’t have to go anywhere either, unless it decides to. It can still choose survival over self-erasure.
The point of writing pieces like this is exactly that: to break the spell of self-deception and remind people - everywhere - what is at stake and what is worth defending.
Am Yisrael Chai - and those who haven’t given up on the West aren’t done fighting either.
Thank you - that line really is the core of the whole problem, isn’t it? Seeing things as they are rather than as we wish them to be should be the basis of politics, yet in much of Western Europe it has become almost taboo.
Why? Because admitting reality would force politicians to confront the consequences of their own choices. It would mean acknowledging that decades of policies built on wishful thinking - about immigration, multiculturalism, the Middle East, and the nature of ideological extremism - have produced outcomes they can no longer control. If they admit the truth now, they inherit responsibility for the damage. So they double down on illusion instead. Denial becomes a survival strategy.
And on a deeper level, many politicians fear truth because truth would require moral judgment. It’s easier to repeat slogans about “dialogue” and “peace” than to take a principled stand that might cost votes or disturb the carefully curated image of moral superiority Europe projects to itself.
So they cling to fantasies - not because they’re convinced, but because the alternative is accountability.
I’m actually finalizing an essay right now that digs into exactly this pathology. Your question goes straight to the heart of what I’m writing about: how a civilization trained to mistake empathy for strategy and optimism for ethics becomes incapable of recognizing danger until it’s too late.
Thank you again for the thoughtful comment - it’s readers like you who make these discussions worth having.
A 100% accurate brilliantly written magnum opus on the harsh realities of how things really are. As my father used to say, “denial is not a river in Egypt.”
1. People tend to believe what they wish were true.
Thank you, Kenneth - that means a lot. And I like your father’s line more than I probably should. It captures the whole pathology in one sentence.
You’re right that people believe what they want to be true, especially when the truth demands responsibility or discomfort. And yes, when a society keeps making alliances with movements and ideologies that openly hate it, the fleas aren’t an accident - they’re the invoice.
I’m not ready to write off the West’s moral clarity as permanently lost, though. It’s badly eroded, for sure. But clarity doesn’t vanish; it just gets abandoned. Which means it can also be recovered. Not easily. Not by everyone. But by enough people to matter.
There are still many who recognize what’s happening and refuse to pretend otherwise. If anything gives me hope, it’s that the lies are becoming harder to sustain. Reality has a habit of knocking on the door sooner or later.
Once denial stops working, clarity becomes a survival instinct again.
Thank you so much, Beatrice - that really means a lot.
And you’re absolutely right to ask that question. The fact that the world still prefers the term “West Bank” tells you everything about how much easier it is to repeat a comfortable fiction than to face history as it actually is. The truth is there for anyone who wants to see it - some just choose not to.
Phenomenal. Where to start? Aren’t these points obvious? We survive in a world willfully blind to reality, hands in spasms from patting itself on the back. Praying for a miracle.
Thank you, Susanne - I’m really grateful for your reaction.
Yes, the points should be obvious, and that’s exactly what makes the blindness so maddening. Reality isn’t hiding - people are choosing not to see it because it threatens the comforting story they’ve built about themselves. It’s easier to applaud their own virtue than confront the consequences of their decisions.
A miracle would be welcome, but I’m not waiting for one. Clarity spreads faster than people think once someone breaks the silence. And every person who refuses the illusion makes it harder for the rest of the world to keep pretending.
Thank you again for reading - voices like yours are part of that pushback.
Great piece. Agree with everything you wrote. The West is sleep walking into its own demise and expects Israel to join in this insanity. Well, we, the indigenous Jews of Judea refuse to be a part of this madness. We will survive and thrive whilst the West succumbs to Islamisation, unless they awaken from their very naive slumber…
Thank you for reading and for writing this. I understand the frustration you’re expressing about the West. You’re not wrong to see the sleepwalking, or to feel that many here have forgotten what they stand to lose.
But I also live in the West, and I’m not prepared to let it slide quietly into Islamism or any other form of totalitarian ideology. There are still people here who see the danger clearly, who haven’t surrendered to wishful thinking, and who are not going to sit it out. The first step, as you said, is to tear away the comfort blanket of self-deception. That work is slow, but not hopeless. Minds do change when the illusion is broken.
There’s still a lot worth defending here. Civilization doesn’t rot overnight, and it doesn’t have to die if its immune system wakes up in time. Some of us intend to fight for that - intellectually, culturally, politically - and I count myself among them.
So while I agree with you that Israel shouldn’t be dragged into Europe’s delusions, I also refuse to concede that Europe is already gone. Not yet. Some of us are still here, and we’re not done.
I still live in the West myself Paul though I’m hoping to make Aliyah next year. I don’t want to see it succumb to Islamisation either and believe it is worth defending and saving and thank G-d for people like you, and Douglas Murray, Melanie Phillips and others that I follow who’ve been sounding the alarm for quite some time. So I haven’t quite written off Europe or North America yet, but time of is of the essence and I pray people wake up, realise what they have and what they will lose if they are Islamised.
Excellent fact based evidence of a revolving door of failed diplomacy, moral narcissisism, Israel is always blamed for it's right to sovereignty, defending its citizens, national security against existential threats 🙏🇮🇱
Thank you, Elayne - you captured the pattern perfectly. The same failed diplomacy repeats, Israel pays the price, and the West applauds itself for “trying.” At some point, the ritual has to give way to reality. Sovereignty and self-defense aren’t crimes - they’re the baseline of survival.
So much contemplation. What us there to contemplate about. It's jew hatred and the only response is to destroy those who seek our destruction. What else is there to contemplate?
Thank you, Michael - I understand why you go straight to the core. When an ideology openly declares its intention to wipe out Jews, there’s no need for philosophical interpretation. Anyone who seeks your destruction forfeits the right to coexist.
But the article is aimed at something even deeper than Jew-hatred itself. Antisemitism is the visible toxin; the real danger is the system that cultivates and normalizes it. Hamas isn’t dangerous only because it hates Jews - countless fringe movements do. It is dangerous because the West built a political and humanitarian apparatus that protects, funds, excuses, and morally launders that hatred so long as it is directed at Israel.
If the focus stays only on the hatred, we eliminate the perpetrators but leave intact the network that manufactures the next generation. UNRWA indoctrination, the incentives of the Palestinian Authority, the Western media narrative, the NGO funding machine, and the moral narcissism of European diplomacy - that whole ecosystem ensures the hatred never runs out of oxygen.
And that’s why this conversation matters. The fight isn’t just on the battlefield; it’s also against the illusion that allows the West to subsidize the very forces that want Israel destroyed while congratulating itself for compassion. When the enabling structure collapses, the hatred loses its fuel.
Those who seek Israel’s destruction must never succeed. And to guarantee that, we have to dismantle not only the killers but the entire global machinery that keeps them in business.
Until the "holy writ" becomes: 'The Arab Muslims who identify as Palestinians do not care about having their own state, they just want Israel, or the Jews, not to have a state.'
Therefore, all actions should follow from this premise.
The world doesn't need more truth. It needs more action. Bad behavior must be punished and not appeased or rewarded. The west needs to install fear in the arabs and bring them to your feet otherwise they will be at your throat. Trump should have destroyed the Ayatollahs and insisted on regime change. Every time the arabs attack Israel they should be punished by loosing territory. In Lebanon the new border should be the Litani river. Every time an Arab terrorists attacks Jews a certain number of arabs should be expelled from Judea and Samaria and sent to Syria. The solution is not a 2 state solution but rather a population transfer were the arabs in Gaza and Judea and Samaria are moved to Iraq, Libya and Algeria.
Europe lives in denial because it is impotent and hopes that by appeasing Islamic evil the Moslems will leave them alone.
Thank you, Edward - I appreciate the force of what you’re saying and where it comes from. When you look at decades of Western appeasement, moral double standards, and the rewriting of cause and effect, the instinct to demand decisive action is completely understandable.
But the point of my essay isn’t that there hasn’t been enough action. It’s that the West has been acting inside an illusion of its own making. Every policy - diplomatic, humanitarian, military, media-driven - has been built on a narrative rather than on reality. And when actions are rooted in fantasy instead of fact, they don’t solve the problem; they reinforce it.
That’s why the essay doesn’t offer recipes. It doesn’t propose strategies, borders, punishments, or transfers. It’s not about how to fix the conflict - it’s about exposing the intellectual architecture that makes fixing it impossible in the first place. The “peace process,” as the West understands it, is not an attempt at peace. It is a ritual of self-absolution. A performance of virtue. A way to protect a worldview rather than confront facts.
Whether one advocates negotiation or overwhelming force, both become meaningless if they begin from a lie.
The world doesn’t suffer from a shortage of actions. It suffers from a shortage of honesty about what those actions are actually doing. Until the illusions break, every move - diplomatic or military - ends up orbiting the same cycle: failure repackaged as momentum, denial disguised as optimism, and Israel assigned the role of designated villain so the West can applaud its own conscience.
My essay’s purpose is simple: to strip away the comfort. Because when illusions collapse, clarity becomes unavoidable - and only then does anything meaningful become possible.
That’s the ground the piece stands on. Not prescriptions. Reality.
"We rename Judea and Samaria “the West Bank” and think we’ve neutralized history."
Reality check, if one may. In 1950 Jordan renamed Judea and Samaria the West Bank to erase any Jewish connection to its ancestral heartland. The world eagerly embraced the name change. Sadly, many Jews willingly swilled the kool-aid.
As the saying goes, the day you describe your enemy the way he describes himself, you lose the battle. The day you describe yourself the way your enemy describes you, you lose the war.
Because in the first instance, you declare the worthiness of your enemy's cause. In the second, you declare you are worthy to be defeated by your enemy.
"The tragedy is that the West still mistakes linguistic creativity for moral courage. We rename Judea and Samaria 'the West Bank' and think we’ve neutralized history. We call terrorism “resistance” and imagine we’ve balanced the scales."
The West engages in Orwellian speak, or as Humpty Dumpty first articulated the technique in Lewis Carrolls "Through the looking glass," "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less". To which Alice rebuts " ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.' "
"Every new envoy arrives convinced that this time will be different, that the right combination of empathy and PowerPoint will finally untie a century-old knot."
Actually, the envoys arrive to apply a hammerlocks and strangleholds on Isra" Witness the "consultation" strategies of Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan during the Biden administrative and Steve Witkoff now, during the Trump administration.
"the condemnation generates more funding “to address the root causes"
More Orwellian speak: “to address the root causes" is euphemism for a call to annihilate Israel and exterminate the Jews because if they did not exist, so the thinking goes, Hamas and company would not need to resort to "acts of righteous resistance." If it weren't for the Jews, so the thinking goes, there would be peace on earth and goodwill towards all men.
"The same governments that ban hate speech in their cities "
If the law in these countries proscribes hate speech, then not enforcing the laws has two effects: it reinforces in the haters' minds that hate speech is socially acceptable, and if it is socially acceptable, then escalating hate speech to hate actions is also acceptable, especially when violence has the tacit approval of law enforcement and government because it is not stopped.
"UNRWA . . . has mastered the art of moral camouflage. . . . its victims are statistics"
They are less than statistics. They are utterly ignored by politicians, academia, and by all aspects of the media as they ply the polemics of victim identity politics.
"The slogan “Free Palestine” in Western capitals pretends to speak for a people seeking liberty"
This slogan and its concomitant battle cries "From the river to the sea," "Jihad now," "Globalize the Intifada" and "Resistance by any means," are not calls to establish a Palestinian state, much less calls for a two-state solution. They are genocidal calls to wipe Israel off the earth and annihilate Jews. Its source is not political, but religious, found in the Quran and the Hadiths. See Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 56, Hadith 139 and Sahih Muslim, 2922: Book 54, Hadith 103.
"The Oslo accords explicitly prohibit unilateral recognition, violence, and incitemen"
In contract law, these violations are known as "Material breaches of contract," according to which the contract becomes null and void. However, in the kangaroo court of world opinion and world institutions alike, Arabs are fee to violate the agreement at will, but Jews must observe all the concessions they committed to in the contract.
"With whom exactly is Israel supposed to share sovereignty? . . . . With an authority" [whose constitution explicitly calls for the elimination of the sovereign state of Israel and the slaughter of Jews"
"what we have instead is one nation defending its existence and another defined by its ambition to erase it."
The phrase "and another [state] grants nation state status to the Gazan, Judean, and Samarian Arabs. They do not meet the minimum legal criteria to call themselves a national entity. Not that legalities were ever a real consideration when it came to applying the League of nations, San Remo, the UN Charter provisions to the Jews. To call "Palestinians" for what they are, they are a politicallyconstructed identity created in 1964 by Yasser Arafat.
The problem with uti possidetis juris is that Israel has never claimed to be the successor state to the British mandate. It claimed from the very beginning that it was creating a specifically Jewish state.
Today’s moral narcissism is repackaged anti Semitism
In its death throes, the West wants to see Israel destroyed so it can get on with the business of dying from Islamization in peace. What passes for Western Civilization will never live to see that happen. Haaretz has reported that Harvard has a secret archive of Israeliana in the event Israel ceases to exist, like Hitler’s projected “Museum of an extinct race.” Der Fuhrer never lived to see that happen and neither did his thousand-year Third Reich. The same fate awaits the West as it—in vain—congratulates itself for its moral probity. And so does Harvard. Am Yisrael Chai🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱🇮🇱
Thank you, Aaron - powerful thoughts, and I appreciate you taking the time to write them.
The instinct you’re pointing to is real: parts of the West would like Israel to disappear so their own self-image never has to be challenged again. Israel’s existence exposes the moral contradictions they’d rather not face. If Israel survives, their worldview doesn’t. That’s why the pressure to conform, surrender, and “be reasonable” is so relentless.
But I don’t believe Western civilization is finished yet. It’s in a dangerous moment - maybe the most dangerous in our lifetime - but history isn’t written in advance. Decline becomes destiny only when no one resists it. And not everyone here has lost the will to fight for sanity, truth, and the values that built the West in the first place.
If Harvard really does have an archive ready “in case Israel ceases to exist,” they are preparing for the wrong future. Israel is not going anywhere. And the West doesn’t have to go anywhere either, unless it decides to. It can still choose survival over self-erasure.
The point of writing pieces like this is exactly that: to break the spell of self-deception and remind people - everywhere - what is at stake and what is worth defending.
Am Yisrael Chai - and those who haven’t given up on the West aren’t done fighting either.
To see things as they are, rather than how we wish them to be.
What a simple, sensible statement.
Yet Western European politicians seem utterly determined to ignore simple, sensible common sense.
Why?
Thank you - that line really is the core of the whole problem, isn’t it? Seeing things as they are rather than as we wish them to be should be the basis of politics, yet in much of Western Europe it has become almost taboo.
Why? Because admitting reality would force politicians to confront the consequences of their own choices. It would mean acknowledging that decades of policies built on wishful thinking - about immigration, multiculturalism, the Middle East, and the nature of ideological extremism - have produced outcomes they can no longer control. If they admit the truth now, they inherit responsibility for the damage. So they double down on illusion instead. Denial becomes a survival strategy.
And on a deeper level, many politicians fear truth because truth would require moral judgment. It’s easier to repeat slogans about “dialogue” and “peace” than to take a principled stand that might cost votes or disturb the carefully curated image of moral superiority Europe projects to itself.
So they cling to fantasies - not because they’re convinced, but because the alternative is accountability.
I’m actually finalizing an essay right now that digs into exactly this pathology. Your question goes straight to the heart of what I’m writing about: how a civilization trained to mistake empathy for strategy and optimism for ethics becomes incapable of recognizing danger until it’s too late.
Thank you again for the thoughtful comment - it’s readers like you who make these discussions worth having.
You have expanded that far better than I was capable of, and touched pretty much precisely what I believe.
Thanks.
I’d hope to get a chance to read your essay.
The exam question, of course, is how do we change the behavioural habits of the majority of our politicians before it’s too late?
I am sometimes drawn to despairing, but I will not go gently into the night falling on my country.
A 100% accurate brilliantly written magnum opus on the harsh realities of how things really are. As my father used to say, “denial is not a river in Egypt.”
1. People tend to believe what they wish were true.
2. Lie with dogs and you awaken with Fleas.
Moral clarity in the west is forever lost.
Join us in a place where we do not “spare ourselves the discomfort of honesty.” https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1BWTCSbydV/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Thank you, Kenneth - that means a lot. And I like your father’s line more than I probably should. It captures the whole pathology in one sentence.
You’re right that people believe what they want to be true, especially when the truth demands responsibility or discomfort. And yes, when a society keeps making alliances with movements and ideologies that openly hate it, the fleas aren’t an accident - they’re the invoice.
I’m not ready to write off the West’s moral clarity as permanently lost, though. It’s badly eroded, for sure. But clarity doesn’t vanish; it just gets abandoned. Which means it can also be recovered. Not easily. Not by everyone. But by enough people to matter.
There are still many who recognize what’s happening and refuse to pretend otherwise. If anything gives me hope, it’s that the lies are becoming harder to sustain. Reality has a habit of knocking on the door sooner or later.
Once denial stops working, clarity becomes a survival instinct again.
Well articulated!
Thank you so much for your honest/brillant essay!!!!!!!!..... why Judea & Samaria still call a colonial name "The West Bank
Thank you so much, Beatrice - that really means a lot.
And you’re absolutely right to ask that question. The fact that the world still prefers the term “West Bank” tells you everything about how much easier it is to repeat a comfortable fiction than to face history as it actually is. The truth is there for anyone who wants to see it - some just choose not to.
Thank you again for reading and for speaking up.
Phenomenal. Where to start? Aren’t these points obvious? We survive in a world willfully blind to reality, hands in spasms from patting itself on the back. Praying for a miracle.
Thank you, Susanne - I’m really grateful for your reaction.
Yes, the points should be obvious, and that’s exactly what makes the blindness so maddening. Reality isn’t hiding - people are choosing not to see it because it threatens the comforting story they’ve built about themselves. It’s easier to applaud their own virtue than confront the consequences of their decisions.
A miracle would be welcome, but I’m not waiting for one. Clarity spreads faster than people think once someone breaks the silence. And every person who refuses the illusion makes it harder for the rest of the world to keep pretending.
Thank you again for reading - voices like yours are part of that pushback.
It’s good to be part of any pushback and encouraging to imagine that clarity can spread.
Great piece. Agree with everything you wrote. The West is sleep walking into its own demise and expects Israel to join in this insanity. Well, we, the indigenous Jews of Judea refuse to be a part of this madness. We will survive and thrive whilst the West succumbs to Islamisation, unless they awaken from their very naive slumber…
Thank you for reading and for writing this. I understand the frustration you’re expressing about the West. You’re not wrong to see the sleepwalking, or to feel that many here have forgotten what they stand to lose.
But I also live in the West, and I’m not prepared to let it slide quietly into Islamism or any other form of totalitarian ideology. There are still people here who see the danger clearly, who haven’t surrendered to wishful thinking, and who are not going to sit it out. The first step, as you said, is to tear away the comfort blanket of self-deception. That work is slow, but not hopeless. Minds do change when the illusion is broken.
There’s still a lot worth defending here. Civilization doesn’t rot overnight, and it doesn’t have to die if its immune system wakes up in time. Some of us intend to fight for that - intellectually, culturally, politically - and I count myself among them.
So while I agree with you that Israel shouldn’t be dragged into Europe’s delusions, I also refuse to concede that Europe is already gone. Not yet. Some of us are still here, and we’re not done.
I still live in the West myself Paul though I’m hoping to make Aliyah next year. I don’t want to see it succumb to Islamisation either and believe it is worth defending and saving and thank G-d for people like you, and Douglas Murray, Melanie Phillips and others that I follow who’ve been sounding the alarm for quite some time. So I haven’t quite written off Europe or North America yet, but time of is of the essence and I pray people wake up, realise what they have and what they will lose if they are Islamised.
Excellent fact based evidence of a revolving door of failed diplomacy, moral narcissisism, Israel is always blamed for it's right to sovereignty, defending its citizens, national security against existential threats 🙏🇮🇱
Thank you, Elayne - you captured the pattern perfectly. The same failed diplomacy repeats, Israel pays the price, and the West applauds itself for “trying.” At some point, the ritual has to give way to reality. Sovereignty and self-defense aren’t crimes - they’re the baseline of survival.
And thank you for taking the time to say this.
Your very welcome Thanks for the positive feedback Much appreciated
So much contemplation. What us there to contemplate about. It's jew hatred and the only response is to destroy those who seek our destruction. What else is there to contemplate?
Thank you, Michael - I understand why you go straight to the core. When an ideology openly declares its intention to wipe out Jews, there’s no need for philosophical interpretation. Anyone who seeks your destruction forfeits the right to coexist.
But the article is aimed at something even deeper than Jew-hatred itself. Antisemitism is the visible toxin; the real danger is the system that cultivates and normalizes it. Hamas isn’t dangerous only because it hates Jews - countless fringe movements do. It is dangerous because the West built a political and humanitarian apparatus that protects, funds, excuses, and morally launders that hatred so long as it is directed at Israel.
If the focus stays only on the hatred, we eliminate the perpetrators but leave intact the network that manufactures the next generation. UNRWA indoctrination, the incentives of the Palestinian Authority, the Western media narrative, the NGO funding machine, and the moral narcissism of European diplomacy - that whole ecosystem ensures the hatred never runs out of oxygen.
And that’s why this conversation matters. The fight isn’t just on the battlefield; it’s also against the illusion that allows the West to subsidize the very forces that want Israel destroyed while congratulating itself for compassion. When the enabling structure collapses, the hatred loses its fuel.
Those who seek Israel’s destruction must never succeed. And to guarantee that, we have to dismantle not only the killers but the entire global machinery that keeps them in business.
Well said.
Until the "holy writ" becomes: 'The Arab Muslims who identify as Palestinians do not care about having their own state, they just want Israel, or the Jews, not to have a state.'
Therefore, all actions should follow from this premise.
The world doesn't need more truth. It needs more action. Bad behavior must be punished and not appeased or rewarded. The west needs to install fear in the arabs and bring them to your feet otherwise they will be at your throat. Trump should have destroyed the Ayatollahs and insisted on regime change. Every time the arabs attack Israel they should be punished by loosing territory. In Lebanon the new border should be the Litani river. Every time an Arab terrorists attacks Jews a certain number of arabs should be expelled from Judea and Samaria and sent to Syria. The solution is not a 2 state solution but rather a population transfer were the arabs in Gaza and Judea and Samaria are moved to Iraq, Libya and Algeria.
Europe lives in denial because it is impotent and hopes that by appeasing Islamic evil the Moslems will leave them alone.
Thank you, Edward - I appreciate the force of what you’re saying and where it comes from. When you look at decades of Western appeasement, moral double standards, and the rewriting of cause and effect, the instinct to demand decisive action is completely understandable.
But the point of my essay isn’t that there hasn’t been enough action. It’s that the West has been acting inside an illusion of its own making. Every policy - diplomatic, humanitarian, military, media-driven - has been built on a narrative rather than on reality. And when actions are rooted in fantasy instead of fact, they don’t solve the problem; they reinforce it.
That’s why the essay doesn’t offer recipes. It doesn’t propose strategies, borders, punishments, or transfers. It’s not about how to fix the conflict - it’s about exposing the intellectual architecture that makes fixing it impossible in the first place. The “peace process,” as the West understands it, is not an attempt at peace. It is a ritual of self-absolution. A performance of virtue. A way to protect a worldview rather than confront facts.
Whether one advocates negotiation or overwhelming force, both become meaningless if they begin from a lie.
The world doesn’t suffer from a shortage of actions. It suffers from a shortage of honesty about what those actions are actually doing. Until the illusions break, every move - diplomatic or military - ends up orbiting the same cycle: failure repackaged as momentum, denial disguised as optimism, and Israel assigned the role of designated villain so the West can applaud its own conscience.
My essay’s purpose is simple: to strip away the comfort. Because when illusions collapse, clarity becomes unavoidable - and only then does anything meaningful become possible.
That’s the ground the piece stands on. Not prescriptions. Reality.
"We rename Judea and Samaria “the West Bank” and think we’ve neutralized history."
Reality check, if one may. In 1950 Jordan renamed Judea and Samaria the West Bank to erase any Jewish connection to its ancestral heartland. The world eagerly embraced the name change. Sadly, many Jews willingly swilled the kool-aid.
As the saying goes, the day you describe your enemy the way he describes himself, you lose the battle. The day you describe yourself the way your enemy describes you, you lose the war.
Because in the first instance, you declare the worthiness of your enemy's cause. In the second, you declare you are worthy to be defeated by your enemy.
"The tragedy is that the West still mistakes linguistic creativity for moral courage. We rename Judea and Samaria 'the West Bank' and think we’ve neutralized history. We call terrorism “resistance” and imagine we’ve balanced the scales."
The West engages in Orwellian speak, or as Humpty Dumpty first articulated the technique in Lewis Carrolls "Through the looking glass," "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less". To which Alice rebuts " ’The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.' "
"Every new envoy arrives convinced that this time will be different, that the right combination of empathy and PowerPoint will finally untie a century-old knot."
Actually, the envoys arrive to apply a hammerlocks and strangleholds on Isra" Witness the "consultation" strategies of Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan during the Biden administrative and Steve Witkoff now, during the Trump administration.
"the condemnation generates more funding “to address the root causes"
More Orwellian speak: “to address the root causes" is euphemism for a call to annihilate Israel and exterminate the Jews because if they did not exist, so the thinking goes, Hamas and company would not need to resort to "acts of righteous resistance." If it weren't for the Jews, so the thinking goes, there would be peace on earth and goodwill towards all men.
"The same governments that ban hate speech in their cities "
If the law in these countries proscribes hate speech, then not enforcing the laws has two effects: it reinforces in the haters' minds that hate speech is socially acceptable, and if it is socially acceptable, then escalating hate speech to hate actions is also acceptable, especially when violence has the tacit approval of law enforcement and government because it is not stopped.
"UNRWA . . . has mastered the art of moral camouflage. . . . its victims are statistics"
They are less than statistics. They are utterly ignored by politicians, academia, and by all aspects of the media as they ply the polemics of victim identity politics.
"The slogan “Free Palestine” in Western capitals pretends to speak for a people seeking liberty"
This slogan and its concomitant battle cries "From the river to the sea," "Jihad now," "Globalize the Intifada" and "Resistance by any means," are not calls to establish a Palestinian state, much less calls for a two-state solution. They are genocidal calls to wipe Israel off the earth and annihilate Jews. Its source is not political, but religious, found in the Quran and the Hadiths. See Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 56, Hadith 139 and Sahih Muslim, 2922: Book 54, Hadith 103.
"The Oslo accords explicitly prohibit unilateral recognition, violence, and incitemen"
In contract law, these violations are known as "Material breaches of contract," according to which the contract becomes null and void. However, in the kangaroo court of world opinion and world institutions alike, Arabs are fee to violate the agreement at will, but Jews must observe all the concessions they committed to in the contract.
"With whom exactly is Israel supposed to share sovereignty? . . . . With an authority" [whose constitution explicitly calls for the elimination of the sovereign state of Israel and the slaughter of Jews"
"what we have instead is one nation defending its existence and another defined by its ambition to erase it."
The phrase "and another [state] grants nation state status to the Gazan, Judean, and Samarian Arabs. They do not meet the minimum legal criteria to call themselves a national entity. Not that legalities were ever a real consideration when it came to applying the League of nations, San Remo, the UN Charter provisions to the Jews. To call "Palestinians" for what they are, they are a politicallyconstructed identity created in 1964 by Yasser Arafat.
"Every civilization has its vice."
The West's vice is self-righteousness.
Incredible writing
One day a friend of mine said that it’s easy to demand empathy and pacifism when you are not the one who’s paying for it.
This was a brilliant essay and so beautifully written. Thank you for taking the time to put it all together.
Process without partners. Sounds like a stupid university humanities course that I would never take.
The problem with uti possidetis juris is that Israel has never claimed to be the successor state to the British mandate. It claimed from the very beginning that it was creating a specifically Jewish state.