View of the Israeli community of Karnei Shomron in Samaria, July 2, 2020. Photo by Sraya Diamant/Flash90.
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Which state? Biden’s or the Palestinians?
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The world’s response to Palestinian demands should be, as we said as kids, “tough noogies.”
text

The Biden administration is trying to pressure Israel to accept its idyllic vision of the Middle East by threatening to recognize a Palestinian state. The Israeli government should answer in the immortal words of actor Clint Eastwood in the “Dirty Harry” films: “Go ahead. Make my day.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should explain what will happen the day after the United States makes its announcement. Israel will recognize “Palestine” and inform the administration that now that the Palestinians have achieved independence, peace negotiations will be permanently ended since there is no longer anything to discuss. The land dispute with the Palestinians would also be officially over, same with the “occupation.”

The territory of the Palestinian state will consist of Areas A and B of the West Bank as defined by the Oslo Accords. All of Gaza, minus a buffer zone, will be part of Palestine. If and when a government capable of ensuring the safety of Israelis across the border is in place, Israel will withdraw completely. Palestinians will need to apply for a visa to cross Israel’s sovereign territory to travel between the West Bank and Gaza, and a corridor with Israeli border controls will be established to facilitate movement back and forth.

Israel will immediately apply sovereignty to all the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Residents can choose to stay in their homes or receive compensation to move. Those who remain will be under the jurisdiction and protection of Israel.

Jerusalem will remain united under Israeli sovereignty. Israel will decide whether the Islamic Waqf may continue to have any authority on the Temple Mount. Christian and Muslim citizens of Palestine can obtain tourist visas for access to their holy places. Jews will have unrestricted access to the Temple Mount, subject to security concerns.

Jewish holy places within Palestine must be protected, and Jews granted access under the same terms that Palestinians are allowed entry to the Temple Mount. Any denial of access will be reciprocated.

Palestinian refugees will have a right to return only to the state of Palestine.

Israel will cease to collect tax revenues for the Palestinians, as well as cut off all water and utilities that are not purchased from Israeli companies. Palestine will have to negotiate trade agreements for the import and export of goods to Israel.

Palestinian Map, Palestinian Version
Palestinian Authority version of the proposed map of a Palestinian state. Credit: P.A. official website.

Israel will take whatever measures are deemed necessary for its security, which includes ensuring that the Palestinian state is demilitarized and that it controls the airspace. It will retain its freedom of action for self-defense.

Palestinians living in Area C and eastern Jerusalem will be given the option of becoming citizens of Israel. At most, Israel would have to absorb roughly 100,000 Palestinians, which is the number that founding father and first Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion was prepared to accept after the 1948 War of Independence if the Arabs had made peace. Those who decline the offer would be considered illegal immigrants and deported to Palestine. Israel may, at its discretion, offer permits to Palestinian citizens to work in Israel.

If adopted, this series of events would ironically constitute the unilateral acceptance of the Trump “Peace to Prosperity” plan.

Following the establishment of the Palestinian state, the Saudis and Qataris will no longer have any excuse not to normalize relations except for the king of the former’s rabid antisemitism and the emir of the latter’s support of the Islamist goal of world domination.

Palestinian Map, U.S. Version
U.S. version of the proposed map of a Palestinian state from “The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace” by Dennis Ross (2004.) Credit: Courtesy/Reprinted with the author’s permission.

Comparisons to South Africa (which are bogus, to begin with) will be irrelevant because Israel will not control any aspect of Palestinians’ lives (no doubt, Israel’s detractors will shift their focus to equally specious arguments about Israeli Arabs).

The Palestinians’ true intentions will immediately become clear to everyone, except perhaps the U.S. State Department when they say they are unsatisfied with recognition. They will insist on a larger state that fulfills their dream of freedom from the river to the sea (unlike many protesters, I know which river and sea they refer to). “Resistance” will continue to be justified until that goal is achieved.

The world’s response to Palestinian demands should be, as we said as kids, “tough noogies.”

Of course, that’s not what will happen. The United States, the United Nations and everyone else will not change their position one iota. Protests around the world will continue. They will back Palestinian demands for an enlarged state, and continue to refer to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as “illegal” and their land as “occupied.”

Just as the U.N. “peacekeeping” force has done nothing to prevent Hezbollah from violating international law, Israel alone will have to ensure that “Palestine” does not become “Hamastan,” and it will be pilloried for any acts of self-defense.

America will have taken us back to square minus one, and the Palestinians will have succeeded only in what they have done consistently: give up a larger potential share of Palestine by their intransigence and cede more land to Israel. But at least they’ll have a flag, and the world will have a 23rd Arab state and 57th Muslim state.

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America boasts copious environmental marvels, but the redwoods in California tend to top the list.

Lonely Planet, for instance, names them first in its “10 of the Best Natural Wonders in the USA” rankings, noting that they can reach a height of 380 feet—the tallest trees in the world and higher than the Statue of Liberty in New York City—and live for up to two millennia.

To showcase their splendor, Save the Redwoods League prints an annual wall calendar for supporters and donors, not unlike similarly sized glossy calendars sent free around the United States and the world. But unlike many others, it includes an annual Jewish tradition: Tu B’Shevat.

The holiday takes place on the 15th day of the Jewish month of Shevat, which this year falls on Feb. 13. Commonly called the “New Year of the Trees” (or Rosh Hashanah La’Ilanot in Hebrew), it marks the earliest time certain trees in Israel begin to emerge after winter. Some celebrate with a seder, when it is customary to nibble on the seven species mentioned in the Torah: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates.

Tu B’Shevat has been included in the “Glorious Redwoods Forest” calendar, along with a wide array of holidays, for years—at least since 2018, the organization’s centennial. In that year, the league also organized an event in Golden Gate Park to mark the day.

The iconic redwoods exist naturally only along the California coast, it says, and “have long inspired people from around the world and represent resiliency, the power of nature and simple awe. They are also powerful climate allies, sequestering more carbon per acre than any other forest type in the world.”

The league pointed out that “only 5% of the original old-growth trees survived the logging of the past 150 years and are now protected, thanks to the work of conservation organizations.”

Multiple fires in the Los Angeles area in January that have burned as much as 60,000 acres of land, in addition to blazes that have destroyed approximately 20,000 acres in northern Israel after Hezbollah started launching rockets and missiles from Lebanon 16 months ago, thrust forests into the news and on the priority lists of government replenishment programs.

The league noted that “it’s important for everyone to understand how important restoration and proactive forest management is in rebuilding resiliency.”

A handful of other calendars with environmental themes and animal habits had no mention of the “New Year of the Trees,” including the National Park Foundation, National Parks Conservation Association, Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, National Wildlife Federation, Defenders of Wildlife, Ocean Wildlife Calendar and the Sierra Club.

Founded by preservationist John Muir, the Sierra Club does offer an annual trip to Israel (in addition to one to see the redwoods), though it has been postponed due to the multifront war, said a spokesperson. Its most recent visit was in March 2023, six months before the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

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Eighty years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt lifted the immigration quotas for the only time during World War II and allowed almost 1,000 European refugees to enter the United States.

The 982 men, women and children—874 of them Jewish—were housed behind barbed wire in Fort Ontario in Oswego, N.Y., about 40 miles north of Syracuse. They remained there for 18 months until Roosevelt’s successor, Harry S. Truman, allowed them to become American citizens after first crossing into Canada and then returning to the United States.

Now legislation has been reintroduced in Congress to designate their temporary home as the Fort Ontario Holocaust Refugee Shelter National Historical Park.

“The Holocaust Refugee Shelter at Fort Ontario was a place of safety and hope during a dark moment in history, and it deserves recognition in the National Park System,” the bill’s chief Senate sponsor, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said in a press release announcing the bill, which passed the Senate in the last Congress but was never considered in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A museum telling the story about the refugees sits in the old Fort Ontario administration building. The site itself first housed a British fort during the French and Indian War and was the scene of battles during the American Revolution and the War of 1812.

“We must ensure that the historic importance of Fort Ontario is properly honored and preserved for future generations,” said the chief House sponsor, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.). “Once an important site in the battles of the French and Indian War and the War of 1812, as well as a refugee camp for Holocaust survivors, it is crucial that we secure the recognition this significant historic site truly deserves.”

The World War II refugees, who had fled their homes and were living in Italy, were selected from the 3,000 who applied. They sailed under constant fear of a German attack.

While some Oswego residents resented the newcomers, most felt differently. They handed candy to the refugees through the barbed wire. They organized a Boy Scout troop. Almost four dozen refugees were members of Oswego High School’s Class of 1945.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., a co-sponsor of the legislation, said the site currently is “standing proudly as a beacon of hope for hundreds of Jewish and European refugees forced to flee their homes to escape the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II.” 

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At the U.S. Department of Justice task force on campus antisemitism meeting last week, Trump administration official Leo Terrell announced that the government will launch comprehensive investigations into universities for their failure to address Jew-hatred over the past several years. This marks a watershed moment in the battle against the alarming rise of violence against Jewish students, Christian students and conservative voices on college campuses—and it is long overdue.

For too long, universities have operated with impunity, allowing harassment, threats of violence and outright violence to flourish under the guise of academic freedom or political activism. The past few years, in particular, have witnessed a disturbing normalization of antisemitism cloaked in anti-Israel sentiment. This has not only endangered Jewish students but also eroded the foundational values of respect and intellectual integrity that higher education is supposed to uphold.

The task force will focus on holding universities accountable for their complicity or negligence. This initiative is more than a policy shift; it is a moral imperative. The investigations will scrutinize administrative responses to pro-Hamas, antisemitic and violent incidents, including the handling of violent protests targeting students and organizations.

One of the most striking aspects of Terrell’s announcement was the new directive concerning international students on visas who have engaged in violent antisemitic activities. Until now, there has been a disturbing lack of consequences for such behavior with academic institutions often reluctant to discipline these students, fearing a backlash or accusations of discrimination. (Those students also often pay full tuition.) That era of leniency is coming to an end. Students who have participated in violent acts against individuals or institutions, without facing proper recourse from their universities, will now face deportation.

This policy shift sends a clear message: The United States will not tolerate hate-fueled violence under the pretense of academic discourse or political expression. It also underscores the principle that student visas are a privilege—not a right—and that this privilege comes with the responsibility to adhere to the laws and values of the host country.

Universities are supposed to be bastions of free thought, not sanctuaries for those who weaponize that freedom to intimidate or harm others. The line between legitimate criticism of government policies and outright antisemitism has been blurred too often, allowing dangerous ideologies to fester unchecked.

Furthermore, the lack of accountability has emboldened perpetrators and created an environment where Jewish, Christian, conservative and white students feel unsafe and unsupported. Most recently, since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct.7, 2023, reports have surfaced of Jewish students being harassed, physically attacked or subjected to antisemitic slurs during campus events.

Yet in many cases, university administrations have responded with tepid statements or have ignored the incidents altogether, prioritizing political correctness over justice and safety. This is just another example of how the academic elite have failed in their mission.

The investigations will also delve into the role of administrators and faculty who have used their positions to propagate antisemitic views. Academic freedom does not grant a license to indoctrinate students with hate. Professors and college administrators who abuse their platforms to encourage violence and contribute to a toxic campus culture that normalizes bigotry under the guise of scholarly critique will be brought to justice.

This initiative is not just about addressing past wrongs; it is about setting a precedent for the future. University administrators must understand that there are consequences for failing to protect their students and allowing hatred to thrive within their institutions. This is a crucial step toward restoring the integrity of American higher education and reaffirming the nation’s commitment to combating violence and threats of violence in all its forms so that our students can learn safely.

Moreover, this situation has broader implications for society at large. Universities are microcosms of the larger world, shaping the minds and values of future leaders. If antisemitic, anti-Christian, anti-conservative and even anti-white hate is tolerated in these environments, it inevitably will seep into the broader cultural and political landscape. By holding universities accountable, we are also taking a stand against the normalization of antisemitism and hate in society.

It is imperative that university administrations cooperate fully with these investigations and take proactive measures to address violent protests on their campuses.

The message is clear: Violent protests have no place in America, least of all in its institutions of higher learning. The time to act is now, and the consequences of inaction will be severe.

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At a time when antisemitism in the medical world and on college campuses is rising at an alarming rate, the Jewish world is making some advancements. The New York College of Podiatric Medicine—the first of its kind in the United States—is now officially part of Touro University, a private Jewish university in New York, and New York Medical College, the institutions announced.

“Educating approximately 8,000 students annually in the health sciences, Touro is fast becoming one of the largest health-care educational systems in the United States,” said Alan Kadish, president of Touro University in an official press release issued last week. “Adding podiatric medicine to our existing network of medical and health-science schools and programs will serve to augment and strengthen our academic offerings.”

Touro has been working with the college for a few years before the acquisition and has already seen a “significant number of students enter podiatry,” he told JNS.

Touro, which serves 19,000 students total, was founded in 1970 “to focus on higher education for the Jewish community and humanity,” according to the university website, and has grown into one of the largest Jewish universities in the country. As the only Jewish health science institute in the country, according to Kadish, its mission is to “uphold the Jewish heritage, and more broadly to educate and serve ‘in keeping with the historic Jewish commitment to intellectual inquiry, the transmission of knowledge, social justice and service to society.’”

“Every school that Touro operates or starts is Sabbath-observant and has kosher food available,” Kadish told JNS. “It makes a more comfortable environment for Jewish students at any level of observance.”

According to the American Podiatric Medical Students’ Association, NYCPM has “graduated more than 25% of all active podiatrists in the nation.” Future students will now receive an education that upholds Jewish values, which Kadish says is just one of the reasons that people attend the school.

“Students come here for those values, whether they view them as Jewish values or humanistic values,” he told JNS.

An environment that teaches by ‘osmosis’

A recent study published in the Journal of Religion and Health concluded that more than 75% of Jewish medical professionals and students say they have been exposed to antisemitism. It also showed that since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, medical publications and social-media posts by medical professionals about Jew-hatred have increased by five times while posts actively promoting antisemitism by medical professionals have increased by some 400%.

At the same time, antisemitism on college campuses has skyrocketed, with one report by StopAntisemitism seeing a 3,000% rise in college antisemitism since Oct. 7.

Touro is helping to confront this through numerous means, Kadish said. He told JNS that the school is “very careful” about antisemitism and “that Jewish students feel protected.”

Alan Kadish
Alan Kadish, president of Touro College. Credit: Courtesy.

While many institutions of higher learning are only taking “baby steps” to combat antisemitism, said Kadish—acts that he noted are “unclear” in how they will work out in the long term—Touro is leaning on its laurels.

“We are engaged in creating our own antisemitism education program,” he told JNS. “We’re going to make it part of the orientation for all of our students, Jewish and non.” The program is set to be rolled out within the next few months.

The university is also working hard to make sure that all students understand aspects of Jewish life, whether it’s by taking Judaic studies classes or just being in a Jewish environment, absorbing the culture through “osmosis,” Kadish said.

“By and large, they develop a positive view of Judaism based on the environment they’re in,” he told JNS.

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U.S. President Donald Trump might be surprised to learn that long before he proposed moving Arabs from Gaza to Jordan, Yitzhak Rabin recommended the exact same thing.

It happened in 1973. Rabin, a former chief of staff of the Israeli army, was serving as Israel’s ambassador in Washington. In an interview with the Israeli daily Ma’ariv, on Feb. 16, Rabin discussed the question of what should be done about the large number of Palestinian Arab refugees residing in the Gaza Strip. Much of Gaza’s population consisted of Arabs who had settled there during the 1948 War of Independence and their descendants.

Here’s what Rabin said: “The problem of the refugees of the Gaza Strip should not be solved in Gaza or el-Arish [in the Sinai] but mainly in the East Bank”—that is, Jordan. 

Rabin continued: “I want to create conditions such that during the next 10 or 20 years, there will be a natural movement of population to the East Bank. We can achieve that, in my opinion, with [King] Hussein and not with Yasser Arafat” (Page 17).

As far as I know, he never backtracked on that comment.

Rabin was not a “racist,” “fascist,” advocate of “ethnic cleansing” or any of the other harsh names now being hurled at Trump. The future prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize laureate was simply taking a long, hard look at a difficult problem and proposing what he considered to be a practical solution.

The heart of the problem facing Rabin was that when Egypt illegally occupied Gaza from 1948 to 1967, it refused to absorb the refugees into the Egyptian population. The Egyptian government kept the Gazans impoverished, languishing in shanty towns and refugee camps administered by the United Nations. What’s more, Egypt sponsored Gaza-based terrorist groups, known as fedayeen, to attack Israel. 

Under Egypt’s rule, the United Nations set up schools in Gaza run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East—the same UNRWA we’ve been hearing so much about lately. In UNRWA schools, young Gazans were educated to hate Jews and Israel, and glorify Arab terrorism.

Following the 1967 war, Israel found itself saddled with all these hate-filled Gazans. So unless something was done to change the situation, Israel would continue to face constant terrorist attacks from Gaza.

And that’s exactly what happened. Nobody listened to Rabin’s advice to move the Gazans to Jordan. The Gazans stayed in Gaza, launched constant attacks on Israel and eventually voted Hamas into power in 2007. The horrors of Oct. 7, 2023, followed.

It made perfect sense for Rabin to think of Jordan as the destination for the Gazans. After all, Palestinian Arabs who settled in Gaza and those who settled in Jordan are indistinguishable. They have the same history, culture, language and religion.

The problem, though, is that Jordan’s King Hussein had lost patience with them. For years, Hussein let the PLO set up its bases on Jordanian territory. Hussein was fine with the PLO attacking Israel. But some of PLO chief Arafat’s terrorists began talking about how Jordan really was Palestine, too. Hussein became worried they would try to overthrow him.

And the PLO gangs were causing Jordan problems in the international arena by repeatedly hijacking planes, forcing them to land in Jordan and then holding the passengers hostage while demanding to trade them for imprisoned terrorists. Some things never change, it seems.

How did King Hussein solve the problem? He kicked them out. In the autumn of 1970, the King of Jordan forcibly relocated more than 2,000 PLO terrorists, including their entire leadership, to Syria. From there, they continued into Lebanon, where they soon plunged that country into years of chaos, civil war and bloodshed. It was named Black September.

So the current king, Hussein’s son Abdullah, may not be too keen on welcoming in Gazans. Or, on the other hand, he might decide to exclude terrorists while welcoming ordinary Gazans—in the same manner that Jordan took in so many refugees from the Syrian civil war. 

How this will all play out remains to be seen. The public debate has just begun. But in the meantime, let’s acknowledge that the essence of the Trump plan is not a Republican or Likud proposal. It was advocated by the most famous leader of the left-wing Israeli Labor Party more than half a century ago.

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U.S. President Donald Trump hosted Jordanian King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday in an attempt to persuade regional leaders to accept his plan to relocate Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip.

Abdullah announced a proposal for Jordan to accept 2,000 children in Gaza grappling with cancer and other severe illnesses for treatment in the kingdom but did not express agreement with Trump’s plan for the United States to “own” the enclave and relocate its population to other countries.

Jordan and the United Arab Emirates are among the Arab countries that have previously accepted medical evacuees from Gaza for treatment.

The king said he and other Arab leaders would meet in Saudi Arabia soon to discuss an Egyptian counter-proposal to the Trump resettlement and redevelopment idea.

“We will be in Saudi Arabia to discuss how we can work with the president and with the United States,” Abdullah said. “Let’s wait until the Egyptians can come and present it to the president and not get ahead of ourselves.”

The meeting is Trump’s first with an Arab leader since he resumed office for a second term.

“He’s a great man,” Trump said of Abdullah, who was accompanied by his adult son, Crown Prince Hussein, when the two entered the White House complex earlier on Tuesday.

Trump said he and Abdullah would have a longer, private discussion about the plan to “own” and rebuild Gaza, which according to the U.S. president would include the resettlement of some 2 million Palestinians living in the coastal enclave to Egypt, Jordan or other regional countries.

“I believe we’ll have a parcel of land in Jordan,” Trump said. “I believe we’ll have a parcel of land in Egypt. We may have someplace else, but I think when we finish our talks, we’ll have a place where they’re going to live very happily and very safely.”

‘I think we’re above that’

Hosting large numbers of Palestinian refugees would not be unprecedented for Jordan though is potentially explosive politically.

Jordanians of Palestinian descent are thought to make up more than half of the population of Jordan, and the country hosts 2.4 million people registered as refugees with the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, or UNRWA. Most, but not all, of those registered refugees have Jordanian citizenship. Jordan does not officially track Palestinian origin in its census data. The country also hosts hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees.

Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar have previously written to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that they reject any plan to deport Palestinians from Gaza.

Trump said on Monday that he might be willing to withhold U.S. foreign aid from countries if they don’t agree to his plan, though ruled that option out on Tuesday in Jordan’s case.

“I don’t have to threaten that,” Trump said. “I think we’re above that.”

Details of Trump’s relocation and redevelopment plan remain sketchy, and Trump administration officials have given contradictory answers about whether the displacement would be temporary or permanent. 

In an interview with Fox News released on Monday, Trump said displacement would be “permanent” because the reconstruction of Gaza would take “years.”

“I’m talking about building a permanent place for them because if they have to return now, it will be years before you could ever—it’s not habitable,” Trump said. “It will be years before it could happen.”

On Tuesday, however, the president seemed to suggest that Palestinians could eventually return to a rebuilt Gaza.

“A lot of those people that you're talking about are going to end up maybe living there and maybe working there, but it'll be in a different form,” he said.

Trump administration officials have also been vague about what would happen to Palestinians who refuse to leave Gaza.

‘I think its going to be great’

One reporter asked the president if what he was describing was “ethnic cleansing.”

“We’re moving them to a beautiful location where they have new homes, where they can live safely, where they have doctors and medical and all of those things,” Trump said. “I think it’s going to be great.”

Trump took shouted questions from reporters as Abdullah arrived at the White House complex, but answered only one about whether he intended to stick to a deadline he announced on Monday that Hamas had until noon on Saturday to release all its remaining hostages or he would “let hell break out.”

“Yes,” Trump said. He also appeared to answer a question about whether Hamas would listen to the deadline, but his response was inaudible.

In the Oval Office, Trump said he didn’t expect Hamas to be able to meet the Saturday deadline.

“I think they want to play tough guy, but we’ll see how tough they are,” he said.

Other topics of concern Trump and Abdullah might discuss include the potential extradition or expulsion of the convicted terrorist Ahlam Tamimi. 

Tamimi is under criminal indictment in the United States for her role in orchestrating the Sbarro Pizza bombing in Jerusalem in August 2001 that killed 16 people, including U.S. citizens. Tamimi was convicted in Israeli courts but released to Jordan in the 2011 prisoner exchange with Hamas that freed Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit. Jordan has refused to extradite her, despite a U.S.-Jordanian extradition treaty signed in 1995.

The speaker of Jordan’s parliament denied Israeli reports this month that Jordan was considering expelling or extraditing Tamimi.

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How serious is the Gaza proposal put forth by U.S. President Donald Trump? This question seems to be on everyone’s mind after the release over the weekend of three male hostages who were as emaciated as Holocaust survivors.

The president issued a stern warning to Hamas, giving an ultimatum of the release of the rest of the hostages from the Gaza Strip by noon on Saturday, Feb. 15 ... or “all hell is going to break out.”

On this episode of “The Quad,” we’ll be discussing all of Israel’s options and weighing in on what may be coming next.

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https://youtu.be/hLqujJmjDP0
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(Feb. 11, 2025 / JNS) New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is an exemplary member of the American Jewish community. Over the years, he has donated a great deal of money to Jewish causes, locally in his hometown of Boston and in the State of Israel, even building a football stadium in Jerusalem. The National Football League magnate’s philanthropy testifies to his own strong sense of Jewish peoplehood, in addition to a decent concern for others less fortunate than himself, as shown by his family’s support of a variety of educational and health-care causes.

Among the efforts he has supported is the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), which he founded with money he pledged as a result of his winning the Genesis Prize in 2019. The idea behind the foundation was to fight the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel, as well as other efforts to battle Jew-hatred. The campaign itself was marked by a bright blue square with a moniker called “The Blue Box Campaign” that urges standing up to hate.

But for all of his various efforts on behalf of that important cause, probably none gained as much attention as the FCAS advertisement that appeared during the Super Bowl this past Sunday. It featured two mega-celebrities—rapper and actor Snoop Dogg, and NFL great Tom Brady, who won seven Super Bowls, including six for Kraft’s Patriots. In it, they spout various reasons why people hate each other before concluding that “things are so bad that we have to do a commercial about it,” before the two walk off together in a gesture of amity.

https://youtu.be/AOxm8LmH7Y4

A missed opportunity

That’s a colossal mistake, as well as a missed opportunity that Kraft and anyone else who cares about the issue should deeply regret.

While no one should doubt the good intentions of Kraft, the 30-second blurb sums up everything that is wrong with the mindset and the efforts of liberal American Jewish efforts to deal with the problem.

Indeed, if that’s the best that the FCAS can manage, then Kraft would be well advised to close it up and transfer the money he’s currently wasting on it to those interested in fighting antisemitism in a way that will make a difference.

What’s wrong with the ad?

Part of the problem was the employment of Snoop Dogg. While he may be famous and a ubiquitous figure in pop culture and ads for all sorts of products, he’s also a well-known antisemite. As the Americans for Peace and Tolerance group noted in its criticism of the ad, he is an avowed supporter of the antisemitic Nation of Islam group and its 91-year-old leader, Louis Farrakhan, who has done more than anyone to spread Jew-hatred among American blacks and Muslims. Using him in a spot sponsored by a group that cares about antisemitism wasn’t mere negligence but a betrayal of the values Kraft has always exemplified.

There was more that was wrong about it other than Snoop Dogg.

The underlying premise was a decision to try to universalize the problem rather than one that would specifically focus on the issue of antisemitism. That’s based on an assumption that talking about antisemitism and Jews is a turnoff to a broad audience like the one that tunes into the Super Bowl. The NFL championship game is the most watched television program every year—an event that has assumed the status of a secular holiday. This year's show reportedly attracted an average audience of 126 million viewers throughout the contest with a peak of 135.7 million watching, with the halftime show featuring rapper Kendrick Lamar being a major draw.

The universalizing impulse

With that in mind, the FCAS produced an ad that it supposed would appeal to the widest possible audience and therefore went all-in on universalizing the problem.

This is the same premise of most Holocaust education programs that have been employed in the United States in the past few decades. They are rooted in the belief that the only way anyone can be deterred from hating Jews is to depict the Holocaust and antisemitism as essentially no different than any other form of prejudice. In this way, as the FCAS ad seemed to be telling us, Jew-hatred is no different from disliking any group or people other than the majority. The solution, then, is for everyone to play nicely with each other the way Snoop and Brady—a black celebrity and a white one—appear willing to do.

But if history, as well as the present-day surge in Jew-hatred teaches, it is that antisemitism is not like other varieties of prejudice, be they major or minor. It is a specific virus of hate that targets Jews not merely as a function of bad behavior or a lack of awareness of our common humanity, but as a means of acquiring and holding onto political power.

To antisemites of every variety—be they left-wing, right-wing, Islamists, and yes, blacks—Jews aren’t merely the “other.” They are in the crosshairs to be despised and subjected to singular prejudice and discrimination, no matter their age, background, what they do or where they reside. They are, instead, an almost superhuman force for evil that must be eradicated. They alone are to be denied rights that even other discriminated minorities are given. And in so doing, various groups can wield power and pretend to be forces for good.

Why antisemitism spreads

That is why antisemitism is such a contagious and adaptable virus. It is, as scholar Ruth Wisse has noted, the most successful ideology of modern times since it has attached itself to a variety of movements, including fascism, communism, socialism, Islamists, and in our own day in contemporary America, woke ideologues who pretend to be “anti-racists.” The latter claims to be defending minorities against Jews who are “white” oppressors, as part of a struggle against racism that can never end. And, just as was true of the German Nazis and their collaborators, anything can be justified if it constitutes “resistance” to the Jews or the Jewish state, even the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, committed by the Hamas terrorist group and other Palestinian Arabs.

That is why rather than provoking sympathy for the Jewish state and Jews around the world, the Oct. 7 spree of mass murder, torture, rape and kidnapping in southern communities in Israel inspired an unprecedented surge in antisemitism.

In the face of such ideological fanaticism, merely telling people to be nice—as that Super Bowl ad did—does nothing. Such universalization trivializes the Holocaust. The same can be said for efforts that treat the widespread rationalization and even defense of antisemitic acts of intimidation and violence on American college campuses.

The collapse of the black-Jewish alliance

What makes this particularly disappointing is that last year’s FCAS Super Bowl ad was not quite so wrongheaded. Their 2024 featured Clarence B. Jones, a former speechwriter for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking against generic hate. The images that appeared on the screen while he spoke were specific in that they showed swastika graffiti on Jewish institutions and signs that spoke of the need to fight antisemitism. Though it bowed to liberal orthodoxy by also including an image that smoke of the largely mythical threat of prejudice against Muslims, it also left no doubt of the particular problem that, only a few months after Oct. 7, as Jew-hatred spread on campuses and in the streets of major U.S. cities, the country was facing.

Interestingly, since then Jones has broken with Kraft and the FCAS over what he depicts as insufferable Jewish “demands for loyalty.” Sadly, like many in the African-American community, he seems to think that a request to support the struggle of the Jewish people against the genocidal Islamists of Hamas is a bridge too far. In a USA TODAY op-ed in which Jones vented his resentment against his former allies, he blamed the refusal of Israelis and their American Jewish supporters for the collapse of the alliance between blacks and Jews that flowered during Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s time. In doing so, he not only embraces classic tropes of antisemitism like dual loyalty but also seems to think that Hamas’s efforts to accomplish the mass murder of Jews and destroy the one Jewish state on the planet is the sort of thing that friends should be willing to agree to disagree over rather than a patently evil cause.

As depressing as it is for a civil-rights-era veteran to write such things, it’s equally true that he—and those who might agree with him—is an ally not worth having.

But we’ve also seen why the timid universalizers of the FACs are dead wrong about the American people.

Libeling the American people

Contrary to the stereotypes spread by the political left, the American people as a whole are not antisemitic. Nor are they irredeemably racist against blacks, Hispanics or other minorities. And, as the election results last November showed, they don’t much appreciate the lectures of sermonizing liberals who talk down to them, and think that their patriotism and most cherished values and beliefs are racist or expressions of prejudice.

The universalizing of the battle against antisemitism plays right into the lies of the most prevalent form of American bigotry against Jews.

It is true that the last 16 months of brazen antisemitism and the mainstreaming of efforts to rationalize and even justify it in the liberal corporate media have presented new and unique challenges for Jews.

But the response of most Americans, which is to say that those who live outside the woke leftist bubble in which much of the press and other cultural elites live, is support for Israel and anger at students and other activists who chant for the genocide of Jews (“from the river to the sea”) and terrorism against them (“globalize the intifada”). President Donald Trump may only have the support of the approximate half of the electorate that voted him into office. But he speaks for the vast majority of the country that supports Israel and believes that foreigners who use their student visas to engage in anti-Israel (and anti-American) protests, encampments and often violent-like behavior should be deported.

Jews and the groups that purport to speak for them as well as to lead the fight against antisemitism like Kraft’s FCAS ought not to buy into the idea that America is full of hate. In this way, the Super Bowl ad was just another version of those ubiquitous lawn signs that say “Hate Has No Home Here,” as if to imply that those who don’t engage in such liberal virtue signaling, are haters. Trump, whose executive orders against antisemitism and full-throated support of Israel aren’t couched in amorphous platitudes like that of the 2025 Super Bowl ad, has had no trouble in identifying the sources of the current surge in antisemitism. Like him, they ought to be exposing the Jew-haters, and countering lies about Israel and the Jewish people that are integral to the left’s toxic myths of critical race theory, intersectionality and the woke catechism of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) that are the root of the problem.

If they did, they might find that most Americans don’t need to be shamed into uniting against antisemitism but would, instead, readily support an unapologetic campaign to back Israel and join the fight to roll back the woke tide fueling much of contemporary American antisemitism.

This Super Bowl ad will soon be forgotten. But the decision to run something like it demonstrates just how clueless even well-meaning establishment figures like Kraft are when it comes to the world’s oldest form of prejudice. It’s a reminder that rather than relying on legacy groups and celebrity-driven foundations like that of Kraft, it is long past time to get rid of such organizations and pour Jewish philanthropic dollars into the hands of those able to think clearly about the problem. Jews need to stop their reflexive desire to universalize their tribulations, and even more, to stop blaming all of the American people for the transgressions of leftist elites.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.

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  • Words count:
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The decree by the Palestinian Authority on Monday that it has restructured its terrorist payment program has been widely misrepresented as signaling the end of its pay-for-slay program, long-time observers told JNS, noting that reports of pay-for-slay’s demise are greatly exaggerated.

The announcement, published on the P.A.’s English-language WAFA news site, said the P.A. was transferring its payment allocation system from a ministry to an "independent" foundation.

It didn’t mention ending pay for slay, or what it calls its “Martyrs’ Fund,” in which Arabs, many of whom sit in Israeli prisons, are rewarded stipends for having carried out attacks against Jews.

Itamar Marcus, founder and director of watchdog group Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), told JNS of a telling exchange between Fatah, the ruling party of the P.A., and Hamas.

Hamas, criticizing the move, said that Fatah, the ruling party of the P.A., had abandoned the “martyrs,” i.e. prisoners.

“Sons of the Homeland,” a Telegram channel used by Fatah's Bethlehem branch took umbrage at Hamas for publishing a “truncated version of the news”—that is, mispresenting the report to suggest that the P.A. was, in fact, canceling payments to terrorists.

Marcus quoted the Fatah-aligned channel: “The full news states that the salaries of the martyrs and printers have not and will not be affected, as all families that previously benefited from the law, regulations and systems will continue to be subject to the same standards.”

“Translation: the P.A. continues to fund and reward terrorism,” Marcus said.

‘Three-card Mahmoud’

Lt. Col. (res.) Maurice Hirsch, director of the Initiative for Palestinian Authority Accountability and Reform in the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs, told JNS that the P.A. is merely playing “a shell game, three-card monte, or if you will, three-card Mahmoud.”

The P.A. has tried pulling the wool over Western eyes before, Hirsch said. In 2014, when the pay-for-slay program first made news and the P.A. felt that its funding was threatened, it declared that it was closing the Ministry of Prisons and no longer paying terrorist salaries.

“They announced it with great fanfare,” recalled Marcus. “What we saw internally was that they were opening in its place a PLO Commission of Prisoners. The Minister of Prisoners was going to be the Commissioner of Prisoners, and all the staff, all the buildings and the money were going to be the same but it wouldn’t be from the P.A.

“We're all convinced something similar is happening now,” Marcus added, noting that Abbas is politically weak and Hamas is very popular because of its mass slaughter of Israelis. Abbas wouldn’t risk appearing to “hurt” the prisoners, he said. (Prisoner payments are extremely popular among the Arab public in P.A.-controlled areas with 91% supporting them, according to a 2017 poll.)

‘A wave of lawsuits’

Driving the timing of the P.A.’s announcement are a number of factors, the first of which is fear of liability.

It’s for this reason that the payment system is being transferred from a P.A. ministry to the so-called Palestinian National Economic Empowerment Foundation, described in the WAFA statement as an “independent legal personality.” Notably, it will be managed by a “board of trustees appointed by the president [Abbas].”

“They don't want to be exposed to lawsuits in the States, and they would love to get the money that Israel is deducting in Israel,” Marcus said, referring to a 2018 Knesset law that ordered tax revenue Israel collects from the P.A. withheld to an amount equal to that which the P.A. pays to terrorists.

Hirsch agreed that the P.A.’s primary motive is to avoid liability, noting that the P.A. is reportedly asking behind closed doors for the U.S. to repeal the Taylor Force Act, which cuts financial aid to the P.A. until it ends payments to terrorists and their families.

Also on the liability front, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal in the coming months over whether the P.A. and Palestinian Liberation Organization can be sued in U.S. courts, Hirsch said.

In 2015, plaintiffs in one of the cases, which the court will hear jointly with another, were awarded $218.5 million, automatically trebled to more than $650 million under America’s Anti-Terrorism Act. (The sum amounted to a significant portion of the P.A.’s annual budget at the time—$4.2 billion.)

That decision was overturned by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. But the U.S. Congress has since changed the law. “They enacted the Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act of 2018. which said that if you are a country or a body that receives U.S aid, you cannot deny jurisdiction in the courts,” Hirsch said.

In the last two weeks, a slew of amicus briefs were filed with the Supreme Court, Hirsch noted, “including a position from the Department of Justice supporting the law, saying that it is clearly constitutional and that the court should override the lower court's decision.”

There have also been recent laws in Israel smoothing the way for suing terror sponsors, including one that went into effect in the summer of 2024 establishing compensation of 10 million shekels ($2.8 million) for someone murdered by terrorists and 5 million shekels ($1.4 million) for a person who suffered a disability due to terror.

“There has been a wave of lawsuits against the P.A. under that law,” Hirsch said.

As recently as Sunday, the Jerusalem District Court put a freeze on $760 million in P.A. funds following a lawsuit filed by hundreds of victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

The P.A. understands that the strategy of bankrupting terrorism is working, Hirsh said.

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