Category: Palestine

Coleman Hughes interviews Ben Shapiro

September 8, 2025 • 9:45 am

This is a new video interview from the “Conversations with Coleman” series at the Free Press, but I found it posted just this morning on YouTube. Before you go running to the hills when you hear and see “Ben Shapiro”, let me remind you of the salubrious effect of listening to those whose views differ from yours.

Here are the notes from The Free Press, with the piece titled “Ben Shapiro on the most dangerous force in America“.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro sees the civilizational battle of the modern era as one between the builders and the destroyers—or as he writes it in his new book, between the “lions” and the “scavengers.” [JAC: you can find the book here on Amazon].

When I sat down with Ben this week, he explained the way he sees this dynamic play out in American society—across both political parties—as “scavengers,” who feed on grievance, identity politics, and moral relativism, cut down the progress of “lions,” who choose responsibility, courage, and a commitment to truth, even when it’s unpopular.

Over the past two years, Ben has seen the scavengers ascendant, as America and Europe have exploded in violent protest against their own institutions, blaming their ills on the free markets and constitutional republicanism, or on the “military-industrial complex” and “global Jewry.”

I spoke with Ben about the way out of the darkness—which he thinks can best be found in religious values: family obligation and procreation, moral order, and meaning beyond the self.

Our conversation ranged across birth rates, wokeness, and the Donald Trump presidency, with moments of both agreement and debate. I came away with a clearer understanding of his worldview—one that frames the future of Western civilization as a high-stakes struggle, more fraught than ever.

Click to listen; it’s a bit more thanb an hour long, and I did listen to it. I have a few notes below the video. (Note: there are a few short ads.)

Shapiro’s premise, which isn’t controversial, is that those who protest Israel’s actions and favor Palestine (or Hamas) really want to see the demise of Western civilization.  This all, avers Shapiro stems from adopting the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, which leads to the idea that dispelling that dichotomy means “ripping down the whole system.”  The irony is that many of those who are scavengers, calling for the death of Western values, also benefit from the fruits of those values (e.g., the Oxford students whom Shapiro debated—the incident that inspired the book).  He adds that those “fruits”—the results of technological and scientific innovation, as well as of capitalism—were largely spread by Western colonialism, a contention that will drive “progressives” wild (cf. Bruce Gilley).

I do disagree with both Shapiro’s religiosity and his claim that alternative family structures are somewhat immoral (both of which, he says, are things that “scavengers” oppose, along with the “male/female binary”), and he does push hard on his view that the societal norm, endorsed by the government, should be that couples are best made of one heterosexual male and one heterosexual female, who have a sort of cultural duty, as well as a proper “life aspiration,” to have several children. (Apparently Shapiro is deeply worried by the low frequency of “replacement level” births in the West.

I’ve always wondered how Shapiro, who prides himself on his rationality, had bought so heavily into superstition—in the form of orthodox Judaism. It’s not just that religions like Judaism uphold the traditional values that that Shapiro sees as the grounding of Western civilization, but that Shapiro seems to believe the myths and superstitions of the Old Testament itself.

Moving on, at 43:45 Hughes says Shapiro describes himself as a “sometimes Trumper” rather than a “never Trumper”, and Hughes asks whether Trump has done or could do anything that would make Shapiro reject him completely. Shapiro responds that he’s been very critical of Trump’s economic policy (tariffs) and foreign policy, as well as of the use of executive power willy-nilly to promote “national security.” Shapiro abhors the expansion of executive power at the expense of Congress, something he says has been going on for a while, including under Biden and Obama.

When asked what he sees as Trump’s biggest achievements, Shapiro replies that the three big ones are the shutting down of the southern border, the dismantling of DEI (which, of course, is not near being dismantled), and the striking of Iranian nuclear facilities in conjunction with Israel.

They then discuss peak wokeness, and Shapiro argues that “Black Lives Matter” as well as “trans-issue” wokeness are gone, but we are heading into higher “economic wokeness”, which calls for violence against those, like the murdered United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who are seen as parasitizing society. This takes him back to the “tear down society” mindset of many protestors.

At about 53:30, they proceed to disagree on the value of the Second Amendment (Shapiro is pro, Hughes con, as he considers that Amendment as originally construed in the Constitution is largely superfluous).  Shapiro considers the Amendment moot because there are so many guns already in existence, and it’s impossible to get rid of them. I disagree: one can at least try to restrict and buy back guns from the public, even if it doesn’t work perfectly. Remember, far more deaths that result from privately-owned guns are of innocent people than of criminals shot in self defense.  This is from a study conducted by the Violence Policy Center:

The study finds that in 2019 there were only 316 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm reported to the SHR. That year, there were 9,610 criminal firearm homicides reported to the SHR. Using these numbers, in 2019, for every justifiable homicide in the United States involving a gun, guns were used in 30 criminal homicides. For the five-year period 2015 to 2019, 49,104 Americans died in criminal gun homicides, while guns were used in only 1,453 justifiable homicides: a ratio of 34 to one. Neither ratio takes into account the tens of thousands of lives lost each year in firearm suicides and unintentional gun deaths. The study presents Bureau of Justice Statistics data that reveal that only a tiny fraction of the intended victims of violent crime (1.7 percent) or property crime (0.3 percent) employ guns for self-defense – and of these incidents, it’s not known whether the gun was even used successfully in stopping the crime.

They finish up with Shapiro describing what he sees as the biggest misconceptions about him harbored by the public. They include lumping Shapiro together with other conservatives (e.g., Tucker Carlson), a view which I don’t like either as it gives people an excuse not to pay attention to any message that comes from the Right.

Overall, it’s a decent conversation (Hughes is an excellent interviewer), though I thought Shapiro went on a bit too long about the duty to have heterosexual families and children, a view with which I disagree. And I still don’t understand his strict adherence to Orthodox Judaism, which is a form of superstition. I wish Hughes had asked him that question, but of course it would have made Shapiro uber-defensive.  And, in general, I agree with Shapiro on what he see’s as Trump’s biggest mistakes and three biggest achievements, though of course I did not and would not ever vote for Trump.  And I still think we should strive to eliminate all private ownership of guns.  Finally, there wasn’t enough discussion about the connection between war protests and the desire to destroy Western civilization. After all, that was supposed to be the “most dangerous force in America,” and yet I don’t perceive it as so dangerous right now. I would, however, like more people to be aware of the connection.

U.S. denies visa to Palestine President Mahmoud Abbas (and other Palestinians) ahead of UN meeting

August 31, 2025 • 11:00 am

This is from CNN, so you know it pained them to publish a piece like this (click to read):

Mahmoud Abbas, 90, was elected President of Palestine in 2005 for a four-year term, but somehow has hung on for 16 more years, having been voted an indefinite Presidency by the PLO (Hamas doesn’t recognize him as a legitimate President). He’s also chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and chairman of the Fatah party. Although the PLO claims to have renounced terrorism, it still promotes it (viz., the Second Intifada), and in 1987 was designated a terrorist organization by the United States. Fatah is a militant wing of the PLO.  The Palestinian Authority (PA), run by Fatah, is also notorious for administering the so-called “Martyr’s Fund“—better known as the “Pay for Slay” program—which gives money to those Palestinians and their families who perpetrate against of violence against Israelis. (I’m always surprised that so few Americans seem to know much about this odious fund.)  The PLO now disburses money to these “martyrs” (you don’t have to die to get the dosh; you just have to try to kill Jews), so Abbas is responsible for yet another form of terrorism.

All this has fed into my judgement—and in fact the judgement of anybody who’s rational—that Abbas, and the PLO or PA in their present forms—are not qualified to run the Palestinian government in a “two state solution.” (And remember that Hamas would never allow this to happen, as Hamas hates Fatah and the PLO.) No, if there is to ever be a two-state solution, the Palestinian side cannot be run by anyone with a history of sponsoring terrorism.  And Palestinian leaders like that are hard to find.

Given the history of Abbas, the PLO, and the PA as sponsors of state terrorism, it’s no surprise to me that, as the headline above declares, Abbas and others were denied visas to enter the U.S. for a UN General Assembly meeting. This meeting is special because of all the misguided countries, like France and the U.K., who promised to use the occasion to recognize a Palestinian state. (Where and who runs it haven’t been specified!). An excerpt:

The United States is denying a visa to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas for next month’s UN General Assembly – a significant and controversial move ahead of the global summit where multiple countries are expected to recognize a Palestinian state.

The State Department announced Friday it is “denying and revoking visas” from members of the Palestinian Authority (PA) & Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

A State Department official confirmed that “Abbas is affected by this action along with approximately 80 other PA officials.”

According to Friday’s announcement, the Palestinian Authority’s Mission to the UN “will receive waivers per the UN Headquarters Agreement.”

However, refusing Abbas a visa would appear to violate that agreement as the United Nations recognizes Palestine as a non-member observer state.

The policy will also severely limit the presence of Palestinian officials at the annual global summit as the war in Gaza continues and a number of key allies prepare to recognize a Palestinian state.

In a statement Friday, the Palestinian presidency expressed “deep regret and astonishment at the US State Department’s decision not to grant visas to the Palestinian delegation participating in the UN General Assembly meetings next September.” The statement called on the US to “reconsider and reverse its decision.”

While some European countries have claimed the visa denials as “unjust”, and indeed, it’s not the norm, other Palestinian representatives have not had their visas revoked and so can speak for the two Palestines (Gaza and the West Bank) during the meeting. More:

In the statement announcing the move, the State Department accused the PA and the PLO of taking steps that “materially contributed to Hamas’s refusal to release its hostages, and to the breakdown of the Gaza ceasefire talks.”

“Before we take them seriously as partners in peace, the PA and PLO must completely reject terrorism and stop counterproductively pursuing the unilateral recognition of a hypothetical state,” State Department deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott said on X.

Now given the behavior of European states in recognizing Palestine, which constitutes a reward to Hamas, I can’t say I’m deeply opposed to this action, which is to be sure a break from tradition. At any rate, there will be no two-state solution in the near future, simply because Israel (and, in the Security Council, the U.S.), won’t even consider recognizing two states.  Who would run such a Palestinian “state”? Where would they find a leader who doesn’t promote violence towards Israel, a violence that such a solution is supposed to end? Ensuring that Palestinians renounce terrorism towards Israel is a sine qua non for this solution, and it’s nowhere on the horizon.

Triggernometry grills Benjamin Netanyahu

August 24, 2025 • 10:00 am

Here’s a 43-minute interview of Benjamin Netanyahu by the Triggernometry dudes: Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster.  It’s a short one: 43 minutes with about 4 minutes of commercials, and the schedule, given on the YouTube site, is at the bottom along with my comments.

Click on the screenshot below and then hit the “play” button.

 

 

Here’s the contents by introduction time (indented), and my comments (flush left):

00:00 Introduction

02:13 Benjamin Netanyahu’s Experience Of October 7th

06:05 What Do We Now Know That We Didn’t On October 7th?

08:11 How Did Your Intelligence Services Not See This Coming?

Netanyahu says this question will be answered by an upcoming investigation. There’s also another “lesson” he learned from October 7: that Israel “ultimately have to take on Iran itself”. I’m very curious about what the investigation will conclude.

12:57 Was Israel Allowing Qatar To Give Money To Hamas?

Netanyahu claims that the money was given by Israel to Gazans themselves, in order to “protect the population and feed and nurture them”, but I’m a bit dubious about this. How could they not know that the money would go mostly to Hamas, not ordinary Gazans? And with that dosh from Israel, Hamas built its huge network of terror tunnels.  In other words, Israel was financing terrorism and must have known it.  Here we have another conundrum, for Hamas swore in its first charter (1988) to not only wipe out Israel but kill all Jews.  Are you telling me that Netanyahu didn’t think about this?  His own country helped buttress Hamas terrorism in Gaza and now, he says, Israel will keep fighting until Hamas is eliminated.

16:14 Keir Starmer’s Comments And The UK Recognising Palestine As A State

Here Netanyahu says, correctly, that the recognition of Palestine as a state by European countries only encourages Hamas to continue their resistance. And that rewards Hamas with a de facto gift of a state whose rulers have already said they will to repeat the butchery of October 7 again and again.  As he says, echoing Douglas Murray “[Those European states] recognize Israel’s right to defend itself as long as Israel doesn’t exercise that right.”  He adds that those countries are weak, bowing to “radical minority protestors”.

19:36 Will Israel Be Trapped In A ‘Forever War’ Through Its Current Actions?

Here Kisen and Foster ask the obvious question: what  about the amount of casualties and suffering of Palestinians?  Further, they ask, “If Israel has achieved nearly all of its aims, won’t its actions continue to radicalize the Gazan population?”

Netanyahu responds again with an assertion that doesn’t quite ring true: he says that Gazans see hope and are many are telling Israel “don’t let up” until they eliminate Hamas. This seems like an exaggeration.

But the PM’s response to accusations of genocide is on the mark:  “If we wanted to commit genocide, we could have done it in one afternoon.”  He says that the ratio of civilians to combatants killed is 1.5/1, which of course readers here have contested. But I’d believe the IDF’s estimates over Hamas’s any day.  To expect a lower ratio, says Netanyahu, is holding Israel “to an impossible standard”.

26:47 The Inflammatory Comments By Israeli Government Ministers

People are always quoting statements made in anger by Israeli government officials (or, more recently, by extreme right-wing politicians) to justify their charge of “genocide” against Israel. My own response is the same as above: there is no evidence I see that Israel is actually acting in a way that will wipe out all Gazans, terrorists or civilians. IDF soldiers are being killed in efforts to invade by killing as few civilians as possible, and why would they do that if they could simply bomb the country to smithereens at no risk to IDF soldiers?  Netanyahu admits that Israeli officials have said things they “don’t mean”, but, nevertheless, most but not all of Israelis are united in the war aims

Kisen and Foster responds, “But those espousing the ‘kill ’em all’ ideas were in the government; so isn’t that ethnic cleansing?” [Not a direct quote!] Netanyahu says that ethnic cleansing has never been discussed in the war cabinet but admits that there are disagreements in the cabinet about how to conduct the wear.  He adds that Israel’s policy is not to occupy Gaza. Rather, he wants a non-Israeli civilian government that doesn’t condone or launch terrorism (i.e., not Hamas or PA), and he does not want to see or send Israeli settlers in Gaza.

31:33 The Views Of The Younger Generations Towards Israel

Kisen and Foster mention that the biggest opposition to Israel’s attack on Gaza is among young people. Netanyahu responds that these young folk should look carefully at exactly whom they are supporting: terrorists, Iran, even those who tried to kill Trump. He adds that he does not want to see American boots on the ground to help Israel, though he approves of Trump’s “forceful support given in a judicious way.”

Finally, he says something that seems very true: “We are the litmus test for the survival of the West.” He claims, correctly, that many of the pro-Palestinian protestors have as their explicit or implicit aim the destruction of Western civilization. There is plenty of evidence that this is indeed the case.

35:01 What Does The Future Of Gaza Look Like?

Again the Triggernometry duo asks Netanyahu, “How can you have a peaceful eoexistence with radicalized people who hate you?” Netanyahu responds that after the war there should be a “program of deradicalization”. Such a program, he says, has worked elsewhere, as in Japan and Germany after WWII, and even with the Gulf States in the Middle East. The goal, he says, is to “reconstruct Gaza and deradicalize it.”

The problem, of course, is that after WWII the world was not allied against the U.S. for defeating Germany and Japan, as it is now against Israel defeating Hamas. Further, the U.N. (especially UNRWA) is firmly on the side of Hamas, and so “deradicalization” in Gaza would face enormous pushback from the rest of the world. Still, I think, it’s necessary, and for that they need good, moderate, and non-terrorist Palestinian leadership. Sadly, nobody seems willing to step up to the plate. Other Arab states already recognize the seeds of terrorism in Palestinians by refusing to let them settle in their countries.

Starmer and others who recognize a Palestinian state are, says the P.M., recognizing a state that would continue to foster terrorism. These countries are implicitly calling for the continuance of Islamist threats against Israel’s existence. Indeed, one might almost think they wouldn’t be disturbed if Israel disappeared.

37:15 What’s The One Thing We’re Not Talking About In Western Civilisation That We Should Be?

Netanyahu’s answer is “Three things: history, history, and history”  As he says, “If you don’t know how we got here, you don’t know how to proceed from here.”  One of these bits of knowledge is to take threats of annihiliation, like those in Hamas’s first charter, seriously. Another is that if a state like Iran says it might use nuclear weapons, do not ignore that. That in fact is why Israel and the U.S. united to go after Iran’s nukes in June of this year.

A few final comments. I am getting a lot of anti-Israel emails (and a few comments on the site) that parrot the Hamas line of genocide and call for Israel to withdraw from Gaza, apparently leaving Hamas in power. Some of the emails and comments are uncivil.  To those who want Israel out of Gaza now, leaving Hamas to resume power, I ask you to tell us, “What would you do if you were in Netanyahu’s place now?” That is, how would you conduct the war if you controlled the IDF?

Almost nobody ever answers that one, save one commenter who told me that Israel should withdraw from Gaza and build a huge, high, and impenetrable wall on the border between Gaza and Israel!  The problems with that are clear, of course. Rockets do not respect high walls, and Hamas will begin firing rockets again if it resumes power. Further, you remember what happened when Israel built walls along parts of the West Bank to stop terrorists from entering. Those walls worked very well, but Israel was accused of furthering “apartheid” by building them. The fact is that nothing Israel does in this war will ever be praised, much less be free from worldwide condemnation.

Finally, I ask readers to avoid accusing Israel of deliberately committing genocide against the Palestinians, much less saying Israel is an “apartheid state”. Those are stupid and obtuse assertions, and obtuseness (defined by Brittanica as “stupid or unintelligent: not able to think clearly or to understand what is obvious or simple”) is banned by Da Roolz. In fact, it might behoove you, especially if you’re a new reader, to read “Da Roolz”, as many seem to have forgotten them.

That said, feel free to go after Netanyahu–or support some of what he said.

Two Triggernometry videos on the war in Gaza

August 22, 2025 • 10:30 am

When I woke up the other day, I found an email from an old and good friend—who may no longer be a friend, at least on her side. It was a bit of reporting from the British satirical magazine Private Eye, which does have some straight reportage, and she insisted that the magazine had “a stellar record in reporting.” Well, if it did, it doesn’t any more. The bit my friend sent me was not only strongly anti-Israel, but full of lies and unsubstantiated assertions. I’ll embed it here, and hope you can read it by clicking on the photo.

The article above has bought totally into Hamas propaganda, ranging from the ludicrous claim that there have been more than “60,000 trauma-related deaths” of Gazan civilians caused by Israel, and “an estimated 70% of the Palestinians killed are women and children, victims of widespread indiscriminate bombing.”  That sentence needs some severe correction; even Hamas, I think, wouldn’t claim that 70% of the dead are women and chilren. (And don’t forget that “children” are defined as those under 18, while, as John Spencer notes below, the average age of a newly recruited Hamas terrorist is 16).   This ignorant writer also claims, without evidence, that Israel is deliberately shooting Palestinian children in the head and neck or abdomen. I won’t go into that “indiscriminate bombing.”

Note that the article mentions Hamas only once—to deny that Hamas uses Gazan hospitals as command centers. But that happens to be true, and is well documented. Dr. Maynard, the author, is another example of someone who deliberately ignores facts they don’t like, and, in fact, denies them.

It’s an abysmal piece of propaganda that the writer, a surgeon in Oxford, has swallowed whole.  I was deeply saddened to wake up to this in an email, especially from a friend with whom I once was very close.

I wavered about responding, but decided that I coiuldn’t let this pass, so I said a few words about the “data” given above, and then simply sent my correspondent the video below from the podcast Triggernometry.

Here, the two moderators,Konstantin Kisin and Francis Foster, interview John Spencer, “chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of the Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast at West Point”.  As an expert in urban warfare, Spencer is qualified to speak about the kind of palaver given above, though you can say he’s biased if you want (he is not Jewish). He’s emphasized since the war’s beginning the care that the IDF has taken to avoid killing civilians, and that the civilian/terrorist death ratio among Gazans is lower than any ratio in modern warfare (between 2/1 and 1.5 to 1, I think).

I won’t go on; you can listen for yourself, but of course those who are anti-Israel or anti-Zionist (which amount to the same kind of bigotry), will not listen.  As for the starving children, if it were true it would be horrible, but, as you can read in this Free Press piece, nearly all the photos used to convince the world that Israel is starving children involve infants with other medical conditions that would make them malnourished.  There is certainly hunger in Gaza, but widespread starvation of children, and starvation planned by Israel? I don’t buy it.

Listen for yourself: it’s an edifying hour.  And remember, if you want to criticize Israel for all kinds of war crimes (I will not tolerate dumb accusations of Israeli “genocide,”), be prepared to offer a solution to the war, preferably one that leaves Israel still in existence.

I append a second Triggernometry video below, titled  “Our honest opinion on Israel”.  Kissen does most of the talking at the beginning, and it turns out that both he and Foster are “pro-Israel”, but only with respect to this war, not necessarily in general. Kissin avers that Israel is winning the war against Hamas and Iran, but is losing the propaganda war to Hamas, which is true.

Kissin feels, like Spencer, that many people who discuss the war are ignorant of the facts, are not rational, are governed by their emotions, and have no interest in resolving the issue. They just want to demonize Israel. He asks the question that I often do, “If you are so keen to demonize Israel’s behavior in the war, what would YOU do?”

You never get an answer that would work.  Kissin mentions that he posed the same question in a Triggernometry discussion with Bassem Youssef, and got no answer from the strongly anti-Israel Youssef.

Kissin does add that Israel is committing some war crimes (he mentions the food cut-off and the West Bank situation) but says that every Western country has committed war crimes in every war it’s been in, including the U.S. in WWII and its response to  9/11.

But then the discussion turns discursive, dealing with free speech, antisocial behavior in the West, housing prices, the problems facing college-aged Westerners, and British politics. I listened dutifully to the whole video, but found most of it uninteresting.

There is more coming later, as I found a Triggernometry video of Kissin and Foster interviewing PM Benjamim Netanyahu, and I suspect they didn’t go easy on him.  I haven’t watched it but will before I post it.

What to do about Gaza?

August 17, 2025 • 9:30 am

A couple of weeks ago I got the following email from a colleague whom I deeply respected and was friends with for years:

Greetings, Jerry,
Regretfully, I ask that you unsubscribe me from WEIT.
You often include interesting and even delightful information, but I strongly disagree with the position you advocate, at length and incessantly, on Gaza and Israel’s actions.
You have been a good professional colleague, and have made major contributions that I will probably have occasion to cite in the future. I regret having to break with you over this issue.

Of course this was a blow, and, although I still support Israel in the conflict and think the media constantly exaggerates the situation in favor of Hamas, and although I also unequivocally reject the claim that Israel is committing genocide, when I get something like this email I always ponder what truth, if any, there is in it.  Have I been too sympathetic to Israel and neglected any bad actions they’ve performed?

I am not only revealing my dubts and ruminations, but also using them to ask a question of readers, given is in bold below.

My constant questioning of my views and sympathies center on these four questions:

1.)  Is Israel withholding food from Gazans, leading to civilian starvation?  I haven’t written about this simply because I haven’t seen enough evidence one way or the other. My sympathy for Israel has made me think that they are—despite the earlier “pause” on aid—now allowing sufficient food into Gaza, and that it is simply being hijacked by Hamas and either kept for terrorists or put on the black market at inflated prices. Israel says there is sufficient food going in, but the rest of the world says no, there isn’t. Perhaps the rest of the world might be ignorant, and it’s for sure that the UN isn’t helping. Further, it’s unprecedented that one country (Israel) is expected to feed another while they are still at war.  But they are, though they get no credit for it.  Once the war is over, though, I think Israel has the responsibility to take care of the people of Gaza until the IDF withdraws completely from the country. But the war isn’t yet over. And there have been credible videos of Hams (or armed and masked thugs) hijacking food trucks.

2.)  Is Israel really shooting Gazans who are trying to get food at distribution centers?  This I don’t believe, simply because it would be the worst possible optics for the IDF to kill Gazan civilians. So far I have not seen any video of this happening, but I keep looking.

3.) Does Israel have a credible plan for the end of the war?  If they do, I haven’t heard of it. Things are changing rapidly. The IDF did conduct the beginning of the war in a way that, I thought, was well planned, but now there seems to be no military endgame, save to keep bombing members of Hamas, something that now often involves substantial deaths of nearby innocent people.  And what plans are adumbrated still change rapidly. On one day Gazan civilians are supposed to relocate elsewhere, like the Sinai; on the next day Israel says it will occupy Gaza City for the indefinite future, and so on. In this form of urban guerrilla warfare, it seems unlikely that Israel can destroy every member of Hamas, and the terrorists seem unlikely to surrender so long as any are still alive, though I think the organization must surrender and disarm the war is to end. Israel cannot accept any less.

4.) What about the hostages?  It is not in Hamas’s interest to release all the hostages, for that is the only card they’re holding that will make Israel negotiate for a cease-fire.  Yet the retention of the hostages has turned many Israelis (though not the world, which doesn’t seem to care much about the hostages) against their government.

Thus the two aims of the IDF at the beginning of the war—the destruction of Hamas and the release of all the hostages—seem not only impossible, but incompatible. And yet I have always believed, and still believe, that these things need to be done if Israel is to continue existing.

Nor do I see any viable two-state solution: Israel doesn’t want one for clear and obvious reasons, and neither does Palestine.  My hope that a third party, like the United Arab Emirates, could take over and supervise the reconstruction of Gaza is a hope that seems doomed. No other Arab country wants to step in here

My dilemmas, then, are that there seems to be no “day after” plan, that a lot of Gazans are being killed (even though as a byproduct of Hamas’s policy of embedding itself among civilians), and that a lot of Gaza has been destroyed.  Yet Hamas seems unlikely to surrender. As for the hostages—and this will sound callous to hear—I regarded them all as doomed right after October 7, though of course I’d be elated for them to all return home, and I get furious every time one is killed, or a dead body is released in swaps. (Why doesn’t the world care, for instance, that the Bibas family was killed–strangled–by Hamas?)  But should we allow Hamas to remain in power just so some hostages will be released? Do realize that Hamas will never release all living hostages: if they do anything, they will release some living hostages and kill the rest without telling Israel.

So, here is my question for readers:

If you were Israel’s PM (you can go after Netanyahu if you want, though that’s rather irrelevant here), what plan of action would you devise to end the war?

This is the question I would ask anyone who says Israel is behaving badly, like my erstwhile friend and colleague above. I have not heard a credible answer save the inevitable and futile “two-state solution.” But anybody who knows anything about Hamas and the Palestinian Authority knows that the two-state “solution” would not mean the end of anti-Israel terrorism. Those countries that recognize Palestine as a state, like France and the UK, are simply stupid if they think that this recognition will create a real state of Palestine and thereby end terrorism against Israel. And do they not know that Hamas hates the Palestinian Authority and would not co-govern any state as partners?

Anybody who follows this conflict must realize that there are many accusations against Israel that are simply false or undocumented and, in my view, criticisms of Hamas have dwindled to nearly zero—comprising at most a caveat in some news reports that “Yes, we realize that Hamas were terrorists and the acts of October 7 were reprehensible.”  But do you hear now that Hamas are still keeping hostages, killing them, and starving them? That they have committed war crimes repeatedly and continue to do so?

But I digress. Please dilate on the question above, and if you think there’s a viable solution, please give it.

Coleman Hughes on Gaza

August 4, 2025 • 8:51 am

The heterodox Coleman Hughes, now writing for The Free Press, tenders 17 minutes of discussion about the Hamas/Israeli war on “Conversations with Coleman.”  The reader who sent me this link said, “He gets it spot on!”, and was so impressed with this video that he/she immediately subscribed to Highes’s Substack, which you can find here.

You may remember that Hughes got into trouble with TED for giving a preapproved talk about how people should be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character (see my posts on this here and here, and you can read about it on Wikipedia here).

Although Hughes thinks that Israel are the “good guys” and Hamas the “bad guys,” he avers that both sides have committed war crimes and that the IDF has done unjustifiable things, including cutting off aid to Gaza for two months, which he sees as close to a war crime. But, as he says in his summary below, he maintains that the sides are not morally equivalent: as he says, “Israel’s goals as a country are far more benign and ethical than Hamas’s goals.”  In short, Hamas is genocidal and Israel is not (Israel could easily have wiped out all of Gaza any time in the last two decades, but they withdrew and gave Gaza autonomy).

And of course anyone with more than a handful of neurons realizes that he’s right:

In this special episode, I take on probably the most controversial and emotionally fraught topic of the moment: the Israel-Hamas conflict. I think war crimes have been committed on both sides. But that doesn’t mean I think the two sides are morally equivalent. Today, I argue that there’s a fundamental asymmetry between Israel and Hamas, one that’s too often blurred or ignored by the mainstream media. Israel’s actions, while sometimes flawed or tragic in consequence, are ultimately rooted in a defensive logic. Hamas, on the other hand, has explicitly genocidal goals. But where does that leave us when we see images of children starving and hear reports that Israel is responsible?

Hughes notes that war crimes have been committed by both sides in most wars, including by the U.S. in WWII and the Union Army during the Civil War. What matters to him in the main are the goals for which each side is fighting.  Again, though, he says that Hamas has committed far more war crimes, like fighting without wearing uniforms; and that Hamas’s war crimes fall largely not on Israelis, but on Gazan civilians.  He goes on to list a number of further war crimes committed by Hamas. Nevertheless, as he says, when we hold Israel alone responsible for the civilian death toll in Gaza, “We are implicitly holding Israel responsible for Hamas’s war crimes against the Palestinians.” He goes on to indict the mainstream media, like the New York Times, for distorting the news by relying on Gazan sources (the misleading photo of an emaciated child on the NYT front page is one example).  He’s not denying that there is hunger of food insecurity in Gaza, but adds that “the pipeline that’s feeding you information about the humanitarian disaster in Gaza is fundamentally broken, biased, untrustworthy, and weaponized against Israel.” In the end, we simply don’t know how to trust the reports of the Gazan Health Ministry, who can’t be “trusted blindly.”

And the end he discusses the accusation of genocide committed by Israel, which he considers “absurd.” He is, of course, right, because any fool can see that the goal of Israel is not to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza. And that’s in contrast with Hamas, whose goals are explicitly genocidal. “If the IDF chose to destroy Gazans as a people, they could kill almost everyone in Gaza in a matter of weeks. So ask yourself, ‘Why haven’t they?'” (The answer “because of international pressure” won’t wash, because that concedes that Israel is not in fact committing a genocide.)

Finally, he says that if you want to argue that Israeli actions reflect the angry statements of a few Israeli officials soon after October 7, 2023, he recommends that you read the following Atlantic article (the link goes to an archived version):

In the end, Hughes’ take seems both objective and correct.  I hope he has a bright future ahead of him (he’s only 29), but of course his heterodox views, and probably now his association with The Free Press, will hamper the approbation he deserves. (I was on his show two years ago, and found the guy was highly informed about evolutionary biology, even though that’s not his field.)

French President Macron: a blockhead whose ignorance will harm Israel

July 28, 2025 • 11:00 am

A fair number of countries have decided to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state (the U.N. can’t as it requires Security-Council approval, and the U.S. is on that council).  This has had little effect as simple declarations like this have no force in international law (see reference to Natasha Hausdorff below).

Now, however, another state has decided to recognize Palestine, and it’s an important one: France. For President Emmanuel Macron of France has decided to join the queue, and France’s recognition will have a lot more influence than those of other countries. It is a move guaranteed to further endanger the sovereignty and safety of Israel.  Yet whether one likes it or not, Israel was recognized by the UN as a sovereign Jewish state, and so it remains.

And yes, I can understand that people don’t like all the killing of Gazan civilians associated with the war between Israel and Hamas, but they seem to forget that Hamas can stop this war instantly by disarming, surrendering, and letting the hostages go.  But for some reason Americans seem to overlook Hamas’s war crimes and its tactic of conducting urban war in a way that guarantees the death of Gazan civilians, and have laid all the onus for the Gazan war on Israel.

One of those people appears to be Macron, who wrote the letter below to Mahmoud Abbas. The original letter from Macron to Abbas is below, and, weirdly, I cannot find an English translation. Instead, I’m forced to rely on an AI summary, which says this:

Recent news reports indicate that French President Emmanuel Macron sent a letter to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirming France’s decision to recognize a Palestinian state.

Based on these reports, the letter outlined several key points:

  • Recognition of a Palestinian state: Macron confirmed France’s decision to recognize Palestine as a state, according to the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent. He stated he would formally announce this at the United Nations General Assembly in September, notes CBS News.
  • Focus on a two-state solution: Macron reiterated that this recognition is consistent with France’s historical commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, according to The Economist.
  • Need for an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aid: Macron emphasized the urgency of ending the war in Gaza and providing relief to the civilian population.
  • Demilitarization of Hamas and rebuilding Gaza: He stated that the demilitarization of Hamas is key to securing and rebuilding Gaza.
  • Viability and security of a Palestinian state: Macron wrote that it is essential to build the state of Palestine, ensure its viability, and enable it to contribute to regional security by accepting its demilitarization and fully recognizing Israel.

If you are fluent in French, or can find a translation of what’s below, by all means put it in the comments or send it to me:

Macron’s entire letter, though, is below in French:

Abbas, you may recall, was elected as President of Palestine and the Palestine National Authority in 2005 for a four-year term, but somehow that’s been extended to twenty years. He supports terrorism against Israel, and it was under his regime that the “pay for slay” program (or “Martyr’s Fund“), which reimburses Palestinians (and their families) for killing Jews, was put into practice. It is still in practice, and over 90% of Palestinians approve of it.

Hamas, of course, doesn’t recognize Abbas as President, and Gaza would never accept Abbas (or the Palestinian Authority) as a legitimate government.  This leads to two immediate questions:   where is the new state that Macron wants going to be located, given that Palestine is divided into Gaza and the West Bank? And who is going to run it?

These lead to a bigger third question:  why should we recognize a sovereign state unless everything is in place, and agreed on, for how that state is to be run and where its borders will be? As I mentioned yesterday, it’s jumping the gun to create a Palestinian state next to Israel until these questions are settled. Otherwise, Israel still faces existential threats. Although Macron in his letter calls for release of the hostages, a ceasefire, and the demilitarization of Hamas, these are not preconditions for his recognition of a Palestinian state. They are just what he wants, but he’s going to go ahead and recognize a Palestinian state whether or not these things are done. What kind of blockhead is this guy? He think he’s on the right side of history, but this gesture is performative, although it may be influential. As the NYT said:

It was not clear whether other members of the Group of 7 would follow the French example, although France indicated it hoped that would happen. Nor was it clear what territory France would recognize as comprising a Palestinian state.

“It’s a powerful symbol, but without really doing anything on the ground to change Palestinians’ plight,” Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said in an email message. “It’s largely virtue signaling.”

The best critique of offers like Macron’s comes from Paul Friesen’s site “Minority of One,” which you can access by clicking on the headline below. Friesen apparently read the letter in French and his translation is the basis of his critique.

You should read the whole post, but I’ll give a few excerpts, which I’ve indented (all bolding is Friesen’s):

The state with no coordinates?

Let’s start with the simplest geographical question: where is this Palestine Macron plans to recognize? The 1967 lines? Adjusted borders? A demilitarized Gaza under Mahmoud Abbas’ theoretical authority, which he hasn’t been able to exercise even over Ramallah’s traffic lights without Israeli security coordination?

No answer.

A state without borders is either a fantasy or a threat. Fantasy, because you can’t govern what you can’t locate. Threat, because ambiguity is always the friend of maximalism; it gives every faction the right to fill in the map with its preferred crayons—green flags for some, blood-red slogans for others.

Which government? The Cadaver or the Caliphate?

Recognition means recognizing something sovereign. In this case, sovereignty would need to be exercised by either:

  1. The Palestinian Authority: A sclerotic bureaucracy funded by Western donors, dedicated to the moral pedagogy of “pay-for-slay,” where murderers’ families are salaried for their grief; or
  2. Hamas: A jihadist organisation whose founding charter reads like a fever dream of medieval Jew-hatred fleshed out by Iranian steel, Qatari cash, and Western indulgence.

Macron writes to Abbas as if the PA can govern Gaza by decree. He writes about demilitarizing Hamas as if it’s a customs offence. He speaks of elections in 2026 as if the militant factions will queue politely and accept the result. This is not policy; it is therapeutic prose—designed to soothe the conscience of a continent that outsourced its moral courage to metaphors.

I can’t imagine anybody taking issue with the bit above.  Hamas will never voluntarily demilitarize (remember, it’s sworn to destroy Israel), nor will it accept the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza.

. . . The Gaza Experiment: a controlled study in delusion

Gaza already answered the question Macron refuses to ask. In 2005, Israel uprooted every Jew, dismantled every settlement, and even removed the dead. Gaza became a laboratory. The reagents: international aid, Israeli withdrawal, and Palestinian self-rule. The result: rockets, tunnels, human shields, and ultimately the largest pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust. The experiment ran for eighteen years. The conclusion writes itself.

Unilateral gestures reward unilateral violence. Recognition without prior disarmament and constitutional guarantees converts terror into diplomacy. Europe calls it “statehood”; the region experiences it as war.

“147 countries have recognized palestine.” And then?

One hears the refrain: 147 countries have recognized Palestine. The implied argument runs: majority equals morality equals inevitability. This is a Foreign Ministry version of argumentum ad populum. The supposed avalanche of recognitions has produced neither peace nor governance, neither civic pluralism nor demilitarization. The guns didn’t fall silent; they multiplied. Hezbollah didn’t retreat; it rearmed. Hamas didn’t moderate; it industrialized cruelty.

Recognition divorced from reform hardens the worst actors and punishes the best arguments. It tells the Palestinian street: why vote out the militants when Europe will hand you a state regardless? It tells the Israeli public: your self-restraint is evidence of guilt, your survival is evidence of aggression.

The operant phrase here—and the notion that makes hash of Macron’s proposal, is that it calls for “recognition divorced from reform.”

More:

[Macron] speaks to Abbas about “trust, clarity, commitment.” Trust must be earned. Clarity requires maps, laws, and leaders who survive without stipends from terrorists. Commitment begins with a single test: renounce the destruction of Israel in Arabic, in writing, in schools, and in mosques. No backchannels, no “resistance,” no flirtation with martyrdom culture. Then we can talk borders. Until then, we are not in the realm of diplomacy, but in the showroom of European performative statesmanship.

There is an alternative—it just requires adult terms

The alternative to Macron’s gesture politics exists, and it has three pillars:

  1. Prior Disarmament and Constitutional Guarantees: Any Palestinian state must be a state that ends “pay-for-slay,” purges genocidal education, and constitutionally recognizes Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.
  2. Regional Accountability: Iran and Qatar finance, arm, and launder this conflict. No Palestinian “state” stabilizes while the patrons of jihad remain unpenalized. Recognition that bypasses this reality is fraud.
  3. Moral Reciprocity: Israel’s Arab minority has rights. Jews in a Palestinian state must have rights. If the future Palestinian state rejects pluralism in principle, it forfeits recognition in practice.

What’s above is Friesen’s solution (he offers another version below), and it sounds reasonable. Will it happen? No way! And what’s below is both savvy and true, and Macron is a blithering idiot for promoting these consequences:

The consequences will not stop at the Green Line

Those who think this is just about Israel are already asleep. What Macron is normalizing is the West’s capitulation to grievance without responsibility, to victimhood without introspection, and to diplomacy without memory. Today it’s Palestine. Tomorrow, it will be Lebanon’s reinvention under Hezbollah’s rebranded PR team. Then it will be the Syrian regime getting a cosmetic makeover from its Russian backers. All in the name of “regional stability,” which—if recent history is any guide—is diplomatic code for “we can’t afford to care anymore.”

And let us not kid ourselves: this will echo through the democracies of the West. Macron’s recognition gives license to every armchair revolutionary and anti-Zionist campus demagogue to declare victory. It emboldens those who set fire to synagogues in Europe while chanting “intifada.” It tells the “Free Palestine” mobs: you no longer have to argue—Paris has already agreed.

It delegitimizes Israel’s defensive war by presuming symmetry where there is none. It casts the aggressor as a co-equal interlocutor, rather than a regime that kidnaps children, slaughters civilians, and builds tunnels under schools. It gaslights the Israeli dead into mere “complications,” and elevates the architects of their murder into state-builders.

Finally, Friesen reiterates his preconditions for peace, something Macron neglected entirely. Macron states what he wants, but they are no “preconditions for peace.”

The only way forward—clarity before recognition

There is a path forward. It is not a utopia, but it is achievable:

  • Palestinian reform must come before international recognition, not as a reward for avoiding it.
  • Hamas must be defeated, not “demilitarized.” You do not negotiate disarmament with a group that views compromise as apostasy.
  • Education must be de-radicalized, not subsidized. Palestinian children deserve books that teach coexistence, not maps that erase Israel.
  • The right of return must be relinquished, not romanticized. No peace will come from imagining that Tel Aviv is negotiable.
  • And finally, Israel must be recognized not merely as a fact, but as a moral necessity—a refuge state for a people nearly extinguished, and the only one of its kind.

Until those terms are met, every recognition letter, every UN podium gesture, every Elysée photo-op is an act of profound irresponsibility—a theatre of virtue where tragedy is the curtain call.

A few final statements from Friesen:

Macron’s letter is already being archived as “historic.” It is no such thing. It is the bureaucratic paraphrase of a failure to learn, a polished signature at the bottom of a diplomatic hallucination. The same moral calamity that allowed Europe to whisper through the rise of Islamism at home now shouts Palestine abroad, hoping it buys a little more credibility in the salons of global virtue.

Let it be remembered, when the next war breaks out—and it will—that the match was struck not in Rafah or Tel Aviv, but in the offices of those who mistook theatrical compassion for strategy, and who never paid the price for their illusions. Others always do.

. . . I don’t write this from a place of cynicism, but of conclusion. At this point, I consider the two-state solution—and the rush to recognition—not merely premature, but illusory. That said, I’m open to being proven wrong. Not swayed by sentiment, applause lines, or diplomatic euphemisms—but by reasoned, evidence-based arguments.

***************

One final note: as I’ve said, I consider anti-Zionism—the opposition to the existence of a Jewish state—as a form of anti-Semitism. And, in a new Pharyngula column (archived here), P. Z. Myers, who has bought deeply into Hamas propaganda, shows himself to be an anti-Zionist in this way. In fact, he wants Israel abolished and turned over to Palestine.

I no longer support the right of the Jewish state of Israel to exist. Dismantle that horrible government and turn the entire country over to Palestinians, with independent UN monitoring to prevent retaliation. Although, to be honest, I think some retaliation is necessary for justice to prevail — Netanyahu, for instance, ought to spend the rest of his disgusting life in prison.

Additionally, it’s committing genocide. I don’t care to hear from people who are splitting hairs to deny that Israel is a genocidal monster of a state.

Myers is no fool. He realizes that turning Israel over to Palestine will result in the mass slaughter of Jews, and “independent UN monitoring” will not stop that.  What good has “independent UN monitoring” done to stop the depredations of Hezbollah in Lebanon? The UN declared in Resolution 1701 that Hezbollah cannot attack Israel, must disarm itself, and had to stay north of the Litani River. UN forces are in fact in Lebanon to explicitly prevent these things, but they have done exactly nothing.And that’s what they’ll do in Myer’s “Palestinian + Jewish state.” If you think otherwise, you’re deluded.

In fact, Myers says that “some retaliation” is necessary for justice to prevail. Is that only imprisonment, or should the consequences be more severe? He says only that Netanyahu should be imprisoned for life.  Is that the only retaliation necessary?

As for Israel committing genocide, Myers is notably silent on Hamas’s explicit genocide as instantiated in its initial charter and in its actions in the various intifadas. Shouldn’t there be some “retaliation” for Hamas having killed thousands of Jewish civilians on October 7 two years ago, as well as having kidnapped and held Israeli citizens as hostages? (Hamas also killed some Israeli civilian hostages).  No, because Myers apparently has no existing beef with Hamas as well as remaining woefully ignorant of the tricky geopolitics of a two-state solution.

And so, along with Macron, we have another blockhead, and one who calls loudly for the abolition of the state of Israel. In fact, in 2010, the U.S. State Department under Secretary John Kerry declared that “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, and denying Israel the right to exist” was one form of antisemitism. As far as I know, this criterion still holds.

Draw your own conclusions.