Pushback on the the movie “NAZA”

September 25, 2026 • 9:30 am

About ten days ago I reported on the first public showing of the anti-Israel film “NAZA,” made by two Israelis. Its premise was the IDF had, during the Gaza war, engaged in the deliberate targeting of civilians using AI, not caring about how many civilians they killed and, in fact, killing as many as possible (the “genocide” trope). The movie apparently used information from 24 anonymous IDF sources, and showing of the movie has been highly restricted. In fact, I wasn’t sure whether it had been shown beyond the Venice Film Festival, where it got not only a prize but a standing ovation that was 24½ minutes long: the longest in the history of the festival. Grok now tells me that it’s been shown at a festival in Bologna as well, and there are plans for a wider release. But most people haven’t seen it, including the IDF. Some of its approbation comes from the fact that it was directed by two Israelis, who, of course, couldn’t possibly be showing stuff that was wrong or distorted.

Nevertheless, you can tell a lot about the movie’s premise from this short , 83-second trailer, which has English subtitles. And some of the film’s contents have leaked.

The premise is that there was an IDF program to deliberately kill civilians, whether directly or as “collateral damage” (the meaning of the word “Naza”), and in some strikes up to 500 Gazan civilians were killed. The video by Natasha Hausdorff and the two articles in the Times of Israel below vigorously dispute this allegation, though you can dismiss them, if you wish, because those sources are either Israeli or sympathetic to Israel. But before you join the Stalinesque-wave of applause for NAZA (remember from The Gulag Archipelago that the first person who stopped applauding for the Russian leader was arrested), hear them out.

The 26-minute take by Hausdorff, who hasn’t seen the movie, is based on what has been made public about the movie and its trailer. She clearly explains the rule of proportionality as obeyed by the IDF and the ways the IDF warned civilians of imminent attacks. NAZA apparently ignores Hausdorff’s point: estimating “collateral damage” before a strike is a legal obligation, not a nefarious exercise. As she says:

“And what the filmmakers do is present the modeling of incidental harm to a lay audience as though it were some cold Israeli invention devised for the purpose of justifying slaughter. Well, it isn’t an Israeli invention—it’s the law. And it’s precisely intended to minimize excessive harm to civilians. Pre-strike collateral damage estimation is the standard practice in every law-abiding Western military—that includes Americans and NATO forces. It’s the procedural tool that compels a commander to confront the presence of non-combatants before a weapon is ever released.”

She goes on to explain what kind of civilian assessment and damage do and do not constitute war crimes. As for the “death of 500 civilians” accusation in NAZA, it’s been strongly denied by the IDF; indeed, no attack was approved to eliminate a Hamas commander, however powerful he be, that would kill more than 100 civilians. Hausdorff also denies that decisions about where and who are attacked by the IDF are made by machines rather than humans; here the IDF has already published its protocol, which involves three different groups of people.

As for the anonymous IDF souces, Hausdorff avers that, “From an evidential standpoint, these accounts are unverified in every respect that actually matters. We don’t know who these individuals are. We don’t know what roles they had. And we don’t know they are who the filmmakers say they are.” This means that neither Israel nor anybody else can establish whether the accounts are true.

Second, this Times of Israel by Sarit Zehavi (click to read) also casts strong doubt on the film’s premise, for Zehavi, who was willing to be interviewed but wasn’t asked, helped construct the very system of estimating civilian casualties. (She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israeli IDF reserve.) Click the headline to read.

An excerpt:

The creators of the recent documentary, “NAZA,” about “Naza” (a Hebrew military acronym for Nezek Agavi – collateral damage) did not have to work too hard to discover the truth.

They could have simply interviewed me. I would have stood in front of the camera, without hiding my identity, on the roof of my house nine kilometers (5.6 miles) from Lebanon, where we endured endless barrages of rockets, and explained the reality on the ground.

A little less than 20 years ago, I was one of the founders of the unit within the IDF that deals with warning populations on the other side of enemy lines and preserving civilian lives.

We built the processes that define how to issue evacuation warnings, and how to track evacuations. I was personally involved in formulating target approval processes and operational discussions.

If they had spoken with me, I would have explained that the chart shown at the beginning of the film’s promotional material is not a “killing chart,” but rather a planning chart for a target identified as being used by Hamas.

Its purpose is to determine whether to strike at all, who in the command echelon is authorized to approve the strike, with what munitions, and under what conditions. In stark contrast to the way it is presented in the promotional material, when the words “Naza 500 – collateral damage estimated at 500” appear in the approval process, it means that action must be taken to reduce the collateral damage.

There are a variety of ways to do this, such as issuing an evacuation warning, using precision munitions, or canceling the strike entirely. Noting the collateral damage on the target sheet does not signify an intention to kill civilians or commit “genocide”; it is intended, first and foremost, to prevent civilian deaths.

Our enemies, both Hamas and Hezbollah, deliberately place their rockets and headquarters in the heart of civilian areas, in tunnels under Beirut or in high-rise residential buildings in southern Lebanon. Hamas in Gaza does the same, operating in civilian areas and using children as human shields. They do this on the working assumption that if Israel strikes without warning, hundreds of civilians will be killed. That is exactly their goal. But Israel chooses differently: there are hundreds of soldiers and officers in the IDF whose sole role is protecting civilians in enemy territory. That is what they think about from the moment they wake up in the morning.

I would have expected a serious examination of this subject to include the perspective of former IDF personnel, like me, as well as serving soldiers and officers who are familiar with these procedures and could explain the professional meaning of collateral-damage assessments. Based on the promotional materials I have seen, that perspective is absent.

The promo for the film claims that the IDF “never checks the number of civilians killed.”

The truth is that checking the exact number of casualties in enemy territory in real time is a complex and nearly impossible task. This is exactly why the collateral damage assessment process takes into account factors such as the size of the structure and the estimated number of civilians routinely in its vicinity.

. . .According to IDF officials quoted in the Israeli media, the filmmakers did not seek the military’s response before the film was released, and the IDF learned of its claims through the media. The IDF spokesperson later publicly asked to view the full documentary in order to respond to its allegations. If the filmmakers, both of them investigative journalists, have declined to disclose their film or findings to the IDF, that would be contrary to basic journalistic ethics.

Without knowing more about the film’s anonymous sources, it is impossible to know what roles the interviewees held within the system, and whether their accounts, assuming they are authentic, are even relevant to understanding the chain of approvals and actions taken prior to striking a target.

The promotional materials released so far present the story from a very narrow angle: they rely on anonymous sources whose level of involvement, rank, and understanding of the process are unclear, while completely omitting the experts who built these systems with one goal: preserving human life. There are such experts. I was one of them.

The article below by Omer Shem Tov is based on an op-ed he wrote in the Wall Street Journal. It’s not all that germane to the film but I’m throwing in the links here for information.

Shem Tov was a hostage kidnapped on October 7, and recounts the lengths Israel went to not to kill him by accident:

Shem Tov, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from the Nova music festival near the Gaza border, recounted an instance when the mother of one of his captors received a phone call from the IDF warning her of an imminent airstrike.

“Hamas knew where I was and left me to die. Israel didn’t know my location, but it knew where my captor’s mother was and called to make sure she wasn’t killed accidentally,” he wrote. “There I was — kidnapped, starved and tortured by her son — while my army was trying to keep his mother alive.”

He said his captors in Gaza celebrated death and destruction on both sides: “For Hamas, destruction itself could be victory. As long as there was death on either side, Hamas could win.”

Shem Tov said that “Israel desperately wanted me home. But not at any price. There were Palestinian civilians between Israel and me. So Israel dropped leaflets, sent messages, made phone calls and ordered evacuations. It tried to minimize NAZA, or collateral damage.”

. . The freed hostage suggested that Israel “paid a price” for its efforts to reduce civilian casualties: “They gave Hamas time. They exposed Israeli soldiers to greater danger. And they left hostages like me waiting longer.”

“If Israel had cared less about NAZA, perhaps I would have come home sooner,” he added. “Fewer Israeli soldiers might have died. Fewer hostages might have died. But more Palestinians would have.”

Shem Tov wrote that he is troubled by reports about the documentary film, which he notes that he also hasn’t seen in full.

“In Venice, the film received a standing ovation that lasted more than 24 minutes,” he said. “As a former hostage, those minutes felt like a shower of knives. Not because the film shows Palestinian suffering, which is real and deserves to be seen. What hurts is that the film, as it has been reported, doesn’t seem to see me.”

The former captive said that to the filmmakers, “perhaps I am NAZA too. Collateral damage. A Jewish hostage who could have been left to rot in a Hamas tunnel, or murdered alongside my friends at Nova, because fighting to free me, and to protect Israelis from the people who did this, is itself treated as morally suspect.”

The lengths that Israel went to to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties—the dropping of leaflets, the phone calls to civilians in buildings scheduled for bombing, the “knock on the door”—an innocuous bomb dropped whose noise would alert people to evacuate—and the announcement of “safe areas” for evacuation—all this has been announced publicly and not contested, even by the New York Times. And it gives the lie to the idea that the IDF wanted to kill as many Gazans as possible. If they really wanted to perpetrate a genocide, why the delivery of food and polio vaccine to Gaza? Why these warnings? Why no bombing of the West Bank? What army engaged in a war has ever taken these precautions? And now this film, which apparently stimulates huge approbation by Israel- and Jew-haters everywhere.

I never even thought much about anti-semitism before October 7 three years ago, but now that it’s apparently stimulated a huge outpouring of belief in Big Lies, like the Genocide Myth, I have no choice but to conclude that antisemitism is ubiquitous, and simply was repressed until the Hamas attack gave it an excuse to emerge.

No, it’s not all about Netanyahu (Israel will be hated no matter who becomes Prime Minister), and no, it’s not all about Zionism (“Zionist” has become a euphemism for “Jew”). It’s about hatred of Jews, pure and simple. As I’m a nonbelieving Jew and never banged on about antisemitism before October 7, I am confident in these conclusions. You will never find a purveyor of the Genocide Lie who will admit that they’re wrong, but the evidence shows they are wrong. And the makers of NAZA, and those who so fervently applaud that film, also perpetuate the Big Lie. As does the British Government with its chowderheaded boycott of Jewish products in false hopes that it will bring about the impossible: a “two-state solution.” I agree with Bill Maher that those who spread the Genocide Lie are at the same time spreading antisemitism.

There are but 16 million Jews in the world, with about half of them in Israel, yet that tiny country, the only democracy in the Middle East, and a the only place where women, gays, and ethnic minorities have equal rights, seems to be the focus of the world’s damnation. The explanation is clear.

The two-state delusion

September 24, 2026 • 9:30 am

As I reported recently, UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband (under Labour) announced that a new government’s policy would (if passed) include imposing sanctions on companies in the West Bank, but only Jewish ones. I also quoted Miliband at length to show that he deemed this policy essential to effect the one thing he and Labour thought would end the enmity between Israel and Palestine: the vaunted TWO-STATE SOLUTION. A couple of quotes from the Secretary himself.

So Madame Deputy Speaker, there is a deeply painful contrast between our professed commitment to a two state solution, and the reality on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank.

. . . We should always be proud that it was a Labour government that took the historic step of recognising the State of Palestine.

What we seek today is to salvage the only course for peace and security for Israelis and Palestinians – the two state solution.

. . .Ethnic cleansing is defined by the UN as ‘a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.’

The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank – perpetrated by settler terrorists.

To advance the two state solution, we also need viable and effective Palestinian governance.

So I urge the Palestinian Authority to accelerate reform and I urge Israel to lift its withholding of revenues that is financially crippling the provision of essential services in the West Bank.

The set of measures I have announced represents a clear message to the government of Israel, to the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories, and to the world that we will not acquiesce in the destruction of the two state solution.

Now anybody who says something like this is a complete chowderhead on several fronts. First, as we see later in this post, neither Israel nor Palestine wants a two-state solution. Palestine has rejected one repeatedly: at least a half-dozen times, and often on favorable terms for Palestine That’s because the powers that be in Palestine want a one state solution: a state that would ostensibly harbor Jews and Palestinians, which is like wanting a state that would harbor both dynamite and matches. Such a state would eventually lead to the expulsion or mass death of Jews, which is what most Palestinians want.

Nor do Jews want such a state. They used to, when several times they offered one to Palestine, but after October 7 they realized that having a state run by promoters of terrorism right next to Israel, whether those terrorists be Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Palestinian Authority, would simply guarantee more attacks on Israel. In fact Gaza was, in effect, a Palestinian state, and how well did that work out?

Finally, the “viable and effective Palestinian governance” that Miliband calls for simply does not exist. People have bruited about the Palestinian Authority, but anybody who knows anything about the PA knows that that organization is also a hotbed of terrorism that pays off Palestinians for killing Jews, and is also rejected by Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza in favor of the even more terroristic Hamas.

And so a new Pew Poll, as reported in the Times of Israel, shows that neither side thinks that a two-state solution is the solution to coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis. Ed Miliband, and other European countries who will sanction Israel in hopes of effecting that solution, are speaking from their nether orifices.

Click below to read the ToI article:

Quotes:

A large majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and a majority of Israelis say they do not believe Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist peacefully, according to a new Pew survey.

Just 17% of Israelis said they believed a path to peaceful coexistence could be found, compared with 56% who said it could not. Among Palestinians surveyed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, 21% said coexistence was possible, while 68% said it was not.

The Israeli result is a low point in more than a decade of Pew polling on the issue. The share saying coexistence was possible had already fallen to its lowest level in 2025 and remained roughly unchanged in 2026.

The year 2026 was the first time that more than half of Israeli respondents explicitly said it was impossible.

Among Jewish Israelis, 16% said a two-state solution was possible, while 64% said it was not. Among Arab Israelis, 46% either said they did not know or declined to answer, while 23% said peaceful coexistence was possible and 26% said it was not.

Pew surveyed 1,001 people in Israel and 1,038 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Israeli interviews were conducted from April 5 to May 6, while Palestinian interviews took place from March 30 to April 28, in Hebrew and Arabic.

The fieldwork coincided with the Iran war, beginning while fighting was still underway and continuing after an initial ceasefire was declared on April 7. Gaza was not included because Pew said it was unable to conduct fieldwork there.

Click below to go to the Pew poll and article:

First, the data. Note that Israeli Arabs don’t really want to answer, perhaps because they fear being demonized if they think peaceful coexistence is possible. Overall, Palestinian adults in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are as pessimistic as are Israeli adults:

Now some wishful thinking:

Why do some Israelis and Palestinians think Israel and an independent Palestinian state can coexist peacefully?

Small shares of the populations in both Israel (17%) and the West Bank and East Jerusalem (21%) say a way can be found for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully.

When asked why they think so, some Israelis and Palestinians offer similar reasons: Both see peace between two states as the inevitable conclusion to their conflict and acknowledge that a diplomatic peace process would bring about clearly-defined borders and independence from each other.

But there are also some differences in their open-ended responses. Palestinians tend to emphasize the benefits of peace, such as economic prosperity for both peoples, while Israelis explain that peace is possible under certain conditions, like increased trust or political will.

Among those who say peaceful coexistence is possible, an interest in peace is a common sentiment. Some say that they personally want peace or – in the words of one respondent – that “both sides want to live in peace.” And others see peace as an imperative, saying, “we must make an effort.”

In addition, some point to interpersonal relationships between the two sides as evidence that they can coexist. “Just as Arabs and Jews live in harmony in Jaffa, so it is possible between countries,” said one Jewish Israeli woman. And a Palestinian woman expressed similar reasoning, saying, “There are friendships between Arabs and Jews, and peace can be achieved.”

“We need to find the path to peace for the sake of our children and their children.”
Jewish man, 29, Israel

“We tried coexistence before and it was successful.”
Man, 27, West Bank/East Jerusalem

I wonder when that was.

“We complement each other in work, trade and security, so that we may live together.”
Woman, 18, West Bank/East Jerusalem

In the West Bank and East Jerusalem, some recalled periods of trust and cooperation in the past. “We used to coexist and could accept each other,” said one Palestinian man. “Previously, coexistence and peace existed, and peaceful coexistence is possible now, just as it was before,” said another.

Many Palestinians stress the economic benefits peace would bring. Peace is “the way to improve the economic situation of the Palestinians,” one Palestinian woman said. Others mention the economic interdependence between the two peoples: “We work for them, they need Palestinian labor,” said one Palestinian man, adding, “We share the same economy and the same currency that Israel uses.”

Palestinians are more likely than Israelis to explain, in their own words, that peace between two states can be achieved because they see it as a desirable outcome. This is the most common theme in the open-ended responses from people in the West Bank and East Jerusalem who say a two-state solution is possible.

This strikes me as a sentiment along the lines of “If wishes were horses, even beggars could ride.” Just because peace is desirable for some people doesn’t mean that it will come, simply because (in my view, of course), peace was never desirable for most Palestinians, and while it was desirable for many Israelis as well as for me, that desire vaporized on October 7. So long as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority are in control of the Arabs in Gaza and the West Bank, there will never be peace, as both of those organizations are dedicated to extirpating Israel. And there is as of yet no viable alternative. UNRWA, for example, has helped teach a generation of Palestinian children to hate Jews and love martyrdom. It is not until those children grow up and their own children are brought up under a different system—not something that seems likely—will there be hope for peace.

The figure below shows the waning confidence in a two-state solution over the past thirteen years. It’s fallen by about two-thirds among Israelis of all stripes!:

Finally, there’s a lot about why Israelis and Palestinians think they cannot coexist. Here are some of many reasons:

Why do most Israelis and Palestinians think peaceful coexistence is not possible?

Most Israelis and Palestinians say a two-state solution is not a viable option. Over half of the people surveyed in Israel (56%) and roughly seven-in-ten in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (68%) cannot see a way for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully.

When asked to explain their answer, Israelis and Palestinians say coexistence is not possible because their differences are too great to overcome. People on both sides agree that they are enemies with competing belief systems who are fighting over the same land, and some also mention the violence between them, which has culminated in the most recent war. Small shares in both places accuse the other side of rejecting peace.

But there are points of disagreement about why they cannot coexist, in their own words. While Israelis explain that an independent Palestinian state would pose a threat to Israel, many Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem say coexistence is not an option while they live under Israeli control.

One of the top reasons that Israelis and Palestinians alike say peaceful coexistence is not possible is disagreement over the land.

Some think there is not enough land to split. For example, one Palestinian woman said that “Palestine cannot be divided into two states.” Another said that “there cannot be two peoples when there is no room for two peoples.” Israelis express similar sentiments – saying, for example, that “Israel does not have enough territory to divide into two states” or that “there is no land to establish a Palestinian state.”

In both places, there are people who believe they are the only rightful owners of the land. One Jewish Israeli woman said, “This is our land alone,” and another stated that “the Holy Land belongs only to the Jewish people and was given to them by God.” Similarly, some Palestinians say Israel “stole our land” and that “the homeland belongs to the Palestinians.”

They didn’t survey Gazans for obvious reasons, and the “under Israeli control” reason wouldn’t have as much force before October 7, 2023. I have every reason to think that had Hamas (much less the PA) not controlled Gaza (they were voted in by its residents), the territory would now be a seaside tourist destination. Yes, Israel did maintain control over air, land, and sea crossings into and out of Gaza, but so did Egypt, and nobody blames that country for an “occupation” (Egypt also refused to let Palestinian refugees settle in their land after the October 7 war began). Those restrictions were, of course, largely due to terrorism, and yet Gazans were largely free to work in Israel as well as to use its transportation facilities to leave the area. And with few exceptions they could get treatment in Israeli hospitals. It’s undeniable that Palestinian terrorism is the main reason that Israel has put restrictions on Gaza and the West Bank, and why Israeli enthusiasm for the West Bank has cooled.

Big News: The Pope pleas for peace

July 31, 2026 • 9:45 am

My NBC Evening News has devoted its opening story two nights in a row to Pope Leo, who just gave an interview in the Apostolic Palace of Castel Gandolfo, the gorgeous Papal summer residence of whose existence I was unaware. Among other things, the Pope revealed that he loves America and realizes he’s the first American Pope, but says that he also recognizes that his mission is to lead a worldwide church. He also revealed that, after someone looked up his ancestry, he had ancestors who were slaveowners as well as slaves (he didn’t elaborate on the latter). Finally, NBC reported that the Pope held a Concert for Peace and made an eloquent plea for peace as a prelude.

That was all well and good, but it didn’t seem to me that this should be a story that led the news—or even should be on the news. Of course the Pope pleaded for peace—that’s an important part of the job description, though there’s a lot of other stuff. To me it’s as earth-shaking as saying that a plumber unclogged a drain.

Leo seems like a good guy, and “progressive” in the good sense, but I found myself yawning at this paean to the Infallible Man, and wanted to hear real news—new news. I also remembered that the Papacy wasn’t always so peaceful. So I asked Grok a two-part question:

Did the Papacy ever engage in war? Is there any modern pope who has not pleaded for peace?

After thinking for less than a minute, Grok spat out the following, with references (I’ve omitted the latter):

Yes, the Papacy historically engaged in wars as a temporal (political/territorial) power, particularly while ruling the Papal States; modern popes, by contrast, have consistently pleaded for peace and have not engaged in war as state actors.

From roughly the mid-8th century (after the Donation of Pepin) until the capture of Rome in 1870, the popes were sovereign rulers of the Papal States in central Italy. They maintained military forces (volunteers, mercenaries, and later specialized units such as the Papal Zouaves), participated in regional conflicts, and sometimes allied with or fought against other European powers. These included conflicts with the Holy Roman Empire, involvement in the Italian Wars of the late 15th and 16th centuries, the Wars of the League of Cambrai and Cognac, actions during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods, and resistance during the Italian unification (Risorgimento). The Papal army was generally modest and often relied on foreign troops or diplomacy; by the late 18th–19th centuries it was weak and largely defensive or internal-security oriented. Temporal power ended with Italian annexation in 1870; the Swiss Guard today is ceremonial/protective rather than a force for external war.

Of course Pope Leo wasn’t going to admit that some of his predecessors were bellicose, and not all that long ago, either. There’s more:

Popes also initiated or strongly supported the Crusades, beginning with Pope Urban II’s call at the Council of Clermont in 1095 for the First Crusade to recover the Holy Land, with later popes proclaiming additional crusading efforts.

A prominent example of direct military leadership is Pope Julius II (1503–1513), nicknamed the “Warrior Pope” (or Battle/Fearsome Pope). He actively campaigned to restore and expand Papal States territories during the Italian Wars: he subjugated Perugia and Bologna, joined the League of Cambrai against Venice, formed the Holy League against French forces in Italy, and personally led troops (including at the successful Siege of Mirandola). He framed some efforts as freeing Italy from foreign domination.

After 1870 the papacy lost its territorial state (beyond the later-recognized Vatican City) and shifted emphasis to spiritual and moral leadership. Modern popes (commonly understood as those from the late 19th/20th century onward, especially post-World War I) have not commanded armies or waged war. Instead, they have repeatedly and publicly pleaded for peace, often in the face of major conflicts.

Here are papal pleas for peace since the turn of the 20th century:

Benedict XV (1914–1922) worked intensively for an end to World War I, issuing encyclicals and a detailed 1917 peace note proposing arms reduction, arbitration, restoration of occupied territories, and related measures; he also organized humanitarian relief while maintaining neutrality.

Pius XII (1939–1958) made radio and other appeals for peace on the eve of and during World War II (including a notable August 1939 broadcast) and continued to preach peace amid the conflict.

John XXIII issued the encyclical Pacem in Terris (1963) and advanced teachings on peace in the nuclear age.

Paul VI famously declared “No more war” (including at the UN).

Subsequent popes—John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis, and the current Pope Leo XIV (as of 2026)—have issued frequent appeals, encyclicals, messages, and prayers against war, for dialogue, disarmament, and reconciliation, continuing a clear pattern.

No prominent modern pope stands out as having refrained from pleading for peace; the record shows a consistent emphasis on it as part of the papal moral role once temporal power ended. Historical engagement in war reflected the dual spiritual-and-political character of the medieval and early-mo

Perhaps I seem churlish at the MSM regarding the Pope’s please for peace as Big News, but so be it. My question is whether the Pope’s pleas have any real effect in bringing peace. And about that I do not know,

The shameful reaction of “humanitarians” to to the war in Gaza

July 22, 2026 • 9:15 am

I woke up this morning to find this Substack commentary written by my friend the philosopher Maarten Boudry.

Few things have shocked me more than the open acquiescence—or even outright support—of the international “humanitarian” community for Egypt’s decision to seal, and even reinforce, its heavily fortified border with Gaza throughout the war. Early on, Israel tried to negotiate with Egypt to allow Gazan civilians out of harm’s way so it could target Hamas more effectively. The international “humanitarian” community reacted with outrage to the very suggestion. Meanwhile, Egypt threatened to tear up its peace treaty with Israel and declared that it was “ready to sacrifice millions of lives so that nobody would approach a grain of sand [in Sinai].”

You expect that kind of cynicism toward “fellow Arabs” from a corrupt and authoritarian regime. But from self-proclaimed Western “humanitarians”? Apparently, they’d rather keep Gazan civilians trapped in an active war zone, where Hamas could exploit them as human shields, because evacuation would supposedly amount to “ethnic cleansing.” And all this while they were hurling the obscene “genocide” libel at Israel. Because that’s obviously how you would behave if you sincerely believed a genocide was taking place, right? Prevent people from escaping? It’s either callousness, mendacity, or both.

By way of analogy, imagine that Poland had sealed its border with Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in 2022, telling the world: “Why should we let in Ukrainian civilians? We don’t want a bunch of Nazis in our country.” Bad enough. Now imagine the “humanitarian” community supporting that stance—insisting that Poland bore no responsibility for Russia’s aggression, and that admitting Ukrainians would amount to “ethnic cleansing” because Moscow might never allow them to return.

In this brilliant article, my good friend Shany Mor uses a series of clever thought experiments to expose the revealed preferences of the “humanitarians” in the Gaza war. The conclusions are deeply disturbing. They reveal an astonishing level of indifference—whether intentional or not—to the very people these organizations claim to care about. If they have to chose between demonizing Israel and helping Palestinians, they always chose the latter.

I will never, ever, ever donate to any of these organizations again—even though I supported many of them regularly in the past.

I’ll mention below which organizations Maarten deems not worthy of donations. But you’ll want to read Shany Mor’s piece, which I discuss below.

Note as well that Maarten has two related articles. One, published in The Jewish Chronicle in January (Maarten is not Jewish) is called, “Europe’s silenced scholars: the forced Gaza genocide ‘consensus’,” which has this paragraph:

In reality, the accusation of genocide is as obscene as it is absurd. Netanyahu and his far-right cronies may be guilty of many things, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that Israel intends to exterminate Gazans, and abundant evidence to the contrary. The eagerness of Western intellectuals to nonetheless accuse Israel of genocide is by now depressingly familiar, as is their blindness to Hamas’s cynical war tactics and the extraordinarily difficult conditions under which Israel has had to pursue its legitimate aims of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages. In my latest book, Het verraad aan de verlichting (The Betrayal of Enlightenment), I trace this reflex to a postcolonial ideology that casts the West as perpetual oppressor and anti-Western forces as inherently virtuous victims.

And a very nice essay on his substack site (originally published in Quillette) called “They don’t believe it either,” which is mostly about how those who accuse Israel of “genocide” don’t believe that accusation. An excerpt:

The many fabrications and distortions in the genocide case against Israel are evidence of something different from rational inquiry and truth-seeking. What explains the frantic search, from almost the first day of the war, for statements by Israeli officials that can be twisted into proof of genocidal intent? What accounts for the willful blindness to Hamas’s cruelty, to the point of erasing Hamas altogether, as if the war had only one combatant? And why is the definition of genocide gerrymandered by NGOs to implicate and condemn Israel—through inventions like “slow-motion genocide” or “incremental genocide”—even though the Palestinian population grew from 1.1 million to 5.1 million between 1960 and 2020?

Infographic: Growth of Palestine | Statista

The answer is that the “Gaza genocide” calumny has become the Left’s equivalent of the “stolen election” hoax on the American Right—a baseless accusation that signals ideological allegiance precisely because it defies logic and evidence. That is why nonsense like the Amalek verse keeps being recycled, impervious to correction—the point is not to offer evidence, but to hammer down a pre-established conclusion.

Shany Mor is described by Tablet as “an Associate Fellow at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College and a Research Fellow at the Chaikin Center for Geostrategy at the University of Haifa. He served as a Director for Foreign Policy on the Israeli National Security Council.” His Substack, “Roter Faden“, began in April, and you can subscribe to help get it off the ground. The article mentioned by Maarten is otherwise free to access, and you can read it by clicking on the screenshot below.

Mor considers the “epistemic community of nongovernmental organizations, activists, experts, scholars, and even a few formal intergovernmental bodies united by loosely overlapping commitments to global and transnational justice,:” and divides what he calls these “Humanitarians” into four groups. He then performs a thought experiment on the groups, to wit:

Take everything you know about the course of the war which began on October 7, about the capabilities and actions of the belligerent parties, about the war’s duration and casualties, and about the terms of the various ceasefires, but pretend you know nothing about the claims and calls to action of the Humanitarians. And ask yourself what you might expect them to say and do under each of the following four hypotheses about the rough overlapping consensus of their collective preferences.]

H1: Humanitarians, especially including scholars of international law regarding armed conflict, are neutral regarding the belligerent parties in the war, and the Humanitarians collectively are genuinely committed to the humanitarian needs of civilians and noncombatants among both Israelis and Palestinians.

H2: Humanitarians are indifferent to the humanitarian needs of the Israelis but genuinely committed to the humanitarian needs of the Palestinians. Operating on imperfect information in rapidly changing conditions, and limited by what is allowable in international law and what is politically or materially feasible, they seek whatever can be done to reduce or eliminate loss of life or suffering on the part of Palestinians either as a direct or indirect consequence of the war.

H3: Humanitarians are indifferent to the immediate humanitarian needs of Palestinian civilians, but they fervently wish to see Israel defeated in the war Hamas started on October 7. They fervently believe that the only moral conclusion to the war is one that is a net gain for the Palestinians and a net loss for the Israelis. To this end, they endeavor to act as force multipliers both in theatre to preserve Hamas’ power and, especially, in Western states, to push for policies that limit Israel’s freedom of action, cut it off from military supplies, and apply pressure on it.

H4: Humanitarians are indifferent to the war’s strategic outcome and prefer to see more death and more suffering on the Palestinian side, not as an end in and of itself but rather as a means to confirm beliefs in Israel’s essentially demonic nature, and as a way of mobilizing hatred and social isolation of Jews in the West. In particular, there is a preference for any rhetoric or political action which removes what are believed to be the unfair social privileges which western Jews hold due to the memory of the Holocaust.

Mor then says what one would expect from each group if the characterization were true. (Of course he’s operating with the wisdom of hindsight here, but that doesn’t negate his argument.)

Did you decide which was the most accurate characterization of the worldwide “humanitarian” response to the war? In light of what Maarten said above about the border with Egypt, and the total neglect of Hamas’s stealing of humanitarian aid to Israel, as well as the distortions about the “starvation” situation in Gaza and the push to stop Israel from taking military action, I guessed correctly. Yes, it’s H3. Here’s what Mor “retrodicted” under that scenario:

H3 would see immediate demands for Israel to forgo any military offensive against Hamas at all, effectively locking in the tactical gains Hamas made on October 7, and opening the door for future October 7-style operations as a means to securing political advances for the Palestinian cause. Humanitarians would do nothing to get Palestinians out of a war zone, and they would boycott aid mechanisms that threatened Hamas’s continued rule in Gaza. They would pressure Western governments to cut off weapons supplies to the IDF and to suspend trade relations with Israel. They would mobilize international courts to try to stay Israel’s hand on the battlefield in order to limit Hamas’ defeat. And they would use their influence to push governments to hand the Palestinians tangible diplomatic achievements that could have been secured for decades with a peace agreement for free as a reward for the war launched on October 7.

That is pretty much what happened: the calls for Israel to not retaliate, or calls for a cease-fire, began even before Israel attacked and entered Gaza to retaliate. The lack of criticism of Egypt for sealing its borders was deafening to some of us, though most people—perhaps on purpose—didn’t even consider the implications of that silence. The pressure on Israel is obvious: Douglas Murray said something like, “Israel is the only country in the world that is not allowed to win a defensive war.” Many apologists said that Hamas’s attack was justified retaliation for Israel’s oppression of the territory, despite the fact that Israel booted the Jews out of Gaza in 2005 and handed it to Palestinians. They had, in effect, a state, but then elected Hamas, which ruined whatever valid governance Gaza had. (Don’t forget that the Palestinians had rejected a two-state solution half a dozen times before.)

Mor’s conclusions:

The war has provoked a lot of anguished discussion about the role of international law and global civil society, to say nothing of the role of international norms and the “rules-based order.” But the epistemic community that claims for itself the role of protector of those values is due for a serious moral reckoning too.

And once that reckoning begins, it shouldn’t limit itself just to the Humanitarians’ actions following October 7. Critics of Israel’s government often point to its role in supposedly propping up the Hamas regime in Gaza in the years before October 7, supposedly as a counterweight to the more moderate Palestinian Authority operating in the West Bank. It’s a legitimate critique, voiced domestically in Israel as well. But it’s worth remembering that Israel’s role in propping up the Hamas regime was tiny compared to that of international organizations such as UNRWA, MSF, and others who took care of crucial governance functions for the de facto Hamas statelet during its two-decade reign in the Gaza Strip, freeing it to hijack all the Strip’s resources for tunnel digging and weapons smuggling and manufacture. And these were joined by the experts and agencies who invented bespoke international norms after 2007 that meant that any Israeli action that we now know could have prevented October 7 would have been decried as a war crime.

Oh, and what were the NGOs that were in group 3? Maarten got a list from Claude that you can see here; it includes Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights. The question he posed to Claude was this:

Which international humanitarian NGOs or organizations have criticized the Israeli proposal early in the recent Gaza war to evacuate Gazan civilians to the Sinai peninsula, worrying that it might amount to ethnic cleansing, or arguing that Egypt has no responsibility to help Israel’s war efforts? Give me names and links please.

Maarten added, “Amnesty was appalling, as usual.” Amnesty International has gone the way of the ACLU and SPLC: ideologically captured by “progressives.”

As for the “g-word”, I write off those who accuse Israel of genocide as either ignorant blockheads or antisemites.

The “Memorandum of Understanding”

June 17, 2026 • 9:30 am

I understood that Trump was going to make public the “Memorandum of Understanding” (MoU) that laid out the framework for a peace deal between the U.S. and Iran, and was even going to read it aloud on television. That apparently didn’t happen, and if you look for the text of the MoU on the Internet, you see several versions. For example, the one I put below—the most comprehensive one I’ve seen—comes from Bloomberg News, but there are different versions at the NY Post and MEMRI.

Here’s from Bloomberg:

Below is the text of the 14-point draft memorandum, as seen by Bloomberg News.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States, together with their allies in the current war, declare upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding an immediate and permanent end to the war on all fronts, including Lebanon, and undertake that from now on they will not launch any hostile action against each other, and will refrain from the threat or use of force against each other. The final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article and the remaining Articles.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States undertake to negotiate and reach a final agreement within a maximum period of 60 days, extendable by mutual consent.

Immediately upon the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, the United States Lift the naval blockade and prevent any interference or obstruction against the Islamic Republic of Iran, and restore traffic within a maximum of 30 days to its full capacity; the traffic of ships shall be proportional to the pre-war volume of traffic on the part of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The United States also undertakes to withdraw its forces from the surrounding areas within 30 days after the final agreement.

Upon signing this Memorandum of Understanding, the Islamic Republic of Iran will immediately take steps to ensure that the movement of merchant ships from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa is resumed within 30 days to the pre-war volume, taking into account the need for the removal of technical obstacles and the neutralization of mines by Iran.

The United States undertakes, together with its regional partners, to create a comprehensive plan agreed upon by both parties for the rehabilitation and economic development of the Islamic Republic of Iran, While ensuring financing of at least $300 billion. The implementation mechanism of this plan, as part of the final agreement, will be formulated within 60 days.

The United States commits to ending, on a schedule to be agreed upon as part of the final agreement, all types of sanctions currently facing the Islamic Republic of Iran, including resolutions of the United Nations Security Council and the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and all unilateral U.S. sanctions, both primary and secondary.

The Islamic Republic of Iran reiterates that it will never produce nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States have agreed that the fate of enriched material and the fate of all other mutually agreed nuclear-related issues, including Iran’s nuclear needs, will be adequately addressed in a final agreement; the final agreement will confirm the provisions of this Article.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States agree that, pending a final agreement, they will maintain the status quo: Iran will maintain the status quo on its nuclear program, and the United States will not impose new sanctions on Iran or strengthen its forces in the region.

The United States undertakes that immediately after the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and until the date of the lifting of sanctions, the United States Treasury Department will issue waivers for exports of Iranian crude oil, petrochemical products and their derivatives, and all related services, including banking, insurance, transportation, and the like.

The United States undertakes that, in light of the progress of negotiations towards a final agreement, frozen or restricted funds and assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran will be released and made fully available. These funds, whether held in the master account or transferred, will be used for any final beneficiary payment determined by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will be fully available for use. The United States undertakes to issue all necessary permits and licenses on this basis.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States agree that an implementation mechanism will be established to oversee the successful implementation of and future commitment to the Final Agreement.

Following the signing of this Memorandum of Understanding, and upon receipt of assurances regarding the commencement of implementation of Articles 4, 5, 10, and 11 of this Memorandum of Understanding, and the continued implementation of these steps, the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States will enter into negotiations for a Final Agreement solely with respect to the remaining Articles.

The final agreement will be approved through a binding resolution of the UN Security Council.

Note several things about this version:

a) It declares a cessation of hostilities in Lebanon (i.e., Israel and Hezbollah will stop fighting), though Israel did not sign on to this agreement.

b) A “final agreement” is to be signed within 60 days, and that doesn’t mean “final agreement about nuclear weapons,” but final about all stipulations

c) The Strait of Hormuz is to be reopened: “the Islamic Republic of Iran will immediately take steps to ensure that the movement of merchant ships from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa is resumed within 30 days to the pre-war volume.” It does not say that the movement will be unimpeded by fines or fees that could be charged by Iran

d) The agreement stipulates that Iran will “never produce nuclear weapons”, and the final agreement will address what will be done with enriched uranium.

e) The U.S. agreed that all “frozen or restricted funds and assets” of Iran will be unfrozen, though “in light of the progress of negotiations towards a final agreement”.

f) The final agreement must be ratified as binding by the UN Security Council.

The MoU as given by the NY Post: note that it differs in some respects from what’s above:

The following 12 points were first revealed by Axios reporter Barak Ravid, who also works for the Israeli channel. The document has previously been described as a 14-point agreement.

Iran, the US and their allies would stop fighting across the region — including in Lebanon.

Tehran would reaffirm its pledge never to build a nuclear weapon.

The US and Iran would work out what happens to Tehran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

Both sides would open talks on Iran’s future enrichment activities and nuclear needs.

Iran would maintain the “status quo” of its nuclear program — which has been largely decimated — while negotiations continue.

The US would lift its naval blockade, hold off on new sanctions and refrain from sending more troops to the region.

Iran would guarantee safe, toll-free passage for commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz for 60 days.

Washington would release an unspecified amount of frozen Iranian assets once the MOU takes effect.

A final deal reached after the 60 days would see the US withdraw its forces within 30 days and lift all sanctions on Iran.

It would pave the way for a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran.

The US would allow Iran to resume oil sales through temporary sanctions waivers.

Iran, Oman and Gulf states would negotiate new shipping and maritime security arrangements for the Gulf.

The last stipulation, according to the paper, means that Iran and Oman would charge for transit through the Strait of Hormuz—something that did not exist before the war and gives Iran a source of revenue it did not have.

To me, this is a U.S. loss: our efforts gained us nothing: not the cessation of terrorism, not the drive of Iran to produce a nuclear weapon (we all know they’ll continue trying), nt the freedom of the Iranian people or even a weakening of the hard-line Islamist regime, and we may have even lost the right of free (unpaid) passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Plus we’ll release the Iranian funds frozen by the U.S.

I’ve already noted that this is a terrible deal for the U.S., and, in his latest column, “Iran found Trump’s bone spur” (archived here). I quote from Stephens’s piece, and I’ve put a bit in bold, a bit that makes me both sad and angry:

Iran’s military leaders have greeted the cease-fire agreement with President Trump as a triumph, crowing that “through the imposition of their divine and iron will” they had “humiliated American and Zionist enemies.”

Mostly, they’re right.

Mostly, because it’s worth remembering that the current regime in Iran is far less formidable than it was before the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Back then, Iran had potent allies and proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen. Its nuclear program was intact and steadily accumulating ever larger quantities of highly enriched uranium. It had a powerful military-industrial base, a weak but functional economy and a government that — for all its repressiveness — was internationally recognized as legitimate.

Today, much of that is either gone or diminished. Iran is no longer within sprinting distance of a bomb. Its ally in Syria was deposed. Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis have lost much of their fighting strength. The Iranian rial is the world’s most worthless currency. The leadership rules an unhappy population that — outside of die-hard loyalists — would almost certainly overthrow it if given the chance. Its latest ballistic missile salvo against Israel failed to land a serious single blow. Its blockade of the Strait of Hormuz strained, but did not strangle, the world’s energy markets.

Those are real achievements against an evil, ambitious regime. Yet the outcome of war rarely rests on a tally of relative strength. War is a contest of wills. And in that contest, the hard men of Tehran appear to have scored a decisive victory over the vain man of Washington.

I write this as someone who supported the war from the outset and hoped to see Trump carry it through to a decisive result: if not regime change, then at least a deal in which Iran would be forced to relinquish all of its enrichment capabilities and access to the Strait was unfettered. Those goals were well within the president’s reach, particularly if he had continued to attack Iran’s military-industrial infrastructure until it agreed to terms, rather than conducting most of the negotiations after the fighting had mostly stopped.

But Trump got spooked after the regime didn’t instantly crumble and energy prices shot up. He then effectively abandoned the war he had started after less than six weeks of sustained combat — combat in which the United States lost fewer service members than in the 1983 invasion of Grenada. He compounded the error with an almost comical succession of military threats and last-minute climb-downs, each of them signaling indecision and weakness to Iranian adversaries practiced in the study of weakness.

Though the details of the deal remain murky — a telling indicator of its likely shoddiness, since the administration would surely trumpet the terms of a strong agreement — it’s already clear that Trump has betrayed his promise to the Iranian people, after they were massacred in January to quell antigovernment protests, that “help is on its way.” As in Venezuela, to say nothing of China and Russia, this administration’s message to oppressed people everywhere is that their rights come last.

Trump is also on his way to betraying Israel, our principal ally in this fight, by pushing Jerusalem to stand down in its effort to stop Hezbollah’s attacks on its north, in that way handing Tehran the victory of creating a diplomatic linkage between Lebanon and Hormuz. If Iran is now allowed to extract some kind of service fee for permitting ships to transit the Strait, Trump will have also betrayed our allies in the Persian Gulf by giving Iran financial and strategic leverage to which it has no right, and which it didn’t previously have.

. . . There’s a word for this: debacle. Not because the war, for all its costs or errors of execution, was a mistake. It’s because this pretense of a peace is an act of geopolitical self-harm that will haunt our standing in the world for years to come.

It’s very sad. Please weigh in below, giving your thoughts and opinion whether this is a good deal for the U.S., a bad deal, or whether you have no opinion about it.

I don’t know how Trump can claim victory when he’s merely restored a somewhat less favorable status quo, but you can be sure he’ll be crowing himself.

A superb piece: Sam Harris explains why, though he has criticisms of Israel, he won’t debate Israel’s critics

June 7, 2026 • 9:00 am

I always find Sam Harris’s writings absorbing, but in today’s piece he’s really hit his stride, telling us why, despite his own criticisms of Israel, he won’t debate those people—he calls them “scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics”—who demonize Israel as not only morally worse than its enemies, but the worst country in the world.

In a way, the piece below is a bookend to the superb piece he posted on November 7, 2023: “The bright line between good and evil.” In between then and now, Hamas has lost the war, Gaza has been largely wrecked because of Hamas’s tactics, and yet the terrorists are still in power. What has changed is that despite the efforts of Israel to limit civilian casualties in Gaza and Lebanon, antisemitism and hatred of Israel have ballooned. To Sam, and to me, this spate of criticism of Jews and Israel, parading under the flag of “anti-Zionism”. shows that the “river-to-the-sea” gang has lost its moral compass. And the encampers and drum-bangers have dragged a lot of academics and journalists along with them.

What is missing in all the debate is what Sam has bookended: the moral compass that points clearly to which side in the conflict is on the side of morality and justice. It might be salutary for you to read his 2023 piece first (I posted about it here), but it’s imperative to read the piece he just put on his Substack. You can it for free by clicking on the screenshot below.

What shines in Sam’s analysis is his laserlike focus on the most important question—right versus wrong—and his refusal to be distracted from that focus. This is truly a superb piece, and I recommend it highly. Today you should be reading Sam Harris, not me. I’ll put a few quotes in indents below, but you really need to click above and spend a while pondering Sam’s views.

Excerpts:

Many readers and podcast listeners have been dismayed by my enduring support for Israel and now urge me to debate someone—really anyone—drawn from a growing cast of scholars, grifters, and moral lunatics who have made that beleaguered country their professional or psychiatric obsession. The Making Sense Community seems to have inherited this infatuation, leading to some heated exchanges in recent days. I’ve explained my position on Israel across several podcasts and in my public talks, but it might help to summarize it here.

First, my general attitude: I’m not interested in exploring all the ways that Israel has missed the mark—from Prime Minister Netanyahu’s corrupt alliance with the far right, to the many crimes committed by settlers in the West Bank, to the deaths of innocent noncombatants in several wars—because none of these failings, however grave, will alter my sense that (1) the ethical difference between Israel and her enemies remains vast, and (2) the global preoccupation with the Jewish state, as though it were the worst villain among nations, is contemptible, being the product of perennial lies and delusions.

Next, a simple heuristic: As I suggested in at least one Community thread already, if my intransigence on these matters mystifies you, it might help to understand that, for whatever reason, I think militant Islam is ten times worse than you think it is. When I talk about “jihadists” and their various groups—Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, the IRGC, etc.—I’m talking about people who I consider to be worse than Nazis (jihadists being, essentially, Nazis who are certain of Paradise). My views about the conflict in the Middle East will not fundamentally change unless my critics produce evidence that Israel has become as evil as her enemies.

However, you can rest assured that if the IDF morphs into a death cult that uses its own civilian population as human shields (and yet somehow remains widely popular), if ordinary Israelis begin to celebrate martyrdom above every earthly priority, producing generations of bright-eyed, suicidal fanatics, if the residents of Tel Aviv condone the taking of Palestinian infants, old women, and other noncombatants as hostages and then gather in crowds of thousands, baying for their blood—if, in other words, the Israelis begin to resemble the Palestinians, then I won’t care who wins this war. Short of this, there remains a world of difference between the two sides, and I believe that we should focus on how brutalizing it is for any free society to confront enemies that can sincerely claim to “love death” more than everyone else loves life—for this has been Israel’s predicament for the better part of a century.

The problem in the Middle East is not, and has never been, the existence of the state of Israel. The problem is jihadism, Islamism, Islamic extremism, Islamofascism, militant Islam—or whatever words you want to use to describe the belligerence and triumphal lunacy of those who take the most pernicious doctrines of Islam too seriously.

He then explains his unwillingness to engage in debate about the war. I’ve put a critical bit in bold:

I won’t debate the history of the Middle East because it is irrelevant to resolving the conflict there. Of course, many people insist that we must disentangle and reconsider every strand of this history, going back at least a century. The reason I’m convinced that this is a fool’s errand is simple: Palestinians and Israelis have discrepant accounts of the past, and no amount of study or debate will reconcile them.

What’s far more important to understand—and I think it really is the only thing worth considering—is what the current inhabitants of Israel, the Palestinian territories, and the surrounding Arab states want out of life now. (Not what they pretend to want or what a handful of royal families want, while their populations want something quite different.) What do the Jews and Muslims in the region really yearn to accomplish? What are they willing to sacrifice for? What are they willing to die for? And what are they willing to let their children die for?

When we focus on the present this way, if we’re being honest, we must concede that there are two very different realities on either side of this conflict: culturally, psychologically, ethically, spiritually—in every way that matters. Yes, Israel has its religious fanatics too. But they aren’t the same sort of fanatics we find in Hamas or Hezbollah, and they’re far less representative of the surrounding culture. Notwithstanding everything that can be said against Prime Minister Netanyahu, the Israeli far right, and the settlers in the West Bank—and there is much to condemn—I believe the following remains true:

If the Palestinians laid down their arms, there would be peace. There could be a two-state solution; there could even be a one-state solution; it wouldn’t matter. If the Palestinians simply stopped killing Jews and stopped building a culture that celebrates pointless murder and martyrdom as its highest values, there could be a diverse, tolerant, and prosperous society between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. There could have been one eighty years ago. But if the Israelis laid down their weapons, there would be a genocide. This was obviously true on October 7th, 2023. And for anyone who has been paying attention, it has been true on every other day since the founding of the state of Israel.

Those who demonize Israel and lionize terrorists, or those Palestinians who lionize terrorism—and there are many of them—must deal with this point, which seems palpably true. But requiring Hamas to lay down its arms, as well as demanding that Palestinian society lay aside Jew hatred and then aspire to peace and prosperity, is a tough ask, and we won’t see it in our lifetimes. For even the younger generation of Palestinians have been brainwashed into Jew hatred, and they aren’t even teenagers yet.

There’s more, but Sam ends this way:

Why does antisemitism matter? Well, for the Jews, it’s obvious why it matters, but why should it matter to everyone else? It matters because when you look at what antisemites also hate, you find they hate everything that makes culturally rich, diverse, open societies possible. Real antisemites bring with them more than just their hatred of Jews: they bring censorship, political repression, conspiracy thinking, and the politics of dehumanization and scapegoating. So decrying antisemitism is not an act of special pleading. It is a defense of the moral and institutional architecture that free societies require.

Let me close with another general point to members of the Making Sense Community: Many of you have written to tell me that you’ve lost respect for me over this issue (or that you still value my work and are giving me “a pass” on Israel). I reject this framing, and you should too. No one should be a part of Community just because they agree with me. I’m not running a political party, and there is no line for me, or for anyone else, to toe. If I’ve fallen off a pedestal because I said something you don’t agree with, the pedestal was the problem, not the disagreement. Of course, if you think I am lying to you, or that I otherwise lack integrity, you should leave and never look back. But if you just think I happen to be wrong, even about something important—especially about something important—I encourage you to keep showing up with better evidence and argu

The first paragraph makes the point that antisemitism (aka “anti-Zionism”) is a hatred not just of Jews, but of the liberal, democratic societies built by the West. The grifters and maniacs will never admit that, but look at what is happening to liberal European democracies like Belgium and the Netherlands—countries that have admitted floods of Muslims who have imported hatred of the very societies to which they’ve fled.

I have not lost respect for Sam: I admire him all the more, and have told him so. Of course this piece, one of the best on the current Middle East situation, will itself be demonized and ignored, probably by invoking things Sam has said in the past. We will hear, “But he favors torture!” Or “He’s a neuroscientist, and not qualified to pronounce on politics.” Or, “Sam has been too hard on religious people.” Those are all distractions. Yes, I’ve had my differences with Sam—I think his view that there is an objective morality is misguided—but that is irrelevant. Regardless of whether Israel’s morality is objectively better than that of the morality of its critics, it’s true that those of us who are rational want to live in a society based on liberal democracy than in a dysfunctional one based on jihadism and Jew hatred. Jihad is more than a struggle to live a holy life by the lights of Islam: it’s also a struggle to destroy Western values.

Peace for our time? (. . and a poll)

May 24, 2026 • 9:30 am

“Peace for our time” was, of course, the phrase uttered by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on September 30, 1938 after he returned from signing The Munich Agreement with Hitler. That treaty allowed Nazi Germany to occupy the Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia, in return for Hitler’s promise to leave the rest of Czechoslovakia—and Europe—alone. That was a lie, of course, and Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II, on September 1, 1939. Chamberlain, and other dupes who believed Hitler, had thought that the treaty would avert war in Europe. Skeptics like Churchill disagreed, and Chamberlain resigned on May 10, 1940, giving the PM slot to Churchill.

Now we are told by Trump and others that we’re close to peace for our time in Iran; here’s Trump’s announcement, bereft of details, from Truth Social:

It doesn’t say much about Israel except Trump had a “very good call” with Netanyahu. Israel is being shoved aside in Trump’s hell-bent desire to get some kind of peace with Iran. But what kind will we get? We can see more details in The Times of Israel. which partly quotes the NYT (headings below are mine, extracts from the ToI are indented, and my words are flush left):

Uranium:

Iran has agreed to give up its stockpile of highly enriched uranium as part of an agreement with the US to end the war, two US officials tell the New York Times.

According to the officials, Iran has committed in a general statement to giving up the uranium, rather than reaching an agreement with the US on exactly how it will relinquish it. Instead, the exact details will be worked out during the negotiations that will begin once a deal is reached.

The report comes days after Iranian sources claimed that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, had issued a directive that the near-weapons-grade uranium should not be sent abroad.

Iran has a stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in its possession, which Israeli officials have said is sufficient for 11 nuclear bombs if enriched further.

Earlier this month, a senior Israeli military official said if the uranium wasn’t removed, the war launched in February could be considered “one big failure.”

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