Anybody reading the secular or haredi press in recent months knows that the Religious Zionist sector is under attack from opposing sides of the political spectrum. Anybody reading the religious and right-wing press in recent months knows that the Religious Zionist sector is tearing itself apart too.

The issue at hand is the draft exemption law for the haredi world being debated in Knesset. Obviously, the broad Religious Zionist public and political and rabbinic figures associated with it are broadly supportive of efforts to draw haredi men into national and military service.

The debate is over how demanding to be in drafting haredi men – how fierce a draft law to pass (or how weak a draft exemption law to pass) – and whether to risk the current and future nationalist-haredi coalition governments over this matter.

I have a strong opinion in this regard – in favor of forcing real societal change through tough sanctions on the haredi world which refuses to participate in the privilege of national security service – although I understand those who fear the shattering of the political right wing if haredi leaders are pushed harder.

What I cannot tolerate is the demonizing of the Religious Zionist public in this debate – especially the savaging of brave Religious Zionist women, wives and mothers of courageous soldiers – who have led campaigns for the passage of an effective and enforceable haredi draft law.

UNDERSTAND: No sector in Israeli society has “carried the burden” of the past two years of war with more devoted military service, and alas with more casualties, than the Religious Zionist sector.

This assessment was borne-out in a first-of-its kind detailed academic study published last month. Writing in The Israel Journal of Society, Military, and National Security (published by the Maarachot thinktank of the Ministry of Defense together with The Association of Civil-Military Studies in Israel), Dr. Roe Naon and Prof. Uzi Ben-Shalom assert that the Religious Zionist sector suffered four times the losses of any other sector in Israel.

The authors studied the conscript and reserve units serving in “Swords of Iron” as well as the injured and fallen soldier rolls. They found that 257 fallen soldiers, equaling 34% of all soldiers killed in the war, were religious Israelis; way beyond the less-than-ten percent of the overall public that identifies as “dati” (religious or Religious Zionist). Again, the losses among the religious soldiers are four times larger than the size of this community within the broad Israeli public, and 2.5 times larger than the size of this community in relation to men of draft age.

Among reserve soldiers, religious men are a whopping 45 percent of the casualties in this war. They are 29 percent of the casualties among soldiers in the standing army, and 27 percent of the casualties in the professional army ranks.

Among junior officers in the military, religious soldiers are 43 percent of the fallen. Among NCOs, religious soldiers are 41 percent of the fallen. Among noncommissioned foot soldiers, religious soldiers are 30 percent of the fallen.

In the corps most implicated in frontline, heavy combat – engineering, armored, and infantry corps – more than one-third of the fallen are religious soldiers. And a preponderance of all these fallen religious soldiers hail from Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, and peripheral towns in Israel – where many religious Jews live – and they also come from the lower socioeconomic strata of Israeli society.

In summary, the authors of the study note the high degree of ideological, communal, familial, and national commitment of the Religious Zionist sector to military defense of Israel, and the great emphasis on “national unity” and the “privilege” of serving the country that marks this sector. All of which leads to a disproportionate share of the fallen and wounded soldiers borne by this sector of Israeli society.

What Naon and Ben-Shalom have not yet studied is the large families that these religious soldiers often have, especially the families of reservists, and the deep, disrupting, and traumatizing impact that long military service, injury, and death has had on many, many, many religious families.

THIS HEROIC yet bone-chilling reality makes the current attacks on Religious Zionists all the more ugly.

It is bad enough that some radical secular leftists accuse Religious Zionists of uber-nationalism (calling them “messianist” or “bloodthirsty”), while the defeatist policies of the Left ever since Oslo have led Israel to disaster. And it is bad enough that haredi leaders accuse Religious Zionists of “abandoning Torah values,” while haredi indifference to the suffering and national burden of all other Israelis is the very opposite of Torah values.

But it is outrageous and infuriating to witness the savage attacks on brave women like Noa Mevorah and Shvut Raanan of Shutafim LaSheirut – Partners in Service: Religious Women in Favor of IDF Service. They are being called “traitors” and “useful idiots of the Left” for their outspoken, principled advocacy of strong haredi draft legislation.

These are women who husbands and sons have collectively served thousands of days of tough military duty, and they have every right to demand a sea change in the “contract” between the serving Israeli public and the mostly non-serving haredi public. And they are right to do so.

They are now facing an avalanche of delegitimizing ads and digital posts across a broad swath of right-wing and religious newspapers (like BaSheva), magazines circulated in synagogues (like Olam Katan and dozens of haredi zines), and broadcast platforms like Channel 14.

The attacks have broadened to include assaults on all religious women who do “only” national service and on religious men who do “only” hesder service (truncated army combat duty combined with yeshiva study, but very long and intensive years of frontline reserve duty).

Alas, the unifying theme behind these attacks seems to be slavish devotion to the principle “thou shalt not harm Netanyahu’s coalition,” while downplaying the overarching moral demand for equalizing military service responsibilities at the historic inflexion point now before Israeli society.

Unfortunately, a hardali coalition of 40 rabbis (community rabbis and yeshiva deans within Religious Zionism that tend toward haredi ideology and religious practice) this week joined the fracas against Shutafim LaSheirut and in support of Religious Zionist Party Leader Betzalel Smotrich – who is leaning toward adoption of the current draft evasion law concocted by Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee chairman Boaz Bismuth.

They bury the real ideological and political questions of the day under a blanket of smarmy niceties about “brotherly love” for the haredi public. They glibly term opposition to draft-evasion legislation as a “trap” caused by “troublemakers” meant to bring down the current right-wing government.

They furthermore make the nonsense assertion that the proposed legislation will indeed help to draft many haredi soldiers – “three times as many haredi soldiers.” (Three times what? The current number of near-zero?!)

And in a further insult to our intelligence, these rabbis aver that the Bismuth bill will “ease the burden on reservists,” including, supposedly, the many Religious Zionist reservists whose communities they helm. Except that even the most ardent advocates of the bill do not make this ridiculous claim. (It will take decades of effective haredi draft until a mass of combat soldiers is sufficiently absorbed and trained leading a to real easing of the reservist burden.)

As a deeply believing Religious Zionist myself, even an unabashed “messianist,” I too seek brotherly love and unity, but not at the expense of ideological distortions, false narratives, and malicious defamation.

Published in The Jerusalem Post 13.02.2026 and Israel Hayom 14.02.2026

The oh-so-sophisticated foreign policy specialists and expert defense analysts are out in full force explaining to anybody who will listen that it would be a mistake for US President Trump to attack Iran.

A military assault on Teheran will not save the brave Iranian protesters from savage repression by the Basij and Revolutionary Guard Corps, say the “experts.” It won’t bring about regime change; it will only rally Iranians around the regime. At best it will bring to power an alternative Iranian dictator, a military general perhaps, who will be as repressive and aggressive as the ayatollahs. It will only dent and delay the Iranian nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs.

Yes, yeah, yeah, all that may be partially true, but this (mis)analysis misses the point: That a significant US strike on Iran is critical to resetting the regional and international balance of power.

A crushing military blow on Iran is necessary to create a Middle East and a broader world where Washington and its friends are far stronger, and its enemies far weaker, than ever before. Indeed, that is what Trump’s second term as president is all about.

As Elliott Abrams wrote last spring in Foreign Affairs, “The United States now has a chance to keep Iran and its allies off balance. Because the only true solution to the problem of the Islamic Republic is its demise, the United States and allies should mount a pressure campaign on behalf of the Iranian people – who wish for the regime’s end more fervently than any foreigner.”

“(Occasional) negotiations (with Iran) should be viewed as a tactic in the long struggle for a peaceful Middle East – a goal that cannot be reached until the Islamic Republic is replaced by a government that is legitimate in the eyes of the Iranian people and that abandons its terrorist proxies, its hatred of the United States and of Israel, and its desire to dominate other countries in the region. Until that day, the military presence of the United States must not diminish…,” according to Abrams.

To which I add that Trump’s plans for “winning” in the global struggle against China and his hopes for a reset in relations with Russia depend to a great extent on proving his mettle in confrontation with Iran.

If Trump’s bluster against Iran, and his promises of “help on its way” to the Iranian people, occasion just another Obama-style soft deal that kicks the Iranian nuclear can down the road – then Trump’s presidency is finished. He will never be the “transformational” president with “historic” achievements in international affairs that he so explicitly wants to be.

US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee said it colorfully this week. In his trademark forthright and folksy style, Huckabee noted that “many plates of poison” are coming from Iran, and that it is best to “burn the kitchen down” than simply “changing the menu.”

“Many plates of poison – Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis – are being served all out of the same kitchen, Tehran,” Huckabee remarked at the International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem. “You can change the menu; (but it is) better to burn the kitchen down and not let them serve those plates anymore.”

THERE IS SO MUCH that must be done to put Iran back in its box; to end its hegemonic advances.

According to US Admiral James Stavridis (former head of global operations for NATO, dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, and author of a chilling must-read book about a war with China, 2034: A Novel of the Next World War), the US can strike high-value leadership targets (including the mullahs), and command-and-control facilities of the Revolutionary Guards and the conventional military.

The US also can hit Iran’s logistics supply chain for both the military and the civilian police including the ironically named “morality police;” and critical elements of the Islamic Republic’s energy infrastructure such as maritime installations, refineries, and port facilities.

Non-kinetic options listed by Stavridis include offensive cyber activity against Iran’s energy sector, consumer supply chains, military command and control nodes, police and Revolutionary Guard facilities, telephone systems, and military-production infrastructure, notably facilities that produce drones and ballistic missiles.

And then, maybe, the so-called international community will get serious about implementing the multiple rounds of sanction regimes against Iran that have been passed by the UN Security Council (but never taken too seriously by America’s Western allies).

This includes six UNSC sanctions resolutions (numbers 1696, 1737, 1747, 1803, 1835, and 1929, passed between 2006 and 2010) that were reimposed last September after Iran was found by the IAEA to be in “continuing significant non-performance of its nuclear commitments.”

And then there are the new rounds of restrictions on business and government dealings with Iran passed by the EU after Tehran’s recent slaughter of its protesting citizenry (and also in response to Iran’s support for Russia’s war against Ukraine). The EU even, finally-finally, agreed to include the IRGC on its list of terrorist organizations. Even the supercilious French agreed to do so.

There is more to be done. Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington has published a manifesto for “maximum pressure” on Iran that goes far beyond “maximum sanctions.” This includes an end to all sorts of waivers and licenses that facilitate Iranian world trade, rigorous sanctions enforcement (mainly targeting Iran’s oil trade with China), multilateral sanctions on third-party countries (including European countries) that facilitate Iranian banking and Iranian-backed radical Islamist NGOs in the West, and more.

Gregg Roman of the Middle East Forum has published a comprehensive strategy for democratic transition in Iran that should have been put in place years ago. This involves an aggressive information campaign, amplifying internal pressures backing opposition ethnic groups, leveraging regional cooperation networks, and kick-starting transition planning for post-regime scenarios. This would include political warfare against the regime: Constant criticism of its economic failings and brutality, and overt and covert aid for efforts by Iranians to protest a regime most of them clearly loathe.

THIS IS THE PLACE to credit Nadim Koteich for his important article this week entitled “Khamenei Can’t Give Washington What It Wants.” He points out that the prevailing (and mistaken) consensus in Western capitals, articulated most recently by Trump administration envoy Steve Witkoff, is that when faced with the specter of total collapse, Iran will trade its ideological soul for its material skin.

After all, from a Western, neo-liberal perspective, a “Great Bargain” with Trump is Iran’s only logical exit from the current crisis.

But this rests on a fundamental category error: That the Iranian regime is a rational, utility-maximizing actor. It is not. Rather, the ayatollahs “preside over a Byzantine structure where reform is not a lifeboat, but a torpedo. They are running a regime based on a theology of absolute power, on metaphysical claims to divine legitimacy.”

Ayatollah Khamenei sees himself as guardian of a holy revolutionary state whose preservation supersedes even the fundamental pillars of Islam. “By descending from the sacred to the negotiable, Khamenei would effectively abolish the theological basis of his own office.” As a result, he cannot and will not “discard theology for the hard metrics of realpolitik.”

Therefore, Iran is a brittle system that has mistaken rigidity for strength. “When Khamenei says that American demands are impossible, we should believe him. The regime he has spent a lifetime fortifying, is designed to break, not to bend.”

I say: Time to break Iran, to burn down its kitchen and then manage the consequences of a fracture that is now historically inevitable.

The alternative is far worse. Surrendering to Iran will inexorably lead to surrendering to Hamas in Gaza, to Turkey and Qatar in Syria and Lebanon, to China in Taiwan and in Africa, to Russia in Ukraine, and to the forces of radical Islam in Europe and in America itself.

Published in The Jerusalem Post  February 6, 2026 and Israel Hayom, February 6, 2026.

Here we go again. The “international community,” led by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff of the Trump administration alongside the EU and a panoply of questionable Arab “allies,” is rushing in to stabilize the Middle East. A convoluted and fantastical array of “technical” and “security” structures is supposedly going to bring good governance, deradicalization, and demilitarization to Gaza.

Poppycock. Especially the part about disarming Hamas. Nobody but the Israeli army is truly going to clear the Gaza Strip of weapons aimed at Israel, from guns to rockets to terror attack tunnels. Nobody but the IDF is going to confront and crush Hamas’s remaining 30,000 or so troops.

Nobody but the Israeli military can prevent Hamas from rearming or reimposing its reign of terror on Palestinians in Gaza. And nobody but Israel can thwart the flow of money to Hamas, whether from Turkey, Qatar, or Iran.

In fact, the fanciful Kushner concept of a “Riveria” in Gaza, an Eden-like oasis of high-tech progress and high-end living, may already be serving as conduit for a surge of cash to the same corrupt and venal Palestinians who have occupied and destroyed Gaza over the past generation.

THROUGH US President Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, Israel has been presented with gobbledygook – a dazzling and dizzying assortment of new/old guarantors of stability with serious-sounding acronyms: EUBAM, GAC, NCAG, ISF, PSF, CMCC, DDDR, and more.

The European Border Assistance Mission (EUBAM), and its counterpart EU Mission for the Support of Palestinian Police and Rule of Law (EUPOL COPPS), is meant to guard the Rafah crossing from Egypt into Gaza and prevent bad guys and bad goods from entering.

It is convenient but reckless to forget that EUBAM officers (along with Palestinian Authority policemen) hastily fled Rafah with their pants around their ankles – when Hamas violently grabbed Gaza in 2007.

There is no reason to believe that these European cops will today show any more spine in the face of Hamas threats than they have in past.

The Gaza Administrative Committee (GAC), also known as the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), is theorized as a “non-partisan, technocratic body to manage civilian affairs” in Gaza, made up of “non-affiliated” Palestinian bureaucrats, i.e., people who don’t owe their lives and livelihoods to Hamas, even though these will be the same Palestinians who worked in the Hamas-ruled administration before October 7.

There is no reason to believe that such “non-affiliated,” fearless Palestinians exist in Gaza.

The International Stabilization Force (ISF) is posited on troops from countries around the world (there are currently no serious volunteers for this other than the evil Turks) who are to train and oversee the Palestinian Security Force (PSF) drawn from Mahmoud Abbas’ various armies and militias in the West Bank as well as decommissioned and deradicalized Gazan fighters.

There is no reason to believe that such an international force (if it ever materializes) or such Palestinian forces will act to strip Hamas fighters of their weapons or oust Hamas leaders from their de facto nodes of control (even if behind the scenes) of Gaza.

No officer in such forces will dare intercept aid and money streams to Hamas or expose a new Hamas terror attack tunnel being dug under Shifa Hospital or the Philadelphi Corridor.

The Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC), already operating in Kiryat Gat with hundreds of US army officers and representatives from other countries too, is expected to oversee all the above plus the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza, the planning of Gaza reconstruction, and the implementation of Disarmament, Demobilization, Deradicalization, and Reintegration (DDDR) in Gaza.

This all sounds nice. It amounts to imagined paradise. But it is claptrap.

It is ridiculous to expect that Hamas will melt away in the face of this alphabet soup of international do-gooders. Rather, Hamas will bamboozle, threaten, buy-off, or bump-off any EU cop, American monitor, or Egyptian overlord that stands in its way.

And Hamas will have Qatari and Turkish officials – its increasingly assertive Moslem Brotherhood backers – embedded in Trump’s grand “Board of Peace” (BoP) and its Gaza Executive Board (GEB) to run cover for Hamas when needed and to fill-out Hamas coffers as needed.

EGYPT STANDS as a good example of double-dealing which explains why Israel must never rely on Arab actors or the international community for its core security.

Egypt has a peace treaty with Israel and claims to be a Western partner in stabilizing Gaza. But Egypt is one of the fiercest purveyors of anti-Israel and utterly antisemitic messaging in the Arab world, and Cairo is a great enemy of the Palestinians too.

Egypt did nothing to stop Hamas from staging a coup against the Palestinian Authority and seizing control of the Gaza Strip. Egypt has allowed the Sinai Desert under its control, which adjoins Gaza, to become the Middle East mecca for local and international terrorist group operations, and for weapons and drug smuggling into Gaza and Israel.

By turning a blind eye to, nay benefitting from, the massive smuggling industry, Egypt significantly contributed to transforming the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip into a major base for Islamist terrorism, paving the way for the October 7 attack on Israel.

Over the past two years, the IDF has discovered more than 100 smuggling tunnels under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. There is no way in the world that Egyptian police, army, and political officials did not know and approve of this.

It is important to remember this too: Egypt cares about Palestinians even less than it cares for Israel. It has kept Palestinians locked-into Gaza for decades, even refusing medical treatment in Egypt for wounded Palestinians over the past two years of warfare, not to mention any refuge in Sinai for Palestinians seeking to flee the fighting.

So, the idea of once again placing the Gaza border (specifically the Rafah Crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor) under Egyptian supervision, alongside some flimsy-flabby EUBAM monitors with only a token Israeli presence, is both preposterous and dangerous.

Only full-scale and permanent IDF control of this border area will guarantee Israeli security.

Overall, only the obliteration of the Hamas military as well as its governing mechanisms might bring some respite to Gaza and long-term security to Israel. And only the IDF can accomplish this. All the fancy-shmancy mechanisms now being introduced will only get in the way, or yet worse – will further fortify Hamas.

Published in The Jerusalem Post 30.01.2026 and Israel Hayom 31.01.2026

Three news items of the past week serve as reminders that the security and sovereignty situations in Jerusalem require urgent government action.

First is the passing of the heroic Jerusalem archaeologist Dr. Gabi Barkay, who led protests against Wakf destruction of Temple Mount antiquities and founded the Temple Mount Sifting Project – which for the past 20 years has sought to recover and research the ruined, residual antiquities, with important results.

Barkay played a major role in pushing back against Palestinian ideological violence in Jerusalem and in reclaiming Jewish historical rights.

Second is the notable change in police policy on Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount), allowing Jewish/Israeli visitors to bring pages with prayer texts onto the Mount. This is one more blessed step forward toward full-scale and regular Jewish prayer at the site – the holiest place in earth according to Jewish tradition – with all necessary accoutrements (Torah scrolls, prayer books, tallit and tefillin, and more) in a permanent location.

Aside from being essential from a religious perspective, this is long-overdue pushback against the Arab/Islamic denialism of Jewish history in Zion and the Palestinian attempt to turn the Temple Mount into ground zero for warfare against Israel.

Third is the razing of the large UNRWA compound in Maalot Dafna (Sheikh Jarrah) in Jerusalem, the necessary and uber-justified result of new laws passed in Knesset outlawing UNRWA operations in Israel.

This too is long-overdue pushback against the Palestinian refugee-martyrdom narrative, perpetuated by UNRWA’s support for the so-called Palestinian “right” of return, and it is punishment for the involvement of UNRWA personnel and administrators in Hamas operations against Israel in Gaza.

A NEXT STEP in the re-securing – dare I say re-liberation – of Jerusalem must include action to counter the subversion of Israeli sovereignty by radical Islamic groups (funded mainly by Turkey and Qatar) and by European nations and NGOs.

According to Dr. David Koren of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, foreign troublemakers are becoming ever-more brazen and omnipresent. They engage in covert and overt activities, both legal and illegal, ideological and concrete, in the civilian and security spheres. They have little interest in improving the lives of Jerusalemite Arabs but rather seek to undermine Israeli administration of the city. And some of the bad actors pump-out messaging supportive of terrorism against Israel and Jews.

Another critical area requiring government action is wildcat Arab building in the Jerusalem envelope. Palestinians have grabbed over 2,600 dunam of land and built over 30,000 illegal structures in and around Jerusalem. Over the past decade 1,500 unauthorized buildings have shot up in the Jerusalem neighborhoods of Shuafat and Kafr Akab alone, with some of these buildings 15-20 stories tall.

(These were built without heed of engineering standards. God help residents of these buildings if an earthquake hits Jerusalem.)

MOST OF ALL, Israel must boost the manpower, resources, and authority of the Jerusalem police force, and the Border Police and IDF units arrayed around Jerusalem, to prevent infiltration of terrorists.

Everybody knows that the security fence/barrier around Jerusalem is a joke. Aside from the tens of thousands of Palestinians who travel legally into Jerusalem every day through 16 supervised gates, there are thousands of other Palestinians who infiltrate Israel illegally over and through the unfinished fence every month.

Most come to work in Jerusalem, but more than a few penetrate Israel for terrorist purposes, like the terrorists who breached the fence in northern Jerusalem and carried out the terrorist attack at the Ramot junction last September, killing six people.

The IDF says that about 16,000 Palestinians attempted to infiltrate into Israel from the West Bank in 2025, half of whom were apprehended – and mostly in the Jerusalem envelope. But since the IDF is not responsible for the barrier in the Jerusalem area (but rather the Israel Police and the paramilitary Border Police), the actual number of infiltrations is believed to be at least double the IDF number.

Obviously, this is an ongoing, massive security risk, an acute blunder, which must be addressed, especially as the Moslem month of Ramadan approaches one month from now.

Ramadan may be a holy time in the Moslem calendar – meant as a month of fasting, charity, prayer, contrition, and reflection – but often it has been “celebrated” by Moslem, especially Palestinian, violence, especially in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. It is Ramadan exploited as an excuse for ramped-up holy war against Israel.

Those with long memories will remember that Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel on Yom Kippur 1973 – during the month of Ramadan. In many Arab circles, it is still called the “Ramadan War.” Somehow the prayer, contrition, and reflection did not inhibit that sneak attack that slaughtered 2,700 Israelis. Neither did the fasting. Egyptian and Syrian soldiers were given an exemption from fasting because they were engaged in the religious duty of killing “infidels.”

Hamas gleefully labeled the murderous attack in 2016 on the Sarona Market in Tel Aviv the “Ramadan Operation.” The beginning of Israel’s “Guardian of the Walls” offensive in 2021 against Hamas in Gaza was marked by barrages of Palestinian rockets fired toward Jerusalem; with 4,400 rockets fired into Israel over that 12-day war. That was also Ramadan.

SO SURE ENOUGH, again this year, everybody fears “escalation” in Ramadan, especially since Hamas and its mouthpiece the Al Jazeera broadcasting network are religiously calling for expansion of the “Al Aqsa Flood” (i.e., the war launched by Hamas’ October 7 attack) to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria via terrorism and uprising.

Some subsequently call upon Israeli leaders to pay deference to Ramadan, to be extra cautious during Ramadan, to do nothing to “provoke” Moslems on Ramadan – especially in and around Jerusalem’s Temple Mount – because Moslem emotions are oh-so-very sensitive during this month.

This is the soft bigotry of low expectations. When so-called security experts, politicians, diplomats, and statesmen nod their heads and say, “Well, of course, tensions always run high during Ramadan, and as such Jews/Israelis should keep a low profile because Moslem violence must be anticipated during the holy month” – they insult the majority of the world’s Moslems, as well as our intelligence. It is the very definition of surrendering to bullies rather than confronting them.

Instead, Israel’s security, intelligence, and diplomatic experts should be gathering to secure Jerusalem over Ramadan and beyond.

This means imposing anti-riot limits on Arab visitors to Jerusalem and the two Moslem shrines on the Temple Mount – as has been the case over the past three years. This requires multiple concentric circles of police/army checkpoints in a broad envelope in and around the city.

(Only men over 45 years old and married with families, as well as women and children, should be allowed to visit. This keeps away the population most likely to riot or commit acts of terrorism.)

Furthermore, any Palestinian/Moslem preacher on the Temple Mount or in the city who incites to violence – say, by blaspheming the “Zionists” for “Judaizing” Jerusalem and “storming” its Moslem holy sites – should be swiftly jailed.

Alas, such wretched talk has become almost standard Palestinian discourse. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas continues to stoke a broad-scale campaign against the authenticity of Israel’s historic rights in Jerusalem. In 2015 he screeched that “Al-Aksa is ours and so is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. They (the Jews) have no right to desecrate these holy sites with their filthy feet.”

Additionally, the Israel Police must act decisively to bar the flying of ISIS, Hamas, Islamic Movement, and Turkish flags on the Temple Mount as well as banners with calls to annihilate Israel and the Jewish People. Again, this has become almost expected behavior during Ramadan.

On the diplomatic level, Israel must be ready to rebuff the despicable denunciations of gullible (and not-so-gullible) Western progressives, who, when there is trouble in Jerusalem, love to blabber about Israel’s supposedly (but not really) “unprovoked and unacceptable” actions on the Temple Mount, and about “excessive Israeli force” (again, not), “violations of the status quo,” and other such balderdash.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom 23.01.2026.

It was so heartwarming this week to see the flotilla of human rights activists led by Swedish wunderkind Greta Thunberg steaming toward the shores of Iran on a dozen ships festooned with defiant banners, in support of the brave Iranians seeking to bring down the Islamic fundamentalist regime of the Ayatollahs.

It was wonderful to read petitions by masses of Hollywood movie stars, pop music icons, sophisticated novelists, and other highbrow types denouncing Ayatollah Khamenei for slaughtering thousands of his own citizens in the streets of Isfahan, Mashad, and Shiraz.

It was touching to see the “Free Iran” lapel pins worn by so many glamorous attendees at the Golden Globe film and television award ceremony this week, and to hear the passionate pleas for freedom in the Islamic Republic by distraught award winners.

It was gratifying to see students, including the new group Queers for Iran, setting up tent encampments, and breaking into libraries and classrooms at Columbia, Sydney, McGill, and Oxford universities to protest the war crimes of the Islamist clerics in Tehran.

It was rewarding to learn that powerful feminist organizations around the world, the new mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court Karim Khan, and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres all fulfilled their noble responsibilities by condemning the killings in Iran and calling for swift and historic regime change.

It was marvelous to hear the “squad” in the US Congress – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib – and other “progressive” representatives like Sen. Bernie Sanders, known for their ardent advocacy on issues of racial justice and Palestinian rights, give a series of fiery speeches in support of decisive American and Western intervention to back the courageous Iranians seeking to free their country from tyranny.

And it was encouraging to see all of the above marching through Moslem neighborhoods and outside mosques in Toronto, Chicago, and Paris challenging locals to “prove” their loyalty to the cause of freedom in Iran by joining the rallies. Even restaurants serving Iranian traditional fare were picketed by protesters demanding justice in Iran.

BUT OF COURSE and alas, none of the above things are true; none of this happened. Nobody who has participated over the past two years in incessant and vehement condemnations of Israel, and fervid attacks on Zionists and Jews, has spoken out against Iran.

Why is this so? Why the speechlessness, why the indifference to suffering, why the hypocrisy? Where is the genuine sympathy for innocent men, women, and children in Iran? What happened to principled support for freedom and ardent opposition to oppression?

Why have people – intellectuals all! – who screamed so swiftly and enthusiastically about the “starvation” of Gazans and “genocide” of Palestinians (both of which were blood libels against Israel) been struck so utterly dumb about definitive, undeniable, purposeful carnage in Iran?

Well, perhaps this is because the Hamas, Hezbollah, and Houthi assaults on Israel of the past two years, which the Western paragons of “virtue” essentially supported, were fueled and supported by Iran.

Perhaps they simply hate the West and thus cannot bring themselves to criticize an Islamic regime. Even when Islamists commit mass murder against the innocent, it can only be construed as justified resistance against Western-backed “imperialism.”

Perhaps because those who hate the West and Israel sense that if the ayatollahs fall, the entire colossus of anti-Western and anti-Israel animus will fail, or at the very least be severely weakened.

Perhaps the insane totality of their commitment to the Palestinian cause, with Palestinians as the ultimate oppressed people and Israel as the supposed ultimate agent of “apartheid” in the modern world, leaves no mental space, no moral conscience disk space, for any other malevolence.

Perhaps because they are just drunk on Jew-hatred, and/or hatred of US President Donald Trump.

WHATEVER THE CASE may be, the result is clear: The burning of Jews alive in their homes by Nazi-like Islamic stormtroopers is a cause for celebration; the brutalizing of Iranians in the streets by Islamo-fascist revolutionaries is a cause for silence.

Unfortunately, such sickness crosses partisan lines, afflicting radicals of all stripes. Hard-Left columnist Max Blumenthal and hard-Right broadcaster Tucker Carlson, for example, are united in rejecting any American support for the protest movement in Iran. Why? Because that would be “collaborating with Jewish supremacy” and succumbing to the pressures of Jewish “lobby groups” to force regime change “for Israel’s narrow benefit.”

Here you have the “horseshoe effect” in action – extreme Left and Right coming together in rare consensus, specially and only when it comes to demonizing Israel or defending the forces (like Iranian theocratic dictatorship) that threaten Israel.

The plain fact that Iran is a great threat to America and to Western civilization – and to its own people – is no matter. Israel and its nefarious advocates are the greater threat, you see.

Let us hope and pray that Trump rejects such warped thinking and instead grabs the opportunity to help reset the regional and global strategic situation by helping bring down the evil empire in Iran.

And, in the meantime, let the hypocritical silence regarding Iran of Hollywood heroes, college campus denizens, and so-called international human rights organizations be a stark lesson for Israelis and supporters of Israel around the world: Do not bow a head before them.

Our opponents are motivated by hatred. They are neither honest nor moral. They are crooked actors and distorted thinkers who hold no purchase on justice.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom 16.01.2026.

Israelis snicker a bit when US President Donald Trump declares with self-congratulatory assurance that peace in the Middle East has been achieved after 3,000 years of conflict.

They know, alas, that Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis have not been sufficiently defanged or deterred. They know that would-be hegemons in the region like Turkey, Qatar, and Iran are driven to conflict by long-term ideological goals and are in fact fighting a civilizational war against America, the Western world, and Israel.

But Trump does not do ideology. He holds an exceptionally transactional approach to political and foreign affairs – thinking that money, dealmaking, and the force of his personality can fix things and lead to swift peace everywhere. He prefers not to see the civilizational battles ahead.

Israel is appreciative of Trump’s dealmaking and is willing to partner with him to some extent – such as his buttering-up of the new Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa (aka, Mohammed Al-Jolani) – in order to peel Syria away, perhaps, from Russia and Iran.

But because Israel doubts that Sharaa is a reliable partner, it must also be prepared for renewed conflict. (Jihadis with deep roots in Al-Qaeda like Sharaa do not vacate their eliminationist beliefs very often or so suddenly.)

After the October 7, 2023, assault on Israel by Hamas, Israel cannot brook illusions about the dawn of regional peace, nor can it return to the “containment” policies of recent decades that prioritized diplomacy over decisive military triumphs against jihadist adversaries.

Israel can no longer accept policies that emphasize “quiet for quiet” and prioritize “restraint” because this allowed enemies to develop attack capabilities under the cover of diplomatic breathing time; what some Western officials mistakenly call periods of “stability.”

That approach failed. It blew up in Israel’s face, with terror and invasion from the West Bank and Gaza and from Syria and Lebanon, and with the march of Iran’s nuclear bomb program to near completion.

Therefore, Israel is gearing up for extended conflict at varying degrees of intensity, basing itself on a more aggressive mix of diplomacy and the use of force to scuttle enemy threats. Israel intends to act like a superpower, proactively asserting dominance along its borders and strategic ascendancy against threats farther away.

To this end, the Israeli government last month approved its largest-ever military budget –about US$35 billion for 2026 – with US$100 billion in direct military expenditures expected over the coming decade, alongside other investments in advanced military technology and indigenous weapons production capacity.

A superpower mindset takes shape

In this regard, expect Israel to continue to make fierce, overwhelming, and surprise strikes against enemy assets and strongholds from Khan Yunis to Isfahan. It needs to keep its enemies off base with pager blasts and bunker-busting airstrikes.

Israel wants to be feared, militarily dominant, and even “hegemonic” – not loved. Jerusalem knows that its neighbours will seek true reconciliation only when Israel is strong.

In short, Israel intends to project its strength to definitively neutralize adversaries, and in so doing to lead the region – to gather a coalition of truly peace-seeking nations. Israel intends to “stabilize” the region but not through reliance on hackneyed diplomatic templates and failed formulas that ooze weakness. More Abraham Accords-style peace treaties (even with Saudi Arabia) are possible and desirable, but these will be based on strength and clear strategic thinking.

Again, all this is based on a clear strategic prism that stems from a realistic perspective on the region. Israelis and their leaders – all leaders, from current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to opposition leaders like former prime ministers Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid –
understand that the algorithms by which the worst actors in the Middle East operate are ideological, attritional, and genocidal. They are not accommodational or transactional. The jihadists are informed by violent eschatological visions of crushing victory over Israel that have not ebbed.

For example, Israelis understand that beyond whatever security accords might be possible with the new regime in Syria and the Aoun government in Lebanon, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) itself must and will continue to regularly interdict threats to Israel over the borders with these countries. Israel will not sit back for a decade or two, merely gathering intelligence on emerging threats until they reach monstrous proportions (as Israel unfortunately did versus Hezbollah for three decades, and Hamas for two).

It means that to some extent Israel will intervene on behalf of the non-jihadist Druze community in Syria, which holds a zone of strategic importance in the southeast of that country along Israel’s northern border. Israel will not wait for American mediators to calm the situation or rely on UN peacekeepers to protect the Druze and secure the border.

The same goes for Judea and Samaria. Nobody is under the illusion that any Palestinian “authority” can or will counteract the build-up of Iranian-backed Islamic terrorist armies in these areas that directly threaten Jerusalem and central Israel. Only the IDF can and will. Thus, brigade-level Israeli military operations in places like Jenin, Tulkarm, and Nablus will continue to resolutely root out such threats. This is likely to be a permanent feature of Israeli policy.

Why Israel will not outsource its security

On the Palestinian front, it is important to note that Israel has no confidence whatsoever in the ability of Canada, the EU, or the US to substantially reform the Palestinian Authority to make it into a “democratic, transparent, efficient, and sustainable governance system” – as the “international community” keeps pattering on.

Thirty years and billions of dollars and euros later, the return on Western investment in Palestinian independence is abysmal. There is no democracy, no rule of law, no transparency, no sustainability, no investment in economic stability, and no peace education in the Palestinian Authority (PA). There are only nepotism and corruption, “pay-for-slay” handouts (meaning the incentivizing and rewarding of terrorism against Israel), violent propagandizing against Israel (including support for Hamas’s October 7 invasion and massacres), and diplomatic assaults on Israel in every possible international forum.

And not one single new hospital in the West Bank has been built with those Canadian, European, and American funds. Only one sewage treatment plant. Not a single refugee has been resettled.

As for Western “security assistance” to the PA, well, over US$1 billion in training and equipment for PA security forces (including over US$40 million in 2025) and hundreds of millions of dollars and euros in Canadian and European funds – has produced mixed results, at best. PA security personnel have repeatedly participated in or facilitated terror attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF soldiers. PA security personnel account for 12 per cent of all Palestinian terrorists held by Israel.

This explains why it is so nonsensical of France, Canada, and others to resuscitate delusions of Palestinian statehood, specifically now. This is a recipe for devastating disappointment and escalated conflict; and of course, for the isolation of Israel.

Alas, that may be the entire point of the French-led exercise to “recognize” faux Palestinian statehood. The point is to weaken Israel, to prevent it from growing too strong, too “hegemonic” in its ambitions, too “aggressive” in its military actions, too “dominant” in resetting the regional strategic situation. Too successful in defending itself, including the prevention of runaway Palestinian statehood.

According to President Emmanuel Macron of France, Israel must not be allowed to win so much – especially after its game-changing, successful strike on Iran’s nuclear bomb program. Instead, Israel needs to be constrained, hemmed-in, humbled, and dictated to. “No discussion!” he declared regarding “the need to urgently recognize” Palestinian statehood. It “must” happen, Macron declared – over the protests, and if necessary, over the dead bodies of Israelis.

The situation regarding Gaza is similar. Israel still intends to thoroughly end the military threat from Gaza. This means that beyond whatever temporary truce has been blessedly reached, mainly to secure the release of Israeli hostages held savagely by Hamas, there are no long-term accommodations with that terror movement. It must be rooted out from Gaza.

Certainly, there must not be any reconstruction of Gaza without complete demilitarization of the enclave, which may mean years of additional warfare at varying degrees of intensity.

Do not expect Israel to rely on Egypt or any other Arab/Muslim state to bring security or stability to Gaza. For years, Egypt turned a blind eye to the massive smuggling of weapons from the Egyptian-controlled Sinai Peninsula into Gaza, and of course it did nothing to stop Hamas from staging a coup against the Fatah-controlled PA and making Gaza into a Muslim Brotherhood mini-state. Nor will Israel abide a “technocratic” Palestinian government in Gaza that is but a flimsy cover for de facto Hamas rule.

The long war’s defining front

The Israeli superpower mindset applies, of course, to Iran. Iran must be prevented from rebuilding its nuclear bomb and ballistic missile programs and be deterred from rebuilding its network of proxy armies across the Middle East.

Any attempt at a cosmetic boondoggle with Iran, say another insubstantial P5+1 nuclear accord with the ayatollahs, will force Israel to again act against Tehran. The same goes for a situation in which Iran rebuilds its ballistic missile array. (The IAEA recently warned that Iran is rapidly doing exactly this, apparently with Chinese-supplied materials.) Israel will apply its updated defence doctrine, its regional superpower prism, of preventively downgrading enemy capabilities and preempting enemy threats.

In short, Israel intends to soldier on and maintain its upper hand. Israelis understand the long-term ideological and civilizational nature of the battles ahead. They gird themselves for these battles with the superpower mindset described here, intending to be a proactive regional power – the only true Western ally – reshaping the Middle East for the better.

Get used to a revamped Mideast strategic situation anchored by a very strong Israel.

Published in The MacDonald-Laurier Institute (MLI) on January 13, 2026.

One month before the Hamas assault on southern Israel in October 2023, I warned in these pages of the insanely widespread availability of weapons in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and Gaza, and especially in Arab and Bedouin communities in Israel.

The gargantuan wave of terrorist and criminal violence that Israel experienced all that year clearly was powered by the unbearable ease of obtaining weapons – increasingly advanced, sophisticated, and professional grade weapons, largely funded by Iran and smuggled into Israel across almost every border.

Since then, the crisis has escalated many times over. Hundreds of thousands of weapons are smuggled into Israel every year through the Egyptian and Jordanian borders via organized smuggling networks that are now using sophisticated drones. The weapons flow into mixed Jewish-Arab cities and from there penetrate Judea and Samaria, fueling both organized crime and terrorist activity and blurring the line between them.

Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) activity in Judea and Samaria over the past year clearly illustrates this. In Hebron and Bethlehem, broad Hamas terrorist organization infrastructures have been thwarted, involving dozens of operatives, firearms training, explosives production, and stockpiling of weapons. From the terrorists interrogated, it is clear that weapons smuggled as criminal transactions ultimately end up in the hands of terrorists. This could fuel a next Arab/Palestinian hybrid uprising against Israel, like the massive May 2021 Arab riots during Operation Guardian of the Walls.

The scale of the threat is vast. According to Hodaya Busheri and Yotam Deshe of this newspaper, 160,000 weapons are smuggled into Israel each year, about 14,000 a month. This amounts to 300,000 weapons over the past two years, with 100,000 illegal weapons estimated to be circulating in the Negev alone, with Bedouin criminal and terrorist gangs in the lead.

Just how much unlicensed and illegal weaponry is on the loose overall in Israel and in Palestinian-dominated areas? Nobody knows for sure, with estimates that vary from “mammoth” to “berserk” and “unlimited.” More than a decade ago, police estimates stood at half a million weapons, and since then, well, only G-d knows how many more weapons are out there.

The IDF admits that there are dozens of smuggling incidents across the Egyptian border each night, with each drone shipment averaging four long guns and several pistols; and it further admits that it intercepts one in four such “aerial packages,” at best.

The US Army at West Point estimates that for every smuggling attempt identified, thwarted, or disrupted by Israeli authorities, a vast number of other smuggling forays get through successfully without authorities ever learning about them!

In October 2025 alone (which is the last month on which there is published data), the IDF’s 80th “Edom” Division foiled 130 drone-assisted weapon (and drug) smuggling attempts across the Egyptian border; meaning that 500 attempts to smuggle weapons may have made it “successfully” into Israel.

The weapons smuggling situation across the Jordanian border – Israel’s longest and least protected – may be even worse, which is why the IDF is now beginning to deploy camera arrays, ambushes, and extensive area operations aimed at identifying smugglers and thwarting weapons transfers. Israel also is speeding up the building of a NIS 5.2 billion ($1.4 billion) 425-kilometer (265-mile) security barrier along the Jordan border from the Sea of Galilee all the way down to Eilat.

Nevertheless, despite the enormity of the problem, only one division of IDF troops holds down the entire Jordanian border from the Sea of Galilee to the Dead Sea, and only one division patrols the Arava from the Dead Sea down to Eilat.

Where does all the weaponry come from? Well, in August 2022 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Hossein Salami (who has since been assassinated by Israel) bragged how he was driving weapons to Palestinians engaged in “jihad” against Israel, adding that just as Iran managed to send weapons to Gaza in the past, “the West Bank can be armed in the same way, and this process is happening.”

Also, ammunition and auxiliary weapons continue to be stolen from Israeli depots with alacrity. The IDF admits to about 200 theft incidents from its bases over the past two years. For example, last October, 30,000 bullets were stolen from ammunition warehouses in the IDF’s Sde Teiman base in the south. In November, 70,000 bullets and 70 grenades were stolen from an IDF base in the Golan Heights in the north.

Sure enough, most of the weapons smuggled into Israel by drone in recent times specifically match the types of weapons that the IDF uses and the ammunition the IDF stocks on its bases. The smugglers and criminal/terrorist gangs aren’t stupid.

THE VAST smuggling effort and widespread availability of weapons is no longer a marginal criminal phenomenon but an ongoing strategic threat that urgently demands a national response.

This requires designation of the threat as a high national security priority (the government seems to have done so, at least rhetorically), and establishment of task forces at the ministerial level and at executive levels managed by the National Security Council to coordinate between the police, army, intelligence services, justice ministry and prosecution, etc. This requires operational and technological resources, with budget for manpower that is both beefy and brainy.

Otherwise, none of the above agencies will make the countering of weapons smuggling a top priority. They each have so many other tasks to handle and will unsurprisingly point the finger of blame at one another. (That is the nature of such large security bureaucracies.)

The Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee should establish a dedicated subcommittee to ride herd on this matter.

If Israel can figure-out which exact window in a Tehran apartment building to fly a nearly invisible explosive drone through, launched from a secret base inside Iran, in order to clobber an Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander – then it should be able to get a handle on drone smuggling of weapons into the Negev and Jordan Valley spawned by Iran, too.

Attack the smugglers in neighboring states, interdict the drone flights, and aggressively prosecute the local gangs receiving and distributing the weapons on our side of the borders.

Published in The Jerusalem Post 09.01.2026.

The Western media annually devotes considerable Christmas ink, and many Christian NGOs dedicate their Christmas appeals, to propagating the lie that Christians are under assault by Israelis. And worse still, that Jews are crucifying Christians smack in the heart of Bethlehem.

Not only is this untrue, but it ignores the radical Islamic assault on Christians across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, often with government encouragement and support.

The international media does its best every Christmas season to demonize Israel. For example, Ben White of Middle East Monitor published a filthy piece entitled “Bethlehem Bantustan: Have Yourself an Apartheid Christmas.”

White wrote that Bethlehem is “a microcosm of Israel’s colonization of Palestine.” The refugee camps are home to those expelled from their villages in the “ethnic cleansing” that enabled a majority Jewish citizenry; camps where “Israeli soldiers snatch residents and deploy lethal force” against youth raised in the shadow of the “apartheid, choking wall.”

Harriet Sherwood of The Observer wickedly evoked Biblical and Christian imagery to savage Israeli settlement in and around Jerusalem. She painted a picture of a pastoral “Christian biblical landscape” with “gnarled olive trees,” “bleating sheep and goats,” and “vine covered terraces,” “near the site where angels announced the birth of Jesus to shepherds in a field” – all tended to with love by Bethlehem’s remaining Christian heroes.

She then contrasted this with the evil Israeli security fence – “Eight-meter-high concrete slabs casting a deep shadow, both literally and metaphorically, snaking around most of Bethlehem,” along with the monster “cranes, bulldozers, and concrete apartment blocks” – all of which are “strangulating” the Christian city.

According to Lubna Masarwa and Peter Oborne of Middle East Eye, Christians in Bethlehem face no less than an “existential threat” under Israel’s occupation. And Al-Jazeera – that genocide-against-Israel-supporting radical Islamist propaganda organ – had the chutzpa to publish this week an account of supposed Israeli violence against Christians in Jerusalem and Gaza.

THESE SCREEDS seek to cover up the real reason for Christian decline in Bethlehem: The Palestinian Authority and radical Islam.

It started with Yasser Arafat. Arriving from Tunis, Arafat immediately set out to suppress the Palestinian middle class across the West Bank, which he understood could be the only real opposition to his planned dictatorial authority. He nationalized most business sectors and squeezed Palestinian small businessmen out of business. Especially hard hit was the mainly Christian middle class of Bethlehem.

Arafat then sidelined the long-time Christian mayor of Bethlehem, Elias Freij, and Arafat’s henchmen led a campaign of terror and intimidation against Christian institutions and families in the city. Land theft, beatings, and intimidation of Christians in Bethlehem by PA security services and other gangs became routine. Forced marriages between Christian women and Moslem men were reported. In 2002, Arafat’s terrorists even took over and defiled the Church of the Nativity for 39 days, holding 200 priests hostage as the terrorists sought to escape Israeli justice.

The result was an inexorable and ongoing Christian exodus from Bethlehem: a city captured by the PA and taken over by a very intolerant strain of Islam.

Nevertheless, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas annually releases a malevolent Christmas message in which he cynically calls Jesus Christ a “Palestinian messenger,” and goes on to blast Israel for denying “millions” of Christians their “right to worship in their homeland.”

This is an ugly attempt to apply replacement theology (in which Christians are said to have superseded the Jews in a covenant with G-d) to the Palestinian assault on Israel. In Abbas’s reversed and warped world, the Jewish-Christian Jesus has been replaced by a Palestinian Christ, and Christianity is under attack by the Jews, not the Arabs and Moslems.

INSTEAD OF exposing this nasty history, the global media prefers to parrot Abbas’s nonsense and to play up isolated instances of Jewish hooliganism against Christians in Jerusalem. Concurrently, the media and world leaders ignore the systematic, rampant, chronic, and deadly persecution of Christians in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

According to a British report, pervasive persecution of Christians “sometimes amounting to genocide” is ongoing across the Middle East. Millions of Christians in the region “have been uprooted from their homes, and many have been killed, kidnapped, imprisoned and discriminated against.”

The report highlights how states, and state-sponsored social media, incite hatred and publish propaganda against Christians, especially in Iran, Iraq, and Turkey.

The governing AKP in Turkey depicts Christians as a threat to the stability of the nation. Turkish Christian citizens are stereotyped as being not real Turks but rather Western collaborators. The oldest functioning Christian monastery in the world, the 5th century Mor Gabriel Monastery near the Turkish-Syrian border, has been stripped of most of its lands.

More than 600,000 Syrian Christians have been displaced or fled Syria since the civil war in that country began. Of the more than 80,000 Christians who lived in Homs prior to the uprising, only about 400 remain today. Christians have been massacred and buried in mass graves.

Iraq has lost at least two-thirds of its Christians over the past two decades. An al-Qaida raid on a Baghdad cathedral five years ago resulted in the murder of 44 Christian worshipers and two priests.

In Gaza, Islamic militants have bombed churches, killed prominent Christians, and forced others to convert to Islam. Greek Orthodox Archbishop Alexios tried to speak out against the persecution of Christians but was silenced by Hamas. Any foreign media interested in covering this story?

There are about a thousand documented cases in Egypt of the abduction, torture, rape, enslavement or forced conversion to Islam of Christians. Coptic churches have been bombed on Christmas and New Year’s Day, with flyers circulated calling for the total genocide of Egypt’s Christian Copts. As a result, tens of thousands of Coptic Christians have left.

Churches have also been attacked in recent years in Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Kenya, Lebanon, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tunisia. Christians have been threatened with death and imprisonment for “blasphemy” and “apostasy” in Algeria, Bangladesh, Iran, and Pakistan.

My friend Umar Mulinde, an Evangelical pastor from Uganda, has been receiving medical treatment on-and-off for almost two decades at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center following an acid attack that severely burned his face, destroyed his right eye, and damaged his lungs.

Pastor Mulinde, who converted to Christianity and began teaching favorably about Israel after spending much of his life as a Moslem, was attacked on Christmas Eve in 2011 in Kampala. The assailants shouted “Allah Akhbar” as they fled the scene. Since then, his wife and children have been under threat by Ugandan Islamists as well.

Have you seen any significant international media coverage of this story?

AS FOR THE situation in Israel, well, Israel is the only country in the Middle East where the number of Christians is rising (at about one percent per year, currently standing at 184,000, amounting to two percent of the population).

For the first time, there is a significant population of non-Arab Christian Israeli citizens, mainly immigrants from the former Soviet Union who, unlike Arabs, are fully assimilated into the Jewish Israeli mainstream. There are newly arrived Roman Catholics, Russian Orthodox, and Ethiopian Orthodox.

Christians in Israel have it good. The percentage of Christian Arabs who graduate high school is higher than that of Muslim or Jewish students, and more than half of Christian students proceed to study at Israeli universities (including more than 60% of Christian Arab women).

But you would not know this from media reports. Instead, you likely would have received the impression that Christians in Israel are under assault by Jews – because of Palestinian propaganda, and because of a few isolated hooligan attacks on Christian clergy and sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.

(Note that every responsible Israeli political and religious leader, including the Chief Rabbis, has condemned such attacks and apologized profusely in the name of Israel and Judaism.)

None of this has given any pause to anti-Israel churches in North America and Europe who continue their merry Yuletide way of divesting from Israel and otherwise campaigning against it. (‘Tis the season to bash Israel, tralalalalala tralalala …)

They have almost nothing to say, ever, about imprisoned pastors in Iran, Islamic acid-attacks on pastors in Uganda, fire-bombings of churches in Gaza, or the mass expulsion of Christians from Syria. I guess their silence can be explained by the fact that those Christians weren’t assaulted by Jews.

Published in The Jerusalem Post, 02.01.2026

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denies any link between Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state and this week’s Bondi Beach terrorist attack against Jews celebrating Chanuka.

“Overwhelmingly, most of the world recognizes a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East,” Albanese muttered in his trademark anodyne tone when relating to the attack. This was pushback against insinuations of Australian diplomatic culpability made by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and many Jewish leaders.

Albanese is wrong. He is blind, purposefully in denial. His enthusiasm for promoting Palestinian statehood led to the Bondi Beach slaughter.

Albanese’s impudent and insolent, in-Israel’s-face, at-Israel’s-expense, over-Israel’s-objection, stance on this matter indeed makes him culpable in the murder of 15 Australian Jews. As Emile Zola famously wrote: J’accuse!

This may be an accusation not comfortable to make, but Israeli and Jewish leaders around the world must insist upon it in every interaction with politicians and diplomats.

Leaders like Albanese – and prime ministers Keith Starmer of Britain and Mark Carney of Canada, and President Emmanuel Macron of France – must be told that their insane insistence on unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, specifically after October 7 and especially as calls for the destruction of Israel escalate in Palestinian society and in Western streets – is immoral.

Unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood in defiance of Israel obnoxiously delegitimizes Israeli historic-national and security positions and callously undermines the right to dignity of Jewish supporters of Israel. It amounts to abrogation of Western commitment to Israel’s security and to abandonment of the Jews. It is criminal appeasement of the enemy beast (and the beast will never be appeased).

It declares open season for hunting down Jews and “Zionists.” Yes, it directly paves the way to Sydney-style bloodbaths.

You see, the dereliction in countering antisemitism of the Australian government (and of the British, Canadian, French, and other governments) is clear, but that is only part of the picture.

Undeniably, they have been delinquent in setting proper limits on democratic discourse and in applying concrete policies that would combat the escalating hate fest. They have let the jihadist mobs rant-away in their streets with calls of “Gas the Jews,” Death to the IDF,” “Globalize the Intifada,” and other threats to Jews near and far.

Alas, dereliction of duty in combating such hate is an accusation easy to make and substantiate. It is a painfully obvious and searing indictment, but also too thin of an indictment. Western leaders must be charged with more – with mollycoddling the rapidly accelerating civilizational assault on the Jewish People and their indigenous homeland, the State of Israel.

WHEN GOVERNMENTS like Canberra give credence to false anti-Israel narratives about the Gaza war (such as allegations that Israel intentionally starved Gazan children, or targeted hospitals and journalists) – Hamas is handed a victory, and supporters of jihad are given incentive for violence against Jews everywhere.

When these falsehoods are presented as legitimate criticism of Israel’s government, Israelis and Jews inevitably become classified as villains undeserving of rights or sympathy – and outrages like Bondi Beach as well as campus and subway attacks on Jews become likely, even normalized.

When governments like Canberra blabber about the “urgency” of Palestinian statehood and shower Israel with “tough love” in this regard through highhanded UN resolutions – Palestinians get a green light for more war against Israel, and antisemites are encouraged to rev-up their attacks on Jews.

When governments like Canberra continue to massively fund the nefarious Hamas-penetrated agency, UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinians) – this feeds the Palestinian claim to a so-called “right of return” that would demographically destroy Israel and nourishes the convictions of jihadist gunmen that they can freely pop-off Jews on beaches or in synagogues.

In short and in plain language: By slap-happily bashing Israel and recklessly promoting Palestinian statehood at this existential moment, governments like those of Prime Minister Albanese weaken Israel and prolong the Palestinian campaign to demonize Israel. And this fuels the mobs rampaging through Jewish neighborhoods in Sydney and Melbourne, London, and Toronto.

And when Western leaders are willfully and stubbornly oblivious to this linkage, their professing of support for Jews rings hollow.

Every thinking Jew in the world knows this to be true. We feel this in our bones. Albanese and his ilk can deny this perspective and profess to be concerned both for the rights of Palestinians and for the safety of Jews with no contradiction between them, but we Jews know otherwise.

To paraphrase the actor and podcaster Jonah Platt: Western leaders absolutely do not get to foment hatred of the one place in the world where Jews are not a minority and where half of all Jews on Earth live – and then pretend they care about Jewish lives.

They absolutely do not get to dismiss mainstream Jewish community voices while tokenizing fringe anti-Zionist Jews who agree with them and who libel Israel – and then pretend they care about Jewish lives.

Mr. Albanese, Mr. Starmer, Mr. Carney, and Mr. Macron: You absolutely do not get to superciliously ignore the genocidal intentions of Palestinians against Israel and the murderous aims of antisemitic rioters against Jews – and then pretend you care about Jewish lives.

Instead, breed a strategic brain and scale back your dangerous delegitimization of Israel and Jews. Get some gumption and tell Palestinians that there will be no Palestine “from the river to the sea” (i.e., no erasure of Israel). Grow a collective spine and tell your own publics that you reject the relentless equation of Israel and Jews with the evils of faddish radical discourse (imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, white supremacy, genocide, etc.).

Stop scurrying about the international stage with schemes to ram a hostile Palestinian state down Israel’s throat while offering crocodile tears when local Jews pay the price of your maliciousness and malfeasance.

Published in The Jerusalem Post and Israel Hayom, 19.12.2025