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There Is No Compromise in a Religious War
Golda Meir. Photo: Wiki Commons.
JNS.org – Golda Meir is reputed to have said of Israel’s enemies, “They say we must be dead. And we say we want to be alive. Between life and death, I don’t know of a compromise.”
As is often said, Israelis live in the Middle East, not the Middle West. No matter what Israel’s enemies say or do, this reality does not penetrate the minds of people who live in different neighborhoods. Instead, politicians speak dreamily of ceasefire agreements, a Palestinian state and normalization with Saudi Arabia.
The root of the conflict is not the so-called “occupation.” When Jordan oversaw the West Bank for 19 years and Egypt controlled Gaza, no one demanded a new Palestinian state. The clamor against “occupation” surfaced only after Israel took control of these territories in self-defense. On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked from Gaza, an area Israel vacated 18 years ago. Israel doesn’t occupy Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen or Iran, and yet it is being attacked by all those countries.
The issue has never been Palestinian self-determination. Arab states invaded Israel in 1948 to carve it up among themselves, not create a Palestinian state. The Palestinians rejected offers of statehood in 1937, 1939, 1947, 1979 (autonomy that would have led to statehood), literally blew up the 1993 Oslo Accords with terrorism and turned down independence provided by the Clinton, Olmert and Trump Mideast peace plans.
What fuels this ongoing conflict is not a fight for Palestinian self-determination but the refusal of Islamist forces to accept a Jewish state in their midst. Most policymakers and pundits can’t process this idea, and students don’t want to believe in religious wars.
At root, religion has always been the basis of the intolerance of Jews in the Middle East. They were, at best, treated as second-class citizens (dhimmis) in Muslim countries before being expelled or forced to flee. In Palestine, the Mufti of Jerusalem incited riots against the Jews two decades before the creation of Israel, demonstrating that anti-Jewish animosity is a cornerstone of the conflict.
Peace cannot be achieved through land or ceasefire agreements since Muslim extremists do not believe that Jews can live on any part of Islamic land. The two-state crowd ignores the Palestinians when they say a Palestinian state would have to be Judenrein, the only place in the world where Jews would not be permitted to live.
Israel’s enemies make their intentions plain, but the world looks the other way. Western leaders argue that Hamas is not just an organization but an “idea,” suggesting that Israel cannot defeat it militarily. If that is true, then how can peace ever be made with an “idea” that calls for the annihilation of Jews?
For those not convinced that Oct. 7 was only one part of the Hamas agenda, I refer you to the group’s charter, which states plainly: “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. … The Islamic Resistance Movement is but one squadron that should be supported … until the enemy is vanquished and Allah’s victory is realized. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine … [emphasis added].
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wisely ignored US President Joe Biden’s pressure to stay out of Rafah, where Israel knew Yahya Sinwar was hiding, the Israel Defense Forces eliminated one head of the Hamas Hydra. Still, it will regrow and ensure that even after its military capability is demolished, terrorism will continue. Hence the idea that Israel should turn over Gaza to West Bank Palestinians who insist that Hamas be part of the government is a nonstarter.
Israel has cut off several of the Hezbollah Hydra’s heads, but it will grow another and another. Hezbollah will remain a danger until the Iranian regime is overthrown and Lebanon is returned to the Lebanese without the domination of Hezbollah. And here’s a reminder of the Hezbollah “idea” that will live on as expressed by Hassan Nasrallah: “If we searched the entire world for a person, more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli.” To reinforce the point that the war is not about land, occupation or Palestinian suffering, Nasrallah expressed hope that Diaspora Jews would all make aliyah. “If they all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
War is hell, but it is also sometimes necessary. What is the alternative when the Iranian regime has surrounded Israel with an “axis of resistance,” attacks it with ballistic missiles and is developing nuclear weapons to incinerate it? Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei said, “The Zionist regime is a deadly, cancerous growth” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed.” Like the antisemites on American campuses, he says he has nothing against Jews, just Zionists, who he says “have always been a plague, even before establishing the fraudulent Zionist regime.” According to Khamenei, “elimination of the State of Israel does not mean the elimination of the Jewish people,” even though 75% of the population are Jews.
We’re told peace is possible with the secular “moderates” in the West Bank like Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, who, along with other P.A. officials, praised the Hamas massacre, boasted that some of their fighters participated in the slaughter and eulogized Sinwar as “a great national leader.”
PLO chief Yasser Arafat once declared: “We know only one word: jihad, jihad, jihad. … And we are now entering the phase of the great jihad prior to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem.” The former speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, Ahmad Bahar, said, “Make us victorious over the infidel people. … Allah, take hold of the Jews and their allies, Allah, take hold of the Americans and their allies … Allah, count them and kill them to the last one and don’t leave even one.”
Fatah, led by Holocaust denier Abbas, has a military wing that posts remarks such as, “To all our sons and brothers in the Palestinian Security Forces throughout the West Bank—today is your day. Break into the settlements, strike the sons of apes of pigs, kill everyone who is a settler, slaughter everyone who is Israeli, by Allah, they are the most cowardly among men. Today is a tiding of days of victory, Allah willing—for this is jihad, jihad, victory or martyrdom.”
Look at any P.A. map or the logos of the terrorist organizations to see that the “solution” is not two states but one called Palestine replacing Israel. To advance its cause, the P.A. incentivizes the murder of Jews through its “pay-for-slay” policy of paying the families of suicide bombers and terrorists in Israeli prisons.
The former head of the Shin Bet astonishingly wrote: “Winning on the battlefield does not bring us closer to winning the war—unless we defeat Hamas’s ideology by creating a better political horizon.”
Others, including Biden, have expressed similar nonsense. The Palestinians were repeatedly offered and rejected a horizon for independence precisely because they share the Islamist ideology. Oslo was the best proof as the Palestinians were given a five-year horizon for statehood and killed it by incessant terror. Arafat’s reaction to the prospect offered by Clinton was to start the Second Intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2005.
Make no mistake, if given the opportunity, the Palestinians and the jihadists in Iran and Hezbollah would kill every Jew if given the chance.
Despite the best efforts of the Biden administration, the Europeans and the United Nations, to spare everyone but the Jews, Israelis stubbornly insist on living and not compromising with those who unapologetically seek its destruction.
As Israelis remind the world, their fight is not only for survival—it is a fight for the West, for the defense of civilization against a barbaric ideology that seeks nothing less than the destruction of the Jewish people.
Americans are in the same fight but dislike talking about it. We are fighting ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other Islamist terrorists, even at the cost of civilian lives. Israelis are told they are creating more terrorists, but Americans have never hesitated to kill terrorists out of such concern. And while some are telling Israel to “take the win” after eliminating Sinwar, no one proposed that the United States stop the war on terror after Osama bin Laden was dispatched.
There is hope, however distant it may seem.
I am reminded of the British adviser who told a Zionist official the Jews should never have allowed the United Nations to decide their fate in 1947 because the only way they’d get a state was if the United States and the Soviet Union agreed. That would never happen, he said.
He was wrong.
For the next 30 years, Middle East experts said the Arabs will never make peace. Then, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat broke the psychological barrier by going to Jerusalem in 1977 and signing a treaty with Israel two years later. It took 15 more years before King Hussein of Jordan showed the same courage. Another 25 years passed before the Abraham Accords were signed and another four Muslim Arab states normalized relations with Israel.
Perhaps, one day, a new generation of Palestinians will see that their future lies in coexistence, not jihad. But that day will only come after Israel’s enemies and their hateful ideologies are defeated, just as Nazism and communism were.
The post There Is No Compromise in a Religious War first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
The Trump administration has imposed sweeping sanctions against Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, citing the UN official’s lengthy record of singling out Israel for condemnation.
In a post on X, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions under a February executive order targeting those who “prompt International Criminal Court (ICC) action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives.” He accused Albanese of waging “political and economic warfare” against both nations and asserted that “such efforts will no longer be tolerated.”
“Today I am imposing sanctions on UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese for her illegitimate and shameful efforts to prompt [International Criminal Court] action against U.S. and Israeli officials, companies, and executives,” Rubio announced on X/Twitter.
“Albanese’s campaign of political and economic warfare against the United States and Israel will no longer be tolerated,” declared the Trump administration’s top foreign affairs official. “We will always stand by our partners in their right to self-defense.”
Rubio concluded: “The United States will continue to take whatever actions we deem necessary to respond to lawfare and protect our sovereignty and that of our allies.”
The decision to impose sanctions on Albanese marks an escalation in the ongoing feud between the White House and the United Nations over Israel. The Trump administration has repeatedly accused the UN and Albanese of unfairly targeting Israel and mischaracterizing the Jewish state’s conduct in Gaza.
Albanese, an Italian lawyer and academic, has held the position of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories since 2022. The position authorizes her to monitor and report on alleged “human rights violations” by Israel against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last week, Albanese issued a scathing report accusing companies of helping Israel maintain a so-called “genocide economy.” She called on the companies to cut off economic ties with Israel and warned that they might be guilty of “complicity” in the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
Critics of Albanese have long accused her of exhibiting an excessive anti-Israel bias, calling into question her fairness and neutrality.
Albanese has an extensive history of using her role at the UN to denigrate Israel and seemingly rationalize Hamas’ attacks on the Jewish state.
In the months following the Palestinian terrorist group’s atrocities across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Albanese accused the Jewish state of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people had been killed in the Gaza war as a result of Israeli actions.
The action comes as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits Washington, where he has received a warm reception from the Trump administration. Netanyahu has been meeting with US officials to discuss next steps in the ongoing Gaza military operation.
Gideon Sa’ar, Minister of Foreign Affairs for Israel, commended the Rubio announcement with his own post on X/Twitter, exclaiming: “A clear message. Time for the UN to pay attention!”
The post US Clamps Sanctions on Israel-bashing UN Rights Monitor Albanese first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations
US President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, July 8, 2025. Photo: Kevin Lamarque via Reuters Connect.
The Trump administration escalated its showdown against Harvard University on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre across southern Israel.
The US Department of Education (DOE) announced the action on Wednesday. Citing Harvard’s admitted failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated others forms of hatred in the past, the DOE called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
The DOE, McMahon added, “expects the New England Commission of Higher Education to enforce its policies and practices, and to keep the Department fully informed of its efforts to ensure that Harvard is in compliance with federal law and accreditor standards.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism has acknowledged that the university administration’s handling of campus antisemitism fell well below its obligations under both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its own nondiscrimination policies.
In a 300-plus-page report, the task force compiled a comprehensive record of antisemitic incidents on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon depicting Jews as murderers of people of color. The report identified Harvard’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups as a key source of its problem.
Coming several weeks after President Donald Trump ordered the freeze of $2.26 billion in federal research grants and contracts for Harvard, the task force report found it was “clear” that antisemitism and anti-Israel bias have been fomented, practiced, and tolerated not only at Harvard but also within academia more widely.”
The university is now suing the federal government over the funding halt.
President Trump has spoken scathingly of Harvard, calling it, for example, an “Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institute … with students being accepted from all over the world that want to rip our Country apart” in an April post to his Truth Social platform.
In recent weeks, however, both Trump and McMahon had commended Harvard’s constructive response in negotiations over reforms the administration has asked it to implement as a precondition for restoring federal funds. The requested reforms include hiring more conservative faculty, shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI] programs, and slashing the size of administrative offices tangential to the university’s central educational mission.
The administration has since changed its tone in the wake of a report by The Harvard Crimson that interim Harvard President Alan Garber has said “behind closed doors” that he has no intention of doing anything that would make Harvard more palatable to conservatives.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism issued Harvard a formal “notice of violation” of civil rights law. Charging that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a flood of racist and antisemitic abuse both in and outside of the classroom, it threatened to strip whatever remains of Harvard’s federal funding.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
In Wednesday’s announcement, US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Harvard’s conduct “forfeits the legitimacy that accreditation is designed to uphold.”
“HHS and Department of Education will actively hold Harvard accountable through sustained oversight until it restores public trust and ensures a campus free of discrimination,” he said.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Hardball: Trump Administration Reports Harvard to Accreditor Over Antisemitism Allegations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks
IDF operating in southern Lebanon. Photo: IDF Spokesperson
Israeli forces uncovered and destroyed Hezbollah weapons caches in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, as a new report indicated that despite ongoing U.S.-led efforts to secure a disarmament deal, the Iran-backed group is making repeated, largely concealed attempts to rebuild its military presence in the area.
Troops carried out several operations targeting Hezbollah infrastructure in southern Lebanon on Wednesday morning, destroying weapons depots, explosives and multibarrel launchers concealed in forested terrain, the IDF said, in violation of the November ceasefire, which requires Hezbollah to withdraw its forces 20 miles from the Israeli border.
A new report released this week by the Alma Research and Education Center found that Hezbollah is focused on rebuilding in three areas: operational deployment, weapons acquisition, and financial recovery.
“Hezbollah didn’t give up its resistance narrative and motivation,” Alma’s director, Lt. Col. (Res.) Sarit Zehavi, told The Algemeiner.
“It wants to rebuild its capabilities and infrastructures, whether it’s the villages that will be used as human shields or the military infrastructure in South Lebanon and in Lebanon in general.”
According to Zehavi, Hezbollah is attempting to return Radwan fighters to positions south of the Litani River as part of a wider plan to restore its elite forces to operational readiness. The IDF on Monday killed Radwan commander Ali Abd al-Hassan Haidar in a targeted strike. The action came hours after US Special Envoy for Syria Thomas Barrack met with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut to discuss a long-term deal that would include an Israeli withdrawal and complete disarmament of Hezbollah.
Barrack described the Lebanese response to the proposal as positive. Later, he issued a blunt warning to Hezbollah in response to a vow by the terror group’s leader, Naim Qassem, not to lay down its arms. “If they mess with us anywhere in the world, they will have a serious problem with us,” Barrack said in an interview with Lebanese news network LBCI. “They don’t want that.”
Zehavi said it was premature to predict the outcome of the diplomatic efforts. She warned that the challenge of disarming Hezbollah remains enormous and emphasized that the Lebanese Armed Forces have not demonstrated the capability or willingness to confront the group.
“It’s too soon to be optimistic or pessimistic,” she said, noting that no firm commitments have emerged from the Beirut talks.
Hezbollah’s efforts to smuggle and manufacture weapons have been complicated by both Israeli strikes and the regional realignment over recent months. While Israeli strikes have disrupted many supply routes, according to Zehavi, Syrian authorities have intercepted far more Hezbollah-bound weapons than the Lebanese Army, which claims to have uncovered 500 arms caches but has provided no evidence.
The financial front marks the third aspect of Hezbollah’s rebuilding effort. Last week, the group halted cash payments to Shiite civilians whose homes were damaged in the war, citing liquidity problems. Zehavi attributed the shortfall to disruptions in Iran’s funding networks — an outcome of the 12-day war against the regime in Tehran — and said the constraints would likely hamper Hezbollah’s ability to compensate its base and sustain operations.
“I hope they will continue to have problems with the cash flow, that way it will be very difficult for them to recover,” she said.
The post IDF Strikes Hezbollah Sites in South Lebanon as Terror Group Pushes to Rebuild Amid US Disarmament Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.