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A Jewish museum exhibit features the Palestinian flag. Some visitors wonder if it belongs.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — Tucked in the far corner of a large, brightly-lit exhibition hall on the ground floor of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco, there is a delicate-looking piece of art with a strong political message.
At first glance, it appears to be three circular vases with flowers in them. The ceramic vases sit on shelves attached to the wall, and colorful collages hang above them. On closer inspection, visitors will notice that the flowers are made out of paper and that affixed to each vase is an image of the Palestinian flag printed on foam board.
A nearby label written by the curators of the exhibit, titled “Tikkun: For the Cosmos, the Community, and Ourselves,” explains that the piece was inspired by a conversation the artist, Tosha Stimage of Berkeley, had with a Palestinian man. He told Stimage about the plants that are native to Palestine — “a place which he can no longer access due to the ongoing conflict in the region,” the curators write.
The label also includes a note about the flag: “Some may find its presence at The CJM troubling or confusing, while others may find it appropriate and forthright. Stimage recognizes the potential for these divergent responses and hopes to use them as a means of generating dialogue.”
On a Sunday afternoon in October, Maury Ostroff read the label and walked away without inspecting the artwork.
Visitors to the “Tikkun” exhibit are encouraged to share their responses to the artwork via comment cards. (Andrew Esensten)
Asked how the presence of the flag made him feel, Ostroff, who is Jewish and lives in Muir Beach, in Marin County, replied, “Unhappy.”
Why?
“It’s not offensive to me in the same way that a swastika is. My skin is a little bit thicker than that. But I wish it weren’t here.”
He added, “What’s so Jewish about this? What’s so ‘tikkun olam’ about all of this?”
For the “Tikkun” exhibit, which opened Feb. 17 and runs through Jan. 8, the CJM invited both Jewish and non-Jewish Bay Area artists to contribute new works on the theme of repair, however they chose to interpret it. “No one is listening to us,” the piece by Stimage, who is not Jewish, is the first work of art featuring the Palestinian flag to be shown at CJM in recent memory; the museum could not say when or if the flag has been displayed on its walls before.
The piece prompted several internal conversations among CJM staff when it was first submitted and, since it has been on display, has generated a variety of responses from museumgoers who have left comments in a box at the entrance to the exhibit. Intentionally or not, Stimage has raised numerous questions with the artwork, including: Does a work of art that is sympathetic to the Palestinian struggle for statehood belong in a Jewish museum? And what is the role of a contemporary Jewish museum, anyway?
“To truly be a contemporary art museum, meaning embedded in the contemporary issues of our day, our job is to provide a platform for dialogue and to share a diversity of perspectives on our walls,” said Chad Coerver, CJM’s executive director since September 2021. “If any institution [like ours] took the path of withholding artwork that troubled our staff, our board or our community, it would be very difficult to mount exhibitions.”
CJM is a member of the Council of American Jewish Museums, a network of 76 museums across the country. CAJM does not have guidelines about the kind of art its member museums can and cannot display, according to Executive Director Melissa Yaverbaum.
J. reached out to several CAJM member museums in New York, Los Angeles and other places by email to ask if they had ever shown artwork with Palestinian iconography or works by Palestinian artists. The museums declined to answer or did not respond.
In recent years, two Jewish museums have been embroiled in controversy over issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Spertus Institute for Jewish Learning and Leadership in Chicago staged an exhibit in 2008 on Israeli and Palestinian concepts of homeland that included maps and portraits of Palestinians. Following outcry from members of the local Jewish community who felt the exhibit presented Israel in a negative light, the museum decided to close the exhibit after only a few weeks. And in 2019, the director of the Jewish Museum Berlin resigned after the museum tweeted a link to a pro-BDS article in a German newspaper. (The museum previously came under fire for welcoming anti-Zionist scholar Judith Butler and representatives of Iran.)
In a joint interview with J., two CJM staffers who worked on “Tikkun” — co-curator Qianjin Montoya, who is not Jewish, and a Jewish senior curator who served in an advisory role, Heidi Rabben — shared the story of how Stimage’s piece came to be in the exhibit. (Montoya’s co-curator for the exhibit, Arianne Gelardin, no longer works at the museum.)
Since 2009, CJM has invited local artists from different backgrounds to create new work as part of the museum’s annual Dorothy Saxe Invitational. The idea for “Tikkun” was hatched before the pandemic put the planning process on hold. Once the CJM and Saxe — a local philanthropist and art collector — agreed on the theme, the co-curators invited artists “already engaged in healing through their relationship to community or in their practice of daily life,” Gelardin told J. last February.
The 30 artists who accepted the museum’s invitation were given only four months to conceive of and submit new works. That was likely the shortest timeline in the history of the invitational, which has been held 11 previous times, according to the museum. Each artist received a packet of materials compiled by CJM staff, with input from the Shalom Hartman Institute, a non-degree granting Jewish education center, to guide their thinking on “tikkun.”
Stimage was invited to participate because she is “very active” in the Bay Area and because “her work reflects ideas of community and connection,” Montoya said.
The curators said Stimage’s inclusion of the Palestinian flag in her submitted piece came as a surprise and prompted challenging conversations. However, they noted that they found the content of some of the other artists’ work surprising, too, and that it’s not unusual for contemporary artists to push the envelope in their work.
“I wouldn’t say we expected to receive a piece about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but we weren’t steering anyone away from that, either,” Rabben told J., adding that the submission guidelines did not place any topic off limits. “That’s a commitment from the museum to authentically represent the creative spirit of the artists that we’re working with,” she said.
Still, the curators said they engaged in a dialogue with Stimage in order to better understand each aspect of her piece and her overall intentions. Through those conversations, the curators learned that Stimage wanted to explore a moment of “rupture,” and that through her piece she hoped to communicate “that before healing or repair might happen, you have to first acknowledge that rupture,” Rabben said.
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is showing “Tikkun,” an exhibit of works by Jewish and non-Jewish artists on the theme of repair. (Andrew Esensten)
Coerver, who was involved in some of the conversations, stressed that “careful consideration” was given to including the piece in the exhibit. “We felt an artwork addressing the plight of the Palestinians was appropriate in an exhibition on healing and repair,” he said. (No work submitted as part of the Dorothy Saxe Invitational has ever been outright rejected, the museum said.)
Stimage did not respond to interview requests from J. According to a CV on her website, she was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and earned an MFA from California College of the Arts in 2016. She is a past fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and was an artist-in-residence at Facebook in 2018. She also owns a floral gift shop in Oakland called Saint Flora.
Her work often touches on Black identity; she created a piece honoring Sandra Bland, an African-American woman whose 2015 arrest and death in a Texas jail cell sparked protests, and contributed to a 2019 San Francisco Art Institute exhibit on the Black Panther Party.
“I have a responsibility to create things that will, to the best of my present knowledge, do more good than harm, heal, inspire and uplift other humans,” she told the San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper in 2015.
Stimage’s precise views on Israel are unknown. CJM referred J. to her artist statement for “No one is listening to us,” which reads: “Olive, sage, and sumac are flowering plants native to the Mediterranean (including regions of Gaza and the West Bank) that have a direct relationship to contested ancestral land and affect the livelihood of so many Palestinian farmers and families caught in the conflict. They are positioned in the space of The Contemporary Jewish Museum as a metaphor for the ongoing conflict over land rights and the desperate need for restoration and healing of an age-old wound.”
The curators told J. that during their conversations with Stimage about her piece, they asked her why including images of the Palestinian flag was important to her but did not request that she remove them.
“We determined that none of [the piece’s] components in and of themselves signified something problematic or concerning,” Rabben said. “Of course, we had the awareness that the symbol [of the flag] will be read in a variety of ways by a variety of people.”
(Rabben pointed out that the exhibit includes other works with national symbols rendered in provocative ways, such as a black-and-white photograph of an American flag that was torn apart and partially reassembled by Mexican-American artist Jose Arias.)
The Palestinian flag — which contains the Pan-Arab colors of black, white, green and red — was adopted by the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964. Since then, it has been the primary symbol of Palestinian nationalism.
For decades, the PLO was considered an enemy organization by Israel, and anything associated with it “had no place in Israeli public life,” said Eran Kaplan, an Israeli-born professor of Israel studies at San Francisco State University. Israel never went so far as to ban the flag. However, during the First Intifada, which lasted from 1987 to 1993, Israeli soldiers sometimes followed orders to confiscate the flag from protesters in the West Bank and Gaza.
With the signing of the Oslo Accord in 1993, Israel and the PLO recognized each other as negotiating partners. Yet the Palestinian flag remains a contentious symbol in Israel today. Kaplan noted that it recently served as a flashpoint during the funeral procession of Shireen Abu Akleh, the Palestinian American broadcaster who was killed in the West Bank in May. (The IDF conducted a review and admitted that the Israeli soldier who shot her had most likely misidentified her as an armed militant.) After warning Abu Akleh’s family not to display the flag, Israeli police attacked mourners in East Jerusalem, ripping flags out of their hands and off of the vehicle carrying her casket.
Today, the flag holds different meanings for Israelis and American Jews from different generations and political persuasions.
“There are large segments in Israeli society who view any form of Palestinian national identity as a threat to the existence of Israel,” Kaplan said. “There are others who view the PLO as legitimate partners in any form of negotiations [over the creation of a Palestinian state], but there’s an absolute split over those questions.”
Given the sensitive nature of Stimage’s work and others in the exhibit, the curators decided to solicit feedback from visitors via comment cards available at the entrance to the hall. Rabben said the museum has received a number of comments specifically about “No one is listening to us,” most of which were positive. “The majority of those comments were ‘Thank you for offering space for this topic at the museum,’” she said.
Last month, a security guard sitting in the “Tikkun” exhibition hall told a reporter that he had not witnessed any expressions of outrage or protest through the first nine months of the exhibit. “When we opened we were afraid of negative reactions, but they’re not stressed about it,” he said of visitors. “We have shown worse things here.” The guard, who has worked at the museum since it opened in 2008, mentioned a 2010 exhibit, “Our Struggle: Responding to Mein Kampf,” which included a copy of Hitler’s autobiography. “Some people were cussing us out” for displaying the book, he recalled.
Meanwhile, on the same floor as “Tikkun,” there is another, smaller exhibit containing potentially offensive art. A sign outside of the room warns visitors that inside is a Hitler marionette created by the parents of puppeteer Frank Oz. “Our intention in displaying this object is to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive through the objects and firsthand stories of those who experienced its persecution, and to encourage conversation and education about the ongoing horrors of antisemitism and authoritarianism today,” the sign says.
Coerver, CJM’s executive director, said he was proud that the museum’s three current exhibits — “Tikkun,” “Oz is for Oznowicz: A Puppet Family’s History” and “Gillian Laub: Family Matters,” which includes photographs that Laub took of her Trump-supporting relatives — are raising “challenging questions” and providing opportunities for both visitors and museum staff to “expand our horizons.”
“We’ve been wading into some issues that I think are a little thicker than maybe we’ve been confronting in the past,” he said, “and I hope that continues.”
A version of this piece originally ran in J. The Jewish News of Northern California, and is reprinted with permission.
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Important North Carolina Democrats Said Zionists Are Nazis — Many People Are Okay With It
Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, speaks after Democrat Josh Stein won the North Carolina governor’s race, in Raleigh, North Carolina, US, Nov. 5, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
The North Carolina Democratic Party is at war with itself over Israel and antisemitism.
Earlier this month, I reported that leaders from the North Carolina Democratic Party’s (NCDP) Muslim Caucus had recently made hateful posts on social media. Elyas Mohammed, president of the caucus, described Zionists as “Nazis” and “a threat to humanity.”
Jibril Hough, first vice president of the same caucus, said “Zionism is a branch of racism/white supremacy and must be fought with the same intensity.” He described Zionists as the “worst of humanity.”
This month, Hough posted that Jeffrey Epstein could be alive and in hiding in Israel as part of a US/Israel conspiracy.
Now, two prominent North Carolina Democratic leaders have strongly condemned the statements by Muslim Caucus leaders.
Gov. Josh Stein told Jewish Insider (JI), “Antisemitic comments and conspiracy theories have no place anywhere, including in the North Carolina Democratic Party.”
Former Gov. and current Senatorial candidate Roy Cooper (D) told JI, “These reprehensible posts were an unacceptable expression of antisemitism and I condemn them in the strongest of terms.”
Stein and Cooper’s comments came promptly after many letters were sent by community members, including a powerful letter co-signed by the four local Jewish Federations directed to Gov. Stein and party officials. The Federations explained:
As Jews in North Carolina who support the existence of the State of Israel, and who represent broad cross-sections of our state’s Jewish population, we find this language hate-filled, insensitive, inflammatory, and threatening. It is incompatible with the standards of responsible civic leadership and it should disqualify any individual from holding a leadership role within a political party structure. Immediate corrective action is required.
The American Jewish Congress thanked Stein and Cooper for “making clear that antisemitism and conspiracy theories are unacceptable in the North Carolina Democratic Party.” The NCDP Jewish Caucus also thanked Stein and Cooper.
Mohammed and Hough responded by quickly doubling down on their statements, likely knowing that many in the party would support them.
Mohammed pinned (placed) his post calling Zionists “Nazis” to the top of his Facebook account.
Hough shared The Algemeiner column reporting his comments to social media, proudly quoting himself saying Zionists are the “worst of humanity.”
Rather than apologize, the Muslim Caucus issued a statement defending Mohammed, proclaiming, “We will not be silenced.” The NCDP Arab Caucus also re-posted a statement defending Mohammed.
Last week, the Jewish Democrats were asked on Facebook, “Do you accept Zionists?” Without answering directly, the Jewish Democrats of NCDP responded, “we accept everyone who treats human beings with dignity.” These comments were then promptly removed or hidden from public view.
Rev. Dr. Paul McAllister is chair of the NCDP’s Interfaith Caucus. The day after Stein and Cooper forcefully rejected Mohammed and Hough’s comments, McAllister posted a photo of himself on social media standing with Hough.
This comes as no surprise. McAllister is well known as a man who promotes hatred towards Israel. For example, McAllister endorsed and spoke on a panel, “The Genocide in Palestine,” which prominently featured Leila Khaled on the flyer. Khaled is a convicted hijacker and member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, designated as a terrorist organization by the US government.
A small Jewish, anti-Israel subgroup of McAllister’s Interfaith Caucus posted on social media, “WE STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH ELYAS MOHAMMED.”
This subgroup, or sub-caucus, calls itself Jewish Democrats of NCDP and is openly referred to by supporters as the “non-Zionist caucus.”
Many Democrats believe this non-Zionist group was created to confuse the public into believing that Jews in North Carolina do not support Israel. The confusion is real and likely widespread.
For example, in a recent social media post, a commenter expressed confusion trying to distinguish between the much larger NCDP Jewish Caucus — which represents broad Jewish interests and statewide constituencies — and the very small Jewish Democrats of NCDP, which is the anti-Zionist sub-caucus.
Jewish Democratic leaders across the state have told me they believe the NCDP is violating its own rules by essentially allowing two Jewish caucuses. The NCDP’s Plan of Organization clearly states, “The party will recognize a single auxiliary or caucus for any specific purpose.”
Democrats point out that, for example, there are not two African-American caucuses or two LGBTQ caucuses that are trying to push different viewpoints. Democrats emphasize this is another example of how state party leaders implicitly allow, or even encourage, targeting and demonization of Israel and Zionists.
Jeffrey Bierer is a current member of the Democratic Party’s State Executive Committee. Speaking for himself and not any organization, he told me, “At least four of us [Jewish Caucus members] paid dues to the Interfaith Caucus and we never received any confirmation or information back.”
Bierer also told me he paid separate dues to the Interfaith Caucus’ Jewish Democrats group with the same result.
Bierer said, “We were 100% friendly and respectful and said we would like to get involved. We didn’t get any response. Zero response.”
I reached out to the Jewish Caucus regarding this issue. They provided me a statement that began:
In an effort to bridge religious and political divides, a few of our members attempted to join the NCDP Interfaith Caucus. Initially their membership fees were accepted, then when those members inquired about the lack of regular communication and meeting times, their money was later returned.
It is evident that the North Carolina Democratic Party should investigate this potential discrimination against Jewish members and members who identify with Israel.
The Muslim Caucus is newly formed and currently in the review process seeking “final approval” by the NCDP. The Muslim Caucus is prominently displayed on the NCDP’s website featuring Elyas Mohammed under the heading, “OUR PEOPLE.”
According to the NCDP’s Plan of Organization, caucuses are not just advocacy groups — they are included in, and contribute to, significant decision making and planning within the party.
The document explains, “Caucuses shall be represented on the NCDP Executive Council, the NCDP State Legislative Policy Committee and the Platform and Resolutions Committee by the State President or designated representative and participate in strategic planning for the NCDP.”
I have contacted State Chair Anderson Clayton and First Vice Chair Jonah Garson twice over the past few weeks, sending them quotes, links, and screenshots regarding the comments from Muslim Caucus leaders. They have not responded. Unlike Stein and Cooper, Clayton and Garson have not publicly denounced the comments made by caucus leaders.
Antisemitism within the NCDP is a systemic problem that goes well beyond a few caucus leaders. The NCDP has been targeting Israel for years. For example, on Saturday, June 28, 2025 — during Shabbat — the party passed six anti-Israel resolutions. One of these resolutions even accused Israel of taking “Palestinian hostages.”
Clayton has appeared in smiling photographs with Mohammed and Jibril over the past few years. It is expected and normal that a chair of a state party stands with caucus leaders. But now that Mohammed and Jibril have clearly distinguished themselves as hateful and have targeted a large share of the Jewish Democrats in North Carolina who believe Israel has a right to exist, it is also expected that Clayton and Garson publicly denounce these hateful statements. They have not.
Their silence sends a message that Jewish members of the North Carolina Democratic Party, and all members who support Israel’s right to exist, are not valued or respected.
Rabbi Emeritus Fred Guttman of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, who formerly served on the executive committee of the state’s Democratic Party, explained:
What has occurred demonizes Jewish supporters of Israel and increases the risk of violent acts against Jews in North Carolina. This is extremely serious…Those in leadership positions should continue to speak out clearly and condemn it…Leadership carries responsibility, and failure to address antisemitism undermines the safety and integrity of the community. We certainly do not need a repeat in North Carolina of tragedies such as Bondi Beach, Manchester, England, or the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.
The North Carolina Democratic Party should take prompt action to unequivocally demonstrate that antisemitism, and discrimination against Jews and those who identify with Israel, will not be tolerated. Jewish safety — and equal treatment for all — depends on it.
Peter Reitzes writes about antisemitism in North Carolina and beyond.
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How to Respond When Your Friends Cite Hamas’ Casualty Numbers
The head of an anti-Hamas faction, Hussam Alastal, fires a weapon in the air as he is surrounded by masked gunmen, in an Israeli-held area in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, in this screenshot taken from a video released Nov. 21, 2025. Photo: Hussam Alastal/via REUTERS
Not long ago, a very intelligent friend asked me a sincere question.
He wanted to know whether, as a Zionist, I was disturbed by what he took to be a settled fact: that Israel had “killed 300 people in a tent while trying to get one terrorist.”
He wasn’t hostile. He wasn’t chanting slogans. He was genuinely troubled and trying to reconcile that number with my support for Israel.
What shocked me was not the question itself, but the assumption behind it. He works with numbers for a living, yet it had not occurred to him to ask the most basic question: “Is that figure actually true, and who produced it?” He had simply absorbed it as unquestionable reality.
When I explained that such numbers almost always trace back to Hamas-run institutions in Gaza, laundered through media outlets and NGOs that treat them as neutral sources, it was clearly a new way of looking at the war for him.
The conversation revealed something I see on a much larger scale: people who would never trust Hamas with their bank account are trusting it with their moral judgment.
When I describe Hamas’ listed death toll in Gaza, I describe it as the “casualty-number war.” It’s not just about how many people have died. It’s about who is doing the counting, what they are counting, and how those numbers are deployed to turn a complicated war into a morality play with ready-made villains and victims.
Hamas understands this perfectly. Its “Ministry of Health” in Gaza is not some independent public health office. It is part of a totalitarian structure that answers to the same regime that launched the October 7 massacre, embeds fighters and rocket launchers among civilians, and openly celebrates “martyrdom.”
Yet Western media outlets, NGOs, and politicians routinely preface their coverage with the same passive formulation: “According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than X thousand people have been killed…”
Once that sentence is accepted as neutral, the argument is already half lost.
These headline numbers blur together every possible category of death: combatants and non-combatants, people killed by Hamas’ own rockets or internal violence, people who died of illness or old age, and people whose deaths are simply unverifiable.
There is rarely a breakdown by cause, location, or affiliation. The message is not “here is our best attempt at a complex casualty record.” The message is, “Israel killed this many people; now explain yourself.”
Western institutions, meanwhile, have powerful incentives to accept this framing. Journalists on deadline want a single, authoritative-sounding figure. NGOs need dramatic numbers to drive fundraising and campaigns. Politicians want an easy way to signal moral outrage without learning the underlying details. “According to Gaza’s Health Ministry…” gives them all exactly what they want.
The result is that Hamas’ tally becomes something close to sacred. To question it is treated as denial of suffering, rather than as basic due diligence.
To be clear, this does not mean that the real toll of the war is small, or that civilian deaths are imaginary. They are not. Wars in dense urban environments, against enemies who hide behind civilians, are always tragic. But tragedy does not excuse deception, and compassion does not require us to outsource moral judgment to a terrorist organization.
There is another trap we must avoid, however, and it lies on “our” side of the argument.
Recently, a claim circulated online that Hamas had “admitted” to losing 50,000 fighters and was preparing to pay stipends to their widows. It was an appealing narrative: if true, it would imply that the majority of Gaza’s war dead were Hamas’ own armed operatives, not civilians. Many people repeated it enthusiastically.
The problem is that the underlying evidence does not support such certainty. The 50,000 figure appears to come from extrapolations about an aid program for widows and vague statements in local media, not from a clear, formal admission of combatant deaths by Hamas itself. Israel’s own estimates of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters killed are much lower — on the order of tens of thousands, but not double that.
In other words, some of Hamas’ critics were tempted to do what they rightly accuse Hamas of doing: leaping from suggestive data to definitive, emotionally satisfying numbers.
That may feel good in the moment, but it ultimately weakens our case. If we want the world to take casualty manipulation seriously, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard than Hamas does.
So how should we think and talk about Gaza casualty numbers?
First, always ask who is counting. A figure produced by a Hamas-run bureaucracy and laundered through sympathetic NGOs is not equivalent to an independent forensic assessment. That does not mean every number is automatically false; it means we must treat it as a political artifact, not a neutral statistic.
Second, ask what is being counted. Are natural deaths and pre-existing illnesses being folded into “war fatalities”? Are internal killings, executions of “collaborators,” gang violence, and misfired rockets landing in Gaza all being quietly attributed to Israel?
Are combatants and non-combatants being distinguished, or are they all being described as “civilians,” “women,” and “children”? If those questions are not being asked, the headline number is not serious.
Third, examine the incentives. Hamas gains strategically every time the West believes that almost every death in Gaza is an innocent civilian killed by the Israel Defense Forces. That perception fuels accusations of “genocide,” drives diplomatic pressure, and legitimizes further violence under the banner of “resistance.”
Conversely, Hamas has every incentive to hide its own fighters among civilians, both physically and statistically.
Fourth, be honest about uncertainty. We will probably never know the exact distribution of deaths in Gaza by category. That is the nature of war, especially in closed, authoritarian environments. But we can say, with confidence, that the picture is far more complex than the nightly news suggests.
We know that a significant share of the dead are combatants. We know that some deaths are caused by Hamas’ own actions, whether through misfires or internal violence. We know that some reported “war casualties” would have occurred from natural causes even in peacetime. A morally serious discourse must reflect that complexity.
For ordinary readers and viewers, the question becomes: what can I actually do when confronted with someone like my friend, who has been told that Israel “killed 300 people in a tent to get one terrorist” and accepted it as unquestionable fact?
A few simple moves can help:
- Slow the conversation down. Instead of arguing about whether 300 is “too many,” start with “Who gave you that number?” That alone often changes the entire frame.
- Separate grief from propaganda. It is possible to say, “Every innocent life lost is a tragedy,” while also saying, “That does not mean Hamas’ numbers are accurate, or that Israel is committing the crimes you’ve been told about.”
- Insist on categories, not just totals. Ask whether the figure distinguishes between terrorists and non-terrorists, between people killed by Hamas and those killed by Israel, between battlefield fatalities and natural deaths. Most numbers in circulation do not.
- Refuse to play by Hamas’ rules. Do not feel compelled to accept a Hamas-run institution’s tally as the starting point for every moral conversation. We are not obligated to let Israel’s enemies define the terms of debate, whether in language or in arithmetic.
My friend and I ended our conversation on good terms. He did not walk away with a perfect spreadsheet of Gaza casualties — neither of us has one. But he did walk away with a new question lodged in his mind: “Why am I letting Hamas tell me what to think?”
That, ultimately, is the goal. If we care about truth, about Israel’s legitimacy, and about the real human beings — Jews and Arabs alike — whose lives are at stake, we cannot allow a terrorist organization to be the world’s official statistician. We do not have to accept a calculator held in the same hands that fired the rockets and sent the “martyrs.”
We can insist on something better: honest categories, transparent methods, and a refusal to surrender our moral judgment to those who openly seek our destruction.
David E. Firester, Ph.D., is the Founder and CEO of TRAC Intelligence, LLC, and the author of Failure to Adapt: How Strategic Blindness Undermines Intelligence, Warfare, and Perception (2025).
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Iran Has Terrorized International Waters for Decades — Now India and the World Have Had Enough
Navy forces of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution commandos and missile boats in Great Prophet IX Maneuver in the general area of Strait of Hormuz, Persian Gulf. Photo: Sayyed Shahab Odin Vajedi/Wikimedia Commons.
The theatricality of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “Smart Control” maneuvers in the Strait of Hormuz this week is a calculated distraction from a far more consequential reality unfolding in the deep waters of the Indian Ocean.
While Tehran’s propaganda wing broadcasts images of high-speed boats and “intelligent” surveillance, the regime’s economic lifeblood is being systematically drained by an actor it once considered a reliable, if cautious, customer.
The confirmed seizure by India of three Iranian “shadow fleet” tankers — the Stellar Ruby, Asphalt Star, and Al Jafziyah — along with the dramatic boarding of the Veronica 3 by US forces, marks the operational debut of the Indo-Abrahamic Noose. These are not isolated incidents; they are the result of a coordinated maritime blockade designed to sever the IRGC’s economic lungs.
For years, the IRGC has operated on the assumption that the “Global South” — led by New Delhi — would remain a passive beneficiary of its illicit oil trade, providing a permanent escape valve from Western-led pressure. That assumption died this month. India’s transition from a neutral energy consumer to a proactive maritime enforcer signals a tectonic shift in the Indo-Pacific architecture.
By deploying 55 ships and 12 aircraft for round-the-clock surveillance, New Delhi has effectively shut down the “ship-to-ship” transfer networks used to mask the origin of Iranian crude. The seizure of the first three tankers, roughly 100 miles west of Mumbai, proved that the “shadow fleet” — the aging, uninsured vessels used to fund the “Axis of Resistance” — has lost its cloak of invisibility.
The IRGC’s “Smart Control” exercises, conducted amidst reports of a deep succession crisis in Tehran, are a desperate display of “atmospheric jihadism.” However, strategic reality is not dictated by camera-ready maneuvers in the shallows of the Gulf; it is dictated by the ability to move liquidity across oceans. When India acts as a maritime gatekeeper, it reinforces a fundamental truth: the “Iranian Threat” is no longer a sufficient deterrent against the national interests of rising powers.
What we are witnessing is the birth of the Indo-Abrahamic Alliance — a strategic pincer movement connecting India, Israel, the UAE, and the United States. This move follows a significant shift in Indo-American trade dynamics earlier this month. Washington is expected to slash tariffs on Indian goods from 50% to 18% this week. The economic incentive to align with a pro-Western security order has now been backed by kinetic maritime muscle.
This bloc — anchored by Israeli intelligence, Indian maritime muscle, and the strategic depth of pro-Western monarchies — is rendering the IRGC’s regional ambitions irrelevant. The meeting last week at the White House between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu set the stage for this enforcement, with both leaders agreeing to target the 80% of Iranian oil flowing to China. India’s intervention ensures that this isolation is not just political, but material.
India’s move also counters the “Lawful Islamist” narrative favored by other regional players. While powers like Turkey attempt to position themselves as mediators while quietly enabling disruptive actors, India’s clear-eyed enforcement of maritime law exposes the futility of such hedging. New Delhi has realized that the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor (IMEC) cannot thrive in a sea patrolled by pirates and IRGC-funded proxies.
We are no longer debating whether normalization between Israel and the broader East is possible; we are observing its maturity into a permanent regional police force. This is the “Naturalization” of a pro-Western security order where the defense of trade routes is inseparable from the defeat of radical ideology.
As negotiations resume in Geneva this week, attended by high-level figures like Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, the Iranian delegation is finding its leverage non-existent. Tehran’s attempts to “bribe” Washington with economic concessions in aviation and mining ring hollow when their primary source of income is being impounded at sea.
The moral and strategic binary of the Middle East has never been clearer. On one side stands a desperate, murderous regime in Tehran conducting hollow drills in the Strait. On the other stands the Indo-Abrahamic Alliance, imposing a reality of law and order from the Mediterranean to the Indo-Pacific.
The IRGC cannot fund its proxies if its tankers cannot reach their destinations. By seizing these vessels throughout February, India and its partners have effectively recognized that peace is achieved only when the aggressor realizes their cause is terminal. The “shadow fleet” is being dismantled, the economic lungs of the regime are collapsing, and the Indo-Abrahamic Noose is anchored.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx