The Real Reason the Palestinians Are Fighting to Save UNRWA - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Instead of solving the refugee problem, UNRWA's function is to perpetuate it.

 

• Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which seeks durable solutions by resettling refugees and helping them rebuild their lives, UNRWA has institutionalized refugee status across generations.

• Instead of solving the refugee problem, UNRWA's function is to perpetuate it.

• Many Palestinians fled the country during the 1948 war, which five Arab armies waged on Israel and lost, then were refused entry back into Israel because they had not been loyal. For Palestinians, UNRWA has become the international symbol of their demand that the remaining Palestinian refugees of 1948 and millions of their descendants be allowed to settle inside Israel. Does anyone think that this time they would be more loyal?

• The Palestinian insistence on the unrealistic "right of return" therefore remains one of the principal obstacles to any peace agreement.

• According to a detailed report published by the Israel Defense Forces, at least 1,462 of UNRWA's 12,521 employees in the Gaza Strip... are members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), or other terrorist organizations.

• The report further states that Hamas systematically exploited UNRWA facilities by constructing terror tunnels beneath schools, storing weapons, establishing command centers, and launching rockets from areas adjacent to UN facilities.

• Instead of helping Palestinians move beyond a perpetual claim to refugee status, UNRWA appears committed to sustaining the conflict's central illusion: that Israel will one day absorb millions of Palestinians and thereby cease to exist as a Jewish state.

• The "Board of Peace" is therefore correct in arguing that UNRWA has no place in the future Gaza Strip.

• If Arab leaders genuinely care about the welfare of their Palestinian brethren, they should insist that Hamas lay down its weapons and relinquish control of the Gaza Strip.

• The Trump Administration should insist that any future arrangement for Gaza exclude UNRWA and replace it with mechanisms that promote rehabilitation rather than dependency.

• Most importantly, it is time for Palestinian leaders to abandon the fantasy of the "right of return." These leaders are lying to their own people by telling them that one day they will return to their families' former homes inside Israel.

• So long as UNRWA continues to institutionalize that dream, it will remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

• If the goal is a different future for the Gaza Strip – one based on reconstruction, coexistence, and stability rather than perpetual conflict – then eliminating UNRWA and replacing it with a new institution – one not obstructed by past conflicts of interest – is not only justified. It is long overdue.

According to a detailed report published by the Israel Defense Forces, at least 1,462 of UNRWA's 12,521 employees in the Gaza Strip are members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or other terrorist organizations. The report further states that Hamas systematically exploited UNRWA facilities by constructing terror tunnels beneath schools, storing weapons, establishing command centers, and launching rockets from areas adjacent to UN facilities. Pictured: Israeli soldiers inspect the entrance to a Hamas terror tunnel directly outside an UNRWA compound in Gaza City, on February 8, 2024. (Photo by Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

The furious Palestinian reaction to the recent declaration by the so-called "Board of Peace" -- that the United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) "has no place in the new Gaza Strip" -- has once again exposed a fundamental truth that many in the international community continue to ignore: for the Palestinians, UNRWA is not just a humanitarian agency. It is a political institution that keeps alive the dream of the so-called "right of return" -- a demand that, by overwhelming Israel's population of roughly 10 million with millions of supposed "refugees" -- would effectively bring about the end of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

In announcing that "UNRWA has no place in the new Gaza... [w]e are turning the page on the complex of perpetual aid dependency and conflict. The people of Gaza deserve better," the "Board of Peace" touched on one of the most sensitive issues in Palestinian politics.

The immediate response from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hamas, and various Palestinian organizations made clear that they are not primarily concerned about humanitarian services. They are evidently worried about losing the UN agency they regard as the guardian of the "right of return."

Ahmed Abu Holi, a member of the PLO Executive Committee and head of its Department of Refugee Affairs, denounced the "Board of Peace" for allegedly attempting to "liquidate the Palestinian refugee issue." He stressed that UNRWA "embodies the moral responsibility and strict legal obligation of the international community towards the rights of refugees, leading to their return [to Israel] and compensation."

Abu Holi warned that "any attack on UNRWA or attempt to dismantle it constitutes a direct assault on Palestinian national identity... and an undermining of the right of return."

Even more revealing was his threat that Palestinian refugees "will strongly resist" any attempt to dismantle the agency.

The Speaker of the Palestinian National Council, Rouhi Fattouh, echoed the same message:

"UNRWA... represents the legal and historical witness to the Nakba ['catastrophe,' the term Palestinians use to describe the establishment of Israel in 1948]... and embodies the international commitment to the rights of refugees until their right to return and compensation is implemented."

Ending UNRWA, according to Fattouh, would amount to eliminating "the legal status of Palestinian refugees."

Ahmed Majdalani, another PLO Executive Committee member, similarly declared that the "Board of Peace" statement "touches the core of the Palestinian issue, represented by the issue of the refugees and the right of return."

"The right of return," he added, "is a fundamental principle of the Palestinian people that no one... can tamper with."

Hamas, too, rushed to defend UNRWA.

The Iran-backed terrorist group condemned the "Board of Peace" for declaring that there is "no place" for UNRWA in Gaza and warned against "stopping the funding of the agency or reducing its mandate or replacing it," and called on the international community to ensure "the continuation of the agency's operations... until our people obtain their legitimate rights."

Those "legitimate rights," according to Hamas and the PLO, include the "right of return."

These statements remove any doubt about why Palestinian leaders are fighting hard to preserve UNRWA.

The issue is not schools, food distribution, or medical clinics. The issue is politics.

Unlike the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which seeks durable solutions by resettling refugees and helping them rebuild their lives, UNRWA has institutionalized refugee status across generations.

More than seven decades after the 1948 war, the number of registered Palestinian refugees has expanded from roughly 700,000 to several million, because descendants continue to inherit refugee status.

Instead of solving the refugee problem, UNRWA's function is to perpetuate it.

Many Palestinians fled the country during the 1948 war, which five Arab armies waged on Israel and lost, then were refused entry back into Israel because they had not been loyal. For Palestinians, UNRWA has become the international symbol of their demand that the remaining Palestinian refugees of 1948 and millions of their descendants be allowed to settle inside Israel. Does anyone think that this time they would be more loyal? ¹

Such a scenario would fundamentally alter Israel's demographic character, transforming the world's only Jewish state into one with a Muslim Arab majority. No Israeli government – left, right or center – is ever likely to agree to such national suicide.

The Palestinian insistence on the unrealistic "right of return" therefore remains one of the principal obstacles to any peace agreement.

Equally troubling are the mounting revelations concerning UNRWA's infiltration by terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip.

According to a detailed report published by the Israel Defense Forces, at least 1,462 of UNRWA's 12,521 employees in the Gaza Strip – approximately 12 percent – are members of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), or other terrorist organizations.

Among UNRWA's 546 school principals and deputy principals, at least 80 were identified as members of designated terrorist organizations, including Hamas's military wing.

The report further states that Hamas systematically exploited UNRWA facilities by constructing terror tunnels beneath schools, storing weapons, establishing command centers, and launching rockets from areas adjacent to UN facilities.

It also reveals that Hamas operated an advanced server data center for its central intelligence office underneath UNRWA's Gaza headquarters while drawing electricity from the UN facility. The report continues:

"During the military operation to expose the terror infrastructure in UNRWA's compound, large quantities of weapons were found inside its buildings, including explosive drones, grenades, sniper rifles, rockets, mortar bombs and RPG launchers. Intelligence and documents discovered at the site confirmed that the offices had in fact also been used by Hamas terrorists. In addition, bodies of Hamas and PIJ terrorists were found on the premises."

The findings additionally state that UNRWA employees actively participated in the October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel, including in the abduction of Israelis and foreign nationals. One of the UNRWA employees, Faisal Ali Mussalem Al-Naami, was identified in Israeli territory that day via surveillance cameras and cellular phone activity, and he took part in kidnapping a man from Kibbutz Be'eri. Al-Naami was filmed in the kibbutz, loading the dead body of an Israeli into an SUV to abduct it.

Against this backdrop, UNRWA's recent announcement that it dismissed 70 employees in Gaza because of concerns regarding their connections to terrorist organizations is a welcome, if overdue, step. The UN agency, however, insists that the dismissals "do not constitute in any way a validation of the claims made against them."

The decision itself, however, amounts to an acknowledgment that the problem exists.

If UNRWA believed there were absolutely no security concerns, there would have been no reason to terminate dozens of employees. The dismissals also raise an obvious question: if 70 employees were considered too risky to retain, what about the many others identified by Israeli intelligence?

Instead of helping Palestinians move beyond a perpetual claim to refugee status, UNRWA appears committed to sustaining the conflict's central illusion: that Israel will one day absorb millions of Palestinians and thereby cease to exist as a Jewish state.

The "Board of Peace" is therefore correct in arguing that UNRWA has no place in the future Gaza Strip.

Humanitarian assistance should certainly continue. The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip who are not involved in terrorism deserve reconstruction, economic development, functioning schools, hospitals, and normal lives. These responsibilities, however, should be assumed by the "Board of Peace" together with Arab states that have repeatedly declared their solidarity with the Palestinians but done nothing to help them.

For decades, Arab governments have proclaimed unwavering support for the Palestinian cause. If Arab leaders genuinely care about the welfare of their Palestinian brethren, they should insist that Hamas lay down its weapons and relinquish control of the Gaza Strip.

The Trump Administration should insist that any future arrangement for Gaza exclude UNRWA and replace it with mechanisms that promote rehabilitation rather than dependency.

Most importantly, it is time for Palestinian leaders to abandon the fantasy of the "right of return." These leaders are lying to their own people by telling them that one day they will return to their families' former homes inside Israel.

So long as UNRWA continues to institutionalize that dream, it will remain part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

The angry Palestinian response to the "Board of Peace" announcement demonstrates precisely why an urgent change is needed. UNRWA has become far more than a humanitarian agency. It has evolved into a political institution dedicated to preserving an unrealistic objective that ensures that the conflict will continue for generations to come.

If the goal is a different future for the Gaza Strip – one based on reconstruction, coexistence, and stability rather than perpetual conflict – then eliminating UNRWA and replacing it with a new institution – one not obstructed by past conflicts of interest – is not only justified. It is long overdue.

---

¹ The Arabs who chose to stay in 1948 and their descendants, known today as Arab Israelis, now number about 2 million, or 20% of Israel's population. They have the same rights as any Jewish citizen and are allowed to hold any position, whether as a judge on Israel's Supreme Court, a member of parliament, a university professor (such as here, here and here), or in the fields of banking, business and medicine. Although they are not required to serve in Israel's military, many often choose to.

• Follow Khaled Abu Toameh on X (formerly Twitter) 

Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22674/unrwa-palestinians

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Palestinian officials slam decision to end UNRWA's role in Gaza as 'politically motivated' - Dana Ben-Shimon

 

by Dana Ben-Shimon

'We'll do everything to preserve UNRWA,' officials told the Post, describing the Board of Peace's decision as 'driven by the Israeli right wing, which seeks to destroy the Palestinian cause.'

 

A boy sits outside the entrance to an UNRWA building complex in Gaza City.

(photo credit: OMAR AL-QATTAA/AFP via Getty Images)

Palestinian Authority officials have rejected US President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace (BoP) announcement that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees will no longer be involved in the “new Gaza,” describing it as a politically motivated move, inspired by Israeli influence, to destroy the Palestinian cause.

“Nobody can simply decide to cancel the role of UNRWA,” a Palestinian official said. “The agency’s mandate is rooted in International law and cannot be revoked unilaterally.”

The official, a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, told The Jerusalem Post that there is hope Trump will change his mind and reverse the decision to exclude the role of UNRWA.

Palestinian sources said that there have been contacts with “the parties concerned” aimed at preserving UNRWA’s role.

A statement released in recent days by the Board of Peace said that “UNRWA has no place in the new Gaza,” adding “we are turning the page on the complex of perpetual aid dependency and conflict. The people of Gaza deserve more.”

Displaced Palestinians wait to receive United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) aid, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, March 7, 2024. (credit: MOHAMMED SALEM/REUTERS)

The official said that “UNRWA and the issue of Palestinian refugees is a political issue at the heart of the Palestinian cause,” rejecting what he called the Israeli attempts to reduce it to a humanitarian matter.

“Israel is targeting UNRWA as part of its attempts to undermine the broader Palestinian cause, and we will fight that,” he said.

Palestinian officials claim that canceling the UNRWA was a right-wing decision

Another senior Palestinian official claimed that “although the decision was issued by Trump, who serves as the head of the BoP, everyone knows it was influenced by the Israelis and in particular the right-wing.”

“There is no acceptance of this by the Europeans or the international community,” he said. The official called the decision “nonsense” and argued that if the BoP implements this position, it will lose its credibility.

“This is what the Israelis want – to strip the Palestinians of any political rights,” he said.

“The BoP says that its goal is to achieve peace. So if it is truly credible, it should be working to ensure that Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip.”

The official noted that as long as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict remains unresolved, there can be no talk of any change to the mandate of UNRWA.

“Israel wants to evade the core issues of the conflict,” one of them said. “They seek to dismiss us and avoid dealing with the root causes of the conflict by eliminating the two-state solution through their expansionist policies in the West Bank, supporting further Palestinian division, and now by targeting UNRWA,” he told the Post.

He said that if Israelis and Palestinians one day reach a comprehensive agreement, the matter of Palestinian refugees, and by extension, UNRWA’s future, would naturally be included in a broader solution and addressed as part of any final deal. “But for now,” he said, “Israel just wants to dismantle the Palestinian question and empty it of its essence.”

“We will do everything to maintain the existence of UNRWA and preserve it,” he added.

During the Israel-Hamas War, Israel accused UNRWA of supporting Hamas, as some of its staff members, according to testimony of October 7 hostage, Israeli intelligence and surveillance footage, backed the terror group’s actions, including participating in the October 7, 2023 massacre. The Israeli military reported that Hamas tunnel shafts and related infrastructure were discovered beneath UNRWA schools.

Over the last almost three decades, successive Israeli governments have accused UNRWA schools of using textbooks that promote antisemitism and encourage hatred of Israel and UNWRA summer camps of promoting terrorism.

UNRWA officials previously dismissed the allegations, saying there was no evidence that significant numbers of their employees were affiliated with or active members of Hamas, and claimed that any such conduct was limited to isolated cases.

Some in Israel have long argued that the Palestinians are using UNRWA to perpetuate the issue of Palestinian refugees under the cover of humanitarian necessity, thus leveraging their demand for the right of return in peace talks and impeding advancement toward resolution.

At the end of 2024, the Knesset passed a law banning UNRWA’s activities in Israel, thereby shutting down its work in east Jerusalem.
The BoP’s statement on UNRWA sparked widespread condemnation across Palestinian factions.

The PA Foreign Affairs Ministry stressed “the vital role of UNRWA in protecting and assisting the Palestinian refugees, and called for the continuation of its work in the Palestinian territory,” describing it as a “lifeline that cannot be replaced and as a stabilizing factor.”

The ministry also said “it rejects all terms that attempt to divide Palestinian geography and demography, such as the term ‘new Gaza’, which seeks to isolate the Gaza Strip from its natural environment,” and emphasized that “the Gaza Strip is an integral part of the occupied territory of the state of Palestine.”

Hamas sharply condemned efforts to end UNRWA’s presence in the Strip, stating that the UN agency “serves as an international witness to the Nakba of the Palestinian people and embodies the international community’s responsibility towards the refugees.”

“Any attempt to undermine or replace the agency constitutes an attack on international law and a bid to liquidate the refugees issue and the right of return,” the terror group said in a statement.

“Ensuring the continuation of UNRWA’s relief activities is essential, particularly given the humanitarian crisis that was created by the occupation in Gaza,” the ministry said.

Dana Ben-Shimon

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-901451

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Hamas official resigns in first step to dissolve Gaza governing body, hand authority to NCAG - Amit Avitan, Jerusalem Post Staff

 

by Amit Avitan, Jerusalem Post Staff

Gaza Board of Peace: 'Assessment will be guided by actions, not promises' • Hamas says move made to facilitate handover of administrative powers to technocratic committee

 

Gunmen stand guard at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, February 7, 2025.

(photo credit: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed)

Hamas on Monday announced that the head of the Emergency Committee had submitted his resignation, as the first step to dissolve the “committee for monitoring government activity,” the body that effectively serves as Hamas’s government in the Gaza Strip.

According to Hamas, the move is intended to allow the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), also known as the Technocrats Committee, headed by Ali Shaath, to enter the Strip and have administrative powers transferred to it.

Hamas also stated that "technical and professional staff" would remain in place, in order to maintain continuity in service to civilians in Gaza.

The Board of Peace addressed the dissolution of the Emergency Committee in a Monday afternoon X/Twitter statement, adding that its "assessment will be guided by actions, not promises, to meet the critical needs of the people of Gaza."

"Decisions must be comprehensive with respect to the requirements as set out in the Roadmap for advancing governance, security, and transition in Gaza," it said. "We look forward to the successful conclusion of discussions on this Roadmap, including on the implementation mechanisms necessary to enable the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza to assume full governing authority."

Hamas members look on as they escort members of the Red Cross towards an area within the yellow line, in Gaza City, November 12, 2025. (credit: Dawoud Abu Alkas/Reuters)

"The core principle remains one authority, one law, and one weapon."

"A genuine transfer of authority must enable the NCAG to exercise its mandate independently, including taking the administrative and governance decisions entrusted to it," the Board of Peace concluded.

Following Hamas’s announcement, the director general of the Gaza Board of Peace, Nickolay Mladenov, emphasized the importance of his roadmap for implementing the Gaza peace plan, which he announced in May.

In a statement on X/Twitter, he described the roadmap as “the bridge between declarations and implementation.”

Today's announcement in Gaza underscores the importance of bringing the Roadmap discussions to a successful conclusion. It is the bridge between declarations and implementation. The sooner agreement is reached on the outstanding implementation provisions, the sooner the @NCAG can…

— Nickolay E. MLADENOV (@nmladenov) July 6, 2026

“The sooner agreement is reached on the outstanding implementation provisions,  the sooner the NCAG can assume its responsibilities, the decommissioning of weapons and the withdrawal of Israeli forces can begin, and large-scale reconstruction can commence,” Mladenov stated.

Cairo to host Hamas, Palestinian factions within 48 hours

It was further reported that Cairo will host meetings within about 48 hours with the participation of the Palestinian factions, including Hamas.

The sources added that there is information indicating that Gaza’s representative on the Board of Peace, Mladenov, arrived in Egypt to take part in the discussions alongside US officials operating within the framework of the Board of Peace and the international stabilization forces.

However, his participation could not be verified through a source on his behalf, and those close to him previously clarified that his participation depends on progress in the negotiations over the agreement's clauses, following Hamas’s and the factions’ responses to the latest update proposals.

Amit Avitan, Jerusalem Post Staff

Source: https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-901534

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Israel approves $9 million plan for hotel development in Judea and Samaria - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

The initiative is intended to unlock the tourism potential of the biblical heartland.

 

People visit the DCITY design mall and hotel in Ma’ale Adumim, in the Judean Desert east of Jerusalem, Aug. 20, 2021. Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90.

 

The Israeli Cabinet on Sunday approved a 27 million shekel (about $9 million) plan to boost hotel development in Judea and Samaria by removing planning obstacles and providing construction grants, the Tourism Ministry said.

The program, led by Tourism Minister Haim Katz, includes 7 million shekels (≈$2.3 million) to advance the statutory planning of projects between 2026 and 2030, alongside 20 million shekels (≈$6.7 million) in grants to support the construction, expansion and conversion of hotel accommodations.

Katz said his initiative seeks to unlock the tourism potential of the Jewish state’s biblical heartland.

“For the first time, we will lead a comprehensive move that combines planning, infrastructure development, the creation of land zoned for hotels and a dedicated track to encourage construction,” the minister said in a statement. “This will remove barriers, provide certainty for developers and lay the foundation to increase the supply of hotel rooms, attract tourists and strengthen the local economy.”

The ministry said a lack of land zoned for hotel development has been one of the main obstacles to tourism development in Judea and Samaria. Under the plan, the Tourism Ministry will prepare statutory plans for hotel projects and identify sites that can be developed or marketed for hotel construction.

The ministry said only about 115 million shekels (≈$38 million) had been invested in Judea and Samaria tourism over the past decade, compared with more than 2 billion shekels (≈$666 million) elsewhere in the country.

It said the initiative aims to increase the number of hotel rooms, encourage overnight stays rather than day trips and boost the local economy.

The plan follows a separate government decision in May approving a 50 million shekel (≈$16.7 million) program to develop tourism infrastructure in Judea and Samaria.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has led an unprecedented drive to expand Israel’s control of Judea and Samaria, having approved tens of thousands of homes and dozens of new communities in the past three-and-a-half years.

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/israel-approves-9-million-plan-for-hotel-development-in-judea-and-samaria

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The New Socialists and What They Say about America - Stephen Soukup

 

by Stephen Soukup

Today's socialists aren't reviving Marx—they're replacing faith with politics and promising comfort instead of freedom.

 

 

In the roughly two weeks since the New York primary elections, conservatives—and other normies—have been understandably upset about the prospects of a socialist surge in American politics. Three candidates endorsed by New York City’s socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani won their congressional primaries easily, while Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)-aligned candidates around the state did quite well. In short, June 23 was a good day for socialists throughout the country, leaving many observers wondering if this will be a new date that lives in infamy, the date that marks the official start of the socialist-led collapse of the world’s quintessential capitalist, democratic republic.

As I say, this concern is understandable. Avowed socialists are winning big in cities across the country, not just in New York City but also in Seattle, possibly in Los Angeles, and almost certainly in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. It has been well over a hundred years since the United States saw such a swell in socialist-affiliated political success. And this time, it’s highly unlikely that the leader of the Democratic establishment (whoever that is now) will be able to crush the nascent movement like his predecessor did last time, when Progressive patriarch Woodrow Wilson had the head of the Socialist Party of America, Eugene V. Debs, imprisoned for the crime of giving a speech. “Socialism” and its number of adherents will continue to expand for some time, at least until both major parties figure out how to refute their claims and prove the emptiness of their promises.

To that end, it is important to recognize just who and what it is the Republicans, the mainstream Democrats, and the nation at large are fighting. These are not your father’s socialists, to coin a phrase. Today’s DSA and yesterday’s SPA share much in common, but they also differ from one another in many significant and some definitive ways. Mamdani is not Debs. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is not Josephine Conger-Kaneko. Bernie Sanders is not Morris Hillquit. Indeed, to a great extent, today’s “socialists” are socialists in name only. And recognizing that—and what makes them different—is the key to both understanding and defeating them.

The first thing to note about today’s socialists is that they are not Marxists, not really. They regurgitate the rhetoric, of course, and spout the proper platitudes, but they don’t know or care anything about the “means of production.” They think the state should have a greater role in the economy, but not because they believe workers are alienated from their labor or because they think society has arrived, dialectically, at the stage at which that alienation can be rectified through collective action. Rather, they think the state should have a greater role because they want stuff, stuff that they—or those whom they purport to represent—can’t otherwise have: low rents, cheaper groceries, free college education, and healthcare. In this sense, today’s socialists are less Marxists than Stirner-ites, not communists so much as “egoists.” Almost two-and-a-half years ago, in a column in these pages about Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness obsession, I spelled out some of the differences between Marxists and Stirner-ites this way:

Unlike most of his fellow Young Hegelians…[Max] Stirner was not a communist or even a socialist. He was, rather, an “egoist,” which is to say that he was concerned with himself and his needs, first and foremost, and believed that all men were, at heart, radically self-interested. Stirner mocked Marx, Engels, and their fellow communists, assailing their quasi-religious utopian dreams and insisting that man, once freed from the “bondage” imposed by the Christians and their God, would never willingly accept the bondage imposed by the communists and their pseudo-god. Instead, Stirner asserted, man would feed his ego, would satisfy his desires, and would be concerned principally with his own personal comfort.

Marx, for his part, grew to hate Stirner more, perhaps, than any other person on earth. In part, Marx resented the fact that Stirner mocked his utopia. In larger part, he feared that Stirner was right. He fretted that Stirner had a better grasp of man’s nature and that once all man’s basic needs were met by modern capitalist society, he would not demand control of the fruits of his labor or of the means of production but would, instead, demand the satiation of his ego.

Mamdani isn’t going to end commodity fetishism. He’s going to make bus rides free. He isn’t going to redirect surplus value to the proletariat. He’s going to provide city-subsidized child care so that people can go to work and not feel guilty or have to give up their venti lattes. This isn’t about labor vs. capital. It’s about getting “billionaires” and “trillionaires” to pay their “fair share” so that everyone else can live in rent-frozen apartments. Or something. The DSA, in its language and agenda, caters almost exclusively to its supporters’ desire for cheaper, state-controlled creature comforts.

At the same time, it’s also worth noting that today’s socialists both confirm and repudiate Stirner. This paradox is, in some sense, the key to combating the socialist surge over the long term. While Stirner was inarguably correct about modern man’s preoccupation with his ego and, thus, his general revulsion at Marx’s anti-materialist Utopia, he profoundly misunderstood man’s innate desire for meaning and belonging. Stirner argued that the workers of the world would reject Marx specifically because of the religious nature of the Marxist project. He mocked the Communists as religious zealots of a sort and rightly predicted that modern man would have no more use for this new religion than he had for the old ones. He was right in the narrow sense but mistaken about man’s nature more broadly. Man is selfish. There is little doubt about that. He has innumerable wants and desires, as Stirner rightly saw. Nevertheless, man is an innately religious being. That’s the primary cultural conflict in history: what can man do to live a good life and find meaning while combating his temporal urges? Stirner—a product of the Enlightenment and its attack on traditional religion and its search for meaning—missed man’s need for meaning entirely.

The United States has always had some handful of political figures who have flirted with “socialism” in its many forms. Starting with Debs and then carrying over to FDR’s administration and the postwar Soviet infiltration of the federal government, true, economic socialists were a part of the governing class. Starting in the 1950s and 60s, the Lukacs and Frankfurt School-influenced cultural Marxists began taking over the institutions (media, education, religion, entertainment, etc.), bringing a different, albeit far more successful type of socialism to the American experience. Over the last few years, the Sanders- and Ocasio-Cortez-led Democratic Socialists have garnered considerable attention by mixing ego-based economic promises with cultural Marxist rhetoric and grievance-mongering. Like the poor, socialists of some form or another we will always have with us.

The socialists today differ from their predecessors, however, in that they seem to appeal to a bigger and broader constituency. Young people in particular seem drawn to the Utopian fantasy now in far greater numbers than ever before. As a result, the threat seems more real and more immediate.

Part of this is that we, as a civilization, are experiencing some very real and unprecedented economic problems. Housing affordability and economic mobility—in part driven by unparalleled longevity—are two issues that are genuinely and negatively affecting Generation Z and pushing them toward radical political solutions.

At the same time, however, it is largely inarguable that the real surge in socialist affiliation coincides with the appropriation by the movement of authentic religious sentiment and fervor. Mamdani and his cohorts—and the movement more generally—are very much animated by the cultural spirit of Islam. When I say that, I don’t mean just the anti-Zionist/anti-Israel/antisemitic vocabulary and policies—although that is a huge part. I also mean the fact that Islam has, for at least the last half century, helped fill two voids in Western society.

It is, first and foremost, the ultimate form of rebellion against “white, Christian hegemony.” In 1978 and 1979, Michel Foucault, one of the most influential intellectuals of the postwar Western Left, traveled to Iran as a newspaper correspondent and, by his own account, fell in love with the revolution unfolding in front of him. He called Ayatollah Khomeini “the old saint in exile” and described the uprising not as the birth pangs of a theocratic police state but as a “political spirituality,” an authentic alternative to the exhausted, disenchanted rationalism of the West. He was far from alone. Much of the Western intellectual Left spent the early years convinced that Khomeini’s Iran represented liberation rather than its opposite. Only once the executions started did most of them quietly look away.

To be clear, it’s not Islam itself that appeals here. It’s the West’s fetishization of Islam’s revolutionary edge, which serves as proof of its authenticity. As the late, great Joe Strummer observed, by romanticizing Islam and ignoring its faults, Western radicals feed the Western misunderstanding of the religious tradition and empower tyrants (while also making themselves look foolish). When he wrote that “Now over at the temple, oh, they really pack ’em in / the in-crowd say it’s cool to dig this chanting thing,” he wasn’t describing Iran. He was mocking his Western contemporaries, the Western hipsters and fellow travelers, Foucault’s spiritual descendants, who found the whole spectacle thrilling precisely because it offended the right people.

Cat Stevens, to name one hipster, took the whole bit further than most, abandoning the hippie-laden Peace Train, converting to Islam, and joining Khomeini in calling for Salman Rushdie to be killed. The peace train had become passé, while hating heretics, apostates, and Jews represented hard-core rebellion. Loving Islam became the ultimate sign of nonconformist legitimacy.

The second void that Islam helps fill is the void of meaning. As Western Christianity has grown flaccid and doctrinally muddled, Islam has remained steadfast in professing a binary certainty: good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, redemptive vs. condemnable. As a result, Islam has grown in appeal not just to wannabe rebels but to lost souls as well. Almost exactly three years ago, when Sinead O’Connor died, I wrote a note to clients explaining how radically misunderstood she was. Most people—critics, fans, etc.—labeled her “antireligious.” But nothing could have been further from the truth. She was deeply religious and desperate for God in her life:

When Sinead O’Connor needed healing, forgiveness, and love, she was instead greeted with confusion and contempt. Even on the cultural Left, where her “bravery” was heralded, she was treated as something other than human. She was turned into a “secular saint,” a righteous warrior against the inequities and “fantasies” of organized religion, rather than the profoundly broken woman she was. The Church, in turn, continued its worldly cover-up of abuses, addressed the “evil” O’Connor identified legalistically, and exacerbated many of its problems by continuing its efforts to save souls through decidedly rationalist means.

This is why, when she died, her legal name was Shuhada’ Sadaqat. She, like countless other lost souls before her, had converted to Islam, specifically because it offered certainty and a version of security. Modern, post-Enlightenment Christianity had more or less abandoned her search for meaning, and so, she found it somewhere else.

There is a lesson here. People—young people, in particular—are lost and are searching. If nothing traditional provides them with the meaning and purpose they desire, they will fill that void with politics. And when the option is available, they will fill that void with a political force that arrogates the certainty of religion.

This isn’t to suggest that America’s youth will all be converting to Islam soon, but it is to say that the current iteration of socialism in this country provides many distinctive challenges—the search for meaning and hatred of Israel being the two most prominent.

As I said, today’s socialists are not your father’s socialists. They are something else entirely, which means that resisting their advances will require a strategy that is completely different as well. People need a purpose. Work, family, and faith—the bedrocks of the American experiment—all provide purpose. It’s long past time to rediscover and rebuild them—lest the socialists keep winning elections. 

Photo: Over 13,000 people pack Forest Hills Stadium in Queens, New York, for mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani's New York Is Not For Sale rally on October 26, 2025. As early voting begins and days before NYC's general election, Mamdani headlines the rally after speakers such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, among others. (Photo by Neil Constantine/NurPhoto)

Stephen R. Soukup is the Director of The Political Forum Institute and the author of The Dictatorship of Woke Capital (Encounter, 2021, 2023)  

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/06/the-new-socialists-and-what-they-say-about-america/

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Former US comptroller calls on Trump, Congress, all Americans to address nearly $40T national debt - Katherine Pugh

 

by Katherine Pugh

Former United States Comptroller General David Walker thinks the issue is not a matter of if the debt collapses, it’s a matter of when.

 

Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker is joining the call for President Trump, Congress – and essentially all Americans – to reign in the national debt that is now nearing $40 trillion, saying its creating an inevitable collapse of the U.S. economy that will ultimately lead to a global depression.  

"One of the things that we clearly have to have is we need a constitutional amendment, because only a constitutional amendment can bind the Congress to return to fiscal sanity and sustainability," Walker said last week on the Just the News, No Noise TV show.

Such efforts to control the debt are being led in part by a group named "50 Million People," for which Walker is the campaign chairman. 

Walker advice to Trump is that he "first ... ought to make it very clear that he supports the need for a constitutional amendment to limit debt as a percentage of the economy, and secondly, that he has no problems if the states decide to sue the Congress, not the executive branch, only the Congress, for failing to discharge their express and enumerated nondiscretionary constitutional responsibility."

He also said on the show that it’s not a matter of if the debt collapses, causing a global depression — it’s a matter of when.

Walker also argues there is no political party of fiscal responsibility today, and that Bill Clinton, a Democrat,  was the last fiscally responsible president. Clinton worked on a bipartisan basis to reform welfare, reduce defense spending and more.

The U.S. saw a financial golden era in 2001, as the country was in a surplus and paying down debt.

“We went from deficits to surpluses. We paid down debts for two years,” Walker said. However, in 2003, things spun out of control, as the national debt and deficit grew substantially. The federal government recorded a record budget deficit of $374 billion for the fiscal year.

Main Street Economics founder Les Rubin said that eventually, the U.S. will reach a point where other people won't buy its debt. And when that happens, the country is rendered incapable of paying its bills.

Amending the Constitution

The amendment would need to consist of a credit card limit based on a percentage of debt as a percentage of the economy, Walker said, and a lower target would be set because “we’re already too high.”

His illustrative amendment would also restrict one’s ability to violate the debt to GDP limit, which would require super majority votes in Congress.

“We have to do something to limit debt to GDP,” and doing so would also save Social Security, Walker said. If Social Security isn’t reformed, there’s a 22 to 28 percent across-the-board cut in late 2032 that is “unacceptable,” he continued. “Yet, Congress is doing nothing.”

Calling Congress to action

Under the Constitution, Congress is regulated to pass all appropriations bills — legislation that authorizes the government to withdraw funds from the public treasury to spend on specific programs and departments — every year. The last time Congress did so was 1996.

“They’ve only done it four times in my lifetime,” Walker said. “That is an F minus.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has long suggested restricting members of Congress from running for reelection if they don’t balance the budget in a certain year, and Walker agrees.

“If there is a willful violation of this constitutional amendment,” he said, “You can't stand for reelection.”

The late-Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a staunch Republican, said in his 2012 book "The Debt Bomb: A Bold Plan to Stop Washington from Bankrupting America" that the nation will ultimately fall if it doesn’t change its fiscal course, and that the issue cannot be traced back to either Republicans or Democrats: to him, both are "equally guilty"

Coburn thought what was really at play was the human sin of greed on account of both parties. He said in his book that members of Congress take an oath to serve the common good of the entire nation, not their constituents.

“When they act or vote in a way that does not serve the common good, merely serves their own reelection, they have violated their oath and are, by definition, corrupt,” Unity Above Self in America founder Brian Walter said, noting that he thinks the states should sue Congress for “failing to discharge their constitutional duty under Article Five,” which details specific procedures required to alter the Constitution.

Trump's next three steps

Walker outlined three actions he thinks the president must take to get plans in motion.

• Make clear that he supports the need for a constitutional amendment to limit debt as a percentage of the economy.

• Communicate that he doesn't have a problem with states deciding to sue Congress for “failing to discharge their express and enumerated nondiscretionary constitutional responsibility,” Walker said.

• Support the Fiscal Commission Act, a bill introduced March 5 that would establish a commission on fiscal responsibility and reform, Walker continued.

Public support and education

Rubin emphasized the importance of educating the public to support fiscal responsibility so that Congress can do its job, as the legislative branch can’t fix anything without public support. 

A public education program, therefore, is the first step towards the end goal of a constitutional amendment.

Walker also mentioned that citizen education and engagement is critical to improving America’s financial health, citing former President Abraham Lincoln: “As Lincoln said, with public support you can do anything, without it you can do nothing. And by the way, Congress is very good at doing nothing.”

Katherine Pugh is a reporter for Just the News. Follow her on X for more coverage.

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/finance/political-advocates-call-trump-congress-american-people-address-nearly-40t

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Watchdogs fight to expose FBI payments to social media, 'sweeping' search warrant for Trump ally - Greg Piper

 

by Greg Piper

FBI repeatedly admitted paying Twitter, other private entities for decades, so it can't assert a wholesale FOIA exemption for law enforcement ops, civil liberties group tells court. Michael Caputo gingerly petitions Judge Boasberg.

 

The Freedom of Information Act doesn't apply to records related to the FBI's payments to social media companies to allegedly induce them to censor lawful speech at odds with the Biden administration's preferences, according to the Trump administration.

A federal judge slapped down by his appeals court for "abuse of discretion" — continuing a contempt investigation of the Trump administration related to its deportation flights — saw nothing wrong with secretly authorizing the Biden administration to pore over the whole digital life of President Trump's friend and former adviser.

Government watchdogs are pressing different judges in D.C. federal court to open the books on the Biden administration's alleged censorship-industrial complex and weaponization of the feds against political enemies, as the FOIA case nears its conclusion and Michael Caputo seeks a peek at the search warrant against him authorized by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg.

The FBI wrongly claims that a FOIA exemption for records "compiled for law enforcement purposes" completely shields its payments to platforms including the former Twitter, known to have received more than $3 million to process censorship requests, the New Civil Liberties Alliance said in its motion for summary judgment against the feds.

Judicial Watch asked Judge Boasberg to let its client, Caputo, intervene in the legal process against him – hidden from Caputo for a year, at Boasberg's direction – and unseal materials related to the "sweeping" Nov. 18, 2024 search warrant for his "entire online private life" as hosted by Google, from email and banking records to calendar and search history.

Congress is also considering whether to statutorily prohibit the practice known as jawboning, when the government leans on private parties to take action unconstitutional for itself.

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, introduced the JAWBONE Act last month, which would authorize victims of government-directed censorship to sue agencies or employees for jawboning, whether it worked or not, and seek monetary damages. Agencies would also have to show Congress "certain communications with companies," the senators said.

The bill would stop the Biden administration's use of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency "to pressure Big Tech into ‘canceling’ Americans who spoke out against vaccine mandates and election fraud," Cruz said. "The most blatant example" for Wyden "is Trump threatening cable companies because he doesn’t like their late-night shows."

FBI stonewalled through 'illiberal interpretation' of FOIA request

The FBI's exposed $3 million payment to Twitter spurred legislation in 2023 to impose a one-year moratorium on taxpayer funding from the Department of Justice to social media companies, the subject of NCLA's FOIA requests and an audit of payments between DOJ and Big Tech going back to 2015. 

The ELON Act was named after Twitter's new owner, Elon Musk, whose invitation to journalists to dig through the company's files exposed its vast communications with the feds and speech-policing groups on squelching supposed misinformation and disinformation on COVID-19, elections and Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop.

NCLA's FOIA suit for records related to FBI payments to social media, pending before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, is one of many by watchdogs regarding Biden administration-Big Tech communications, including two meetings between the FBI and Twitter.

For more than three years, the FBI has acted as if NCLA had requested "only one discrete category of records that, conveniently enough," the government could refuse to even search for under what's known as a Glomar response, meaning that to confirm or deny their existence would imperil law enforcement operations, the motion says.

But the civil liberties group deliberately requested records on FBI payments to Twitter and "comparable entities" for their time spent processing "any" FBI requests – such as "to induce, facilitate, or compensate other actions intended to limit speech" – not just "for their compliance with routine legal process."

That means one FOIA violation, the government's "illiberal interpretation" of its records request, "led to another FOIA violation: their inadequate search for records," the motion says. The FBI instead "reproduced a few heavily redacted documents, duplicating and slightly supplementing" a production from a prior FOIA suit, and never tried to segregate responsive records.

The FBI could determine the law enforcement exception applies only after reviewing its reimbursements and their purposes, which might reveal payments for its "content-moderation" suggestions, "informal" takedown requests or whispers that companies should "modify algorithms" to further the FBI's interests against misinformation, NCLA argues.

The watchdog said it was obviously not asking for "investigative files concerning a particular individual or records whose very existence necessarily reveals a protected law enforcement technique." Since the FBI has already admitted paying Twitter, it cannot invoke Glomar "to each and every requested record."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has already prohibited agencies from invoking FOIA exemptions when they have "officially acknowledged otherwise exempt information through prior disclosure," NCLA said.

Given then-FBI Director Chris Wray's testimony to Congress three years ago that "longstanding" federal law – the 1986 Stored Communications Act – requires it to "pay companies for their costs in responding to a legal process," the FBI cannot declare harm would come from confirming or denying the existence of any NCLA-sought records, the motion says.

The government's response to NCLA's motion is due by Aug. 14.

Convincing Boasberg to back down

A political consultant-turned-documentary filmmaker who investigated Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings before joining Trump's third campaign for president, Caputo learned he had been targeted in a criminal investigation only after it was shut down, letters between Congress and the FBI reviewed by Just the News revealed.

The FBI went after him two weeks after he joined the campaign, targeting an email account with the campaign's "private strategies and deliberations," the correspondence said.

The motion to unseal by Caputo, the former assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services and self-described "longtime ally" of Trump, dances around criticizing Judge Boasberg for authorizing such a far-reaching subpoena and gagging Google so it couldn't tell Caputo it was responding.

"This Court has both the authority and the duty to consider the public's qualified First Amendment and common law right of access to judicial records," the motion says. The government has no "compelling" interest in continued secrecy, and Caputo and Judicial Watch have "powerful interests in disclosure."

All Caputo wants is to know why he was targeted and "the evidence relied on to substantiate the search warrant," the motion says. Judicial Watch cited its success obtaining judicial records related to FBI and DOJ investigations of Trump and his associates, "within which the warrant targeting Caputo must be understood."

The government can't possibly meet its burden to keep the warrant sealed, given public interest in knowing whether it was sought "to target a political opponent's ally," Caputo's plans to make it public and no threat to "ongoing prosecution," the motion says.

It "retained whatever it extracted, and never charged him with any crime," Judicial Watch argues. "He cannot assess whether to seek return of his property or whether the warrant that authorized the seizure was constitutionally defective" until he sees it.

Boasberg ordered the government to respond to the motion by July 16. 

Greg Piper

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/watchdogs/watchdogs-fight-expose-fbi-payments-social-media-sweeping-search-warrant

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Blue states have higher electricity costs, and net zero policies are to blame, analysis shows - Kevin Killough

 

by Kevin Killough

Always On Energy Research and the Institute for Energy Research performed an analysis last year showing that blue states have higher rates than red states.

 

Proponents of renewable energy often claim that wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy and will drive down electricity rates. However, electricity costs continue to rise faster than inflation, with no sign the trend is reversing, even as the amount of wind and solar grows in the grid. 

Last December, the Always On Energy Research and the Institute for Energy Research completed an analysis of electricity rates and found that residents of blue states see higher electricity bills than those of red states. 

Using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the analysis found that 86% of states with electricity prices above the national average voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020 and 2024. By contrast, 80% of the 10 states with the lowest electricity prices voted for the Republican candidate in those same elections. 

In that analysis, the researchers highlighted five states to illustrate that the common factor between high-electricity-rate blue states was they tended to adopt stricter renewable energy requirements and climate policies. 

The researchers are now taking a deeper dive into the other 45 states, and they released the first batch for the 13 original colonies on the Fourth of July. 

“We wanted to have a one-stop shop where people could kind of get a feel for what's the energy mix in their state, what policies are being implemented, and what's the impact of those policies on what they’re paying at the plug,” Isaac Orr, vice president of research for Always On Energy Research, told Just the News. 

‘Wonky’ for the layman

In the original report, the researchers wrote spotlight narratives on policies impacting electricity rates in California, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana and New York. 

The narratives compared the red states with the blue states, showing that the red states with lower electricity rates lacked renewable portfolio standards, zero emissions targets, net metering and other climate policies impacting electricity rates. 

While blue states had higher electricity rates, the picture gets more complicated than just the two figures. States such as Oregon and Washington, which are deep blue states, have lower electricity rates owing to the large amount of hydroelectric power available in the region.

The new report, “Blue States High Rates,” shows these deeper dives, with references, in an interactive index that provides information on specific policy areas impacting electricity rates in each state, allowing readers to easily compare rates and policies across states. 

Sarah Montalbano, energy policy analyst with Always On, told Just the News the report offered the team an opportunity to get “wonky” about the subject. But they wanted to present the findings in a way that’s easy for the layman to understand and assess. 

“We obviously have a perspective, but the ingredients are right there on the label for people,” Montalbano said. 

Policy areas analyzed 

The report examines if the state has renewable portfolio standards, which mandate that utilities supply a minimum percentage of their power from renewable energy sources by specific target dates.  

They also look at electricity providers’ net-zero pledges. Utilities earn more profit when they spend more money, and these pledges increase utility profits by incentivizing them to build larger portfolios of new infrastructure than would otherwise be necessary if reliability and affordability, rather than emissions reductions, were the primary goal.  

They also look at the state’s net metering policies, which credit homeowners with rooftop solar for surplus power they produce from their panels and put onto the grid. The report also looks at carbon pricing and cap and trade schemes, infrastructure policies that impact access to natural gas, and data center protection policies. 

“The map shows these kinds of subtle distinctions in the price of electricity for each of these states, and we wanted to be able to demonstrate why that is from a policy perspective,” Orr said.

Resource for voters

The project has required an extensive amount of analysis and documentation, and so it’s being released in phases. For the 13 colonies, the full state profiles are available by clicking on the state, then clicking the link on the box that appears. 

For the other states, basic information on the state’s average electricity rates and its ranking among states is available. Alex Stevens, manager of policy and communications for the Institute for Energy Research, said that the full profiles for the other states will follow in the “near future.” 

Stevens said the original report has gotten considerable response. Besides the media attention, he said, the IER has conducted a number of Zoom meetings with state officials concerning its findings. Stevens has also testified before the Maryland Legislature on how the blue-state policies impact energy costs. 

With the midterms approaching, concerns about affordability will be near the top of voters’ priorities. Stevens said this will make electricity rates a national concern, and he thinks voters will start looking closer at the relationship between state policies and their utility bills. 

Tom Pyle, president of IER, said in a statement that federal figures show U.S. electricity prices rose 27% from January 2021 through January 2025, with an additional 11% increase from January through September 2025. 

Under the Federal Power Act, states have exclusive authority over generation portfolios, siting, retail pricing, and resource adequacy, giving them direct control over which power sources supply the grid and at what cost to families and businesses.

“Americans deserve transparent information on how state decisions directly affect their wallet," Pyle said. "The bottom line is that the decisions that states make, good or bad, have consequences for American families and businesses when it comes to electricity affordability." 

Kevin Killough

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/blue-states-have-higher-electricity-costs-and-net-zero-policies-are-blame

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Medieval Minbar: Dearborn Heights Sermons Revive Medieval Antisemitism - Dexter Van Zile

 

by Dexter Van Zile

The Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights Is a Focal Point for Such Hostility

 

This is the third installment of a multi-part series on anti-Zionism (and Antisemitism) in Dearborn, Michigan by CAMERA Senior Fellow Dexter Van Zile. Dexter’s Fellowship is thanks to a grant-funded collaboration between CAMERA and Middle East Forum, where he is Managing Editor, Focus on Western Islamism. You can find the first installment here.

The Islamic House of Wisdom in Dearborn Heights, above, is a focal point for such hostility. The mosque was established in the 1990s by Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, who according to The New York Post “served as head of the Iranian Navy’s political-ideological office during the 1980s.”

Photo: Dexter Van Zile

In medieval Europe, Jews knew it was a good idea to stay indoors when their neighbors celebrated Good Friday, a Christian holiday commemorating the death of Jesus. Good Friday was the day Catholic priests throughout Europe took to their pulpits to remind their congregants that Jews were responsible for the death of Christ — even though it was Roman soldiers who put Jesus on the cross.

The Post reports Elahi has “deep, decades-long ties to his homeland” and has “praised the Islamic Republic’s bloodthirsty founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Hezbollah, saying he would die for the cause.”

These homilies had a real impact on Jewish life. In The Anguish of the Jews: Twenty-Three Centuries of Antisemitism, Catholic priest Edward H. Flannery reports that from 848 to 1160, Christians in the French city of Toulouse gathered every Good Friday to strike a Jew in the face as revenge for the murder of Jesus. Flannery reports that, at some point, Christians initiated a practice of “making special mallets for a Holy Week ritual to symbolize the killing of Jews.”

Eventually, Jews in medieval Europe became the targets of accusations of ritual murder and host desecration, which, combined with the deicide charge, turned the Jewish people into a “demonic abstraction more real than any of its individual components,” reports Robert Wistrich in his 2010 book, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad. When this abstraction took root, Jews were viewed “as a dangerous source of unbelief in general,” Wistrich writes.

The problem of religiously inspired violence against Jews was not confined to Catholic Europe, nor was it limited to the Middle Ages. In April 1903, Orthodox Christians, incited by their religious leaders, embarked on a massacre of almost 50 Jews in Kishinev, Steven Zipperstein reports in Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.

These and other acts of violence were motivated by an “obsessive focus on the Jewish menace [which] was at the core of Christian anti-Semitism,” Wistrich reports. “Not only had the Jews killed Christ, not only were they blind to divinely revealed truth, but they were perceived as a dangerous source of unbelief in general.”

By the mid-twentieth century, this hostility toward the Jew had morphed into what Jean-Paul Sartre characterized as a “criminal passion.” Wistrich summarizes Sartre’s insights as follows:

His writings contain passages that, even today, sound remarkably prescient, as if Sartre had uncannily anticipated the paranoid universe of radical Islamist anti-Semites sixty years later. One example was Sartre’s cool observation that (in the mind of the anti-Semite) “the Jew is assimilated to the spirit of evil,” to Satan himself — blamed for all that is bad in society (crises, wars, famines, upheavals, and revolts). The anti-Semite “localizes all the evil of the universe in the Jew.” He imagines him constantly manipulating oppressive governments, or controlling international capitalism, “the imperialism of the trusts and munition makers;” but the Jew is also the hook-nosed agitator and demagogue, the piratical Bolshevik with a knife between his teeth, intent on seducing the workers.

Wistrich reports that “Sartre shrewdly noted that the mania of Manichean anti-Semites was … always directed toward destruction” and that bitter antisemitism often concealed an optimistic belief that “‘once Evil is eliminated’ (as embodied in the Jew) then harmony would finally be reestablished in and of itself.” Sartre, Wistrich reports, understood that for the antisemite, “there is no question of building a new society, but only of purifying the one which exists.”

From Christian Holy Week to Shiite Ashura

Sadly, such Manichean antisemitism is has taken root in the Dearborn, Michigan area, which, as documented previously, has become a bastion of Islamist contempt for the United States, Israel, and Jews.

In a June 15, 2026, sermon, Rajabali localizes the spirit of evil in a hidden global cabal, explicitly naming the Rothschilds as creators of “one of the most evil systems imaginable on Earth in 1790.”

In particular, the Islamic House of Wisdom (IHW) in Dearborn Heights is a focal point for such hostility. The mosque was established in the 1990s by Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, who according to The New York Post “served as head of the Iranian Navy’s political-ideological office during the 1980s.” The Post reports Elahi has “deep, decades-long ties to his homeland” and has “praised the Islamic Republic’s bloodthirsty founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Hezbollah, saying he would die for the cause.” Elahi is proud of his ties to the Iranian regime, which he defends from his mosque’s minbar. A now-deleted biography previously posted on the mosque’s website reports that Navy officers and personnel were “impressed by Imam Elahi’s openness and friendliness.”

At Elahi’s mosque, the run-up to Ashura — a Shiite holiday that commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein ibn Ali (Muhammad’s grandson) and his companions at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE — serves as a pretext for vicious polemics.

A series of pre-Ashura sermons given at the mosque by prominent Shiite activist Haj Hassanain Rajabali embodied the same Manichean habits of mind that Sartre characterized. In a June 15, 2026, sermon, Rajabali localizes the spirit of evil in a hidden global cabal, explicitly naming the Rothschilds as creators of “one of the most evil systems imaginable on Earth in 1790” — a banking system that charges interest and “controls the entire world — every aspect: media, business, everything, even our minds.”

He declares that “the bankers” are behind modern wars — “World War I, World War II, Korean War, the war in Vietnam, the Iraq War, the Afghanistan War, and the war that is there today.” Because of these bankers, “the deep-rooted Shaitan (i.e. Satan) is so deeply rooted” in world affairs.

He blames cannibalism and pedophilia on “the Epstein class.”

He declares that the United States “loses over 240,000 children a year because there is a machinery that takes the impoverished.” And who, Rajabali asks, abuses them? “The elite, the 0.01 percent that really runs the show… The Rothschilds and the bankers, they’re worth hundreds of trillions of dollars,” he answers. “Ninety percent of the wealth on Earth that gets exchanged is owned by that 0.01 percent.”

Throughout his sermon, Rajabali uses the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE and the Iranian Revolution in 1979 as moments of opposition to this global satanic machinery.

Rajabali describes the Trump administration as “a collection of people with the worst history” who have “committed some of the worst crimes on Earth, and they’re leading us.”

The following night — June 16, 2026 — Rajabali gave another sermon in which he made similar arguments. He again portrayed the global financial elite — naming the Rockefellers, J.P. Morgan and the Federal Reserve system — as perpetrators of a massive “Ponzi scheme” and satanic machinery of control. He explicitly linked current wars to efforts to distract from the “Epstein files” and elite pedophilia, describing these forces as the “work of Iblis” (i.e. Satan) pursuing supremacy over humanity through blackmail, crime, and moral corruption.

In one particularly harsh passage in his June 16, 2026, speech, Rajabali describes the Trump administration as “a collection of people with the worst history” who have “committed some of the worst crimes on Earth, and they’re leading us.” After deploying these polemics, Rajabali continues:

They’re amassing Haram wealth, killing indiscriminately. I mean, they are clearly pedophiles. And there’s this attempt [to] create a war, just to hide the evils of these people, just create a war, distract the people. You notice that when the Epstein files … came out and it became the talk of the population of the United States. The war started. And then, what, 10 percent, 5 percent of media was covering Epstein. It was just those ardent ones who were insisting on it. Whereas the entire Epstein [story] is just not only about pedophiles.

It’s not about cannibalism.

It’s a political move that was created by the same people who are fighting the resistance today. They are the same people who are behind this criminality that they have extended themselves. where their goal is to declare supremacy on the human race, and then they have people committing the worst crimes, and telling and encouraging, even those potential citizens, to commit those crimes so they have dirt on them. And then they can dangle it on this person and say, “You’re gonna support us or else we’ll expose you.” This is the work of Iblis.

During the sermons he gave on June 15 and 16, 2026, Rajabali refrained from mentioning Jews or Zionists by name, but his repeated references to Epstein and the Rothschilds make it clear he’s talking about the Jews, their state, and the leaders they purportedly control.

On Wednesday, June 17, 2026, the third night of his lecture series, Rajabali slipped up and called out the Zionist enemy by name in a rant about the evils of mass media. Encouraging his audience to take advantage of alternative media, he declares that traditional media, most notably the Associated Press, is controlled by “shaitan.”

Rajabali frames Karbala and the Iranian Revolution as the divinely ordained resistance that purifies the world from these forces.

“The Associated Press was started a century ago,” he declares. “It was created by the same people who control the media today—the Zionists and those who are in control.”

In sum, Israel stands at the center of the evil Rajabali describes. He portrays the Jewish state as the hidden hand manipulating American policy, pulling the strings of U.S. leaders and preventing criticism of its actions, even as he repeatedly professes love for America and concern for its moral standing. In his telling, the United States is not a sovereign nation acting in its own interest but a captive power beholden to this foreign influence — a classic antisemitic trope updated for the 21st century, in which the Epstein class is portrayed as global manipulators.

The upshot is this: Just as medieval Christian preachers turned Jews into a demonic abstraction blamed for deicide, societal ills, and unbelief, Rajabali presents this cabal as the eternal enemy of God’s will. Rajabali frames Karbala and the Iranian Revolution as the divinely ordained resistance that purifies the world from these forces, positioning the commemoration of Imam Hussein as the model for confronting this abyss so that moral harmony can be restored.

Regular Message at Islamic House of Wisdom

Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi, the mosque’s founder, has echoed similar themes in his own sermons. In a talk last March, he asked, “Why must the people of Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran pay the price so Netanyahu can be elected in Israel and the Jeffrey Epstein files and six million pages of crimes against young girls be forgotten in America?”

What Will Dearborn Leaders Do?

The implications are unmistakable: Israel and its supporters are cast as the contemporary embodiment of Shaitan’s opposition to divine order as embodied by the Islamic Republic of Iran whose leaders have murdered thousands of its own citizens to stay in power.

Dearborn’s political and religious leaders need to come to grips with IHW’s repeated promotion of hostility toward Jews and Israel, and make clear that such rhetoric has no place in American life.

Given the historical impact of such rhetoric, people in the interfaith community — typically reluctant to hold Islamist extremists accountable — need to speak up, particularly in the Dearborn area. Christians have learned that transforming a religious holiday into a platform for conspiratorial antisemitism has historically created an atmosphere in which anti-Jewish violence becomes likely. Dearborn’s political and religious leaders need to come to grips with IHW’s repeated promotion of hostility toward Jews and Israel, and make clear that such rhetoric has no place in American life.

Failure to do so risks repeating a tragic pattern: religious observance twisted into a vehicle for hatred, with real-world consequences for the targeted community. Just as medieval Europe’s Good Friday sermons helped turn Jews into a demonic abstraction deserving of punishment, the Ashura sermons at IHW risk doing the same in 21st-century Michigan. The interfaith community and local leaders must reject this medieval-style incitement before it further poisons communal relations.

If they don’t act, Ashura risks becoming the new Holy Week for Jews in Michigan.

Published originally on July 1, 2026. 

Dexter Van Zile, the Middle East Forum’s Violin Family Research Fellow, serves as managing editor of Focus on Western Islamism. Prior to his current position, Van Zile worked at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis for 16 years, where he played a major role in countering misinformation broadcast into Christian churches by Palestinian Christians and refuting antisemitic propaganda broadcast by white nationalists and their allies in the U.S. His articles have appeared in the Jerusalem Post, the Boston Globe, Jewish Political Studies Review, the Algemeiner and the Jewish News Syndicate. He has authored numerous academic studies and book chapters about Christian anti-Zionism.

Source: https://www.meforum.org/mef-online/medieval-minbar-dearborn-heights-sermons-revive-medieval-antisemitism

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