Why Don't They Ask "Why"?
The Question at the Heart of Every Blood Libel.
Since October 7th I have been pulling on the same thread.
I have researched and debunked dozens of lies. Each one is different on the surface, but they all circle the same accusation: that Jewish power itself is the problem, that Jewish self‑defense is the real crime, and that if Israel would just stop insisting on existing, the world would calm down.
And yet underneath all the charts and quotes and history, something more basic keeps gnawing at me. It is not a clever argument. It is a scream.
If Arabs wanted to live in peaceful coexistence with the Jews why did the Hebron massacre happen? Why did the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem align with Hitler? If the occupation is really the obstacle to peace, why did the violence start in 1948 before there were any “occupied territories”? If this is really about borders, why was there a war in 1967 when every inch of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem was in Arab hands? If Palestinians truly wanted a state next to Israel, why did their leaders walk away in 1947, from Camp David, from Olmert, from the Trump plan, and answer every “yes” with terror and war?
Why did Gaza, once emptied of every last Israeli soldier and settler, become a tunnel network and a launchpad instead of a pilot project for peace? Why, after October 7, did so much of the world rush to explain away rape, torture, and the slaughter of families as “resistance” instead of recoiling in horror?
This essay is not another policy brief. It is the question underneath all the blood libels.
It’s time to ask the most important question that the “antizionists” refuse to ask themselves: “why”.
Why is the Palestinian “cause” engineered to never end?
It is safe to say the quiet part is the point: the “Palestinian cause” is being kept alive on purpose, and Palestinians are not treated like any other displaced population. Every other refugee story in the modern world has three possible endpoints:
- people go home,
- people are resettled somewhere else,
- or people are integrated where they are with citizenship and normal lives.
That is what UNHCR1 is designed to do. Its mandate is to help refugees “get on with their lives as quickly as possible,” usually by resettlement or integration, so the status of “refugee” ends instead of being inherited forever.
The Palestinians are the engineered exception.
In 1949 the UN created UNRWA as a separate agency just for “Palestine refugees,” with a different rulebook: anyone who left in 1948, plus all of their descendants, would remain refugees “pending a just and lasting solution.” UNRWA’s own description is that it does not resettle or naturalize people; it keeps providing services until there is a political deal.
Seventy five years later, roughly 5.9 million Palestinians are registered as refugees across the region, making them the largest stateless community in the world and the longest-running “protracted refugee situation” on the planet. A third still live in camps. In many host states they are deliberately kept from full citizenship, decent jobs, or property rights, precisely so they will not “disappear” as refugees.
Why? Because for Arab regimes and for much of the international system, the “Palestinian cause” is not about the welfare of Palestinians. It is about preserving a permanent, living accusation against Israel.
Consider Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi who said at a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Cairo in October 2023:
I have also emphasized Egypt’s rejection of the ‘liquidation of the Palestinian issue’ through military instruments, or any attempts to forcibly displace the Palestinians from their land, or for this to happen at the expense of countries in the region
He said the quiet part out loud! Egypt which controls the southern border of the Gaza Strip, rejects “the liquidation of the Palestinian issue” and worse, he declared while addressing the attendees formed of local tribal leaders, army personnel, commanders, public figures and journalists:
We, the Egyptians, are ready to sacrifice millions of lives so that nobody approaches a grain of sand in North Sinai.
Arab governments rejected resettlement schemes in the 1950s that would have given Palestinians land, housing, and citizenship in Syria, Iraq, and Sinai for exactly the same reason.
The cause they do not want “liquidated” is not housing, or food, or passports. It is the claim that there is a unique, unresolved injustice that can only be cured by undoing the consequences of 1948 and 1967 on Israel’s side of the ledger. It is the permanent demand that millions of descendants must someday “return” into Israel proper, and that until Israel accepts that, the file must never be closed.
There are other long, ugly refugee stories Afghanistan2, Somalia3, Sudan4. But in those cases the international system at least pretends the goal is to end refugee status, not to preserve it as an identity and a weapon. Only in the Palestinian case do host governments and a dedicated UN agency work together to keep people in suspended animation for three generations, while blocking the two normal exits: resettlement and integration. And of course, anti-zionists never want to discuss the 1947 Partition of British India because it lays bare their lies and propaganda.5 These are all long, ugly refugee stories where in every one of those cases, the international system and the states involved at least pretended the goal was to end refugee status, not to turn millions of people and their grandchildren and great grandchildren into a permanent, weaponized “cause” the way UNRWA has done with the Palestinians.
So when you hear leaders say they will not allow the Palestinian cause to be “liquidated,” believe them. The “cause” is precisely this: to keep millions of Palestinians in a permanent state of unresolved grievance so that Israel’s existence remains on trial forever.
Why this conflict was never about an “occupation”?
In 1947 the UN proposed a partition. Jews accepted it. The Arab world rejected it and launched an invasion the moment Israel declared independence. In 1967, before there was a “settlement” in the West Bank or Gaza, Arab armies massed and attacked again.
Golda Meir asked a “foolish” question in 1974 for which she, nor any of us, have ever heard a single wise answer:
If the ‘67 borders are so holy, why was there war in ‘67?
That is Golda Meir’s “foolish” question that no one on the other side ever answers. If this was really about lines on a map, the wars would have stopped when those lines favored them.
Fast forward. In 2000 Israel offers a Palestinian state with roughly 95 percent of the West Bank, all of Gaza, and a capital in East Jerusalem. Arafat walks away without a counteroffer and the Second Intifada begins. In 2005 Israel leaves Gaza completely. Every settlement, every soldier, every synagogue is uprooted. Gaza could have been a test case for peace. Instead Hamas turns it into a launchpad for rockets, tunnels, and October 7. In 2008 Olmert offers a map with land swaps and shared Jerusalem. Abbas stalls and walks away. In 2020 Palestinian leaders refuse even to negotiate the Trump plan and declare it “dead on arrival.”
So when people say “Israel has never allowed a Palestinian state,” I find myself asking a simple question. If they truly wanted a state next to Israel, why do they elect leaders that walk away from every serious offer on the table? Why do they elect leaders that choose terror over peace?
We have already walked through this in detail with Marwan Barghouti and Salam Fayyad. Marwan is held up as the “prisoner of peace,” the one man who could unite Palestinians and finally say yes. Fayyad was the technocrat who actually tried to build roads, courts, and police instead of posters and martyrs.
And yet, even in their stories, the pattern never really changes. When you scratch beneath the branding, the leadership class keeps one red line: they will talk about a state alongside Israel, but they will not educate for it, prepare their public for it, or confront the factions that still want Israel gone.
That is why Fayyad’s state‑building never turned into a real state and why Marwan’s “two‑state” language has never produced a single concrete compromise. The culture of “no” swallowed them too.
And here is the deeper truth almost no one discusses. This conflict is not unique because Arabs or Muslims lost land.
Since 1948, Arab and Muslim states have lost or ceded territory in Sudan, Yemen, Pakistan, Cyprus, Western Sahara and elsewhere. They adapted. They moved on. Refugees rebuilt lives in new places. They did not turn defeat into a permanent identity and they did not raise their children on the fantasy of reversing history at gunpoint.
What makes this conflict different is not what was lost. It is the choices that were made afterward. A choice to reject every compromise. A choice to glorify loss instead of fixing it. A choice to raise children on slogans instead of skills, on martyrdom instead of a normal life. No one is trapped in that pattern. It continues because admitting defeat would require accountability.
Why Do They Justify Evil is "Resistance"?
At the heart of this lies not just history but morality. On October 12, 2023, days after Hamas launched its genocidal terror attack on Israel, Sam Harris offered a thought experiment that clarifies more than any slogan ever could. He said:
Imagine the Israelis using their own women and children as human shields against Hamas. Recognize how unthinkable this would be, not just for the Israelis to treat their own civilians in this way, but for them to expect that their enemies could be deterred by such a tactic, given who their enemies actually are.
Again, it is easy to lose sight of the moral distance here—which is strange. It’s like losing sight of the Grand Canyon when you are standing right on the edge of it. Take a moment to actually do the cognitive work: Imagine the Jews of Israel using their own women and children as human shields. And then imagine how Hamas, or Hezbollah, or al-Qaeda, or ISIS, or any other jihadist group would respond. The image you should now have in your mind is a masterpiece of moral surrealism. It is preposterous. It is a Monty Python sketch where all the Jews die.
Do you see what this asymmetry means? Can you see how deep it runs? Do you see what it tells you about the ethical difference between these two cultures?
There are not many bright lines that divide good and evil in our world, but this is one of them.
You cannot imagine it for one simple reason. No matter how angry Israelis are, no matter how right wing some governments become, there is a hard moral limit that says you protect your people; you do not turn them into disposable props.
Now flip the thought experiment back to reality. Hamas spends years building hundreds of miles of tunnels under civilian neighborhoods and refuses to put its own civilians in those tunnels. It hides ammunition in mosques and schools. It launches a massacre on October 7 knowing exactly what will follow. It counts on dead Palestinians, including children, as fuel for the propaganda war.
Hamas did not defend Gaza. It sacrificed Gaza on the altar of Jew hatred. It chose to pour concrete into tunnels instead of shelters, to buy rockets instead of MRI machines, to turn children into human shields instead of students. Then it bet the lives of two million people on the hope that the world would blame Israel for cleaning up the mess.
So I ask another “why.” If this is a symmetric conflict, why does one side build bomb shelters for its civilians and the other builds tunnels for its fighters?
You cannot answer that honestly and still pretend the obstacle to peace is Israeli stubbornness. You end up where you do not want to be: admitting that one side treats its own children as a sacred trust and the other often treats them as expendable.
The real problem is not criticism of Israel. The real problem is not even anti‑Zionism in the abstract.
The problem begins when anti‑Zionism becomes a way of thinking that replaces normal moral judgment.
Once you decide that “decolonization” justifies anything, you stop asking basic questions about right and wrong. You stop asking who started a war. You stop asking who targets civilians. You stop asking why one side hides behind children and the other tells children to get out of the way.
That is how we reached a moment when educated people watched Hamas GoPro footage and shared it online as “resistance.” When activists posted images of murdered Israelis with captions like “this is what decolonization looks like” and insisted there were “no Israeli civilians.” The same people who preach consent and trauma suddenly found ways to explain away rape, torture, and the deliberate murder of families as “context.”
Once you cross that line with Jews, you will cross it with others. Today the targets are Jews and Israelis. Tomorrow it is Christians, Americans, Europeans, or anyone else who can be painted as “colonizers.”
And what’s worse, when the “Anti-Zionist” narrative takes hold, they can’t even allow themselves to see that Israel is the most successful decolonization project in history.
Why do their adherents justify hunting Jews Worldwide?
This “why” is perhaps the ugliest. If this was just about Gaza or the West Bank, why are Jews now being harassed, terrorized, and murdered around the world?
Just weeks ago, two gunmen opened fire on hundreds gathered at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia for a peaceful Hanukkah by the Sea event. Fifteen dead. Dozens more wounded. Witnesses described gunmen deliberately targeting Jews in swimwear, turning a holiday joy into a bloodbath.6
Why are synagogues desecrated from London to Paris to Switzerland? Torah scrolls ripped, walls spray painted with “Juden Pack” and Sieg Heil. Why do visibly Jewish people face assaults from campuses to streets across Europe, America, and even stable democracies like Australia, where antisemitic incidents tripled since October 7?
And the numbers tell the story no one can ignore. Jews, just 2 percent of the U.S. population, faced 69 percent of all religion-based hate crimes in 2024, the highest ever recorded by the FBI with 1,938 anti-Jewish incidents. The ADL tallied 9,354 antisemitic acts nationwide that year, a record shattering the prior year by 5 percent and up nearly 900 percent over the past decade.
This is not blowback from a local dispute. It is a global hunt for Jews, ignited by the same ideology that rejects every peace offer and celebrates dead civilians. When Hamas attacks Israel, its foot soldiers do not stop at borders. They chase Jews to Bondi Beach and beyond, proving the real goal is not Palestinian statehood but a world where no Jew walks safe. That is the ultimate proof there is no symmetry here, no shared grievance over “land.”
Why do they scream for a "One State Solution" while glorifying those who want to destroy it?
When people chant “from the river to the sea,” they insist this is just a call for equal rights. They talk about a “one state solution” as if the problem is that Jews selfishly hoard democracy. It sounds noble until you ask another “why.”
If they truly wanted “one democratic state,” why are the loudest voices for this slogan the same movements that glorify suicide bombers, teach children that Jews are subhuman, and deny any form of Jewish self-determination? Why do their charters and sermons speak not of equality but of erasing Israel altogether? Why does the international media ignore Hamas’ 42-page manifesto entitled “Our Narrative: Al Aqsa Flood: Two Years of Steadfastness and the Will for Liberation” defending October 7 as a “calculated” and “glorious” attack, explicitly framing the massacre as justified and foundational to its cause. In it Hamas states:
October 2023, 7, was no sudden event; it was another chapter in the ongoing struggle with the Israeli occupation. The Al Aqsa Flood operation is not a passing memory but the foundation of our narrative… a historic, pivotal stage in the journey of our cause.
The same double game appears in the “ethnostate” rhetoric. In “Packaging Hate as Social Justice,” I discuss the “ethnostate” libel in detail. Calling Israel a “Jewish ethnostate” is not a neutral description but a political weapon that collapses under any consistent definition of the term. Israel grants full legal and political rights to its Arab minority that comprise 20% of Israel’s citizenry, who vote, serve in the Knesset, sit on the Supreme Court, work as doctors and professors, and live under the same civil law as anyone else, many of whom choose to volunteer in the IDF. Contrast this reality with true ethnocracies such as apartheid South Africa, Malaysia’s Malay‑first system, or states that openly enshrine religious supremacy. If “ethnostate” means legal discrimination, Israel does not fit; if it simply means a nation‑state rooted in a particular people’s culture or faith, then Japan, Greece, Armenia, Ireland and Pakistan all qualify and yet only the Jewish nation is condemned for it, revealing a double standard that targets Jewish self‑determination alone. Israel, they claim, is a racist project by definition. If this is an “ethnostate,” it is a very failed one.
From there, the questions multiply.
Why do they ignore the fact that Bethlehem’s Christian population dramatically declined under Palestinian Authority (PA) rule, falling from around 80-86% in the 1950s when Israel controlled it to less than 10% since the PA took control in 1994 while facing harassment, persecution and violence7.
If Israel is uniquely evil, why has it already made peace with Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco, and pursued normalization with Saudi Arabia. If the Jewish state is the problem, why do these former enemies manage to sign treaties and exchange ambassadors while Palestinian leaders still refuse to recognize any Jewish state at all.
The answer is uncomfortable. Which is why so many people flee from it into slogans. This has never fundamentally been about 1967, or even 1948. It has always been about whether there should be a Jewish state at all.
So, why is there still no peace?
I have dedicated myself throughout this substack to show that complexity does not erase moral clarity. That we can acknowledge Palestinian suffering without pretending Israel caused it. We can condemn bad Israeli policies without pretending Hamas is a civil rights “resistance” movement.
When we strip away the propaganda, the “why” becomes brutally simple: There is no peace because too many of Israel’s enemies do not want a state alongside Israel.8
They want a world without Israel. There is no peace because the movements that claim to speak for Palestinians have chosen rejection and martyrdom over compromise and coexistence, again and again, for three generations. There is no peace because an ideology that treats Jewish sovereignty as a cosmic crime cannot live with any borders, on any map, under any flag.
Israel has never failed to make peace when it had a partner who truly wanted peace. Egypt proved it. Jordan proved it. The Abraham Accords proved it.
The tragedy is that the one people who need peace the most have been cursed with leaders and patrons who have educated them to hate Jews and would rather chase the dream of erasing a Jewish state than build a future next to it.
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UNHCR also known as the “UN Refugee Agency” which emerged in the wake of WWII to help Europeans displaced by that conflict. Despite the fact that the organization was founded with a three year mission, the organization still exists today to address the more than 108 million people around the world that have been forcibly displaced as a result of conflict or persecution. UNHCR’s budget was $10.7B in 2022. That’s $99 per refugee. You can find more statistics here: https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/who-we-are/figures-glance. UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) which is solely dedicated to responding to the needs of the 750,000 Palestinian refugees. And did you know that Western Countries contribute the lion’s share of UNRWA’s $1.6 Billion-dollar annual Budget. I love when people say that Israel has committed genocide or ethnic cleansing when there are now 5 million people characterized as Palestinian Refugees because, under international law and the principle of family unity, the children of refugees and their descendants are also considered refugees until a durable solution is found. So let’s see $10B for the World’s 100M+ refugees and $1B for the Palestinian’s 5M refugees. Note that means the UN spends nearly 4x the amount spent per refugee when compared to every other refugee in the world. On its face that should make you question why the Palestinian Refugees have such status amongst the world’s refugees.
[For more insights, please read this article entitled “What to Know about UNRWA and Its Controversial Role in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”]
The Afghan refugee crisis is governed by UNHCR, not a special parallel agency. It began in its modern form with the Soviet invasion in 1979 and has continued through civil war, Taliban rule, and the post‑2001 period, displacing roughly one in four Afghans over time and killing an estimated 1–3 million people. UNHCR’s mandate has focused on protection, repatriation when possible, and resettlement or local integration for millions of Afghans in Pakistan, Iran, and beyond, with large return programs after 2001 and ongoing efforts to naturalize or integrate Afghans in host states.
By contrast, Palestinian refugees fall under UNRWA, which explicitly “does not have a mandate to resettle Palestine refugees and has no authority to seek lasting durable solutions,” but instead provides services while refugee status passes to descendants “pending a just and lasting solution.
The Somali refugee crisis is also under UNHCR. It dates to the state collapse and civil war beginning in 1991, which, along with recurring famine and drought, has killed an estimated 350,000 to 1 million Somalis and displaced more than 3.8 million people internally and over 700,000 as refugees in neighboring states. UNHCR’s response has centered on camp protection, food and health support, and where conditions allow, voluntary repatriation and integration programs for Somalis in Kenya, Ethiopia, and elsewhere. Again, unlike UNRWA’s permanent-service, no-resettlement model for Palestinians, UNHCR’s stated goal with Somalis is to end refugee status over time through return, resettlement, or local integration rather than preserve it as a multi‑generation identity.
Sudan’s current displacement emergency, overseen by UNHCR, began with the civil war that erupted in April 2023 and has quickly become the world’s largest and fastest‑growing displacement crisis, with about 12–13 million people forced from their homes by mid‑2025, including roughly 7.7–8.6 million internally displaced and over 4 million who have crossed borders; by mid‑2024, an estimated 150,000 people had already been killed. UNHCR’s work focuses on emergency protection, cross‑border refugee registration, and support for overburdened host countries, with the long‑term aim of enabling eventual return or permanent solutions once the conflict ends. Palestinians, by contrast, are the only major refugee population managed by a separate UN agency whose mandate explicitly excludes resettlement and durable solutions, ensuring that “Palestine refugee” status persists and expands across generations instead of being resolved.
This subcontinent’s refugee crises are handled under the general UNHCR framework and state policies, not a special permanent agency: the 1947 Partition of British India uprooted about 14–15 million people and killed an estimated 200,000 to 2 million in one of history’s largest forced migrations, as Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs fled in both directions between India and the new Pakistan. In 1971, Pakistan’s war in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) triggered a second massive crisis, with roughly 10 million refugees crossing into India and perhaps 30 million internally displaced, and an estimated death toll of up to 3 million. India, with UNHCR and donors, set up large camps but then organized rapid repatriation once Bangladesh was independent: about 6.8–9 million refugees returned within a few months of the war’s end, and by early 1972 only tens of thousands remained in India. In other words, even refugee movements on the scale of Partition and Bangladesh were ultimately treated as problems to resolve through return, resettlement, or integration not as a hereditary political status to be preserved for generations. That stands in stark contrast to UNRWA’s mandate for Palestinians, which explicitly excludes resettlement and allows refugee status to pass indefinitely to descendants “pending a political solution.”
The attack at Bondi was not just another mass shooting. It was an assault on Hanukkah itself, a holiday born from Jews being forbidden to worship, having their Temple desecrated, and being murdered for keeping their faith under Antiochus IV, until the Maccabees fought back and rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem in 164 BCE. The festival of lights celebrates Jews openly practicing Judaism after persecution; gunmen turning a public menorah lighting into a killing ground is a chilling modern echo of the same hatred Hanukkah was meant to mark the end of.
In a December 2024 paper entitled: “Demographics Don’t Lie: The Decline of the Christian Population in PA- and Hamas-Controlled Areas” the authors cite:
Besides the physical property desecration of Christian religious sites in the Palestinian territories including incidents of graffiti and arson attacks,14 Christians in Gaza and the West Bank also frequently face personal harassment for practicing their religion. Muslim extremists often disrupt Christian religious celebrations, public festivities face threats, and participants fear for their safety. Christmas trees are often burnt by Islamists, as was the case, in the village of Zababdeh in 2015.15
Reports of church desecration and restrictions on worship services also paint a bleak picture.16 In 2019, vandals broke into a Maronite church in Bethlehem, desecrated it, and stole valuable equipment, with similar incidents at other churches, including an Anglican church in Aboud. These events often go unreported in the Palestinian media, since the PA pressures Christians not to publicize them.17
Personal religious freedom is also curtailed. Converts from Islam to Christianity in the West Bank face threats and extreme pressure to give up their new faith. In Gaza, their situation under Hamas rule is so dangerous, that they practice their Christian faith in utmost secrecy,18 with some Christian men growing beards to blend into the general Muslim population.19
On the flip side, Palestinian Christians have reported being forcibly converted to Islam and abducted, raising serious concerns about religious freedom violations. In 2012, the Orthodox Christian Church in Gaza claimed that armed Islamists kidnapped five Christian Palestinians to compel their conversion to Islam. In 2016, Bishop Alexios of Gaza “confirmed that the Christians who converted to Islam did so under threats, coercion, compulsion, and force.” His church submitted a formal petition to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh to investigate matters, which received no response.20
Though, unlike the zealously religious Hamas, the Fatah-dominated PA presents itself as a secular, nondenominational entity, its pervasive mistreatment of Christians proves that bias against religious minorities is an ingrained cultural phenomenon. While Islamic tradition sees Christians and Jews as the “People of the Book,” they still retain only second-class status as “protected” dhimmi, an inferior status for not having accepted Islam. The dhimmi “protection pact” suspends the Muslim conqueror’s initial right to kill or enslave Jews and Christians in exchange for tribute – the jizya tax. Anecdotes of tolerance aside, dhimmicommunities and individuals have been made to live in a state of perpetual, intentional humiliation by Islamic precepts, to emphasize their inferiority. The British consul in Jerusalem wrote that in Jerusalem until 1839, Christians were pushed into the gutter by any Muslim, who would swear, “turn to my left, thou dog.” They were forbidden to ride on a mount in town or to wear bright clothes.21
In Shalom, my opening commentary for this Substack, I surmise that 100 years of Arab rejectionist and Arab leadership and the Palestinian people’s alignment with Islamist ideologies have had a “profound and devastating effect on the psyche of israeli citizens:
Founded as a socialist dream, Israeli politics and society have, over time, moved further right. As a result of Israeli’s learned experiences with Palestinian rejections of overtures of peace resulting in decades of aggressions, as of 2022, 62 percent of the population identifying as on the political right. October 7th has only reinforced that trend and as a result, the prospects of peace have dimmed.
Beautifully, eloquently expressed!