If Free Palestine were to succeed and Israel were eliminated, it would be the worst thing that ever happened to the Palestinians. First of all, let’s just be honest. Palestinians are not interested in democracy. They are Islamist extremists who openly executed and celebrated October 7. If they actually won, they would slaughter 7 millions Jews and 2 million Israeli Arabs and Palestinians they considered collaborators. That’s not remotely controversial if you’ve actually paid attention to what these groups say and do. Then what? Gaza doesn’t have an economy. The West Bank is deeply dependent on Israel and international aid. They’ve spent generations fighting Israel instead of building the institutions of a functioning state. So after the evil Jews are finally gone, what exactly is the plan? What industry suddenly appears? What government? What economy? The answer seems pretty obvious to me. Palestine would become an extremist Islamist state almost immediately. The violence wouldn’t stop. It would just find new targets. Hezbollah would stop being an ally and start being a rival. Jordan would be next. Egypt would be next. Revolutionary movements don’t retire if they win, they look for another revolution. People always ask why Egypt and Jordan don’t simply open their borders. They’ve already learned this lesson. Both have dealt with Palestinian militants destabilizing their own countries. They don’t want to do it again. Then there’s the issue of how Palestinians don’t literally starve. For decades Palestinians have survived on extraordinary levels of international aid. Does anyone seriously believe that continues after the destruction of Israel? I don’t. Western countries aren’t going to enthusiastically bankroll the state that just carried out one of the largest massacres in modern history. And Arab governments would have no political incentive to feed the people killing them (something Israel does.) So what would the Palestinians be left with? An impoverished Islamist state. Competing militias. Something much closer to Yemen than Singapore. Famine. Civil war. Religious extremism. The sane Palestinians trapped in the middle. And for them, emigration would become impossible. Right now many countries accept Palestinian refugees because the story is they’re fleeing Israel. If Israel no longer exists because it was Holocausted, I have a hard time believing those same countries are going to welcome any refugees. The uncomfortable truth is the current stalemate is almost certainly better for Palestinians than “victory.” If you actually care about the future of the Palestinian people instead of chanting slogans, the only path that makes any sense is generations of deradicalization, building functioning institutions, developing a real economy, and eventually creating a state that defines itself by what it builds instead of what it wants to destroy.

Two documents on sexual violence in the Gaza conflict were published over the last twenty-four hours. One is a three hundred page evidentiary record built over two and a half years to support criminal prosecution of Hamas and its collaborators. It examined over ten thousand photographs and video segments, conducted over 1,800 hours of visual analysis, ran more than 430 formal and informal interviews, mapped victims across 52 nationalities, and is the culmination of the scholarship and analytic contributions of dozens of leading figures in their field led by Dr. Cochav Elkayam-Levy, with principal contributor Hon. Irwin Cotler, and distinguished contributors including David Crane (founding chief prosecutor of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone) and Yuval Shany (former UN Human Rights Committee). It is endorsed by internationally recognized notables such as Ambassador Isabelle Rome (France’s Ambassador at-Large for Human Rights), Alice Wairimu Nderitu (Former UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide), Noëlle Lenoir (Former Justice on the French Constitutional Court), Aharon Barak (Former President of the Supreme Court of Israel) and Mukesh Kapila (Former Special Adviser to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights), among many others. The other is Nicholas Kristof’s lascivious New York Times opinion column accusing the Israeli state of systematic sexual violence against Palestinian men, women, and children, supported by Hamas-linked figures at Euro-Med and a documented, self-admitted sexual harasser of minors, Shaiel Ben Ephraim, who lost his junior research fellowship at UCLA over the scandal. It is based on uncorroborated testimony from mostly convicted and suspected terrorists who accuse Israel’s security apparatus of training dogs to rape. The most accredited source it leans on is that of Issa Amro, one of Kristof’s two named witnesses, who holds EU and UN human rights awards and is an HRW fellow. After being convicted in Israeli military court in 2021 of six counts, three for participating in demonstrations without a permit, two for obstructing security forces, and one count of assault for pushing a settlement guard, he was sentenced to a 3-month suspended sentence, 2 years probation, and fined about 3,500 NIS. Amro told the Washington Post in February 2024 that he was threatened with sexual assault during a 10-hour detention on October 7, yet in Kristof’s column, the same October 7 detention has him as a victim of rape -- his own first-person account of the same event contradicts itself. The other, Sami al-Sai, one day after the Hamas massacres, while bodies were still being recovered from the kibbutzim and fighting was ongoing, posted celebratory content praising “the green flag” flying across the West Bank, “over the camps of the occupier and his tanks,” and “decorating the foreheads of the heroic fighters.” About a year before Kristof’s column, al-Sai gave testimony about his alleged abuse to a domestic anti-Israel NGO, B’Tselem, that has been at the center of its own fair share of sourcing scandals. B’Tselem’s account did not include the specific, graphic details that surfaced in Kristof’s column: being sodomized with a carrot, a female guard grabbing his genitals, or finding “other people’s vomit, blood and broken teeth” on his skin from other detainees. In five years, one of these documents will be cited in international tribunals, in court filings, and in academic literature. The other might still be a Wikipedia footnote about a press controversy that likely ended Kristof’s career.

The Franchise. #Isles (@joseph86450151)

Tarik Skubal defends his crown 👑 Repost and reply for a chance to win this @Topps Jumbo Relic card of the back-to-back AL Cy Young Award winner!

Have you ever seen a game like that ? I am so proud of this team . Met fans , go out and celebrate.

ARE YOU SERIOUS, FRANCISCO LINDOR?!?! The @Mets take the lead in the 9th.

BRANDON NIMMOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

ISLANDERS!!! 2-0 lead after the first

Can the #Isles sweep the SoCal back-to-back tonight in LA? @eyesonislesFS

Let’s Go Islanders from Turks & Caicos!!#Isles @eyesonislesFS

Thank you to our readers for making @eyesonislesFS the most read @FanSided hockey site in the US for the month of January 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼 #Isles

The #Isles are: the 8th-oldest team in NHL by average age/salary capped out/behind multiple teams for a playoff spot/Bridgeport is 11-24-5. Aging capped out roster + no org depth. It’s time for more significant changes. @eyesonislesFS

Is Patrick Roy the right choice to lead the #Isles back to glory? My latest at @eyesonislesFS :

All my life, I never was an @Edmonton fan. Now I am -- not because of their streak -- but for my admiration of #ZachHyman. He's a total player, total human being, total team guy and -- no less important -- he's Jewish and never afraid to stand up and say so. YAY, ZACH!

I’m gonna give 10 random people that repost this and follow me $25,000 for fun (the $250,000 my X video made) I’ll pick the winners in 72 hours

Roy calling for his first line change last night #isles

In case you couldn’t tell how much this night and being back behind an NHL bench meant to Patrick Roy, here’s this ⁦@Sportsnet⁩

Our first Patrick Roy OT celly #Isles

First of many. Welcome and congrats, Patrick #isles