The Illusion of Palestinian Peace

written by Fiamma Nirenstein November 4, 2025 

The orgy of blood on Oct. 7, 2023, and everything that followed should have inspired a dream of peace. For anyone with a conscience, the horror would be enough to say: “Never again.”

Yet that isn’t what happened. When you ask Israelis how they are, their automatic “Fine, thank you” is no longer true; it’s merely a social convention. Their souls remain shaken.

But across the divide, in the Palestinian territories, the picture is far more disturbing. According to a recent survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, 59% of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority—that is, in Judea and Samaria—believe that the decision to carry out the Oct. 7 massacre was “correct.” In Gaza, 44% agreed.

Even more shocking, 54% blame Israel for Palestinian suffering, while only 14% blame Hamas. And so, we must ask: what peace are we talking about? The one preached endlessly by the U.N., by Europe, and by French President Emmanuel Macron — “two states for two peoples”? Not only does it lack realism; a majority of Palestinians reject it outright.

The same survey shows that 40% of Palestinians believe an independent state must come through armed struggle, not negotiation; in Gaza, 35% say the same. These are not marginal numbers—they represent a society still enthralled by the myth of “resistance,” not the idea of coexistence.

As Israeli journalist Amit Segal has noted, Shany Mor’s essay “Ecstasy and Amnesia” explains this phenomenon well: the intoxication of violence, the inability of parts of the Islamic world—and the Palestinian one in particular—to separate history from religious emotion.

The “ecstasy” of jihad was visible on Oct. 7, in videos of young men calling their parents to boast about killing Jews with their own hands, and in the mobs cheering as kidnapped Israeli girls were paraded through Gaza’s streets.

Even academics in the West, such as Cornell’s Russell Rickford, revealed the same moral sickness when he called the massacre “exhilarating.”

Arab–Palestinian wars have always followed this script: an initial eruption of homicidal and suicidal ecstasy, followed by crushing defeat—the War of Independence (1948), the Six Day War (1967), the Intifadas, and now the war of Oct. 7. Yet from each failure, what remains in memory is the thrill of violence, not the price of it.

 

 

Westerners Help Hamas Win the Propaganda War

 By Tom Gross  25 October 2025

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-westerners-helping-hamas-win-the-propaganda-war/

After two years of war, and despite Israel’s many successes on the battlefield, Hamas can also claim a kind of victory – at least for now. The terror group has survived and is once again exerting control in the areas of Gaza under its authority. Public executions, whippings, stonings and kneecappings have returned. In the first five days of the ceasefire, Hamas executed at least 100 Gazans.

Hamas’s survival was achieved not only through its remaining fighters and its holding of hostages, but also thanks to a chorus of western apologists. A coalition of so-called progressives and professional activists has excused, rationalised and defended the group’s actions across universities and in newspaper editorials. The BBC, Sky, the Guardian, the FT and the New York Times have all parroted Hamas talking points.

Tales of impending famine in Gaza, for instance, were broadcast as fact, sourced from UN bureaucrats and ‘aid agencies’ with long records of anti-Israel bias and, in some cases, open sympathy for Hamas. This isn’t journalism: it’s agenda-driven activism disguised as news. What the BBC and others failed to grasp is that, for Hamas, the western media is the battlefields.

From the outset, even before Israeli troops had entered Gaza, Hamas’s operatives and sympathisers in the West were shouting about ‘genocide’ and ‘famine’. It was a propaganda trap – and the western media walked right into it.

Consider, for example, these headlines from the early weeks of the conflict in 2023:

11,15,30 October, 6 November: “Fuel in Gaza will run out in 48 hours”

The pattern speaks for itself. It’s been the same story with Gaza being ‘on the brink of famine’ for the past two years. This is how it works:

Step one: The Hamas ‘health ministry’ makes up a casualty number which could be debunked by the most cursory statistical analysis.

Step two: Aid organisations repeat the number without independent confirmation.

Step three: UN agencies in Gaza (some staffed by Hamas members) cite the aid organisations.

Step four: Media outlets quote the UN agencies.

Step five: Hamas’s supporters in the West claim the numbers are ‘UN verified’.

UN officials have also contributed to the fiction directly. In May, Tom Fletcher, a humanitarian coordinator for the organisation, told BBC Radio 4: ‘There are 14,000 babies that will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.’ Almost no babies died as a result of the war in the following days. But that didn’t stop the BBC running the claim in bulletins and news outlets around the world repeating it, citing the BBC as a reliable source.

The Hamas narrative has been amplified, too, by disinformation campaigns driven by Iranian, Russian and Chinese state-linked bots on social media, which have exploited Gaza as a means of destabilising western societies. These regimes understood how easily such narratives could tap into a pre-existing willingness among many in the West to believe anti-Semitic libels.

Today, falsehoods are disseminated by journalists, academics and UN officials – cloaked in the language of human rights but echoing ancient prejudices.

Why were Hamas’s inflated casualty figures reported as facts? Why were incorrect claims of Israel bombing hospitals repeated without scrutiny – while confirmed cases of Hamas rockets hitting Israeli hospitals in Ashkelon and Beersheba were ignored? In part, this was down to journalistic complacency. The facts were accessible.

Independent researchers discovered that some of the most widely shared images of ‘starvation in Gaza’ were from Yemen. One prominent photo showing a skeletal child was highlighted by the media as evidence of famine. In reality, the child wasn’t malnourished due to famine. He had cerebral palsy, hypoxemia and other genetic conditions. That didn’t prevent the Guardian, Times and New York Times running it on their front pages, inflaming the emotions of millions of readers. Despite its resources, the much-touted BBC Verify unit missed these falsehoods.

The good news? Large swaths of the British public aren’t buying it. Scroll through the reader comments under articles about Israel, and you’ll find thousands of ordinary people who haven’t lost their critical faculties. They know casualty figures from terrorist regimes aren’t a sacred truth. They can spot propaganda when they see it.

Unlike some intellectuals, they don’t lose all logic the moment the word ‘Israel’ is uttered. As George Orwell once quipped: ‘You must be an intellectual. Only an intellectual could believe something quite so stupid.’ Today, he might have aimed that line at Guardian readers or BBC news staff.

In this war, it is not Israel or even Hamas that has lost its purpose, but the media.

 

Europe Has Apparently Learned Nothing

        by Majid Rafizadeh, Europe Has Apparently Learned Nothing :: Gatestone Institute

• Once again, Europe seems to have slipped into a dangerous fantasy: that engaging in polite diplomatic parleys with promises of sugar plums will tame Iran's rapacious ambitions.
• France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (E3), acting as the European Troika, declared their intention to revive the long-stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran.
• At the core of the E3's plan lies the deeply flawed assumption that Iran can be wooed into restraint through incremental "incentives." These generally consist of easing financial pressure, lifting trade restrictions, or delaying multilateral sanctions in exchange for ephemeral commitments.
• Sadly, Europe appears to be pursuing the worst lessons of appeasement: the dangerous illusion is that you can temper a ravenous aggressor by conciliation, weakness and generosity. The aggressor immediately sees that the best route for him is to demand more. The cycle becomes self-reinforcing.
• By treating the Iranian regime as a legitimate negotiating partner — and by discounting the moral and strategic gulf that separates it from liberal democracies — Europe is bankrolling the terrorism industry.
• President Donald J. Trump's current posture — doubling down on sanctions, refusing immediate diplomacy until leverage is secured — should jolt Europe out of its passivity.
• The European Troika's charade must stop. Anything less just prolongs the threat.

 

EU. should Propose Peace not Violence

Video Of The Week - Israeli Rescue Operation in Florida - https://tinyurl.com/t5czja7j

For the full Article from “Jewishwebsight” by Fiamma Nirenstein go to - https://tinyurl.com/238pn8fd

 It’s been 30 years since the Madrid Conference, the aim of which was to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Yet, after three decades, Europe still hasn’t grasped what a failure it and all other such attempts have been.

The Palestinian delegation—including Hanan Ashrawi and Saeb Erekat—was engaging in “peace” chitchat by day and rushing by night to report to PLO chief Yasser Arafat in Tunis by night. They returned from the latter full of hatred and contempt for the Jewish people, which they expressed in vitriolic declarations that about Israel’s being a “colonialist occupier, and a “racist apartheid state.”

 Now again, Madrid and Rome are proposing an Israeli-Palestinian peace conference. This is ironic, given the 20-year anniversary of the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance” in Durban, South Africa—itself a festival of hatred.

Europe is well aware of the above conferences and other such failed endeavors, not one of which I have missed as a journalist. All have gone the same way. The Oslo Accords, for example—subsequently signed by then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat—resulted in the bloodbath of the Second Intifada.

Cities were evacuated in order to allow 98 percent of Palestinians to live under the jurisdiction of their government, the Palestinian Authority, where they still reside. But this was nothing meaningful for those who wished for the death of the “enemy,” Israel.

Israel also evacuated every last Jew from Gaza in August 2005. Despite this complete withdrawal from the Strip, the Palestinians and their apologists still called it “occupied”—illustrating perfectly that there is no territorial solution to the conflict. Perhaps the leaders of Spain and Italy haven’t been paying attention.

Perhaps they have forgotten, as well, the numerous other peace conferences that ended with multiple lucrative offers of land to the Palestinians—from Israeli prime ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Benjamin Netanyahu—each of which were met not only with resounding “noes,” but accompanying waves of terrorism.

What European leaders continually seem to ignore is the Palestinian belief that Israel shouldn’t and has no right to exist. It’s an ideology that’s woven into the fabric of Palestinian Authority propaganda, which includes accusations of Israeli “apartheid” and “genocide.”

Still, “occupation” is the only word that the E.U. knows how to utter while accusing Israel of violating international law. It’s a comfortable mantra that has been proven false again and again, with every Israeli overture.

It’s time for the European Union to finally understand this if it truly wants peace and stability in the Middle East—where, in addition to Palestinian intransigence, Iran and its proxy Hezbollah wield influence through money, weapons and warfare—it has to look beyond useless peace conferences.

If the Palestinians ever come to understand that friendship with Israel—based on peace for peace and tolerance for tolerance—is both possible and advantageous for anyone who truly seeks it, perhaps their racist hunger for destruction will subside.

Peace can be a goal that bears actual fruit—such as advancement in all realms of health, agriculture and water technology—not empty words. Indeed, it can provide hope for a better future for all the children of the region.

If Europe really wants to involve the Palestinians in a peace process, it should invite them to Brussels within the framework of the Abraham Accords. To do this, however, it needs to be honest with itself about P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas. It must realize that he’s not a potential partner for peace, but rather a dictator who murders his rivals—one who canceled the Palestinian elections slated for May in order to retain his useless and harmful 17-year grip on power, and keep his hands on all the European money given to the P.A., with which he lines his pockets and funds his “pay for slay” program.

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Will UAE be safer for Jews than most of Europe?

Video Of The Week - 500 Ethiopian Jews Airlifted to Israel - https://tinyurl.com/yc2sx752

For the full article By SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPost, 13-12-2020, go to https://tinyurl.com/ycs96vbn

Hanukkah celebrations in Dubai last week and the national efforts to support tolerance and coexistence in the United Arab Emirates have created a reality in which Jews are more welcomed and safe in the UAE than in Europe.  Many friends and contacts I have spoken to say they were surprised by the feeling walking around the Emirates’ most populous city over the last week wearing a kippah, something they would be hesitant to do in many places in Europe.

This is a testament to the reality of most Western democracies: It’s dangerous to be a Jew in Europe. Jewish schools are attacked and Jews with a kippah are assaulted. It happens almost every day throughout Western Europe and the US, where in some places half of all religious hate crimes target Jews.

Today, Jews are safer in the UAE than in most European countries and most American states. We measure antisemitism in most Western countries by how many thousands of attacks there are – that’s the reality. In most European countries, intolerance towards Jews is widespread, and growing.

This is evident on any visit to a synagogue or Jewish school in European countries. I have been to most of these countries over the last twenty years. I’ll never forget going to a kosher coffee shop near Oranienburger Strasse in Berlin. It was near the beautiful New Synagogue in that part of the German capital, a shul burned down during the Nazi era. Outside the coffee shop there were two policemen to guard against attacks. There were no people inside having coffee.

To be a Jew in Berlin, I wondered at the time, meant that if I go to a kosher coffee shop, there will have to be police guarding it. This is not “protection” but rather an illustration of the levels of hate directed at Jews.  But this isn’t security. People shouldn’t have to pray behind armies of police and soldiers with assault rifles. When we talk about a decline or increase in antisemitic attacks in Europe, we count them in the thousands. In 2018, for instance, there were 1,652 antisemitic incidents in the UK.

A person has to think twice before wearing a kippah in most countries in Europe – it’s risky. One could be spat on, shouted at, randomly attacked or even murdered.

NOW, a new embrace of Jews appears to be happening in the Gulf. These words of tolerance are not just about words, but appear to be about making Jews feel part of the fabric of places like Dubai, where people from 200 nationalities live. This means Jews can become a fabric of these societies, so that a man with a kippah is as normal as anyone wearing any other type of outfit. That is the way it should be.

It should be normal to be Jewish, to celebrate Hanukkah, to wear a kippah if one wants, to do Jewish things and buy kosher food if one keeps kosher. It should be as normal as to be Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Buddhist. Yet, a Buddhist and people of other faiths can go to prayers in Germany or France or the UK and not worry that they and their children will be beheaded and murdered by extremists. Their graves will not be vandalized.

IT’S POSSIBLE to have zero levels of anti-Jewish attacks. But it’s difficult when members of some European political parties, such as the Labour Party in the UK, are found to be members of secret social media online groups that openly deny and mock the Holocaust. That’s the reality.  When educated people in the leading political parties are “liking” and tolerating posts on Facebook claiming the Holocaust didn’t happen, or claiming Jews “exploit it,” then you have a problem. You can’t have tolerance when some of the people who are supposed to be progressive and in charge of tolerance in places like the UK deride and dislike Jews and tolerate Holocaust denial.

It’s not clear if the new messages from the UAE, Bahrain and other states that are pushing tolerance and coexistence will lead to a new era in the Middle East, but today I’d feel safer in the UAE with a kippah than in most countries in Europe. That says a lot about the disastrous failure of wealthy Western countries to create a society of tolerance towards an ancient minority.

 

EU Awakes Then Goes Back To Sleep

Video Of The Week -US State Department's Bias against Israel https://tinyurl.com/y6hlyvco

Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor, a policy analysis think tank focusing on non-governmental organizations, spoke to participants in a June 8 Middle East Forum webinar (Click on video) about the European Union's funding of Palestinian NGOs affiliated to terrorist organizations.

                                  

The EU grants around two to three billion Euros a year to hundreds of NGOs around the world, of which at least 150 million Euros is allocated for humanitarian aid. NGO Monitor's investigations reveal that over the last seven years at least 25 million Euros have gone to Palestinian groups affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), an organization designated as a terrorist group by the European Union.

Steinberg highlighted three examples of NGOs funded by both the EU and EU member governments that have ties to the PFLP:

Al-Haq, an NGO ostensibly dedicated to documenting human rights violations, is led by Shawan Jabarin, who was convicted by Israel's High Court in the 1980s of being a member of the PFLP and subsequently was prohibited from traveling abroad based on evidence he was recruiting for the PFLP.

Defense for Children International Palestine (DCI-P), a local branch of the Geneva-based Defense for Children International, is closely associated with the PFLP. At least three figures with alleged ties to PFLP have been employed or appointed as board members by DCI-P.

The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) was identified in a USAID report as the "agricultural arm of the PFLP." UAWC personnel with ties to the PFLP include an accountant who negotiated funding from the European Union and an administrative manager, both of whom are currently under indictment for the August 2019 murder of 17-year-old Israeli Rina Shnerb.

Last year, the EU introduced a provision into its grant agreements designed to ensure that entities on the EU's terrorism blacklist, known as a "restrictive list," don't benefit from EU funds. This caused an uproar among Palestinians. The Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO), which represents the above groups and many others with dubious affiliations, "went to the European Union office that's in charge of relations with the Palestinians and said, 'We have totally opposed this. We won't let you. We refuse to allow you to apply this regulation to the funding that we're getting'."

EU officials soon backed down. In March 2020, the EU's representative to the Palestinians, Sven Kȕhn von Burgsdorff, issued a clarification letter saying, "it is understood that a natural person affiliated to, sympathizing with, or supporting any of the groups or entities mentioned in the EU restrictive lists is not excluded from benefiting from EU-funded activities, unless his/her exact name and surname (confirming his/her identity) corresponds to any of the natural persons on the EU restrictive lists."

In plainer English, said Steinberg, this means Shawan Jabarin and other PFLP members who pose as "human rights defenders" are allowed to benefit from EU funding so long as their individual names are not on the EU blacklist, which it so happens does not list any individuals (i.e. "natural persons"). Von Burgsdorff's letter assures Palestinian NGOs that affiliates connected to EU-designated terrorist groups like the PFLP not only can continue to receive EU funding but are now afforded "legitimacy" by Brussels.

The Israeli government contested this dodge and continues to insist that the Europeans end funding "that can be readily siphoned off to the terrorist organizations like the PFLP," explained Steinberg. "The European commissioner in charge of relations with Israel ... said, 'We're going to investigate this.' Now we're going to see if there's going to be an investigation or not. There may. That's why I leave the question, did the European Union go to sleep or not?"

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