PALESTINE: THE ULTIMATE MORAL TEST OF OUR TIME
THE QUESTION IS: ARE YOU ON THE SIDE OF PEACE AND COEXISTENCE, OR INTOLERANCE AND JEW-HATRED?
Graham Platner, the Bernie Sanders-endorsed candidate for the Democratic Senate nomination in Maine, calls the situation in Gaza “the ultimate moral test of our time.”
I use this still-obscure (but sadly probably not for long) individual as an example not because he is an outlier, but because he represents millions of people. Few express it quite as succinctly as Platner, but the marching millions who waste their weekends marching “for Palestine” would certainly agree with him.
They’re all correct. Just not in the ways they think.
Palestine (and Israel) are the ultimate moral test of our time.
But Platner and the mobs of marching millions are unequivocally on the wrong side.
Ironically, these people love to announce that they are “on the right side of history.”
What condescending, embarrassing self-aggrandizement.
Leaving aside all the problems with the idea that being on the same side as Hamas, Hezbollah, the ayatollahs of Iran, Zohran Mamdani and Ms Rachel is to be on the right side of history, they have a deeply problematic understanding of history.
Something else — something very, very basic — is at play here.
If you think vilifying and demonizing Jews is a prerequisite to being on the right side of history, it goes a long way to explain how far off the rails the world is.
Even if your activism were in the remotest way advancing peace and self-determination for Palestinians, that would still not excuse the impacts it has on Jews.
The fact that “pro-Palestinian” activism is actually costing Palestinian lives and pushing Palestinian self-determination further away just makes the whole scenario even more despicable.
First: even if your activism were actually “freeing” Palestine (spoiler: It’s not!), the damage you are inflicting on multicultural societies here in Canada, the United States, and Europe is disastrous.
In cities like Toronto, London, New York, Paris, and Vancouver, Jewish schools require full-time guards. Synagogues are firebombed. Jewish students are told to denounce Israel or be ostracized. Israeli restaurants are vandalized. Ordinary Jews are harassed in public spaces for the crime of existing while Jewish.
That’s what your “activism” has done.
This is not “criticism of Israeli policy.” It is the unraveling of our multicultural society.
When mobs chant slogans that call for intifada — an Arabic term associated with waves of suicide bombings, knife attacks, beheadings, rape, and live human immolations — they are not contributing to peaceful debate. When activists justify October 7 as “resistance,” they are not advancing human rights. They are normalizing violence as a political language.
And once violence becomes morally acceptable abroad, it becomes morally acceptable at home. Those chickens have come home to roost in Bondi Beach and in scores of other murderous and destructive ways.
The question is: Has it freed Palestine?
Not a whit.
If your activism were saving lives overseas, perhaps you could argue the tradeoff is tragic but necessary. But here’s the second uncomfortable truth: it is not saving Palestinian lives. It is costing them.
Western campus encampments and street protests do not move the needle toward Palestinian statehood or freedom for Palestinian people. They do not disarm Hamas. They do not reform the Palestinian Authority. They do not advance elections, civil society, women’s rights, LGBTQ+ protections, or democratic institutions in Gaza or the West Bank.
They empower the very forces that oppress and kill Palestinians, while attacking the reconciliation necessary to bring about their freedom and self-determination.
They send the message to Palestinians: Maximalism or bust. Complete victory or endless war. Eradicate the Jewish state or die trying.
And when your cherished Palestinian people do die trying, you take a weird pleasure in their “martyrdom,” certain this is proof of Israeli iniquity.
It’s not. It’s proof of your iniquity.
When Hamas commits atrocities and the Western response is mass demonstrations blaming Israel, what incentive is created? When Palestinian leadership rejects compromise and the world rewards them with moral absolution, what lesson is learned?
Extremism is rewarded. Coexistence is punished.
Courageous Palestinian individuals who advocate nonviolence, negotiation, and mutual recognition are sidelined while Western activists ally with Arab and Islamist terrorist elites.
Israelis who argue for territorial compromise and painful concessions are weakened.
Hardliners on both sides are empowered because the international atmosphere tells them that escalation pays.
You want fewer dead Palestinians? Then stop strengthening the very actors who embed military infrastructure in civilian neighborhoods and employ “martyrdom” as a strategic asset.
Every time Western activists collapse the conflict into a cartoon of pure evil versus pure innocence, they erase Palestinian agency and Israeli humanity. Palestinians become eternal victims with no responsibility for leadership choices. Israelis become irredeemable villains with no legitimate security concerns.
That binary thinking is not just morally lazy. It is deadly.
Peace requires compromise. Compromise requires acknowledging that both peoples have legitimate national aspirations. But if one side is framed as colonial and illegitimate, there is nothing to negotiate. There is only elimination.
And eliminationist thinking — whether wrapped in the language of anti-colonial theory or religious absolutism (or, in this case, both) — almost always leads to bloodshed.
Which brings us to the real moral test.
Israel and Palestine are not a test of whether you can post the right infographic or chant the right slogan. They are a test of what you actually value.
Do you value coexistence — two states for two peoples, mutual recognition, painful compromise? Or do you support maximalist visions that end with one side (the Jewish side) disappearing in ethnic cleansing or genocide?
Do you believe multicultural societies at home are worth protecting? Or are your Jewish neighbors an acceptable casualty in your global “resistance”” narrative?
This is why Israel and Palestine are the ultimate moral test of our time.
Because the conflict forces a choice between two worldviews.
One worldview says conflict is resolved through negotiation, pluralism, minority protections, and the slow, frustrating work of democratic compromise.
The other says history is a zero-sum battlefield between oppressors and oppressed, that violence is a legitimate tool (even when the “enemy” is prepared to negotiate in good faith), that some nations are inherently illegitimate, that some people are collectively guilty.
One worldview builds a society where Muslims, Jews, Christians, Baha’is, atheists, and everyone else can live together.
The other seeks to destroy that society.
The tragedy is that many well-meaning people think they are standing on the side of justice while amplifying forces that undermine it. They believe they are fighting for human rights while normalizing movements that crush them. They think they are defending the vulnerable while making Palestinians (and Israelis and Jews everywhere) less safe.
The moral test is whether you can hold two truths at once: Palestinians deserve dignity, safety, and self-determination — and so do Israelis.
If your activism cannot make both cases unequivocally and without hesitation, you are not advancing peace.
So yes, Palestine is the ultimate moral test of our time.
But the question is not whether you oppose oppression in the abstract.
The question is this: Are you on the side of coexistence and peace — or on the side of intolerance and violence, domestically and abroad?
Are you strengthening democracy — or legitimizing extremism?
Are you protecting multiculturalism — or destroying it?
Which side are you on?
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It's sad to see so many failing this test and being duped by the antizionist propaganda, failing to understand that Israel is not its sole target. States that are hostile to the liberal West are using various methods to erode the internal trust of open societies and to sow discord between allied nations. In this sense, Israel, because it is a polarizing issue between left and right in many countries, serves as a lure, a Trojan horse, that Russia, Qatar, Iran, and China exploit in different ways. These states all work to weaken the West from within and the West, which holds sacred the values of free speech, free media, and unrestricted expression on social networks, fails to grasp that these very principles, and the platforms of social media, journalism, and academia, have been turned into weapons against it.
Qatar is a prime example. Qatar uses its fossil fuel wealth to purchase influence in Western countries, leading to multiple scandals called Qatargate. Qatar invested billions of dollars into American universities, shaping the next generation of leaders, media professionals, and businesspeople. It funds radical student activities and organizations to be its boots on the ground and give social proof for the ideas it seeds. Qatar established Al-Jazeera in order to influence public opinion, presenting itself as a free media channel, but, in reality, as a propaganda channel directly directed by Qatari authorities. This is the Qatari modus operandi: a factory of lies hiding behind institutions that appear respectable. Credit to Barak Sh. Herscowitz @barakher
Sad to say, we are past the two state solution. Israelis have seen this Arab hatred for Jews and a desire to eliminate Israel and kill all the Jews for several generations. October 7 was the straw that broke the camel’s back, to use an expression the Arab world might understand. The result of that barbaric attack was to send all Israelis the unambiguous message that the Palestinians and the Muslim world want them dead and will not change and then to send them the additional message that many millions throughout the West are with the barbarians and support the extermination of Israel.
No one in Israel can get elected by calling for a Palestinian state on their border, and Israel is a democracy. Arab Muslims already have a couple dozen Muslim states, and so-called Palestinians do not differ ethnically or religiously from the others. For a century and a half, we have seen countries lose wars with the result that people moved and borders changed. The world treats Palestinians different from everyone else, refugees forever. There can be only one explanation for this. Genocidal antisemitism. Why should they be given another state? Israelis know that’s suicidal.