For decades, Palestinians have commemorated the Israeli declaration of independence in 1948 as their “nakba,” a word that means ‘disaster’ in Arabic. That disaster resulted from the refusal of Arabs to accept the UN partition plan that made Israel a Jewish state, and five Arab countries attempted to eradicate Israel instead. The Israelis prevailed in that war, triggering massive displacement as Israel expelled Arabs from their country in response to the invasion. In the years since, as Arabs plotted wars against Israel, the Israelis have prevailed and punished their enemies, who insist that the lands of Israel belong to the colonists instead of the Israelis. 

Also for decades, the Israelis have attempted to resolve the conflict through diplomatic means. The US and the Saudis pushed Israel into concessions in talks led by Bill Clinton that would have created a Palestinian state on 98 percent of the land they demanded. Instead, Yasser Arafat declared an intifada, and the idea of a two-state solution began to crumble to the reality of Palestinian maximalism. 

Nearly thirty years after Arafat scotched the deal and angered everyone, nothing has changed except Israel’s openness to Palestinian statehood. Hamas’ massacres three years ago put an end to any peace efforts in Israel and led to Israel deciding to finally fight Hamas and Hezbollah to a complete end of the decades-long conflict. Until then, the pattern of 1948 has constantly repeated itself: Arabs attack Israel, Israel responds, Arabs play the victim in the wars they start. 

Did October 7 break that pattern? It certainly did in Israel, and to a lesser extent in Washington, D.C. And now it might have finally broken the pattern for some Palestinians who have watched Hamas turn Gaza into a terrorist redoubt and continually provoke Israel into military responses. Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib writes at The Free Press that October 7 is the true “nakba,” and that the Palestinian cause will likely never recover from it:

As the grim third anniversary of October 7 befalls a decimated Gaza Strip, the state of the discourse among many in the so-called “pro-Palestine” movement remains as embarrassing, dismal, and disastrous as it was when Hamas initiated the attack in 2023. Over the past three years, I have seen countless posts by self-described Zionists criticizing the conduct of Israel’s government, the behavior of Israeli officials, and the excesses of the Israeli reaction to October 7. And yet, I have struggled to see even a dozen posts by “pro-Palestine” activists, advocates, or organizations explicitly condemning Hamas for triggering the most catastrophic chapter in contemporary Palestinian history.

And let’s be clear: That’s exactly what this is. Three years after October 7, the Palestinian people face their greatest crisis of the modern era.

I begin on the ground, in Gaza itself. The majority of Gaza’s buildings are partially or fully destroyed. Tens of thousands have lost their lives, including entire families wiped out by ferocious Israeli bombardment. People will argue to the moon and back about who was ultimately responsible for the level of devastation in Gaza. I personally believe Israel killed far too many civilians, including dozens of my own family members. Israeli air strikes destroyed both of my childhood homes. I will never not be angry or upset about this.

But I will also forever be furious at the fact that Gaza would still be standing had Hamas simply kept its terrorists at home on October 7. I will forever be rageful at the fact that Hamas not only weaponized every aspect of Gaza’s infrastructure but also held Israeli hostages in a manner that was inevitably going to invite more devastation and suffering for Palestinian civilians. I will forever be resentful of the useful idiots who ignored Hamas’s sadistic tactics, hiding behind vacuous appeals to “international law” despite there being no legal framework to justify a terrorist group entrenching itself in medical facilities, educational spaces, markets, and areas meant to shelter the displaced.

And while the West wants to keep up the pattern of blaming Israel for the conflict, Akhatib offers a much more blunt and honest assessment:

Today, despite Gaza receiving more aid and development money per capita during the nearly two decades under Hamas’s rule than any other conflict zone in the world, the West does not blame the terrorist group for the territory’s suffering; they blame Israel. They ignore Hamas’s deliberate and willful choice to militarize Gaza’s society and infrastructure for perpetual warfare against Israel; they overlook multiple opportunities presented to Gaza to develop an airport, a seaport, and economic projects; and they continue to sacrifice a nation-building agenda in favor of perpetuating Hamas’s “resistance” narrative.

Say, where did all of that development money go in Gaza? It went underground, as my Salem colleague Erin Molan discovered, both figuratively and literally. Hamas used the deluge of Western cash to build a fortified terror base for the purpose of annihilating Israel, and they built openly and defiantly under the noses of Western leaders who rush to blame Israel. This is what Western idiocy and moral inversion wrought:

INSIDE GAZA’S TERROR TUNNELS@Erin_Molan goes deep beneath Gaza and inside a Hamas tunnel near the Israeli border — one the IDF discovered just eight months ago.

Inside: commanders’ living quarters, blast doors, weapons storage, and tunnels running beneath the homes, schools, and hospitals of civilians above.

It’s the same network where Israeli hostages were held — some for more than a year.

And IDF commanders say they’ve barely scratched the surface.

The full video is available now: https://salemnewschannel.com/watch/under-gaza-oct-7th-anniversary-special-6ac5a5abc4692283a12ed718

pic.twitter.com/BAbVoF3fBw— Salem News Channel (@WatchSalemNews) October 7, 2026

The only genocide at hand in Gaza is the one Hamas plotted for Israel and the Jews, and which it launched on October 7, 2023. Gazans may or may not support Hamas now, but they celebrated it as a national victory three years ago, and not a single Gazan did anything to free or assist the 250-plus hostages Hamas hid among them. This war is their war, and just because that war went badly for them does not absolve them of responsibility for it.  p>This is the Nakba that Palestinians suffered because they created it – and that’s been true of every Nakba since 1948.

Ed Morrisey, Hotair

The results of the recent Palestinian student council elections are a clear warning to Israel, the United States and the World.

Bassam Tawil

Palestinians have once again shown that their real heroes, sadly, are those who carry out terrorist attacks against Jews and seek the elimination of Israel.

In May, student council elections for student councils were held at the two most important Palestinian universities in the West Bank: An-Najah University in Nablus and Birzeit University north of Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians. The two major student lists that ran in the elections are affiliated with Hamas, the terrorist organization controlling the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, the ruling faction headed by Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas.

The election results were no surprise to those familiar with the general sentiments among Palestinians: the Hamas-affiliated lists won most of the seats. For the 87-year-old Abbas and his Fatah faction, this was not only humiliating, but also a reminder that when it comes to dealing with Israel, many Palestinians prefer terrorism over diplomacy.

The election campaigns and debates at the universities focused mostly on the relationship between the Palestinians and Israel.

The students affiliated with Hamas, whose charter openly calls for the elimination of Israel, boasted that their group continues to carry out terrorist attacks in which Jews are killed or wounded. These students ridiculed their rivals in Fatah for not carrying out enough terrorist attacks against Jews.

The Hamas-affiliated students also condemned the Fatah-dominated P.A. for conducting security coordination with Israeli security forces in the West Bank. Any form of cooperation with Israel, they argued, is tantamount to treason.

The underlying message the Hamas-affiliated lists sent to the thousands of students at the two campuses was: Vote for us because we explicitly and unreservedly uphold the armed struggle against Israel and promise to continue the jihad (holy war) to murder Jews and replace Israel with a genocidal Islamist state, free of non-Muslims.

During election rallies at the two university campuses, Hamas supporters used banners and photos glorifying Palestinian terrorists such as senior Hamas members Mohammed Dief and Musab Shtayyeh, who are wanted by Israel for their roles in a series of terrorist attacks, including shootings and suicide bombings.

When the Hamas-affiliated Islamic Bloc learned that it had won the elections at Birzeit University on May 24, it announced that Shtayyeh, currently being held in P.A. custody for unknown reasons, will serve as “honorary president” of the student council.

Now that the two most important Palestinian university student councils are controlled by Hamas, the question is whether it would be a good idea to hold long overdue presidential and parliamentary elections for the P.A. in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The answer, unfortunately, is “no”—and certainly not under the current circumstances, where a majority of Palestinians are saying that they would vote for Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh if and when new P.A. presidential elections were held.

It also would not be a particularly good idea to hold general elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at a time when a majority of Palestinians are voicing support for an “armed intifada” (uprising) against Israel.

More than 70% of Palestinians, according to a public opinion poll conducted the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey, support the terrorist attack in which brothers, Hallel Yaniv, 21, and Yagel Yaniv, 19, were cold-bloodedly murdered in March as they drove through the Palestinian town of Huwara on their way home. The poll also found that 68% of Palestinians support the formation of terror groups, such as the Lions’ Den, to attack and murder Jews.

Hamas is correct when it says that the results of the elections at the two universities are proof that most Palestinians support terrorism against Israel. Hamas said in a statement:

“This [Hamas] victory sends a clear message about the rising popularity of the resistance [against Israel]… The victory reaffirms our people’s adherence to the option of resistance.”

To be clear, when Hamas talks about the “resistance,” it is referring to various forms of terrorism, including suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings, car-rammings and rocket attacks.

Zakaria Abu Muammar, a senior Hamas official, said the victory of his group’s supporters at the universities “reflects the Palestinian youths’ confidence in Hamas and its plans.”

In case it was not clear what Hamas’s plans are, it is worth reading the group’s covenant, published in 1988 and which remains unchanged and as relevant as ever.

Article 11 of the covenant, for instance, underlines the strategies and methods of Hamas:

“The Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas] believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered; it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president … neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that.”

Article 13 of the Hamas covenant urges Muslims to wage jihad on Israel and reject any peace initiatives:

“There is no solution for the Palestinian issue except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.”

The victory of the Hamas-affiliated lists at the two Palestinian universities in the West Bank should serve as a warning not only to Mahmoud Abbas, but also to the international community, especially the Biden administration, whose representatives continue to promote the delusional and dangerous idea of a “two-state solution.”

It is a dangerous idea because it will lead to the establishment of a Hamas-controlled state next to Israel. Like the Gaza Strip, this state too would be used by Iran and its terror proxies as a launching pad to attack Israel.

It is time for the Biden administration, the European Union and the United Nations to wake up and see with their own eyes that the only solution sought by a majority of Palestinians is one that would deliberately lead to the elimination of Israel. The university students who voted for Hamas have endorsed Hamas’s call for jihad and terrorism against Israel. They have endorsed Hamas’s argument that Israel has no right to exist.

They have also endorsed the argument that no Palestinian or Arab leader is entitled to make any concessions to Israel.

The victory of Hamas supporters in the university elections is yet another reminder of how Palestinians have been raised to hate Israel and glorify those who murder Jews. For generations, Palestinian leaders have been poisoning the hearts and minds of their people against Israel and Jews. The high regard of Palestinian university students for an Islamist group such as Hamas is a natural consequence of this inter-generational hate-fest.

The officials in the Biden administration, European Union and United Nations who continue to talk about the need for a “two-state solution” are actually advocating the creation of another Hamas-led state, like Islamic State, this time in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. A similar state already exists in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and is used as a launching pad to fire rockets into Israel.

The results of the recent university elections are a clear indication—and warning—that if all of the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem were ever handed over to the exclusive control of the P.A., they too would end up in the hands of Hamas, whether through elections or a violent and bloody coup like the one that took place in the Gaza Strip in 2007.

Hamas staged a coup, overthrew the P.A. and seized control of the entire Gaza Strip just a year after winning the P.A. parliamentary elections.

By voting for Hamas once again, Palestinians are sending a message to the world that they are determined to pursue terrorism and violence against Israel.

They are also sending a warning to Abbas and other Palestinian leaders not to make peace with Israel or work with it in any way, or else they will be treated as traitors—further proof, as if it were needed, that the Palestinians have yet again chosen violence, terrorism and misery rather than a bright, promising future, a better economy, and prosperity for their young.

Originally published by the Gatestone Institute.

The remaining 3,041,326 overstay leads (96.7 percent) were determined by the Biden administration to be “Non-Priority.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is accusing the Biden administration of “dereliction of duty” after a DHS Office of Inspector General report revealed that the administration took little to no action to deal with noncitizens who illegally overstayed their authorized periods in the United States, including those deemed threats to national security.

The OIG report found that Biden’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) received 3,145,375 nonimmigrant visa overstay leads during fiscal years 2021–2024, with 104,049 (3.3 percent) flagged as potential national security or public safety concerns. ICE opened only 496 investigations into those flagged leads and made only eight arrests, DHS said.

The remaining 3,041,326 overstay leads (96.7 percent) were determined by the Biden administration to be “Non-Priority.”

The report also found that of 2,837,188 Non-Priority leads that were sent to ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), only five were investigated after being determined to be possible public safety threats, and only two arrests were made.

The report identified a September 2021 policy under then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directing ICE to focus resources only on “Priority 1” threats as the “root cause” of the derelict nonenforcement of U.S. law.

“The degree of the Biden Administration’s dereliction of duty, which needlessly put American lives at risk, is staggering and enraging,” said DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin. “As if the wide-open borders weren’t enough, a new OIG report reveals that the Biden-era ICE failed to act on more than 3 million leads about possible alien overstays, with more than 100,000 of these being labeled as potential national security threats. Unlike the Biden Administration, the Trump Administration will always put the safety of the American people first. We will target and remove as many illegal aliens as possible to make America safe again.”

In a press release, DHS provided several examples of “Non-Priority” alien overstays who went on to commit horrific crimes in the United States:

Williams was lawfully admitted to the United States in December 2023, but overstayed his authorized period after it expired in January 2024. According to DHS, he was arrested in Florida In August 2026, and charged with TWO counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after allegedly stabbing two people at a Burger King.

Johnstone entered the country in 2021 under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) and overstayed his authorized period after it expired in February 2022, according to DHS. He was arrested in Nevada in May 2026 and charged with “FOUR felony charges of willfully torturing, maiming, or mutilating animals after he allegedly tortured dogs at the animal shelter where he worked,” DHS said.

Chami was lawfully admitted to the United States in December 2021 but overstayed his authorized period after it expired in December 2022, according to DHS. He was arrested in Texas in August 2025, and “charged with aggravated kidnapping after he allegedly sexually assaulted his Uber passenger.”

About Debra Heine

Debra Heine is a conservative Catholic mom of six and longtime political pundit. She has written for several conservative news websites over the years, including Breitbart and PJ Media.

American Greatness

The Haverford case exposes a pattern that deserves far more scrutiny:

1. Publicly hide behind “anti-Israel” or “anti-Zionist” rhetoric—and even blame Israel for antisemitism.

2. Wrap yourself in the language of “Free Palestine.”

3. Operate behind multiple aliases and anonymous accounts.

Then, the mask comes off: explicit antisemitic threats, Nazi references, Holocaust rhetoric, and threats directed at a Jewish victim and his family.

The Guangtian Ha case is a particularly stark example of what prosecutors allege happened when the anonymity came off.

The question is not whether criticism of Israel is legitimate—it obviously can be. The question is what someone’s rhetoric reveals when they stop talking about a state and start targeting Jews.

No one has ever had a valid excuse for shrinking from the duty to fight evil.

Anthony J. DeBlasi | October 8, 2026

Author

When I came home from the war in Korea in 1955, I realized America was moving away from its cultural base, a foundation rooted in civilization strongly influenced by Christianity. I could sense it in mainstream media turning toward the Left. This essentially Marxist spin in commentary and news reporting indicated that America was facing domestic enemies as well as foreign ones. 

Naming this country’s Marxist enemies, for that is what the Left consists of, inevitably points to communists, socialists, and various other collectivists; the lot of them advocates of State rule from the top down. Their bias against individual liberty and its awesome variety of opportunities does not belong in America. 

Americans swallowing the phony narratives of the Left have helped open the path to the deconstruction of America into a nation without liberty, without opportunity, without God, without beauty, and without sanity. Sadly, those who most need to know don’t know that the social and political health of a nation begins with a clear understanding of right and wrong, a truism well tested in human history and recorded in sacred scripture. 

Holy scripture connects people to the realities of life and provides a moral compass to keep them from becoming totally secularized and reliant on the State for their upkeep. That is the way of servitude, for which there is no reward package of subsistence and amusement that can hide the condition of virtual slavery. 

Failure to relate the Word of God to the reality of living deprives us of the connection to the essence of our being. That connection corrects the inherent human tendency to confuse good and evil, a consequence in most humans of being part angel and part devil. Which part predominates depends on the health of one’s moral character. 

Moral health requires training to acquire and exercise. If the training does not begin in childhood, the resulting handicap is difficult to overcome. Among the most troubling results of this deficiency is the weakness of resisting the Left’s anti-America brainwashing.

Moral training of the young is a prime task of parenting, and it draws on the vitality of a sound tradition. This wonderful resource is constantly attacked by the Left because it undermines the Left’s “progress.” Smearing healthy traditions with the lie that they’re “outdated” has largely succeeded in tradition fading from the consciousness of the mainstream. 

The destructive power of Marxism on culture has had its worst effect on the churches, many of them taking the bait of Liberation Theology, allegedly bringing Christianity “up to date.” The fact is that this spin on Christian doctrine treacherously alters it to comply with Marxist teaching, not the teachings of Christ. This has scattered the flock of worshipers, closed many churches, and devalued the Gospel. This is an abomination, not progress. How can anyone improve upon what Christ had to say? 

Of the lessons I’ve learned outside of classrooms, the saddest is that one’s conscience is not infallibly connected to the truth. The conscience must be trained in its role of guiding us to the truth and to the good. And the widely held belief that the heart inevitably supports doing what is right is also subject to error. Let us not forget how cold the heart can be. Countless individuals have committed unthinkable atrocities, some allegedly ordered by God! The conscience and the heart are quite capable of enormous error. 

As for the role of the mind in all this, let us not forget its aptitude to dither and get lost in conflicts over “points of view.” For many minds, there is no difference between fact and opinion – ending any serious discussion regarding important issues. 

Consider the fact that men and women of exceeding mental ability have been known to make terrible mistakes in judgment regarding their lives and the lives of others. How is it that academics with credentials in human behavior frequently overlook the importance and impact of forms of human interaction like love, hate, anger, forgiveness, heroism, and many other common inclinations? 

Philosophy, theology, literature, and the arts have examined the varied factors affecting human life for thousands of years. What justification is there for snubbing the work of thousands of minds as sharp as any today? I do not claim any special insight on the matter, but this nugget is worth passing on: 

We need to let the mind and the heart unite with that “wiser spirit [that] is at work for us, a better eye than theirs, most prodigal of blessings.” 

[William Wordsworth, The Prelude.) 

Such fullness of mind and heart leads true Christians to the Alpha and Omega of Truth and Knowledge: I am the way and the truth and the life [John 14:6]. Such complete insight divulges a power greater than any from the secular world, which is excessively focused on material things. Materialists lack the understanding that truth is independent of the will and of political ideology. Its detachment from a world consisting entirely of matter–including brains and hearts–keeps truth from becoming the plaything of leaders and rulers where the light of God is shut out, 

as in Nazi Germany (1933-1945); as in Soviet Russia (1922-1991); as in Communist China (1949 to ongoing); and as in the United States (circa 1960 and ongoing) after Marxist apparatchiks stuck their foot inside America’s doors. 

Countering such epic cases of illegitimate takeover requires greater wisdom than most current leaders possess, a painfully familiar fact. How is it that very smart leaders in the mainstream fail to detect America’s domestic enemies, year after year – enemies of freedom, enemies of family, enemies of God, enemies of We the People – unless they have joined those enemies and are willing to bring this nation to its knees?  

We could forever mull the reasons for America’s sorry state, but the weight of culpability falls heaviest on those in high levels of government who, claiming to exercise their best judgment regarding the welfare of the people they serve, fail to apply their brains and their power to that purpose.  

Do we wait forever for accountability, without which no “course correction” is possible? 

Although vengeance is God’s [Deuteronomy 32:35], no one has ever had a valid excuse for shrinking from the duty to fight evil. And this applies with double force to today’s clergy. Pastors must remain constantly aware that there is never a time to turn their backs on God, which is what they do when they fail to uphold and defend the Gospel and the faith, leaving congregants in the hands of God’s enemies – the action of traitors, not of men and women of God. 

Anthony J. DeBlasi is a veteran and lifelong defender of Western Culture

We have spent centuries building societies on the assumption that people can govern themselves. Our institutions are premised on individual responsibility, private property, free expression, voluntary association, markets, constitutional limits, and the belief that adults can generally be trusted to govern themselves.

Yet much of today’s politics appears to be moving in the opposite direction.

Competence increasingly seems negotiable, perhaps even disqualifying. Expertise is often treated with suspicion. Complex problems are compressed into slogans. Identity matters more than accomplishment, authenticity more than knowledge, and how a politician makes people feel more than that politician’s ability.

Why? And more importantly, what happens to our democracy when understanding a political argument matters less than producing the politically correct reaction?

That is a different question from whether conservatives or liberals are right. It is a question about self-government itself. The old populist argument was simple: the elites have failed you, so “power to the people.”

The emerging version may be something stranger: you don’t need knowledge; you only need someone or something to blame.

That’s a very different kind of populism.

What replaces them?

If individual responsibility declines, what replaces it? If open markets are rejected, who allocates? If private property becomes less secure, who decides what belongs to whom? If institutional authority is weakened, what replaces it? If competence becomes subordinate to identity, how do complex societies keep functioning? And if citizens lose the habit of independent judgment, who’s left to govern?

Perhaps our greatest vulnerability is also our greatest strength. Free people are difficult to control. But they can also be persuaded to surrender their freedoms if you convince them that those freedoms are responsible for their problems.

Individualism can slide into selfishness, while freedom can decay into license. Skepticism can become nihilism, and populism can become tribal. Democracy can weaken the very conditions that make democracy viable.

Collapse is not inevitable, but we should recognize the warning signs.

Failure is unlikely to arrive as tanks in the streets or governments falling overnight. It will be more mundane: institutional competence mattering less; political loyalty mattering more than truth; citizens becoming increasingly unable to agree on basic facts; disagreements becoming moral emergencies; government assuming responsibilities once reserved to individuals; and political leaders being rewarded for promises rather than results.

The most troubling sign may be simpler still:

People become increasingly certain of what they believe while becoming increasingly incapable of explaining why they believe it.

That’s how a civilization becomes stupid—not by losing intelligence, but by losing the habit of using it.

And that may be the most consequential issue facing our civilization.

Not whether the left or right is winning. Not even whether populism is winning.

What if the real winner is a political system that no longer requires citizens to think for themselves?

If that is happening, we should probably figure it out before we discover the answer the hard way.

God Bless America.

Allan J. Feifer, American Thinker

There are “no innocent people” in Gaza and Israel should “also kill two-week-old babies” in the Palestinian enclave, Israel’s former prime minister Yair Lapid has recounted young Israelis telling him.

“I heard all the rhetoric of: ‘they all need to be killed,’ ‘there are no innocent people’,” Lapid said in an interview on Wednesday, describing “a furious and painful meeting with a group of really young people” he had recently met.

The former prime minister, who is now part of the centrist-right wing alliance of the Together party, added that he asked them, “What about babies? They said: ‘babies too, because eventually they’ll grow up and become terrorists’,” Lapid recounted, adding that they said it applies even to two-week-old babies.

“So, Hamas won,” Lapid said, adding that “those are Hamas’s standards. That’s what it wanted. For us to become like them.”

The government’s failure to act against Israeli ministers and officials who called for the starvation of children caused, Lapid said, an “internal damage where you fail to define value-based standards for being different from Hamas.”

Lapid, who served as prime minister for five months before Benjamin Netanyahu regained power in late 2022, accused the government’s conduct of leading to a sharp decline in Israel’s international standing in the past three years.

Lapid said he was equally worried about how young Israelis see the Palestinians after three years of genocide, adding that Israel is conducting a “just” war in Gaza.

The centrist leader stated that the accusations levelled at Israel that it carried out a genocide in Gaza are “nonsense” but “children shouldn’t die in grown-ups’ wars, period,” he said.

Lapid’s comments on Wednesday come amid a growing body of literature and opinion polls that indicate that young Israelis are more right-wing than their parents, with last month serving as an indicator of this right-wing shift.

Israeli outlet Channel 12 News reported that, according to a new poll, 74 percent of Jewish Israelis between the ages of 18 and 22 hold right-wing or centre-right views.

According to the poll, 15 percent of young Jewish Israelis support far-right parties such as Itamar Ben Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit Party and Bezalel Smotrich’s Religious Zionist Party, which advocate for the expulsion of Palestinians from the occupied territories of Gaza and the West Bank.

Last month’s mock election in a high school in Ramat Gan showed similar results for the Israeli far right, as Otzma Yehudit, the Religious Zionist party and the new far-right Amcha Yisrael party received almost 15 percent of the votes.

This marks a 10 percent increase in support for the far-right in the school compared with 2022.

Additionally, last month, Lior Schleien, a left-leaning comedian travelling around Israel to speak with young Israelis about politics, was asked to delete from his social media accounts a conversation he had with a young Jewish Israeli who said he wanted to kill all Arabs.

In the now-deleted video, the young man told Schleien: “Give me a knife, I’ll murder them. Every Arab.”

When Schleien questioned the feasibility of such an act, the young man said every Israeli Jew should get a weapon to kill as many Arabs as possible.

In a post on X, the Israeli comedian said the young man’s parents asked him to delete the video, stating they were shocked by their son’s comments.

While the young man’s comments caused a stir online, the position that there are no innocent people in Gaza is a very common opinion in Israel, with a poll last year showing that 64 percent of all Israelis agree with the statement.

According to a 2024 study, young Israelis “have increasingly displayed more hawkish attitudes than older generations, coupled with a stronger inclination towards right-wing identification”, with the research stating that young Israelis are also more religious than older generations.

Nadal Rapaport, Middle East Eye

We are now less than a month out from the mid-term elections, and the single biggest theme that the Democrats have chosen to run on appears to be “affordability.”

How can this possibly be? We live in the age of immediate availability of information, let alone artificial intelligence to track down anything that might previously have been challenging to find. If you want a state-by-state comparison of costs for any particular thing, you can get it in a fraction of a second. The results are in: the Democrat-run states are less “affordable.”

The Democrats and Republicans propose opposite strategies for dealing with the economy. The Democrats advocate for higher government spending, higher taxes, and more regulation of business; and the Republicans advocate for lower spending, lower taxes, and less regulation of business. The states are the “laboratories of democracy,” where we get to see the consequences of disparate policies play out, and to evaluate the results. Neither party is perfect in implementing what it advocates, so there are always some complexities. But in the main it is easy to collect data that give a relatively clear picture of the results of Democrat versus Republican policies.

So let’s consider some examples from among the most prominent issues today.

Electricity Prices.

The federal government’s Energy Information Administration puts out monthly data (with some lag) of state-by-state average electricity prices per kWh to the “ultimate consumer.” Here is the latest chart (July 2026 data). There are separate columns for electricity prices for “residential,” “commercial,” “industrial,” “transportation,” and “all sectors.” The “residential” column is perhaps most relevant to the “affordability” issue.

The national average residential price is 18.31¢/kWh. Alaska and Hawaii are outliers due to geographic remoteness. Putting those aside, the highest prices are in the deepest blue states that have most aggressively pursued the fossil fuel suppression policies to “save the planet” from climate change. California has the highest prices among the lower 48 (33.61¢/kWh), followed by a gaggle of Northeastern states that have joined the “Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative” to intentionally drive up their electricity prices (Maine 32.41¢/kWh; Massachusetts 30.49¢/kWh; New York 29.90¢/kWh; Rhode Island 28.29¢/kWh; New Hampshire 26.60¢/kWh; New Jersey 25.19¢/kWh). At the other end of the price spectrum, we find either Republican-run states or a few Democrat states with the good fortune of cheap hydropower: Louisiana 12.72¢/kWh; Nevada 12.77¢/kWh; Utah 13.12¢/kWh; North Dakota 13.41¢/kWh; Tennessee 13.71¢/kWh; Idaho 13.73¢/kWh; Nebraska 13.78¢/kWh; Kentucky 13.81¢/kWh; Wyoming 14.36¢/kWh; Oklahoma 14.35¢/kWh; Arkansas 14.33¢/kWh.

There really can’t be any doubt at this point about which set of policies leads to cheaper electricity.

Gasoline Prices.

Differences in gasoline prices present a red/blue divide that is not quite as clear as differences in electricity prices, but it is close.

The American Automobile Association publishes data on State Gas Price Averages, up-to-date every day. Here is today’s chart. (That link may go to charts that change each day.). They publish a color-coded map indicating states with high, medium and low average prices:

If you go to the link and hover your cursor above any state, you will get today’s price for that state. The swath of mostly Republican-led states across the South and Midwest has the lowest prices. California again has the highest of the lower 48: $6.3602 today, against a national average of $4.3667. The reasons for California’s extraordinarily high prices have been well publicized: a combination of environmental restrictions on drilling and on refineries (causing many of those to close), plus special required blends of gasoline, and high taxes. California’s restrictions on refineries have had the unfortunate effect of dragging many neighboring states, even partially or fully red ones, into gasoline price purgatory, although the prices in these states are much lower than in California (e.g., Nevada $5.4645; Idaho $4.9303; Arizona $4.7263). High prices in the blue Northeastern states are driven by regulations and high taxes (e.g., New York $4.4678; Connecticut $4.4437; Massachusetts $4.3452).

State and Local Tax Burden

The Tax Foundation publishes a chart of annual state and local tax collections per capita. Here is their chart for 2026. D.C. ranks number one at $15,009, followed by New York ($12,506), North Dakota, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, Vermont and Illinois ($8,339) to round out the top ten. North Dakota is the only red state outlier there, explained by the fact that they produce a lot of oil, taxed at the well-head, and have a small population. So the tax burden on the populace is actually low.

At the low end it is entirely red states with the possible exception of purple-ish Arizona (in order starting from the lowest: Mississippi ($4,868), Tennessee, Alabama, South Carolina, Arizona, Idaho, Florida, Missouri, South Dakota, Arkansas, Oklahoma ($5,312)).

How Democrats can claim the mantle of “affordability” in the face of easily-available data like these is beyond me.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

Wisconsin voters will decide in November whether to approve three proposed amendments to the state Constitution.

The Republican-led Legislature has placed three separate questions on the ballot. The proposed amendments would:

*Prohibit the governor from using the partial veto power to create a new tax or fee.

*Prohibit the government from ordering the closure of places of worship during an emergency.

*Bar the government entities from discriminating against or providing preferential treatment to individuals based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.

Under Wisconsin law, a proposed constitutional amendment must pass the state Legislature in the exact same form during two consecutive legislative sessions before it can go before voters. The governor does not have the authority to veto constitutional amendments. If approved by the Legislature, the final decision rests with Wisconsin voters.

“This is a legislature’s attempt to get around the governor,” said Sue Jennik, the President of the League of Women Voters (LWV) of Dane County. The LWV is against all three amendments.

“These are ways to restrict the power of the government,” said Dan Lennington, the Managing Vice President and Deputy Counsel for the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. The conservative law firm is in favor of all three.

Partial veto power

Question on ballot: “Partial veto. Shall section 10 (1) (c) of article V of the constitution be amended to prohibit the governor, in exercising his or her partial veto authority, from creating or increasing or authorizing the creation or increase of any tax or fee?”

Background:

If approved this amendment would prohibit the governor from using the partial veto power to create a new tax or fee.

In 2023, Gov. Tony Evers partially vetoed the section of the 2024-25 state budget that would have increased school funding by $325 per student for two years, changing the wording of the end date from “2024-25” to “2425” by striking out the “20” and the hyphen from the bill. The state supreme court upheld the veto in 2025. Chief Justice Jill Karofsky said at the time that Wisconsin’s constitution does not limit the governor’s partial veto power “based on how much or how little the partial vetoes change policy.”

Religious worship during emergencies

Question on ballot: “Freedom to gather in places of worship during an emergency. Shall section 18 of article I of the constitution, which deals with religious liberty, be amended to prohibit the state or a political subdivision of the state from ordering the closure of, or forbidding gatherings in, places of worship in response to a state of emergency, including a public health emergency?”

Background:

If approved, this would prohibit the government from ordering the closure of places of worship during an emergency.

This question stems from the restriction put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, Gov. Evers issued the Safer at Home order which ordered all Wisconsinites to stay at home unless the activity was considered essential. Religious gathers were limited to 10 people or fewer in a room at a time with social distancing requirements in place.

The State Supreme Court struck down the stay-at-home restrictions and ruled that Gov. Evers’ administration overstepped its authority when it extended the order. Government discrimination

Question on ballot: “Governmental entity discrimination prohibited. Shall section 27 of article I of the constitution be created to prohibit governmental entities in the state from discriminating against, or granting preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, public contracting, or public administration?”

Background:

If approved, this amendment would bar government entities from discriminating against or providing preferential treatment to individuals based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. The amendment’s author Rep. Dave Murphy (R – Hortonville) previously testified that the amendment is modeled “after Michigan’s 2006 constitutional amendment, upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Elly Lalibertie, Channel 3000 News

U.S. — The nation has reportedly slipped into a period of deep sadness and introspection after learning that Iran may not actually nuke Los Angeles.

Following a misunderstood statement by President Trump that it would be a “small price to pay” for Iran to nuke LA and San Diego, the nation was upset to learn there is no imminent threat to the City of Angels and that it would not, in fact, be destroyed.

“There are no words to express my disappointment,” said John Glenn of Arizona. “I mean, I’m glad San Diego is going to be okay, but I was really hoping LA would get hit with an atomic blast and fall into the sea. That would have really made my day.”

Trump has reportedly ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff following the sudden realization that LA would not be torn apart in a flash reaching 180 million degrees Fahrenheit, irradiating the landscape for years to come, preventing Hollywood from ever rebuilding, and scattering the bodies of the Hollywood elite into the wind.

At publishing time, Americans continued to hold out hope that an earthquake would do to LA what Iran would not.

But not all of the regret was focused on Hollywood. Some were just upset that the Dodgers might have another shot at the World Series.

“They can’t keep getting away with it!” said local sports fan Lyle Wann.

Babylon Bee