An exchange at the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five has stayed with me since I first read it decades ago:
You know what I say to people when I hear they’re writing anti-war books?
No. What do you say, Harrison Starr?
I say, “Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book book instead?”
While there is merit in fighting a losing battle, for me, Vonnegut’s observation highlights performative activism, the kind of which we regularly see on display at the UN, no more so than this very week.
Declaring a state of Palestine will not create a state of Palestine. What it will do, ironically, is probably endanger more Palestinian lives, because alienating Israel will not cause Israel to cede, but to entrench. Declaring a Palestinian state will harden Israel’s borders with the Palestinian territories, likely leading to less work for Palestinians within Israel’s borders.
The Western countries that are declaring a Palestinian state, including the UK and France, say that there can be no Palestinian state with Hamas in government. That statement alone reveals Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron as bad faith actors — for they know that right now in Gaza, but also in the Palestinian territories, Hamas remains popular. They know they are declaring a Palestinian state solely for political posturing.
The political theater at the UN benefits not Palestinians, but those who use Palestinians as a tool in Middle East and global geopolitics, as has always been the case.
The political theater strengthens those who refuse to accept a Jewish state, those committed to Israel’s destruction, those who fund terror against Israel and the Jewish people, and those — including the useful idiots on college campuses — who ally themselves with terrorist organizations.
Almost two years after Oct. 7, 2023, there are still hostages in Gaza. Yet the pressure from the Starmers and Macrons is not applied to parties that could possibly force Hamas to surrender (namely Qatar), but to the people who were brutally attacked on Oct. 7 by Hamas, the same Hamas that states it will do Oct. 7 “again and again.”
That the UN show is screening on Rosh Hashanah could be perceived as added insult to the Jewish people. I choose, instead, to see it as a positive. I have a ticket to a much better show in town.
© IJN 2025
