Hello, world, and welcome to Monday, Oct. 12, 2026 — Columbus Day, for those of us still allowed to call it that. They have been giving Trump hell for renaming things, but we're not supposed to mention what they've done with Columbus Day in the name of their value signaling? (Annoyed growl)
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I am still on the road and will be for the next several days. So once again, I’m bypassing my usual Today in History greeting. Please don’t be annoyed with me about that — it’s actually the first vacation I’ve had in years. I may tell you about that in a future column, but for now, I will only say I’m out of state and operating on a new laptop I bought specifically for the purpose. Not all of my usual refinements are in place just yet.
Once I got to my temporary home and started looking around, one of the first things I got hit with was this from Fox News:
But for the first time, communicated frankly in exclusive interviews with Fox News Digital, three anti-Israel leaders acknowledged the goal: one state called "Palestine" encompassing modern-day Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, with a Palestinian "right of return" to the new country and equal political, voting and citizenship rights for Palestinians alongside Jews currently living in Israel.
Most significantly, in the political vision they described, Israel would legally cease to exist as a separate Jewish nation-state and Jews would be quickly overwhelmed demographically.
Interesting, isn’t it, that this stuff always gets amplified when Iran is feeling pressure from the rest of the world?
Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.
First, let’s dispense with “for the first time.” With all due respect to the folks at Fox, nobody who has paid attention over the last 60 years needed three activists and a reporter to clue them in. The Palestine Liberation Organization wrote the destruction of Israel into its founding covenant in 1964. Hamas carved it into its charter in 1988. And the marchers have chanted it on every campus quad and every blocked bridge since Oct. 7, 2023: “From the river to the sea.” The river is the Jordan. The sea is the Mediterranean. Israel sits in between. You don’t need a decoder ring.
What’s new isn’t the goal. What’s new is that the people leading the parade finally stopped pretending otherwise.
Look at the cast. Hatem Abudayyeh of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network told Fox that one “democratic secular” state of Palestine has sat among his group’s core principles from day one. Sam Husseini — a Maryland congressional candidate, God help us — floated renaming the whole place “1948,” the year Israel declared independence, then predicted Israeli Jews would eventually warm up to calling it Palestine anyway. And Miko Peled, the Israeli-born founder of Palestine House in Washington, D.C., insisted the land already functions as one state and that the “proper” name is Palestine, because Israel is a newcomer.
All three wrap it in the language of “equal rights” and “one person, one vote.” It sounds lovely in a faculty lounge. Now run the math.
Add a “right of return” for millions of descendants of the 1948 refugees to the population already living in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, and the Jewish majority vanishes in a single election cycle. Fox said as much. That isn’t a side effect of the plan. That is the plan. You don’t need tanks to erase a country if you can erase its electorate.
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And what would Jews get in exchange? Minority status in an Arab-majority state. We have run that experiment. Roughly 850,000 Jews lived across the Arab world before 1948 — in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Tripoli, and beyond. Nearly all of them fled or got thrown out within a generation. Ask their grandchildren how the “equal rights” worked out. And just in case anyone needed reminding, October 7 should explain how they'd be treated if these people got their way.
As for “one person, one vote,” Gaza held its last election in 2006. Hamas won it, then won the civil war that followed, and nobody in Gaza has cast a ballot since. One person, one vote, one time. That’s the democratic model on offer here.
Now back to that thought I asked you to hold.
The United States has spent months at war with Iran. The Treasury Department rolled out its eighth wave of sanctions this year against Tehran’s shadow banking network back in August, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent declared the regime’s money pipeline was buckling. President Donald Trump stood before the United Nations last month and openly mulled whether to annihilate the place. Special envoy Steve Witkoff now has a 15-point plan on the table and is waiting on Tehran to answer it. The mullahs face more pressure today than at any point in the 47 years since they seized power.
And right on cue, millions of marchers poured into the streets in coordinated actions from Washington to London, Paris, Madrid, and Kuala Lumpur, chanting the same slogans in the same rhythm on the same weekend.
Sure, the organizers will point to the Oct. 7 anniversary. Fine. In fact, I've already mentioned it here.
But here it is: Every time Tehran gets backed into a corner, the global “Free Palestine” machine kicks into a higher gear, and the West’s attention swings away from Iran and back onto Israel. Every hour a Western politician spends fielding questions about “genocide” in Gaza is an hour he doesn’t spend on the Strait of Hormuz, or on centrifuges, or on the tens of thousands of Iranian protesters the regime has killed.
I’m not claiming the ayatollahs print the protest signs. I don’t need to. Tehran has always bankrolled Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis for decades precisely so it never has to fight Israel with its own hands. A street movement in Western capitals that demands Israel’s erasure is the cheapest proxy of all. Iran doesn’t even have to pay for it. Useful idiots are getting cheaper these days.
So here we are. The quiet part is out loud, on camera, with names attached. “Free Palestine” means no Israel. “From the river to the sea” means no Israel. “Equal rights” means no Israel.
They told us exactly what they want. The only question left is whether anybody in Washington, London, or Paris is finally willing to believe them and declare it a dead letter.
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Thought for the Day: When someone tells you plainly what he intends to destroy, the polite thing — and the smart thing — is to believe him.
VIP Members: Make me proud. You know what to do.
Take care today, gang. I'll see you tomorrow.