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US President Donald Trump hailed a "tremendous day for the Middle East" as he and regional leaders signed a declaration on Oct. 13, 2025, meant to cement a ceasefire in Gaza, hours after Israel and Hamas exchanged hostages and prisoners. (TNS)
Lasting peace requires accepting Israel’s right to exist
Oct 22, 2025
President Trump took a rhetorical victory lap in front of the Israeli parliament Monday. Ignoring his patented departures from the teleprompter, which violated all sorts of valuable norms, it was a speech Trump deserved to give. The ending of the war — even if it’s just a ceasefire — and the release of Israel’s last living hostages is, by itself, a monumental diplomatic accomplishment, and Trump deserves to take a bow.
Much of Trump’s prepared text was forward-looking, calling for a new “golden age” for the Middle East to mirror the one allegedly unfolding here in America. I’m generally skeptical about “golden ages,” here or abroad, and especially leery about any talk about “everlasting peace” in a region that has known “peace” for only a handful of years since the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
So, by all means, let’s be forward-looking about building peace.
But that project requires some honesty about how we got here.
Where to begin that story chronologically is the subject of Ph.D. dissertations. But conceptually it begins with a very basic observation. From its founding, Israel and its enemies have had irreconcilable positions. Israel insists that it has a right to exist. Its enemies take the opposite position.
For clarity’s sake at least, I think it is fair to distinguish between critics or opponents of Israel and its enemies. Many critics merely want a two-state solution or more autonomy and security for Palestinians. Israel’s enemies, meanwhile, want the “Zionist entity” to be erased. “From the river to the sea,” as the saying goes, they want the Israeli “colonizers” to die or be expelled from the region. That is the stated position of Iran and its various proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis. It is also by extension the position of their supporters, whether they fully realize it or not.
In such a zero-sum conflict, these positions are axiomatically non-negotiable. One side has to lose for the other to win. But here’s where things get messy conceptually: Many of Israel’s enemies are treated as mere opponents and critics, and vice versa. The distinction gets blurred by friends and foes alike.
The linguistic legerdemain of “anti-Zionism” is treated as a legitimate, respectable perspective, as if anti-Zionism somehow means something other than a desire to end Israel’s existence as a sovereign Jewish nation-state. But that’s literally what anti-Zionism means. Zionism is simply the idea that Jews should have their own country in their historic homeland.
Under the umbrella of the United Nations, there is an alphabet soup of organizations, programs and committees that are dedicated to a one-sided effort to combat the Zionist project and rectify the problem of Israel’s existence. The U.N. Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) bequeaths to Palestinians a unique “hereditary” refugee status, not accorded to any of the hundreds of millions of refugee populations since the end of WWII.
UNRWA school teachers — some of whom are, or were, members of Hamas — indoctrinate children into hatred of, and “resistance” to, Israelis. The Human Rights Council has a long history of having an obsessive, institutionalized, structurally antisemitic double standard for Israel alone.
Western media outlets rely on these agencies to frame the discussion of Israel, keeping the idea alive that the only real solution is to do something about Zionism, as if Israel’s survival remains provisional, even though modern Israel is older than dozens of other nations.
Throughout the Gaza war, claims from the Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry were greeted with reflexive credulity, as were charges of “genocide” — against Israel. Claims that Gaza was enduring mass starvation were not subjected to the journalistic skepticism reserved for Israel or the Trump White House, but rather treated with enthusiastic credulity. Watching the celebrations in Gaza this week, did you see a lot of emaciated Palestinians? Will the press search for them now?
Over the last two years, campus protesters and social media influencers lionized Hamas terrorists as freedom fighters. The protesters were often treated in the press and by school administrators as noble and heroic champions of free speech or human rights, despite the fact they were providing cover for an Islamist organization that murders Palestinian political dissenters and homosexuals, persecutes Christians, and repeatedly affirms its commitment to the genocidal destruction of Israel. Would pro-KKK groups get the same treatment?
I think many of the accusations that Israel is committed to genocide can best be understood as a mix of projection of — and distraction from — its enemies’ open support for genocide.
If a lasting, never mind everlasting, peace is possible, it will only be when Israel’s existence is accepted as an everlasting non-negotiable fact. Once that happens, disputes about borders, Palestinian rights, and autonomy can be negotiated on a non-zero-sum basis.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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Rule of Law
When Belief Becomes Law: The Rise of Executive Rule and the Vanishing of Facts
18 October
The Trump administration’s suspension of the USDA’s Household Food Security Report halts decades of hunger data tracking.
Getty Images, Catherine Falls Commercial
Trump Gives Up the Fight Against Hunger
Oct 21, 2025
A Vanishing Measure of Hunger
Consider a hunger policy director at a state Department of Social Services studying food insecurity data across the state. For years, she has relied on the USDA’s annual Household Food Security Report to identify where hunger is rising, how many families are skipping meals, and how many children go to bed hungry. Those numbers help her target resources and advocate for stronger programs.
Now there is no new data. The survey has been “suspended for review,” officially to allow for a “methodological reassessment” and cost analysis. Critics say the timing and language suggest political motives. It is one of many federal data programs quietly dropped under a Trump executive order on so-called “nonessential statistics,” a phrase that almost parodies itself. Labeling hunger data “nonessential” is like turning off a fire alarm because it makes too much noise; it implies that acknowledging food insecurity is optional and reveals more about the administration’s priorities than reality.
Without data, planning becomes guesswork and fighting hunger means doing it in the dark.
For nearly three decades, the Household Food Security Report has been the nation’s most comprehensive measure of hunger, an essential piece of bureaucracy that told the truth about who was eating and who was not. The Trump administration’s decision to halt its collection marks more than a budget cut; it is an attempt to erase a mirror reflecting uncomfortable realities. The order cites efficiency and cost savings, but its real effect is political. Without the numbers, hunger becomes invisible, harder to prove, and easier to deny.
The Myth of Savings
To put the cost in perspective, the Economic Research Service’s annual budget is roughly equivalent to what the federal government spends on military bands. That comparison underscores how minimal the supposed savings are and highlights the contrast between cost and consequence.
The moral cost of hiding hunger is inseparable from the fiscal debate. Every dollar saved by cutting data collection represents a choice to look away, to trade transparency for convenience.
Economic justifications often serve as political cover, disguising efforts to silence uncomfortable truths. The fiscal rationale does not hold up. The Economic Research Service, which produces the Household Food Security Report, has a budget of roughly $310 million. Estimates suggest the report itself costs only a few million dollars to conduct and analyze, which is barely a rounding error in federal terms. Even a generous estimate of $20 million in savings would have no measurable impact on the deficit.
Ending it is not about balancing the books; it is about hiding the evidence. Without data, there is no accountability, no uncomfortable truths, and no evidence to challenge political narratives. The decision to halt the report was not fiscal; it was strategic. If the numbers are not collected, the problem cannot be proven. And if it cannot be proven, it can be ignored.
The Local Fallout
Hunger is not an abstract policy issue; it is a daily reality for millions of Americans. The disappearance of data has tangible human costs long before it becomes a bureaucratic concern. Without reliable information, the families lining up at food pantries, the schools planning lunch programs, and the states seeking aid are left guessing.
The consequences of data suppression do not stay in Washington. They ripple outward, hitting communities where the need is greatest.
Governors, mayors, school districts, and food banks rely on federal hunger data to qualify for funding and design effective programs. Without it, they are flying blind. In cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, school lunch programs use the data to determine eligibility for free and reduced-price meals. In rural areas, where food deserts stretch for miles, the numbers guide mobile food banks and nutrition outreach.
When the metrics vanish, so does the leverage to demand federal support. Suppressing hunger data does not make hunger go away; it just makes it harder to see. And when we cannot see it, we cannot solve it.
The absence of national data also erodes accountability. Congress cannot track the effectiveness of programs like SNAP or WIC without consistent reporting. Researchers lose the ability to compare trends over time, making it easier for policymakers to claim success where there is actually decline. The nation’s hunger crisis does not get solved; instead, it slips beneath the surface of official statistics, where it is easier to ignore.
A Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight
Congress and federal agencies still have the tools to repair this damage. They can restore the Household Food Security Report, require regular publication, and protect data collection from political interference, ensuring hunger never disappears from the national agenda.
Counting the hungry is more than a statistic; it is a test of national conscience. When the government stops gathering facts, it stops acknowledging those who suffer. Restoring this data is not bureaucracy; it is civic responsibility and a reaffirmation that compassion and accountability still matter.
Data collection keeps government honest by revealing where policy fails and where people are left behind. When leaders decide what information the public can see, governance turns into propaganda. Suppressing food security data is not about efficiency; it is about control. Without transparent measures of hunger, citizens lose the power to hold leaders accountable.
Political scientist and public policy theorist John W. Kingdon observed that indicators shape the national agenda. Leaving hunger statistics off that list sends a dangerous message: that hunger no longer matters enough to measure.
In the end, data suppression corrodes trust, weakens institutions, and turns public policy into a political weapon. The fight against hunger must begin again—with the courage to count and the will to act.
Robert Cropf is a professor of political science at Saint Louis University.
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U.S. President Donald Trump poses with the signed agreement at a world leaders' summit on ending the Gaza war on October 13, 2025 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt.
(Photo by Suzanne Plunkett - Pool / Getty Images)
Standing Up for Democracy Requires Giving the Other Side Credit When It Is Deserved
Oct 21, 2025
American political leaders have forgotten how to be gracious to their opponents when people on the other side do something for which they deserve credit. Our antagonisms have become so deep and bitter that we are reluctant to give an inch to our political adversaries.
This is not good for democracy.
What we need is a new ethics of opposition. Its prime directive is simple: fight hard and unrelentingly for democracy and the rule of law. But when, for whatever reason, our opponents achieve something valuable, say so.
It pains us to follow this maxim at a time when so much that we care about is under attack.
Yet now is a good moment to follow it, even though, as Newsweek’s Bobby Ghosh puts it, “It isn't easy to praise someone (President Trump) who habitually, preemptively, and lavishly praises himself.” But there is no denying that the Trump Administration has just achieved a major and important foreign policy objective, a ceasefire in Gaza and the return of twenty hostages who were abducted during the horrors of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
As Ghosh argues, “(T)he guns in Gaza have quieted. And it isn't because of the nudgings of real estate developers Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the promptings of Qatar and Egypt, the pleadings of Europe, the finger-wagging of human-rights organizations, or the hand-wringing of the United Nations alone.”
“The ceasefire,” he says, “is the gift of Donald Trump.”
Not sure that gift is the right word, for it is something given willingly with no expectation of payment or reward. Is that the right description for a president who is reportedly desperate to win the Nobel Peace Prize? Or for a president who was caught on a hot mic brokering a meeting between his son Erik and the President of Indonesia? Recall that Eric Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., serve as executive vice presidents of the Trump Organization.
Gift or not, Trump got done what the Biden Administration did not accomplish. He induced, threatened, or cajoled the Israeli government to make at least a temporary peace with Hamas.
He did so after wasting a lot of time before drawing a line in the sand for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As Ghosh observes, if the president had not gotten lost in fantasies about “real-estate opportunities in Gaza, thousands of Palestinian lives might have been saved, and more of the Israeli hostages would be in the bosom of their families.”
Better late than never.
President Biden’s former national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, got it right when, on October 12, he said about the ceasefire and hostage deal, “’I give credit to President Trump, I give credit to [Steve] Witkoff and [Jared] Kushner and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio. These are hard jobs. The president of the United States is the hardest job in the world, and these other jobs, including the job I occupied, are tremendously difficult…. And to get to something like today takes a village, and it takes determination and really hard work, and so I, without question, offer credit for that.’”
He was joined in that by Arizona’s Democratic Senator Mark Kelly. “’I think,’” Kelly said, “he should get a lot of credit. I mean, this was his deal. He worked this out.’”
Late-night television host and frequent Trump critic embraced the ethics of opposition, which we are championing, when he said, “What a day for Donald Trump…You know what? He finally did something positive today and I want to give him credit for it … “
Kimmel twisted the knife a bit with a bit of sarcasm about the president, saying, “he’s not the type to take credit for himself,” but quickly added, “the fact is the bombing has stopped, the hostages have been released, and Trump deserves some of the praise for that. So I know it sounds crazy to say, but good work on that one, President Trump.”
To hue to this line, we have to be able to focus on what someone does, no matter how much we dislike the person who does it or other things they do.
This is harder than it should be, not just because of the things the administration is doing at home, but because the leader of the free world never misses an opportunity to kick sand in the eyes of people he considers his enemies.
For example, while basking in the glory of his Middle East accomplishments, Trump told a story about a meeting he had with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi a decade ago and attacked 2016 Democratic Presidential nominee Hilary Clinton while doling so. As the president put it, “We knew each other from the beginning…. I was going to meet him, and then Hillary Clinton was following me…. And he liked me so much he never even got to see Hillary. ... [Sisi] didn’t want to waste a lot of time. He knew what was going to happen.”
Later, he asked El-Sisi if he remembered “crooked Hillary Clinton.”
That followed on the heels of the president’s speech to the Israeli Parliament, when he went out of his way to call former President Joe Biden's administration “the worst in U.S. history,” then said former President Barack Obama was "not far behind."
It doesn’t help that Trump is so eager for credit and so angry and resentful when he doesn’t get the amount of credit he craves. What CNN observed during his first term is even truer today: “The funnel cloud of anger, score-settling, political chaos and divisive rhetoric that swirls around Trump at all times also has the effect of drowning out debate about the nature of his policies and any good press that he does get.”
Trump makes it hard for liberals to adhere to our ethics of opposition because he “makes it impossible, in practice, for liberals to be tolerant (egalitarian), rational, and optimistic about human nature—three things that are essential aspects of liberal ideology and liberal psychology.” AS John Jost and Orsolya Hunyady say, the president “oozes authoritarian ugliness.”
As hard as it is, giving the president credit when he deserves it is not only the right thing to do, it also helps blunt the criticism that those who oppose him on most things are driven by blind hatred or Trump derangement syndrome, a belief that Trump encourages at every turn.
If we are to have any chance of repairing and rebuilding our democracy in a post-Trump world, we need to learn the lesson that all great strategists understand. Giving ground does not mean surrendering.
Doing so at the right time is necessary to make victory possible in the struggle to preserve democracy, even if Trump’s recent success turns out to resemble Ebeneezer Scrooge’s fictitious benevolence on Christmas Day.
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As the COP 30 nears, Indigenous-led conservation offers the best hope to protect the Amazon rainforest and stabilize the global climate system.
Getty Images, photography by Ulrich Hollmann
The Critical Value of Indigenous Climate Stewardship
Oct 20, 2025
In August, I traveled by bus, small plane, and canoe to the sacred headwaters of the Amazon, in Ecuador. It’s a place with very few roads, yet like many areas in the rainforest, foreign business interests have made contact with its peoples and in just the last decade have rapidly changed the landscape, scarring it with mines or clearcutting for cattle ranching.
The Amazon Rainforest is rightly called the “lungs of the planet.” It stores approximately 56.8 billion metric tons of carbon, equivalent to nearly twice the world’s yearly carbon emissions. With more than 2,500 tree species that account for roughly one-third of all tropical trees on earth, the Amazon stores the equivalent to 10–15 years of all global fossil fuel emissions. The "flying rivers" generated by the forest affect precipitation patterns in the United States, as well our food supply chains, and scientists are warning that in the face of accelerating climate change, deforestation, drought, and fire, the Amazon stands at a perilous tipping point.
As world leaders prepare to meet this November at the United Nations’ Climate Change Conference, known as COP 30, in Belém, Brazil, the future of the Amazon—and the climate system that depends on it—hangs in the balance.
On the plus side, there is growing interest among U.S. investors and foundations in projects that will lead to regrowth of the rainforest. But too often, when companies enter the carbon sequestration market, profits flow back to them almost exclusively. I have been working with foundations for more than a decade and have observed firsthand how more and more investors want to see their dollars benefit the community as well as the planet. For example, I coordinated Divest Invest Philanthropy, a coalition of some 170 foundations representing more than $50 billion in assets that are being shifted away from fossil fuels and into impact solutions.
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, for another example, a new, indigenous led project will reforest 10,000 acres as it seeds vanilla and other crops in the understory. This regenerative model—in which funding supports community priorities, livelihoods, and leadership—offers a more just and sustainable pathway forward.
At pre-COP meetings such as last month's Climate Week in New York, coalitions such as the Amazon Sacred Headwaters Alliance, which is leading the restoration project in Ecuador, will be engaging government and business leaders to support the concept of buen vivir, or living well in harmony with nature. The alliance represents 30 Indigenous organizations across Peru and Ecuador that are working to make a 35-million acre region off-limits to industrial-scale resource extraction, advance legal recognition of Indigenous territories, restore degraded forests, and build a regenerative bioeconomy.
But COP meetings are famously siloed: government leaders, business leaders, and grassroots groups each often have separate meetings and produce their own declarations. To achieve durable climate solutions, we must build stronger bridges between these spheres—ensuring that the lived wisdom and priorities of frontline communities inform and shape global policy frameworks. A great example of this is the inspiring work of the Pachamama Alliance, which has been engaged in deep trust building work between philanthropists, investors and community leaders for 30 years. (I have Pachamama Alliance to thank for leading the journey I participated in in Ecuador).
Global carbon markets are expanding rapidly, but their legitimacy and effectiveness will depend on designing mechanisms that are rooted in Indigenous governance and that deliver real, measurable benefits back to communities.
That dual purpose is essential. At the Ecuadorian headwaters, the Achuar, Shuar and Sapara communities engaged in deals that have led to much deforestation of their land. Many local leaders would like to restore the rainforest and generate sustainable economic opportunities. Carbon credits, crops such as vanilla, and ecotourism offer alternatives.
Research consistently shows that forests managed by Indigenous peoples experience far lower rates of deforestation and degradation. The ecological knowledge and cultural values Indigenous communities bring are essential tools for combating climate change and biodiversity loss. Yet these communities face mounting threats: illegal logging, mining, land grabs, violence, and the growing impacts of a warming planet.
COP 30 will be held in the very heart of the Amazon, and global leaders face both a pivotal opportunity and a profound responsibility. It is time to place Indigenous rights and leadership at the forefront of climate action. This means recognizing Indigenous peoples as equal partners in designing and implementing both policy and investment strategies–not just including indigenous people at the table but also investing in their vision. It means providing them with the legal protections, financial resources, and political support necessary to safeguard their lands and livelihoods while ensuring that new economic opportunities are structured to strengthen, rather than erode, community resilience.
The climate crisis demands urgent and systemic change. Protecting the Amazon through Indigenous stewardship is one of the clearest, most effective solutions available.
Jenna Nicholas is an investor, entrepreneur, advisor, a PD Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow with The OpEd Project.
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