[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
And that’s about what their advice is worth. More on their banalities can be found here: “‘Change what you teach your kids,’ Condoleezza Rice advises Palestinians looking for a state,” Jerusalem Post, October 14, 2025:
Palestinians will need to change the way they educate their children, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on CBS 24/7 on Saturday alongside former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Without sweeping changes in mentality, there can be no path to true self-governance for Gaza, Rice noted.
And how will those “changes in mentality” take place? Will the Palestinians jettison the texts and teachings of Islam, that instruct them that the Israelis, as Infidels, are “the most vile of created beings”? Will they stop believing, as Muhammad insisted, that “Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated”? Will they ever believe that land once possessed by Muslims can ever be accepted as belonging to non-Muslims? Will the Palestinians ever stop teaching from textbooks full of hatred not just for Israelis, but for all Jews?
In an interview, the two former Secretaries of State praised the new Gaza deal and discussed what needed to change going forward in the region.
“Change the lessons that you teach your kids about the state of Israel,” Rice advised Palestinians looking towards the possibility of a potential Palestinian state. “Don’t create another generation of Palestinians who believe that somehow the resistance is the way to peace and security.”
The Palestinians don’t want “peace and security.” They want war, until they have destroyed the Jewish state and killed, or expelled, all Israeli Jews, and in its place created the 23rd Arab state.
Rice said her largest concern is how Gaza will gain a truly representative government. Although she expressed respect for Palestinian Authority President Abbas, she expressed her belief that it was time to bring in younger Palestinians, especially those with more experience abroad.
“It is really time to move on to a new generation of leadership in the Palestinian Authority,” Rice said.
Why does Rice “respect” Mahmoud Abbas? Most of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria hate him, above all for being massively corrupt. His net worth is estimated to be at least $100 million; some estimates go as high as $400 million. He has filled the PA with courtiers whose loyalty he buys by letting them, too, steal from the aid money that foreign donors provide to the PA. He continues to support his “Pay-For-Slay” program, which provides generous monthly stipends to imprisoned terrorists and to the families of terrorists killed while carrying out their attacks. Thus Abbas both rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorist acts. Rice can hardly be unaware of any of this, so it’s astonishing that she should express her “respect” for Abbas.
Clinton agreed with Rice but added that Israel, too, needed to shift policy. Clinton called for the Israeli government to cease encouragement for settling in the West Bank, which she claimed gives the message that Israel isn’t committed to pursuing peace….
The Israeli government has every right to allow its citizens to live in Judea and Samaria. It was in that area that Jews have lived for the past 3,500 years, and it was there, and not in Tel Aviv or Haifa, where Jewish history was made. The League of Nations understood that when it assigned that territory to be included in Mandatory Palestine, which in time was expected to become a Jewish state. Jews not only have every right to settle in Judea and Samaria, but the more Jews who live in that area, the less likely it is that Israel can be forced to surrender that territory and allow itself to be squeezed back within the 1949 armistice lines, with a nine-mile-wide waist between Qalqilya and the sea. Israel is committed to pursuing peace, but also to maintaining its rightful claims.
Furthermore, Israel’s holding on to Judea and Samaria makes peace more, not less, likely. For Israelis know that peace can be maintained best by not surrendering territory that make it more vulnerable to attack. The only peace that will be kept by the Arabs is one based not on treaties, but on deterrence. Israel must remain militarily much stronger than the Palestinians. Surrendering Judea and Samaria would not sate, but whet, Palestinian appetites, and were they to have a state including Judea and Samaria, it would be used as a launching pad for attacks on Israel. That is what Gaza became after the Israelis pulled out in 2005.
Rice focused more on the need to cut off international support to Hamas, with Iran being “the only hope” for Hamas to be able to reconstitute with proper financial support.
Both secretaries urged the international community to prepare for a long road ahead, emphasizing the need for outside assistance until a functional government from inside Gaza can be formed.
Is Iran the only conceivable source of financial support for Hamas? Hasn’t Qatar been equally important, not just in supplying money to Hamas, but in providing a secure base for its political leaders, who for many years have been living in luxury in Doha? Does Hilary Clinton believe that Qatar has now decided to abandon Hamas? On what basis?
Neither Rice nor Clinton give any sign of recognizing that the jihadist imperative remains, that peace between Israel and the Palestinians can be maintained only through deterrence, and that Israel has to hold onto Judea and Samaria, not just because it is rightfully entitled — see the Mandate for Palestine — to that territory, but because possession of it strengthens the Jewish state’s ability to deter an invasion force from the east.
