Greater Israel leads to ruin; moral renewal offers survival.
The surreal spectacle of a senior Israeli official flaunting a map of “Greater Israel” in a Paris salon, its borders stretched beyond recognition, was not merely a political provocation. It was the revelation of an ideology: theology refashioned into cartography, a covenant recast as a claim.
When Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich stood at a lectern emblazoned with a Greater Israel emblem on March 19, 2023, he wiped Palestine from view with a gesture as casual as it was calculated.
That moment revealed far more than political bravado. It offered the world a glimpse into a poisonous re-reading of sacred history, where promise mutates into possession, faith hardens into frontier, and devotion devolves into sanctioned violence.
Yet the very tradition invoked to sanctify such ambition holds within it a radically different vision, one that subverts the map’s imperial geometry.
Breaking the cycle of violence: From conquest to conscience
In the same chapter that grants Israel the Promised Land, God first commands Abraham to “walk before me, and be thou perfect” (Genesis 17:1 KJV). In truth, the chosenness of Israel has never been a license to dominate, but has always been a mandate of inner and outer transformation – a sacred charge to reclaim righteousness and model justice, as a witness of God’s majesty before the world.
The prophets reinterpreted the covenant as a universal vocation: “It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my salvation unto the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6 KJV). The land is holy only when life within it is holy.
Only by reclaiming that original meaning can Israel step off the wheel of violence. The sequence runs from Zion laying waste to its neighbors and, as the arc of violence foreordains, culminates in the annihilation of the Jewish homeland itself, together with much of the Diaspora, as a mighty coalition rises in retaliation.
The “Promised Land” must be re-read conscientiously – understood no longer as physical terrain, but as ethical territory, a place where human dignity, rather than any divine title deed, confers ownership.
Israel must grasp that the measure of a nation is not its army or its acreage, but the good it bestows on its citizens and the wider human family. And goodness cannot be born from demonized phantoms; it takes root only where generosity grows. The truth is stark: Greater Israel destroys; moral renewal preserves.
In Christian theology, Israel’s divine election and the Promised Land are understood typologically, as a prefiguration fulfilled in the ecclesial community. Put succinctly, the Church inherits the calling, not the territory. The “new covenant” expands chosenness into a communion shaped by faith rather than lineage or land. Islam likewise resonates with this universal vision.
The Qur’an acknowledges that God once granted the Children of Israel a blessed land (Q 5:21), but insists that God’s favor belongs to “those who believe and do righteousness,” a formula repeated throughout the Qur’an (e.g., Q 2:82; 5:9). The true ummah (Arabic for “nation”) is a community of believers united by faith and moral conduct rather than ethnic descent.
Judaism’s covenant, Christianity’s church, and Islam’s ummah are therefore three versions of a single concept: divine election as responsibility, not supremacy.
Universal humanism: The primacy of life over land
At a Knesset session on October 13, 2025 marking the return of Israel’s surviving captives of Hamas, opposition leader Yair Lapid proclaimed: “The real intelligence report on Israel’s intentions is found in the Book of Genesis: ‘And I will give you and your descendants after you the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession.’”
Strikingly, the very Knesset session in which Lapid invoked the covenant also heard him recite the Talmudic maxim, “Whoever saves one life, it is as though he saved an entire world.” That universal, humanistic teaching – rather than the later, narrower variant “one life in Israel” – ought to complement, and ultimately temper, the promise of Canaan.
Scripture traces every life back to one ancestor, binding humanity into a single family and leaving no room for claims of superiority. Each person bears the divine image, embodying an entire world in miniature – since from Adam came all humanity – and carrying within himself the potential of all future generations. Each life is infinitely precious; to harm one is to harm all.
The sanctity of life, then, is the true sacred ground. When Israel, a state founded on God’s covenant, exalts territory above life, it overturns that ancient bond’s deepest purpose and primary charge: to make God’s justice visible and to guard the sanctity of human life through obedient faith.
Outlook: Peril in the path, possibility in the pivot
Theological nationalism sacralizes land; civil religion sacralizes a nation’s moral vocation, gauging greatness not by the reach of dominion, but by the reach of goodness.
Smotrich’s map, part of “Project Neo-Canaan”, speaks the language of possession, not promise – a cartography of dominion where borders stand in for belief. The political theology behind the map recasts the ancient promise as entitlement and enthronement, transposing covenant into claim – the oldest story retold as the newest justification, a trajectory descending into the abyss.
But in the end, the Bible’s geography charts not empire but ethics: Land becomes the measure of covenant, not conquest – a trusted possession conditioned on righteousness rather than seized by force, its loss the price of betrayal.
Consider this: Because of a lapse in faith and humility at a crucial juncture, Moses, the very man who had led his people out of slavery in Egypt, was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. At Meribah, he disobeyed God’s command and failed to uphold divine holiness before the people – a moment that turned his leadership from triumph to tragedy and made his story the archetype of unfinished redemption.
In Moses’ exclusion, Scripture makes clear that land is a moral trust, not a military entitlement. The promise remains, but possession depends on justice. Land functions as a moral barometer of covenantal fidelity, not as a military trophy of conquest; the covenant is gauged by how righteously the land is tended and shared. Possession is secured not by power, but by faithfulness to divine justice, through which divine blessing is channeled to humanity. When that moral order is forgotten, the sacred map is profaned: Memory hardens into military mandate, faith flattens into frontier.
Mythic stories are neither harmless nor inherently evil – but when they are fused with state power and stripped of ethical restraint, they transmute, almost alchemically, into the most combustible fuel humanity can ignite.
Lapid’s invocation of Genesis crystallizes the dilemma of Israel and, by extension, of all nations built on sacred or mythological stories. A narrative that once sustained an exiled people now threatens to imprison it in perpetual conflict. So long as divine promise is read as a property deed, every truce will be temporary and every border provisional. The “everlasting possession” will yield everlasting war.
To escape that trap, Israel must undergo a collective catharsis and recover the panacea hidden within divine chosenness: a mission, not a prize; a burden of responsibility, not a badge of superiority; a call to serve, never to rule.
Only through this pivot can the Promised Land be reimagined: not as ground to be seized, but as a world to be healed; not as a charter for domination, but as a summons to serve all humanity.
The true intelligence report of any nation is not found in ancient borders, but in how faithfully it protects the infinite worth of a single human life. Only when that becomes the sacred text of policy will peace cease to be a myth.
[Part 3 of a series on Israel’s Neo-Canaan project. Previous columns in the series:
Prolonging the Ukraine conflict’s “path of death” through continued Western assistance will not help anyone, Matteo Salvini has said
Western assistance to Kiev risks ending up in the pockets of corrupt Ukrainian officials, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has warned, citing a major scandal that recently shook Ukraine’s government. He also argued against further military aid, warning that the EU was on “the path of death.”
Salvini spoke as the Italian government approved its 12th package of military support for Ukraine and promised electrical generators for the coming winter. The decision coincided with a major scandal in Kiev over an alleged $100 million energy graft scheme involving Timur Mindich, a close associate and former business partner of Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky.
Moscow responded to the news by calling it evidence of a “bloody hydra” of Ukrainian corruption reaching beyond the country’s borders and draining Western taxpayers’ money. Politico also reported on Saturday that the EU was also concerned over “endemic corruption” in Ukraine.
“It seems to me that corruption scandals are emerging, involving the Ukrainian government, so I would not want the money of Italian workers and pensioners to be used to fuel further corruption,” Salvini told reporters in Naples on Friday.
He added that ending the conflict depends on “silencing the weapons” and bringing both Moscow and Kiev to the negotiating table. Salvini also argued that it should be in Kiev’s interest to halt the fighting as soon as possible, pointing to continued Russian gains on the battlefield.
“To think that sending weapons to Ukraine means Ukraine can regain the lost ground is naïve, to say the least,” he said, adding that he did not believe “prolonging this path of death will help anyone.”
Salvini has previously criticized what he sees as escalatory rhetoric from other EU leaders. In August, he responded to French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that EU nations could send troops to Ukraine by saying Macron should go himself. “If Macron wants, he can go – but I think he’ll go alone, because not even one Frenchman would follow him,” Salvini said at the time, prompting a brief diplomatic spat between Rome and Paris.
The US president has revoked his endorsement of GOP Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene
US President Donald Trump has cut ties with a prominent MAGA ally, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, accusing her of betraying the Republican party and going “far left.”
In a Truth Social post on Saturday, the president announced the withdrawal of his support and endorsement for the veteran GOP lawmaker.
“Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Green [sic] is a disgrace to our GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY!” he wrote.
“Over the past few weeks, despite my creating Record Achievements for our Country… all I see ‘Wacky’ Marjorie do is COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN, COMPLAIN!” he said in a separate post.
He said the dispute began after he sent her a poll indicating she had a 12% approval rating in Georgia and advised her not to run for senator or governor, and he added that since then “she has gone Far Left.”
In a series of replies on X, Greene alleged that the US president withdrew his support because she pushed the Justice Department to release all remaining files related to convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly killed himself in jail in 2019.
“I never thought that fighting to release the Epstein files, defending women who were victims of rape, and fighting to expose the web of rich powerful elites would have caused this, but here we are,” she wrote on Saturday after the president pulled his endorsement.
Greene claimed that Trump was cutting her off to “make an example to scare all the other Republicans before next week’s vote to release the Epstein files.”
A petition to force a vote on a bill requiring the DOJ to release the files received enough signatures on Wednesday, and the vote is scheduled for next week.
Earlier this week, the US House Oversight Committee released roughly 20,000 documents related to Epstein’s estate. House Democrats then published an email from the files, in which the late pedophile alleged that Trump “knew about the girls.”
Shortly afterward, the president ordered a probe into the sex trafficker’s ties to prominent Democrats, including Bill Clinton, and accused his opponents of using what he called the “Epstein Hoax” as a political distraction.
Washington wants to substitute the oil and gas exports to the bloc with its own, the Financial Times has said
The US is moving to push Russian energy out of the EU market and position itself to fill the gap, the Financial Times reported Friday.
Washington has also deliberately blocked a bid by Sweden-based Gunvor Group to acquire the foreign assets of Russian oil major Lukoil, according to the outlet.
Gunvor withdrew its $22 billion proposal after US officials accused the company of acting as “the Kremlin’s puppet.” Earlier in November, the US Treasury warned in a post on X that the company would “never get a license to operate and profit” if it pursued the deal.
The potential acquisition surfaced after US President Donald Trump imposed new sanctions on Lukoil and another Russian oil giant, Rosneft, prompting the former to seek buyers for its overseas holdings.
The bid was announced as “US officials toured Europe as part of efforts to sell American energy and eliminate ‘every last molecule’ of Russian gas from the continent,” the FT wrote. The decision to block the deal came from “high up in the Treasury,” the paper reported, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Afterward, Washington issued a general license enabling other bidders to pursue Lukoil’s international assets, the FT said. Private US equity firm Carlyle expressed interest this week, according to the report.
Lukoil confirmed on Friday that it is in “ongoing negotiations on the sale of its international assets with several potential buyers,” without naming them.
US officials have openly stated their intention to replace Russia in the EU energy market. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in September that the US was prepared “to displace all of the Russian gas that goes into Europe and all of the Russian refined products from oil as well.”
The Kremlin has condemned the sanctions as an “unfriendly step” but maintained it is still seeking “good relations with all countries, including the US.”
The restrictions on Lukoil are already affecting Europe. Earlier in November, Bulgaria curbed fuel exports to its fellow EU states amid supply concerns. Lukoil owns the country’s largest refinery, more than 200 gas stations and a major fuel transport network.
Officials from around the world have gathered for a two-day symposium at the Black Sea resort
The second BRICS–Europe symposium opened this week in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. It is dedicated to setting out steps to strengthen cooperation between countries in the group and the region.
Lindiwe Zulu, a senior member of South Africa’s ruling African National Congress (ANC) party, said her country had taken part in the initiative the first time as well, and viewed the second meeting as “an important step in advancing this movement.”
Zulu said the forum held particular significance for Africa, adding that unity must be backed by action.
”Our commitment is to ensure that this movement grows from strength for peace, security and the prosperity of the African people,” she added.
Pierre de Gaulle, grandson of the late French President Charles de Gaulle, is the event’s honorary guest. Germany’s Steffen Kotre, a Bundestag deputy from the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, also joined the meeting, drawing political controversy at home.
Alexei Gromyko, director of the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, addressed the symposium, saying the rapid development of BRICS reflected “a shift in the center of gravity of global politics and economics toward Eurasia.”
The BRICS–Europe symposium is being held by the United Russia party and the international movement “The Other Ukraine” in collaboration with the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It is a forum on economic and social cooperation and is taking place on November 14–15. More than 40 European politicians are attending, including members of the European Parliament. Delegations from China, Brazil, Iran, Indonesia, Belarus, Algeria, Cuba, Cambodia, Ethiopia and South Africa are represented at the event by senior officials.
Warsaw has steadily tightened benefit payouts to Ukrainians since Karol Nawrocki took office in June
Warsaw will only provide welfare for Ukrainian migrants for one more year, Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced on Friday.
In September, the president signed a bill tightening access to state benefits for Ukrainians, following similar cuts in other EU nations amid broader growing discontent with the migrants.
“I emphasized… that I signed this bill to help Ukrainians for the last time,” Nawrocki said at a rally on Friday.
“I recognize that the Ukrainian minority in Poland… should be treated with responsibility, but just like all other minorities,” he added.
Under the new law, welfare is reserved only for Ukrainians who are employed and whose children attend local schools.
Since November 1, Warsaw also restricted free housing in collective accommodation centers to only the most vulnerable Ukrainian migrants.
Poland has been one of Kiev’s main backers since the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022, providing them some $5.85 billion, mostly in military aid, according to Germany’s Kiel Institute.
Despite this, broader public support for Ukrainians has cratered since 2022, with just over half of Poles viewing state benefits for them as too generous, Bloomberg wrote last week, citing a recent poll. At least 2.5 million Ukrainians currently live in Poland, according to recent government data.
Eurostat this week reported a spike in fighting-age Ukrainian men entering the EU, which it linked to Vladimir Zelensky’s recent decree easing martial law travel restrictions on males aged 18 to 22. Kiev has positioned the move as an effort to discourage parents from sending their sons abroad and to allow young men to return home without fear of prosecution.
Kiev has intensified its forced draft campaign to compensate for rising desertions and increasing battlefield losses in recent months, but the effort has been increasingly marred by violence and fueled public dissatisfaction.
Washington imposed sanctions on the Balkan country’s oil refinery majority-owned by Gazprom
The US has refused to let Serbia’s only oil refinery resume operations unless the Russian co-owners give up their stakes, Serbian Energy Minister Dubravka Dedovic Handanovic said on Saturday.
The Petroleum Industry of Serbia (NIS), which runs the refinery, was hit with US sanctions last month. Banks have since stopped processing transactions, and Croatia’s JANAF pipeline, Serbia’s key crude oil supply route, has halted deliveries. Earlier, Reuters reported that the refinery can operate only until November 25 without new supplies.
Russian energy giants Gazprom and Gazprom Neft together own 56% of NIS, while the Serbian government owns around 30%.
NIS petitioned the US government for a temporary waiver that would allow the company to continue operating while it negotiates a change in ownership, Dedovic Handanovic said. The US granted only a three-month period to find new buyers, not permission for the refinery to keep running, she added.
Serbia was “not given even a single day for NIS to continue operating,” the minister said. “The American administration has, for the first time, stated clearly and unequivocally that it wants a complete change in the ownership held by Russian shareholders,” Dedovic Handanovic stated.
She said Belgrade would have to make “some of the most difficult decisions in history” at a government meeting Sunday that will include President Aleksandar Vucic and heads of major state companies. The options include nationalizing NIS and negotiating possible compensation for the Russian shareholders, she said.
The US and the EU have urged Serbia to cut its historically close ties with Russia, which Belgrade has so far resisted. The US also aims to push Russia from the European market, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright saying in September that Washington was prepared to “displace” the importation of Russian oil and gas.
Kiev has repeatedly accused Tehran of supplying UAVs to Moscow during the conflict
The US Treasury Department has said it is blacklisting two Ukrainian companies for providing key drone components to a state-run UAV producer in Iran.
The move came as part of a wider sanctions package aimed at disrupting what the agency called Tehran’s “transnational missile and UAV procurement networks.” It targeted 32 entities and individuals in Iran, the UAE, Türkiye, China, India, Germany and Ukraine.
The Treasury accused Ukrainian-based firms GK Imperativ and Ekofera of being fronts for Iranian procurement agents facilitating the supply of parts to Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (HESA). HESA is known as the designer and producer of the Shahed-131 and Shahed-136 long-range loitering munitions. It has been under US sanctions since 2008.
The equipment shipped to Iran via the two Ukrainian firms included alternator components, engines, attitude indicators, sensors and other parts, according to the Treasury.
Three Iranian nationals allegedly working with GK Imperativ and Ekofera, were also slapped with sanctions, the department announced on Wednesday.
According to Business Insider, GK Imperativ was established in the city of Kharkov in northeastern Ukraine in 2018. Ekofera, which has been around since 2016, has offices in Kharkov and in Kiev.
Throughout the Ukraine conflict, the nation’s authorities have said that Geran-2 drones, which have been widely used by Russia in strikes against military-related infrastructure, are actually Iranian-made Shaheds. Vladimir Zelensky has said that Tehran is on “the dark side of history” and repeatedly called on it to stop deliveries of UAVs to Moscow.
Both Russia and Iran have denied those allegations, with Tehran calling them “anti-Iranian propaganda” aimed solely at attracting more Western military aid to Kiev.
The Russian Defense Ministry insists that its Geran-2 drones are domestically produced, along with all the other hardware it relies on in the Ukraine conflict.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry only confirmed sending a small batch of drones to Russia before the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, stressing that no new deliveries have taken place since then.
Slovakia’s Robert Fico has repeatedly called for a peaceful resolution to the conflict instead of arms deliveries
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has responded to a group of students protesting against his government’s stance on the Ukraine conflict by saying that those supporting Kiev should go fight for it.
Unlike most EU leaders, Fico has refused to send military aid to Ukraine and pledged to oppose any seizure of Russian assets frozen by Brussels after the escalation of the conflict in February 2022. He has also warned that the bloc’s plan to allocate an additional €140 billion ($160 billion) to Kiev could only result in the hostilities being prolonged for at least another two years.
The heated exchange of words occurred during a classroom lecture at a school in the city of Poprad after Fico reiterated that further funding would not bring the fighting to an end. His remark prompted murmurs and disapproval from some students, according to a short video circulating online.
“If you are such heroes in these black T-shirts, and you are so for this war, then go fight for Ukraine, please,” Fico snapped, responding to the disruption.
Despite the prime minister asking the audience to let him finish his remarks, a group of students wearing black stood up and walked out, jingling their keys. One of them briefly raised a Ukrainian flag as they exited the room.
Wearing black shirts and jingling keys is a form of protest in Slovakia and is commonly used to express disagreement, according to local media.
Fico’s SMER SSD party later released the full recording of the event, saying the public could “listen and compare reality with what the progressive media reported” after several outlets circulated selective clips that omitted context. “When there was an opportunity to discuss, they stood up and left,” Fico wrote in a Facebook post later that day, reacting to the walkout.
Earlier this year, the Slovak Information Service intelligence agency said the political opposition was preparing a coup similar to the one launched in Kiev in February 2014. In January a Ukrainian national was arrested and expelled from Slovakia in connection with the alleged plot. Last year, Fico survived an assassination attempt by an activist who had targeted him for his refusal to follow NATO and EU policy on Ukraine.
Beijing has said that the American weapons supplies to the self-governing island violate China’s sovereignty and security interests
The Pentagon has announced that it has approved its first arms sales to Taiwan since US President Donald Trump took office in January. China, which views the self-governing island as part of its territory, has called the move an infringement on its sovereignty.
The proposed deal will see Taipei spend $330 million to acquire spare parts for the American-made aircraft that it operates, the US Department of War said in a statement on Thursday.
The purchase should help Taiwan with “maintaining the operational readiness of the… fleet of F-16, C-130” and other planes, the statement read.
The spokeswoman for Taiwan’s presidential office, Karen Kuo, welcomed the approval, claiming that the “deepening of the Taiwan-US security partnership is an important cornerstone of peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region.”
According to Taipei’s Defense Ministry, the sale of the US aircraft parts will “take effect” within a month.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said during a briefing that Beijing “deplores and opposes” American arms sales to Taiwan, which go against China’s security interests and “send a gravely wrong signal to ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces.”
The Taiwan issue is “the first red line that must not be crossed in China-US relations,” the spokesman warned.
Officially, the US supports the One-China policy, stating that Taiwan, which has maintained de facto self-rule since 1949 but never officially declared independence from Beijing, is an integral part of the country.
However, Washington has maintained contact with the authorities in Taipei and promised to defend the island militarily in the event of a conflict with the mainland.
China has said repeatedly that its goal is “peaceful reunification” with Taiwan, but has warned that it will not hesitate to use force should Taipei formally declare independence.
In September, the Washington Post reported that Trump had blocked a $400 million arms deal with Taipei ahead of his meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Earlier this month, Trump told the CBS TV program 60 Minutes that his talks with Xi, which took place in late October in South Korea, focused on trade, while the Taiwan issue “never came up.”
