By Tania Curado Koenig — Jerusalem, 5 November 2025
America is waking to the cost of choices it once celebrated—deals signed with golden pens, photographs staged as “historic peace,” handshakes that promised strength and purchased confusion. The Gulf partnerships Donald Trump cultivated did not anchor stability; they nurtured an ideological ecosystem now turning against him—and against the nation’s moral core.
Last night made that plain. New York elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor; Virginia projected Ghazala Hashmi as lieutenant governor—the first Muslim woman elected to statewide office in the United States. Two coasts, one message: the country’s center of gravity is shifting. Not merely toward inclusion, as headlines assure, but toward a lexicon at odds with what once steadied the republic—Judeo‑Christian ethics, covenant loyalty to Israel, and the boundary between lawful dissent and the delegitimization of truth.
This is not a ledger of identities but of causes and consequences. When a nation trades discernment for spectacle—adoration abroad, ambiguity at home—money becomes access, access becomes creed, and creed writes the vote.
Mamdani’s own words need no gloss. He opened his victory speech in Arabic, then vowed New York would “honour” the ICC warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu—promising that if the Israeli prime minister entered the city, he would face arrest. A mayor invoking a foreign tribunal against a democratic head of government is not routine language; it is jurisdictional theater presented as virtue. To Jewish New Yorkers, it sounded like an alarm.
No embroidery is required. The bilingual signaling, the posture toward Israel, the hostility toward Trump reveal not moderation but realignment—loyalties shifting, boundaries redrawn.
In May 2025, Trump returned to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Abu Dhabi for what he called a “renewal of friendship.” Cameras captured the choreography—gold halls, measured smiles—and Qatar presented him with a luxury aircraft: framed as gratitude, read by many as tribute. It was the serpent being fed again, a circle drawn in gold. Those visits were not diplomacy; they were déjà vu. The same rulers who once hailed him as peacemaker now bankroll movements that oppose him. Praise resumed; the toxin matured.
I write from the Christian Media Summit at the Dan Jerusalem Hotel; most of the staff here speak Arabic. Last night a manager told Bill and me he had studied in New York through what he called an agreement between the West Bank and the city. He smiled as he said he is a Democrat and a supporter of Mamdani. That brief exchange said everything. The same exchange of ideas shaping New York now threads through Jerusalem’s daily life. Israel, by habit and policy, keeps feeding her adversaries—funding projects, releasing land, purchasing goodwill that never endures. Where are the Ben‑Gurions and Golda Meirs who believed survival required conviction, not concession? The weakness we lament in Washington echoes here: the refusal to name an adversary even while serving him dinner.
The blueprint was drafted long ago. 2017 offered the first sketch—Trump’s royal tour, the glowing orb, the arms deals, promises of “new friendship.” Beneath the lights lay a trade: influence for access, stability for silence. Qatar mastered that craft—brokering, hosting, financing, buying the channels that shape Western opinion without firing a shot. Feed such an ecosystem and it grows quiet, tenacious roots. They run through universities, NGOs and editorial rooms, teaching a grammar of grievance. The harvest is visible: narratives that brand Israel as oppression, that treat Judea and Samaria as negotiable, that recalibrate America’s own moral compass in the same register.
Language builds worlds. When a mayor equates Jewish survival with colonialism, links NYPD work to the Israeli army, or vows obedience to a foreign court, he is not debating; he is redefining justice. The civic covenant becomes a manifesto of complaint. Social media thickens the haze—mistranslated lines, clipped slogans, viral outrage—but the verified statements are sufficient. Mamdani’s words, the crowds that cheer, and the media’s applause show how far the moral ground has shifted beneath the city’s feet.
The Abraham Accords were hailed as miracle and masterpiece. Miracles are not negotiated. Peace traded for advantage is not peace; it is a pause. Covenant soil cannot be leased without consequence. Trump’s diplomacy mistook ceremony for covenant, ovations for alignment. Every “investment” in that illusion now pays dividends in division. The fruit is visible: campuses steeped in antisemitic activism, officials who normalize repudiation, communities unsure what justice even means.
There is a law older than politics and sharper than contract—the law of covenant. Scripture warns that nations who partition the Lord’s land fracture themselves. Every negotiation that treats God’s promise as real estate carries judgment in its wake. Bill and I have written this for years. We watched sacred vocabulary replaced by diplomatic clichés and pleaded with believers to see the hour. Many chose silence. They speak now—too late.
The Deal of the Century, the quiet two‑state “symmetry,” the belief that man can redraw what God decreed—each repeats the same presumption. Carve the land, and the cleaving comes home.
The powerful strike bargains; ordinary people settle the bill. Inflation, distrust and civic fracture are not market cycles—they are moral debts coming due. When truth is watered down to please the crowd, the crowd forgets what truth was. And when a city built by exiles begins to threaten exiles again, history has closed a grim loop.
Mamdani in New York, Hashmi in Virginia: two victories, one night. Inside the Republican Party a realization is spreading—civility has become paralysis. If conservatives intend to defend liberty, they must reclaim courage. End the filibuster. Legislate boldly. Act before the machinery of democracy hardens into décor.
This is not a plea for censorship but a demand for clarity. For Christians, Jews, and every citizen who believes freedom has a moral spine: stand now. Name what is true. Protect what is sacred. If leaders honour foreign courts over first principles, challenge them. If public voices incite hatred under the banner of “justice,” confront them. We need conviction and compassion—the sword and the salve—but never neutrality in the face of deception.
Do not mistake stage‑lights for revelation or palace applause for approval. The serpent still feeds on vanity and delay. Each compromise nourishes it; each silence invites it closer. America still has a choice: repent of bargains that turned conviction into commerce; refuse to partition what God has joined; speak while truth still carries weight; pray while mercy still listens. When dusk finally falls, it will be memory—not power—that judges us. History will remember who kept watch.