Tuesday, January 30, 2024

01/30 Links Pt1: UNRWA is worse than you think; UNRWA exists to help fight the war to eradicate Israel; Are conspiracy theories about Oct. 7 a new form of Holocaust denial?

From Ian:

Intelligence Reveals Details of U.N. Agency Staff’s Links to Oct. 7 Attack
Israel says it has documented deepening ties between Unrwa and Hamas since the militant group cemented its hold on Gaza in 2007. Unrwa has admitted to finding Hamas weapons stored in schools and Israel has repeatedly said Hamas tunnels run under and through Unrwa buildings as well as other civilian facilities. The former head of Unrwa’s union in Gaza was fired in 2017 after Israel found out he had been elected to Hamas’ top political leadership.

The dossier is the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the Unrwa employees and militants. It offers telling details regarding the events of Oct. 7. A math teacher belonging to Hamas was close enough to a female hostage in Gaza that he took a picture of her. Another teacher was carrying an antitank missile the night before the invasion.

One Unrwa employee set up an operations room for Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Oct. 8, the day after the attack. Three other employees, including another Arabic teacher at an Unrwa school, received a text from Hamas to arm themselves at a staging area close to the border the night before the attack. It was unclear whether they went.

A different elementary school teacher did cross into Israel and went to Reim, a district where a kibbutz, an army base and a music festival were attacked.

One of the intelligence reports seen by the Journal said a 13th Unrwa employee, who didn’t have a discernible affiliation with a terror group, also entered Israel. Hundreds of Gazan civilians flooded across the border as part of the Hamas-led attack, Israel says.

Teachers make up nearly three-quarters of Unrwa’s Gaza-based local staff. Unrwa schools, which use textbooks approved by the Palestinian Authority, have come under fire for using materials that allegedly glorify terrorists and promote hatred of Israel. Unrwa says it has taken steps to address problematic content, but a 2019 U.S. Government Accountability Office report said that measures haven’t always been implemented.
Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA exists to help fight the war to eradicate Israel
Unlike every other refugee population, the Palestinian Arabs were not resettled. They were kept in camps throughout the Middle East with the largest concentration in Gaza, which was controlled by Egypt from 1949 to 1967. They were prevented from finding new homes in Arab and Muslim countries, where they spoke the language and shared a common culture. Nor were they enabled to go elsewhere to make new lives.

Instead, they were kept in place to wait for the day when they could “go home” to their former villages in what was now Israel. Their leaders and the rest of the Arab world opposed their resettlement, doing all they could to prevent it.

And the agency that enabled this policy to continue for generations was none other than UNRWA.

It’s important to understand that at the time when all these refugee problems arose, the United Nations created two refugee agencies. One, UNRWA, deals only with the Palestinians. The other, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (or UNHCR) has the responsibility for all of the other refugees in the world.

The UNHCR has its flaws, but its job is to help the refugees by giving them not just immediate aid in surviving being displaced by wars and other disasters but also assistance in resettling in places where it will be safe for them. Their goal is to ensure that their problems are resolved and that their children will make new lives rather than continue to live in camps.

By contrast, the UNRWA exists solely to ensure that Palestinian refugees are never resettled. That’s why almost all of the people who are called Palestinian refugees are the descendants of the people who fled the war the Arab world started in 1948. Several generations have been born in the camps but, contrary to the way other populations are treated, all are given the same status as those who were the original 1948 refugees.

Of all the tens of millions of refugees of the 1940s, the only ones whose descendants have not been resettled are the Palestinians. A humane and rational policy would have led to their being absorbed into other populations. But that’s not UNRWA’s job. It operates the ultimate welfare state in which generations are kept dependent on charity. Worse than that, its programs and policies all encourage the Palestinians to go on believing that someday Israel will cease to exist, and then they can return to where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived three-quarters of a century ago. Though it pretends to be a humanitarian force, it encourages its charges to look forward to the day when Hamas’s genocidal objective—the mass murder of Israel’s 7 million Jews—will be achieved.

Therefore, it’s little surprise that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas and that among its staff are people who take part in terrorist atrocities. And that much of the aid it receives from the world goes to help Hamas continue to function. UNRWA allows the very people its donors think they are helping to be used as human shields in a cynical hopeless war.

So, let’s not waste much time arguing about the details of UNRWA’s complicity in Oct. 7 or other acts of terror. The only discussion that needs to be held is one about its abolition and replacement by a genuine refugee agency. The world needs one that can give Palestinians new homes rather than keep them in misery awaiting another Holocaust for the Jews that they’ve been led to believe will magically solve their problems.
Brendan O'Neill: UNRWA is worse than you think
Most striking is the left’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of the charges against UNRWA. These people pose as ‘anti-fascists’ yet they seem alarmingly blasé about the possibility that a UN agency employed people of such an intense fascistic persuasion that they were happy to take part in an orgy of anti-Jewish murder. It’s ‘10 or 12 individuals’ from a ‘workforce of 13,000’, said LBC’s James O’Brien. This is a man who said the right-wing media’s defence of Boris Johnson during Partygate was proof that Britain is moving in a ‘fascistic direction’. It seems a handful of pro-Boris thinkpieces is fascism, but ‘10 or 12’ UN employees allegedly kidnapping and murdering Jews is not something we should overreact to.

The Guardian’s Owen Jones dismissively says these are ‘allegations against 0.04 per cent of [UNRWA’s] staff’. Is there an acceptable number of alleged Jew-killers for a UN agency to employ? If 12 isn’t a particularly big deal, how about 50? Or 100? A hundred alleged pogromists would still only be 0.77 per cent of UNRWA’s workforce – is that cool?

Mehdi Hasan speaks of ‘the alleged acts of a handful of UNRWA employees’ and slams the ‘demonisation campaign’ against UNRWA. This is the same Mehdi Hasan who once said Donald Trump’s description of lefties as ‘vermin’ was ‘right out of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda playbook’ and that Trump should ‘terrify’ us all. If a privileged member of America’s media elites can feel ‘terrified’ of Trump’s bluster, surely Jews can feel terrified of Jew-killers, even if it is ‘just’ 12. To a Jew, a ‘handful’ of murderous anti-Semites is still a terrible thing.

The speed with which the woke left went from handwringing over racists to saying, ‘Well, it’s only 12 racists’, has been mind-blowing. These are the kind of people who denounce gender-critical feminists as ‘fascist-adjacent’ if some alt-right arsehole attends one of their demos. Who will damn the entire Tory party as irretrievably Islamophobic if one of its lowly local councillors makes a joke about Muslims. Who insisted that Wayne Couzens – the London police officer who murdered Sarah Everard – was not a ‘bad apple’ but rather was symptomatic of the entire sexist, murderous rot of the Metropolitan Police. ‘Sarah Everard’s killer isn’t one bad apple – the whole police force is rotten’, cried Novara Media in 2021 – a mag whose fanboys are no doubt all over social media saying the 12 alleged Jew-killers in UNRWA were just bad apples. Funny that.

When a British cop was unveiled as a misogynistic murderer, the left cried ‘Defund the police!’. Yet when 12 employees of UNRWA were accused of taking part in a carnival of racist rape and murder they said the opposite: fund UNRWA; give it more money. In response to Britain and other nations’ suspension of donations to UNRWA, the activist class took to X to drum up support for UNRWA. They seem blissfully unaware of how horrendous, how sick, these optics are. It boils down to this: within hours of Israel saying, ‘We believe UNRWA staff participated in the mass murder of Jews’, leftists were on social media saying, ‘Give money to UNRWA’. In all my years observing the left’s abandonment of reason and Enlightenment, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as appalling as that.

Most importantly, they’re just wrong to push the ‘bad apples’ argument about UNRWA. To haughtily tweet about the tiny percentage of UNRWA staff who are alleged to have bloodied their hands on 7 October. To go around saying ‘10 or 12’ possible pogromists does not a wicked organisation make. For the truth is that UNRWA has long been morally and politically compromised. The Wall Street Journal reports on intelligence dossiers that suggest up to 10 per cent of UNRWA’s employees have links with ‘Islamist militant groups’. A study of a Telegram channel made up of 3,000 UNRWA-employed schoolteachers found thousands of messages praising Hamas’s pogrom and expressing hatred for Jews. Analysts have found that some UNRWA-run schools ‘glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonise Israelis and incite anti-Semitism’. The truth about UNRWA, as a writer for Haaretz put it, is that it is ‘riddled with Hamas’.

And yet on Saturday, Holocaust Memorial Day, we had the chilling spectacle of the West’s supposed anti-fascists rattling the tin for UNRWA. We witnessed the self-righteous woke classes helping to fundraise for an organisation that is ‘riddled’ with links to a terror outfit that was founded with the express purpose of killing Jews and destroying Israel. The very people who claim to hate racism spent a day when we remember the victims of the worst act of state racism in history drumming up support for a UN agency that is ‘riddled’ with supporters of an avowedly racist terror group. We must be nearing the nadir of woke, surely?


Seth Mandel: Biden Risks Disappointing Everyone
Joe Biden is about to learn that there’s no such thing as an empty threat from a U.S. president, because a threat that isn’t fulfilled won’t be remembered as a threat at all. In Biden’s case, it will be remembered as a pitiable attempt at pleading with America’s enemies to give him a break.

Biden faces this unforgiving reality as he contemplates a military response to the murder of three American servicemen by Iranian proxies in Jordan yesterday. “We shall respond,” the president said.

But the potentially empty threat I’m talking about isn’t his promise to respond. It’s something he said months ago. On the COMMENTARY podcast this morning, Abe Greenwald recalled Biden’s words—or word, really—after Hamas’s invasion of Israel sparked the current war and raised fears that regional actors (mainly Iran) would take advantage of the moment to spread the war to additional fronts: “Don’t.”

Here’s what Abe said this morning: “It was not only not heeded, but the whole framework was wrong from the beginning. This was, initially, a wider regional situation. The attack itself had Iranian backing. This was always a multi-front issue for Israel and for Israel’s allies and the U.S. What Iran doesn’t want, at this moment, is a direct conflict with the U.S. Which is why, if we finally went after some targets inside Iran, this would stop. But up until now, this has been entirely cost-free for Tehran.”

This strikes me as clearly correct. At the same time, one can at least understand, I think, the president’s desire to prevent a serious escalation even if it has meant over-crediting bad actors with restraint. But that failed, whatever his original intentions. And now he is face to face with a potential “red line” moment of his own.

The line in this case is not as explicit as the one President Obama drew when he infamously lost his nerve after Bashar al-Assad gassed Syrian civilians. Obama, in the end, feared upsetting the Iranians by carrying out his promised military response. But there is an “or else” implied by Biden’s “don’t.”
Seth Mandel: The Knee-Jerk Opposition To Anything Israel Says or Does
After the tragic death of IDF troops carrying out demolitions just inside Gaza last week, their particular task received wide attention. The soldiers were part of an effort to build a buffer zone about a half-mile wide (wider in some areas, narrower in others) on the Gaza side of the border, enlarging the existing buffer zone with a temporary extension. There was already a buffer zone in place, but it was not easily enforceable. What is needed, essentially, is a buffer zone for a buffer zone—Israel isn’t going to mow down anyone who approaches the warning track, so it needs a way to anticipate them and stop them before they get there. Widening the existing buffer zone, and enacting a no-farming rule for it, is the way to do that, at least temporarily.

Case in point: the Wall Street Journal reported that while “soldiers were working, militants twice appeared out of underground tunnels and fired rocket-propelled grenades at the armored bulldozers they were using to clear the area.”

Meanwhile, reports the Washington Post, “The United States has been vocally opposed to the creation of a buffer zone.”

The folks who are worried about Israel resettling Gaza and those upset by the buffer zone should talk to each other. Do they think Israel is going to put settlers on the other side of no-man’s land next to a fence with early warning systems and remote-fired machine guns? When someone builds a moat is your first concern expansionism?

The extension of the buffer zone might be temporary, but it is painfully obvious that, after the discovery of the tunnel system that approaches the border, the area has to be cleared. Israel didn’t force Hamas to build attack tunnels; that was a choice. As was this war, which Hamas launched and promised to repeat. For a million obvious reasons, Israel is not going to expand the buffer zone into Israeli territory instead, a suggestion that should not be dignified with engagement even to knock it down.

A half-mile extension of the buffer zone, at least until it can be cleared of tunnels, mines, and other surprises, should be welcomed. Nonviolent preventative measures should be embraced. Securing an area where Palestinians and Israelis live relatively close to one another should be uncontroversial. And on top of all that, it forecloses the idea that Israel will reoccupy and resettle the Gaza Strip.

Western officials should be happy about this. And maybe they will be, if they ever take their fingers out of their ears.
Are conspiracy theories about Oct. 7 a new form of Holocaust denial? Experts weigh in
In echoes of Holocaust denialism, social media apps and websites such as X, Instagram, TikTok and 4chan are plagued by a new form of denialism connected to the October 7 massacre in southern Israel. This canard, which claims the attacks were an Israeli “false flag” operation to allow it to commit genocide in Gaza, is just one example of the intensifying antisemitic vitriol in cyberspace. Yet, as alarming as such conspiracy theories are, they’re not new.

“People have always thought these things. Social media has just normalized it,” said Mike Rothschild, the author of “Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories.”

“You used to have to put some work into being a conspiracist. You had to know where the weird corner bookstore was and you had to tune into short-wave radio at three in the morning. Now there is no barrier to entry,” he said.

Rothschild, who isn’t related to the Rothschilds that he writes about, was one of several experts speaking on a panel titled “Antisemitism, Technology, and Culture: Modes of Dissemination,” which explored how unregulated digital media injects antisemitic ideas into mass politics and popular culture — a trend that has spiked since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror onslaught in southern Israel.

Held at New York’s Center for Jewish History and co-sponsored by the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University, the daylong symposium “Addressing Antisemitism: Contemporary Challenges” was timed for January 28, the day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“People who want to act violently are good at using new technology, and social media platforms are very useful for the spreading of hate. And because it’s user-generated and the companies do little to control it because it makes money, it’s antisemitism for a profit,” said Sabine von Mering, director of the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis University.


Terrorgram: More evidence of UNRWA support for Hamas
The UNRWA Telegram group was created by Hani Jouda, who advocates for the rights of UNRWA staff and is listed as the owner among the group admins. “Jouda rejects Israel’s right to exist and promotes antisemitism,” UN Watch said, noting a June 18, 2021, post in which he denied any Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.

The fact that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of terrorism is no revelation. It has been described as the “educational arm” of Hamas, filling young minds with incendiary Jew-hatred and thereby ensuring that the next generation furnishes a plentitude of terrorists.

UN Watch is one of a handful of organizations that have exposed UNRWA’s terror ties over the years, noting in its report that since 2015, it has revealed more than 150 UNRWA staff Facebook pages containing antisemitism and incitement terrorism, in “blatant violation” of U.N. neutrality.

“UNRWA’s typical response to our research has been to disparage our human rights organization and downplay the problem as reflecting just a few bad apples,” the report notes.

UN Watch notes that Palestinians, alone among all peoples, have a dedicated U.N. agency to assist their refugees.

But UNRWA doesn’t resettle Palestinian refugees. Instead, it perpetuates their refugee status, passing it down to the next generation as an inheritance, even if they acquire citizenship in other countries. The rolls of Palestinian “refugees” have thus increased from the UNRWA-estimated 726,000 as a result of Israel’s 1948-49 War of Independence to 5.9 million (and growing) today.

Israel would like to see UNRWA gone. Its foreign ministry recently put together a classified report calling for the U.N. agency’s removal from Gaza.

The U.N., however, is trying to save UNRWA. Guterres appealed to governments that suspended funding to at least guarantee a continuous cash flow to UNRWA until war-related humanitarian needs subside. He was set to meet with major donors on Tuesday.
Israel calls to shelve UNRWA after latest reports on terror ties
After recent revelations of UNRWA’s support for terrorism and participation by some of its members in the Oct. 7 attack on the northwestern Negev, Israel has demanded the U.N. agency be stripped of its authority in the Gaza Strip.

In a press briefing on Tuesday, the Prime Minister’s Office detailed how UNRWA aids Hamas. The PMO demanded that UNRWA be defunded, its leadership resign or be dismissed, and that it no longer play an educational role in the Gaza Strip.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken forcefully of the need for deradicalization in Gaza. He has therefore stated clearly the need to ensure that Gaza children not be educated to be terrorists,” PMO spokesman Eylon Levy said, noting that UNRWA indoctrinates children against Israel and Jews.

“UNRWA is part of the problem, not part of the solution. It is a Hamas front and it’s time to put it behind us,” Levy said.

“Foreign Minister Israel Katz has called for UNRWA to be replaced with agencies dedicated to genuine peace and development,” he added. “It happens in every other conflict in the world where people are helped by genuine U.N. agencies and not by tailor-made refugee agencies.”

Levy referred to the fact that UNRWA exists to assist only Palestinian refugees while all of the world’s other refugees are assisted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Existing U.N. aid agencies can take over from UNRWA to deliver assistance to Palestinians, he said.
Head of UNRWA set to visit Israel; foreign minister cancels planned meetings
Israel's Foreign Ministry announced Monday that Minister Israel Katz instructed the ministry's employees to cancel their planned meetings with UN refugee aid agency UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini, who is expected to arrive in Israel on Wednesday.

"UNRWA employees participated in the terrorist attack on October 7. Lazzarini should draw conclusions and resign. Supporters of terrorism are not welcome here," Katz posted on his X network account.

At the end of the week, UNRWA announced the opening of an investigation into the suspicion that at least 12 of its employees took part in the October 7 massacre, following Israeli information that was passed to the agency. The U.S., Great Britain and a number of other countries announced the cessation of funding to the agency. On Sunday, Lazzarini protested the countries' decision, saying it was "shocking" and warned that it threatens the continuation of humanitarian activities in the region, and especially in Gaza. He called on the countries to reconsider their decision.

Israel has been pressing for years to close UNRWA, but every three years the U.N. General Assembly renews the mandate for the agency's activities, which next expires on June 30, 2026. The Trump administration stopped U.S. funding for UNRWA, but the Biden administration restored it, despite Israeli claims of incitement in its textbooks, the employment of terrorist operatives and the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem.

The Wall Street Journal newspaper on Monday published parts of the intelligence information that was transferred to the U.S., and led to Sunday's suspension of U.S. aid to the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees. According to the report, 10% of UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip have ties to terrorist organizations. Reuters on Monday reported that approximately 190 UNRWA employees - including teachers in the agency's schools - are Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives.
Blinken says evidence of UNRWA staffers’ Oct. 7 involvement ‘highly, highly credible’
The evidence provided by Israel alleging that roughly a dozen UNRWA staffers participated in Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught is “highly credible,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday, as media outlets published additional details on the implicated employees, including photos from an Israeli dossier.

“We haven’t had the ability to investigate [the allegations] ourselves. But they are highly, highly credible,” Blinken said during a press conference.

Blinken stressed that the UN agency for Palestinian refugees plays an “indispensable” role in providing assistance to civilians in the Gaza Strip and that “no one else can play the role that UNRWA has been playing, certainly not in the near term.”

This highlights the “imperative” for UNRWA to carry out an immediate investigation and to address the allegations “as thoroughly as possible,” Blinken said.

As further allegations swirled in local and international media about deeper links between the UN agency and Gaza terror groups, Channel 12 news on Monday night revealed additional details about the 12 UNRWA employees accused of taking part in the October 7 massacre, including their photos.
White House: UNRWA has done ‘a lot of amazing work’ in Gaza
John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council spokesman, on Monday lauded the “good work” done by UNRWA amid mounting evidence that more than a thousand of the U.N. agency’s employees are members of terrorist organizations.

“Let’s not impugn the good work of a whole agency because of the potential bad actions here by a small number,” Kirby told reporters during a briefing in the West Wing of the White House.

So far, the Biden administration has only received information that “affirmatively makes the case” that 13 UNRWA employees took part in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

“But you got 13,000 UNRWA employees—the U.N. Relief and Works Agency—you’ve got 13,000 of them in Gaza alone,” Kirby noted.

He added, “I am not dismissing the seriousness of the allegations against those employees. And whether there’s going to be more that will be found, hopefully the investigation will give us more insight.”


Gottheimer to call on U.N. secretary-general, UNRWA chief to step down
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is leading a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken on Tuesday calling for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres and U.N. Relief and Works Agency Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to resign following what the New Jersey lawmaker described as the “appalling and disturbing saga” of the U.N.’s response to the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, including UNRWA employees’ participation in the Hamas assault, Jewish Insider has learned.

“We have lost all confidence in Secretary-General António Guterres’ ability to ensure that the U.N. is not actively supporting terrorism or giving refuge to known terrorists,” the letter, a draft of which was obtained by JI, reads. “Therefore, we ask you to demand that Secretary-General Guterres and UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini to immediately resign from their posts. They can no longer be entrusted to maintain international peace and security, protect all nations, and uphold international law.”

Reps. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) joined Gottheimer as original signatories to the letter, which began circulating on Capitol Hill on Tuesday afternoon.

The letter points to a series of U.N. responses and reactions to the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, including allegations that UNRWA employees were involved in the attacks, other ties between UNRWA and Hamas, the U.N.‘s equivocal initial response to the attack and UN Women’s slow response to acknowledge Hamas’ sexual violence.

The letter asks the G7 nations to investigate Hamas’ involvement in UNRWA and implement “strict ongoing oversight” of its activities.

“We must ensure not a dollar more of aid for innocent civilians ends up in the hands of terrorists. UNRWA also should immediately replace its senior leadership,” the letter reads. “It is unacceptable that U.S. tax dollars, allocated to assist innocent Palestinians, instead funded tunnels under UNRWA buildings, and paid for terrorists to murder, rape, kidnap, and hold innocent civilians hostage.”

The letter comes as other moderate pro-Israel Democrats have told JI that they’re open to seeing the organization disbanded and replaced.


New Zealand to suspend UNRWA funding - report
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon announced that New Zealand will be suspending funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency until further investigations are done, according to a Ynet report on Tuesday.

New Zealand will be joining 11 other countries that have also suspended UNRWA funding this past week.

"The allegations presented [against the UNRWA] are extremely serious. It is important that the organization is fully investigated," said Luxon.


Hillel Neuer on ABC News: UN Workers accused of helping Hamas
Hillel Neuer appeared on ABC News with Linsey Davis to discuss the U.N. workers accused of helping Hamas in the October 7th attacks on Israel, and new evidence that he will be presenting before U.S. Congress on January 30th.




The Commentary Magazine Podcast: UNRWA Uncovered
Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz & Matthew Continetti
Today we get into the growing UNRWA scandal and how it exposes the deep, structural absurdities of the agency’s very existence. We also talk about the American elite’s twisted view of U.S.-Israeli relations and whether Joe Biden should pay attention to younger Americans who oppose his support for Israel.


UNRWA a ‘Frankenstein monster’ which came back to bite the West
Sky News contributor Kosha Gada says UNRWA is a “Frankenstein monster” which came back to life to bite the West.

Her comments follow Australia suspended funding to the UN organisation after Israel made allegations saying UNRWA had staff who were involved in Hamas’ October 7 massacre.

“It had good origins; it made sense when it was set up,” she told Sky News host Peta Credlin.

“But it’s a classic case of just something that’s permanently temporary.

“It overstays its welcome.”




Media Outlets Continue To Conceal the Appalling Truth About UNRWA
Following the release of evidence by Israel that Palestinian UNRWA employees took part in the Hamas massacre on October 7, most of the organization’s major donors have suspended funding to the Palestinian refugee agency.

The United States, UNRWA’s biggest donor, was the first to announce its decision to withdraw aid in a statement that said officials were “extremely troubled” by the allegations that include Palestinian agency workers participated in the kibbutz atrocities, kidnapped Israeli hostages, and helped coordinate the movement of weapons that were used in the attack.

According to a dossier handed over to the U.S. State Department, at least 1,200 UNRWA employees were found to be members of either Hamas or Islamic Jihad.

None of these revelations, however, will come as a surprise to anyone who’s a bit more clued up about UNRWA’s chequered history.

What we (and other organizations) have repeatedly demonstrated over the years is how UNRWA is completely rotten to its core.

From UNRWA employees discovered to be members of terrorist groups, to teachers in its schools who encouraged students to murder Jews, and the agency’s facilities being used as terror bases, UNRWA has repeatedly shown that it is corrupt, inefficient, and, as the evidence indicates, exacerbating the plight of Palestinians.

Despite all of this — specifically, the disturbing truth about UNRWA being laid bare — a peculiar incredulity emerged among media outlets regarding the latest revelations. This was followed by a rush to either downplay the findings or engage in excessive handwringing about the potential consequences for Palestinians without UNRWA.

The BBC, for example, obscured the horrifying accusations against UNRWA that resulted in it being defunded by referring to it as a “diplomatic storm” in the headline of a piece that suggested heartlessness by donor states that have removed the “lifesaving assistance on which two million Gazans rely…”

Indeed, the whole piece reads as a sort of press release for UNRWA, which is described in positively glowing terms as running Gaza’s “medical and educational facilities, including teacher training centres and almost 300 primary schools – as well as producing the textbooks that educate young Palestinians.”

While the BBC does reference some of UNRWA’s troubling history, it frames these issues as mere accusations from Israeli governments, which have “long denounced the agency’s teaching and textbooks for, in their view, perpetuating anti-Israel views.”

A note to the BBC: children’s textbooks that explicitly call for the genocide of Jews, encourage youngsters to become suicide bombers, and glorify Palestinian terrorists go beyond “perpetuating anti-Israel views.


Netanyahu: No withdrawal from Gaza or freeing many terrorists for hostages
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday pledged not to free large numbers of Palestinian terrorists or withdraw troops from Gaza as part of a hostage deal with the Hamas terrorist organization.

“We will not withdraw the Israel Defense Forces from the Gaza Strip and we will not release thousands of terrorists. None of this will happen,” Netanyahu told students and staff during a visit to the Bnei David pre-military academy in Eli in Samaria’s Binyamin region.

“I hear talk about all kinds of deals. I would like to make it clear: We will not conclude this war without achieving all of its goals. This means eliminating Hamas, returning all of our hostages and ensuring that Gaza never again constitutes a threat to Israel,” the premier said.

Established in 1988, Bnei David is the oldest and one of the largest religious Zionist pre-army institutions in Israel. Some 40% of its students have gone on to become officers in the IDF, and since Oct. 7, 14 of its graduates have been killed fighting Hamas terrorists.

Netanyahu’s remarks came as Israel’s national security minister, Otzma Yehudit Party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir, in a tweet, threatened to bring down the government if it reaches a “reckless” agreement with Hamas.
Gallant: IDF to retain security control in Gaza after Hamas defeated
The Israel Defense Forces will retain full security control over the Gaza Strip after the war with Hamas ends, giving it the freedom to operate there similarly to the way it currently does in Judea and Samaria, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israeli lawmakers on Tuesday.

“After the war, when it’s over, I think it’s completely clear that Hamas won’t control Gaza. Israel will control [it] militarily, but won’t control it in a civilian sense,” Gallant told members of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee during a briefing at his Tel Aviv office.

“When we’re talking about military freedom of operation, look what happened tonight in Jenin,” said Gallant, referring to an IDF raid on the Ibn Sina hospital in the Samaria city on Monday. During the raid, Israeli forces killed three members of a Hamas cell planning imminent terror attacks, according to the IDF.

“This is military freedom of operation at the highest level, and yet we don’t control the area in a civilian sense,” said Gallant, adding that this is achievable in Gaza as well.

Jenin is controlled by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority. The United States has insisted that Gaza must also be handed over to the P.A. after the war. However, Israel opposes the restoration of P.A. rule over the enclave because of Ramallah’s overt support for terrorism.

According to a recent survey carried out by Tel Aviv University, 68.9% of the Jewish Israeli public favors IDF security control in Gaza, while a quarter favors rule by international and regional Arab forces. Only 2.2% think the P.A. should be in charge of security in the Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu previously vowed to retain overall security responsibility for Gaza “for an indefinite period” after the IDF destroys Hamas.

“The massacre on Oct. 7 proved once and for all wherever there is no Israeli security control, terrorism will return and establish itself; therefore, I will not agree to concede security control under any circumstances,” Netanyahu stated during a Nov. 12 press conference.
Hamas seems to reject new hostage deal offer, says it’ll only accept full IDF pullout
Hamas on Monday evening appeared to reject a new framework for a hostage deal that had been agreed to by Israel, saying it would not accept any agreement that did not include an end to the war and the withdrawal of all Israeli troops from Gaza.

The terror group issued a statement alongside a smaller terror group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, insisting Israel must halt its “aggression” and pull out of Gaza before any exchange deal takes place.

A senior Hamas official added that the terror group wants a “complete and comprehensive ceasefire” in Gaza.

“We are talking first of all about a complete and comprehensive ceasefire, and not a temporary truce,” Taher al-Nunu told AFP, saying that once the fighting stops, “the rest of the details can be discussed” including a hostage release.

Earlier, the Qatari prime minister said that he believed Hamas had “moved” from its demand for a complete ceasefire as a condition, something that has been outright rejected by Israel.
Secret document details Hamas psychological warfare
Israeli forces in Gaza recently found a secret document written by a senior Hamas official detailing the terrorist group’s psychological warfare strategy against the Israeli public, Channel 12 reported on Monday.

Furthermore, the document was discovered at a site visited by Hamas’s senior leader in the Strip, Yahya Sinwar, according to the report. However, it was unclear whether the mastermind of the Oct. 7 massacre had penned the paper.

The document orders that photos and videos of the Israeli hostages continue to be published “due to the psychological pressure they create.” There are currently 136 captives still in the hands of Hamas.

The report also singles out Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant as a target for psychological pressure, apparently due to the terror group’s belief that he is the most susceptible to this tactic.

Additionally, the directive emphasizes the importance of maintaining the narrative that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bears responsibility for the failures of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack and pushing the idea that the IDF ground operations will not create the conditions necessary for the return of the rest of the hostages.

Moreover, the document highlights the social divide in Israel as an issue to focus on, as well as increasing pressure around the issue of the hostages and “putting sticks” in the wheels of Israel’s war.


IDF reveals how it floods Hamas underground world with anti-tunnel tool
The IDF on Tuesday finally allowed the Israeli media to publish more comprehensive details about its anti-tunnel flooding project against Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli officials have been leaking details to foreign media about what they called "Atlantis" for months, but the censor has actively prevented The Jerusalem Post and others from disclosing these details.

The IDF said that the flooding tool is one of many for fighting Hamas's tunnels, including also explosives, robots, air strikes, and sending in soldiers.

While the system has made real contributions to combatting Hamas's tunnels in some areas, there are many limits, and it is not seen as a solution to the whole tunnel problem by "snapping one's fingers" type solution. It is well known that Hamas's tunnels move in many different directions and use blast doors and other items, which could thwart or reduce the effectiveness of the flooding system.

Flooding system most effective closer to coast
The flooding system is most effective near the Mediterranean Sea and cannot be used in areas where the IDF has concerns that it could harm the Gaza land in the long term.

Special IDF analysts study different kinds of topography also to see where it is likely to be most valuable in destroying tunnels.

In addition, the IDF said that it took time to deploy the system since a whole specialized array of units had to be trained to deploy it.

A statement said that the system is " a breakthrough" for fighting Hamas's tunnels and exemplified positive cooperation between the Defense Ministry, the IDF, and other defense bodies.

The IDF declined to provide any data about how many tunnels have been destroyed by the system.


Israel minimizes civilian casualties more than anyone in history - expert
Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza than any other known army in the world has, John Spencer, who is both chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a retired US military officer, argued in an extensive thread posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.

In the thread, Spencer provided multiple examples of precautions that the IDF takes that he argued other armies do not, at least not to the same extent, or even at all. One of the most well-recognized instances of this that he mentioned is the way in which the IDF implements various methods of warning before commencing with an assault against Hamas.

He referred to this in his numerous replies to commentators on his thread. “In some cases, the IDF will call, text, and drop small munitions on the roof of a building,” he explained.

He even addressed some measures that the IDF took at the cost of its tactical advantage to save lives. The army will “provide [a] warning and evacuate urban areas/cities before the full combined air and ground attack begins. While the tactic does alert the enemy defender and provide them the military advantage to prepare further, it is one of the best ways to prevent civilian casualties,” he said.

He even addressed some measures that the IDF took at the cost of its tactical advantage to save human lives.

The thread addresses common criticisms of the IDF's methodology

Spencer then wrote about the unique complexities of warfare in the Gaza Strip, saying, “No military in modern history has faced 30,000 defenders embedded in more than seven cities, using human shields and hundreds of miles of underground networks purposely built under civilian sites while holding hundreds of hostages and launching over 12,000 rockets at the attacking military’s civilians’ areas.”

One prevailing criticism against Israel’s warfare tactics has been that Israel may be using explosives inhumanly. That is, some are questioning whether the IDF is employing precision-guided missiles (PCMs), or unguided ones, and what the size of the payload of this is, vs. the tactical advantage gained.

Spencer had much to say regarding these issues in the thread as well.


Israeli commandos, dressed as doctors, foil terror attack in Jenin hospital
Israeli counterterrorism forces foiled an October 7-inspired terror attack overnight on Tuesday, targeting a cell hiding and planning the attack from the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin, the West Bank.

According to a joint statement by the IDF, Israel Police's YAMAM counterterrorism forces, and the Shin Bet, Hamas terrorist Mohammad Jalamna was killed during the operation, along with two fellow terrorists who hid alongside him at the hospital.

27-year-old Jalamna, a resident of the Jenin refugee camp, held direct communications with Hamas leadership abroad. According to the statement, he was responsible for transferring weaponry and ammunition to Hamas terrorists across the West Bank for shooting attacks targeting Israelis.

The Israeli commando forces entered the hospital dressed as doctors and nurses, as seen in CCTV footage shared on social media.

'Planned to carry out October 7-inspired attack'

Furthermore, Jalamna used the Jenin hospital as a secret base of operations as he was planning an infiltration attack akin to and inspired by the October 7 massacre, it added.

Along with Jalamneh, Mohammed and Basel Ghazawi, brothers and Palestinian terrorists, were also killed by Israeli forces. Mohammed was a terrorist operative of the Jenin battalions who was involved in numerous attacks including firing at IDF soldiers in the area in recent weeks, the IDF said.

Basel was a Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative involved in terror activities in the area.


After her death, Israeli lone soldier's family donates her organs
Cpt. Rebecca Henrietta Johanna Baruch, a lone soldier who made aliyah from the Netherlands and chose to serve in the IDF, tragically passed away.

Her grieving family has made the selfless decision to donate her organs, with the transplants to follow shortly. Even in her untimely death, Baruch will continue to save lives.

During her first year of service, Baruch lived at Kibbutz Sa'ad in the Gaza border area. She then decided to enlist as a combat soldier and completed officer training. Remembering a beloved IDF lone soldier

Baruch's comrades remember her as someone who fearlessly tackled challenges and served as an inspiration to her fellow soldiers. When the war began, she immediately returned to Israel to resume her military service.

Unfortunately, a few days ago, she fell ill with sinusitis, which rapidly deteriorated into a severe infection. Despite the best efforts of doctors at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, her condition worsened until her tragic passing.


Pressure Mounts on Biden To Confront Iran After Drone Strike Kills US Soldiers
The Biden administration is under immense pressure from Republicans and some Democrats in Congress to confront Iran and its terror proxies following a weekend drone strike by Tehran’s terrorist proxies that killed 3 U.S. service members and wounded 25 more.

Republican foreign policy leaders quickly blamed President Joe Biden’s "doctrine of appeasement" towards Iran for the most recent strike in Jordan, which follows months of Tehran-orchestrated attacks on American and Western forces in the region in the wake of Israel’s war against Hamas. Key Democrats are also beginning to express concerns about the administration’s tepid response thus far to Iran’s increasingly deadly strikes, with Sen. Ben Cardin (D., Md.) saying the weekend drone attack is "an escalation and cannot go unanswered."

Amid this pressure, the White House is signaling it has no desire to directly confront Tehran, with national security adviser John Kirby telling NBC this morning, "We are not looking for war with Iran." Biden said on Sunday the United States would "hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing," but no concrete details have emerged since then.

Iran’s terror proxies—including the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and militant factions in Iraq and Syria—have been targeting U.S. forces and Western assets in the region for months, drawing limited retaliatory attacks from the American military.

While it is clear Tehran is orchestrating the attack spree in response to U.S. support for Israel’s war against Hamas, the Biden administration has repeatedly indicated it is not interested in directly targeting Iran’s hardline regime. But with three soldiers now dead, Republicans in particular blame Biden for emboldening Tehran through a policy of appeasement that has included rolling back sanctions and providing the hardline regime with billions in cash windfalls—money that is used to fund the terror proxies currently attacking Americans.

"President Biden’s fear of escalation has morphed into a doctrine of appeasement. The weakness shown by this administration emboldens our enemies," Rep. Mike Rogers (R., Ala.), chair of the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. "The idea that appeasement will lead to better actions by states and terror groups is profoundly wrong. The consequences of American weakness on the world stage are on full display."

Sen. James Risch (R., Idaho), ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also blamed "the Biden Administration’s weak policies" for producing "this dangerous situation."


Pentagon Identifies Soldiers Killed in Iranian-Backed Militia Drone Attack in Jordan
The Pentagon has identified the three soldiers killed in the Iranian-backed militia drone attack in Jordan.

Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Ga.
Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Ga.
Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Ga.

The drone attack killed the soldiers on Sunday.

Moffett, Rivers, and Sanders belonged “to the 718th Engineer Company, 926th Engineer Battalion, 926th Engineer Brigade, Fort Moore, Ga.”
Daniel Greenfield: BLM Has No Comment on Iran’s Killing of 3 Black Soldiers

Lee Kern: Promise you will never forget who Hamas are
I’m scared people will somehow forget how evil Hamas are. Or rather - be seduced by the illusion of a reward that causes them to compromise on Hamas existing.

They cannot exist.

They have to be destroyed - and anyone like them has to be destroyed. There cannot be any compromise with them on anything. Our civilisation is incompatible with theirs. They will always seek to destroy us. So we have to destroy them.

It’s been three months since I saw a screening of the Hamas atrocities.

You can read about that here.

And you can read the follow up I wrote about its affect on me here.

I still get intrusive images from the footage now and then.

I spoke to other people who saw the film and they seem fine.

Everyone’s different and I guess this is just me.

It’s not as bad as it was.

In the immediate aftermath it was awful and would leave me a mess.

Now an image can pop in my head and I can just let it pass out without too much drama. It happened in the dentist chair. It happened at dinner. It can happen while I’m working or in conversation with someone. Sometimes it can leave me sad. Other times there’s a resentful tiredness in having to make an effort to place my thoughts elsewhere and let it pass out my head.

In bed the other night I didn’t have the energy to deflect the images that popped into my head. So I decided to indulge them and just let them possess me and to feel sad. I did this for a few minutes and then I sat up in bed and thought I would draw the most commonly recurring images I experience. I thought maybe there’d be some therapeutic value to that? Maybe my drawings would become the memory and displace the actual images I saw in HD footage? In movies they always get someone to draw things?

I don’t know.

Anyway, I drew five images that most persistently come into my mind.

Please don’t worry about me or ask me to take care of myself. I do. This is part of it.

These are things Hamas deliberately did to human beings:
How a Druze mom fooled Hamas into revealing its attack plans on Oct. 7, saving her town
Druze mother of four Nasreen Yousef helped to prevent a bloodbath in her community on the southern Gaza border on October 7 by using her native Arabic to convince terrorists that she would give them money and smuggle them out, while she gathered critical intelligence and passed it to the IDF.

Nasreen, her husband Eyad, and their four children live in the predominantly Jewish village of Moshav Yated, just four kilometers (2.5 miles) from the Israeli border with Gaza and the border with Egypt’s Sinai.

The Yousef home, the closest to Moshav Yated’s perimeter fence, was the first stop for Hamas terrorists ordered to attack the community in the early hours of October 7, she told Channel 12/Keshet TV, which first broke the story of her unlikely role in stopping the massacre.

The terrorists breaking into the small farming community were among thousands of Hamas operatives who crossed into Israel from Gaza that day, murdering some 1,200 in brutal circumstances, abducting 253, and shooting and burning their way through dozens of Gaza border villages and towns.

During the attack, Eyad Yousef joined the moshav’s security team despite a broken leg in a cast, while Nasreen, 46, and the children hid in their protected room at home, along with members of a neighboring family.

But when Eyad and friends caught a terrorist about to enter the family’s yard, Nasreen walked out of the house to try to find out how many more armed Hamas men were on their way. Nasreen Yousef filmed by her daughter Shiran, 13, talking to Hamas terrorists near the yard of her home on Moshav Yated, close to the southern Gaza border, October 7, 2023.

“I told him, ‘Look me in the eyes, I’m not frightened of you,'” she recalled, adding that the young gunman had an expression on his face that she subsequently discovered was due to him being on drugs.

Nasreen managed to convince the gunman that she was on his side and would help to get him to safety, she told The Times of Israel.


"We are seeing a moment of incredible unity in Israeli society...against the army of terror"
"We are seeing a moment of incredible unity in Israeli society as everyone understands we have to pursue victory...against the army of terror" Israeli Government spokesperson Eylon Levy speaks to CBN News




Heading For World War 3? Cenk Uygur vs Dennis Prager On Israel
Piers Morgan Uncensored is joined by Conservative commentator Dennis Prager and pro-Palestinian and Cenk Uygur as President Biden says the United States will respond as an Iran-backed militia kills three US soldiers in Jordan.

Donald Trump says we’re heading for World War 3 - is the war in Gaza spiralling out of control?

Piers Morgan leads another feisty debate in which Dennis accuses 'left-wingers' like Cenk of 'smearing' Israel and misusing the word genocide - plus to explains why he thinks America should leave the United Nations,.






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This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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