Tuesday, February 25, 2025

02/25 Links Pt1: A Sickening Display of Evil; Noa Argamani addresses the UNSC; The Red Cross' shameful failure on Israeli hostages

From Ian:

A Sickening Display of Evil
This was not just a crime against innocent people, but a crime against decency and humanity itself.

Unsurprisingly, Hamas and their twisted apologists around the world still blame Israel for their deaths, saying Israeli airstrikes are what killed them. But this is a double lie, a twisted perversion of reality, of which Hamas have become such masters, on two separate levels.

Forensic evidence now shows the two brothers, along with their mother, were murdered by gunman, not in an airstrike.

But even if that were not true, Hamas has been responsible for every death, both Palestinian and Israeli, since October 7 and every day afterwards, no matter the context. If they had not decided to launch a genocidal war on the people of Israel then Shiri Bibas and her children would be alive today. So would every Israeli child and every Palestinian child and every Thai worker and every pensioner and every teenager dancing at a festival celebrating peace.

Everyone.

The ceasefire deal for the release of Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas was not a diplomatic negotiation. It was blackmail and ransom, no different than if someone was to hold a gun to your child’s head and threaten to pull the trigger unless you give in to their demands.

And yet some world leaders, including Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, hail this deal as a step toward some kind of lasting peace, still failing to grasp the magnitude of the enemies Israel faces— their sheer brutality and unwavering, maniacal goal of destroying a country and its people.

Hamas does not seek compromise – it seeks annihilation, and any leader who does not understand this fundamental truth is not just misguided but complicit in enabling further atrocities. Can they truly not see that any group capable of the sadistic events of October 7, is totally incapable of forging any kind of lasting peace?

However, beyond the politics and the diplomacy and the international statements, is a very human story. In Israel tonight, there is a man called Yarden Bibas who was held hostage for 484 days of hell. When he was kidnapped, he had a loving wife and two small children – flaming red hair, smiles that could melt your heart. Today, his family is gone.

And so, our hearts will break, as they should.

Our tears will flow, as they must.

The grief is immeasurable, and the trauma in our community is real and it’s raw.

Throughout our history, we have endured unimaginable tragedies, yet we continue to fight for our existence and our rights, standing tall and proud – even if, at times, it feels like we’re standing alone.

We will mourn Shiri, Kfir, Ariel and every other victim of the October 7 atrocities. As painful as this moment is, it will not weaken our resolve, but strengthen it to keep on fighting our enemies so that such atrocities can never be repeated.
Seth Mandel: What Do the Palestinians Want?
The nature of the Arab-Israeli conflict is that a lot of people claim to speak for the Palestinians. In our current moment, that role has lately fallen to Egypt, which has been putting specific conditions on a postwar plan for Gaza.

Egypt opposes, understandably, forced population transfer. And it insists that any postwar plan puts the two sides on track to achieve a two-state solution.

But Egypt also opposes voluntary population transfer—that is, emigration. It doesn’t want Palestinians. Therefore, it opposes any plan that relocates Gazans while rebuilding the Strip out of fear they will land in Egypt (Jordan shares that fear for itself).

Arab countries simply don’t want Palestinians going anywhere. That is not what Palestinians want, as pollster Khalil Shikaki found by actually asking them: “On the eve of October 7, about a third of Gazans and about a fifth of West Bankers said they were considering emigrating from Palestine… The most preferred destination for immigration is Turkey, followed by Germany, Canada, the United States and Qatar.”

And that was before the war.

The more glaring contradiction between the purported spokespersons for the Palestinians and the Palestinians themselves, however, is on the two-state solution. Today the BBC premiered a documentary in which former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert displays the map of a proposed two-state solution he offered Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in 2008. Abbas rejected the offer.

It is not the first time the basic contours of Israel’s 2008 offer of Palestinian statehood have been described—those details came to light about a decade ago. But it is the first time that Olmert’s map itself has been revealed. And the documentary also gives us the reaction from Abbas’s then-chief of staff Rafiq Husseini.

The map was the result of a series of negotiations held between Abbas and Olmert. The two leaders agreed to hold a joint meeting of the their respective map experts the following day. History was, Olmert sensed, being made.

Yet, as Abbas and Husseini drove away that night, “Of course, we laughed,” Husseini says.

Of course they laughed! Nothing is funnier than stringing Israel along to a final deal and then walking away from the altar.
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour: Why There Should Not Be a Palestine
Watching the gruesome spectacle of Hamas parading dead bodies as cheerful families celebrated the occasion, Hussein Aboubakr Mansour came to the conclusion that “the Palestinian national cause, as conceived and developed over the last half-century, has become irredeemable.” The hope of a deradicalized national movement focused on building a new Arab state rather than destroying the Jewish one, Mansour argues, is in vain.

Any attempt at constructive state-building has been ground into dust by corruption, murderous factionalism, and the unabashed worship of violence. Hence, Palestine must die if the Palestinians are to live. Some might say it is drastic, even cruel, to declare that a people’s aspiration to statehood should be abandoned. But the events we just witnessed . . . are not an isolated atrocity but the peak of a long march of destruction. They reflect a deeper moral and cultural collapse: no meaningful leadership capable of guiding Palestinians toward a humane, tolerant society appears to exist.

To argue that Palestinians should be absorbed into existing states is not to remove their communal identity; it is to acknowledge that the formal structure called “Palestine” has, in practice, become a source of destruction for themselves and for the region. If the dream of a stable, rights-based Palestinian sovereignty were within reach, it would have emerged during at least one of the diplomatic windows over the past decades. Instead, repeated attempts have collapsed into bloodshed.

The idea of Palestine has, tragically, turned into an ideological snare that captures each new generation from birth, seeding them with the promise of “liberation” that only ever seems to produce more suffering. In many Arab countries, Palestinians have lived as second-class refugees for decades, denied meaningful integration or citizenship by the very governments that proclaim solidarity.

Perhaps the most merciful and responsible course is for the Palestinian identity—as a state-bound ambition—to be gently laid to rest while families find refuge in the more concrete structures that already exist around them. The cost of perpetuating a vision that repeatedly descends into cruelty is simply too high. If we truly care about the lives of Palestinians, Israelis, and their neighbors, it may be time to walk away from the fantasy of “Palestine” and offer every real opportunity for inclusion and a dignified future elsewhere.


Argamani to be first freed hostage to address UNSC
Noa Argamani will speak at the United Nations Security Council’s monthly session on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Tuesday, marking the first time a released hostage has briefed the council, according to Israel’s mission to the United Nations.

Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, invited the Oct. 7 survivor to speak.

Israel rescued Argamani, 27, from a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip on June 8, 2024. She was captured by Hamas at the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im during the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023 assault.

She has been advocating for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza, last month attending the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump and meeting with U.S. Congress members.

At the Conservative Political Action Committee just outside of Washington on Saturday, Trump noted that many of the hostages are coming back dead, but emphasized the importance of bringing them home. He recognized several Oct. 7 survivors in the audience, including Argamani and Ilana Gritzewsky, and led the crowd in a round of applause for them, calling them “a beautiful group of people.”


The Moral Case for Mass Relocation
“Population transfer is a grave surgical operation, justifiable, not for cosmetic reasons, but only where the sole alternative would be chaos and destruction.” —Joseph Schechtman, 1953.

President Donald Trump’s proposal to permanently relocate the entire population of Gaza to neighboring countries has caused a storm of condemnation. Foreign leaders, U.N. officials and experts have decried the plan as ethnic cleansing, a violation of international law, and a war crime. But in the years before and after World War II, the imperial powers, the fledgling international bodies, and global leaders alike, operating within the post-Versailles order founded on the breakup of large multiethnic empires, saw population transfer, both voluntary and compulsory, as a humanitarian tool to avoid future wars. In fact, they considered it not only necessary and legal, but also morally justified and advantageous. For British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon, who negotiated the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, population transfer would achieve the “removal of old and deep-rooted causes of quarrel”—an act that reflected the very basis for the existence of nation-states, which gave a political voice to individual peoples.

A pressing problem for the post-Versailles order occurred when part of the people of one nation-state found itself trapped by map-makers and the realities of defensible geography into living in someone else’s national home. The problem was especially acute when these ethnic minorities became embroiled in war between the nation-state of their ethnicity and their country of birth. To avoid both national disenfranchisement, and to limit future wars, the answer to such problems, whenever practical, was population transfer. The first internationally sanctioned example of “unmixing populations” after the Great War was the voluntary exchange of respective ethnic minorities between Bulgaria and Greece. The Treaty of Lausanne then sanctioned the compulsory exchange of Greeks in Turkey and Turks in Greece. While 1.6 million people endured all kinds of suffering in the process, in the end the misery was widely judged to be worth the price as the transfer created a new reality in which ethnic, religious, and culturally monolithic populations were formed, putting an end to violence and conflict.

Understanding the complexities of migration, refugees, and population transfer desperately requires a capable historian. Fortunately we have one in Joseph Schechtman, a Russian Jew who authored seminal books such as European Population Transfers, 1939-1945 (1946); Population Transfers in Asia (1949); The Arab Refugee Problem (1952); and The Refugees in the World: Displacement and Dislocation (1964). Schechtman was a believer in the utility of mass population transfer, which he saw as a useful solution to thorny and bloody nationality disputes and presented a difficult subject in political terms that leaders, politicians, and ordinary people could understand.

His work has since fallen out of favor, however, because while it may be tempting to view large-scale demographic separations as neat and effective solutions, forcible movement of people from one place to another comes with a host of tragic consequences that are now considered taboo to advocate for—even if it also means saving lives. Of course, historically, transfers very frequently were less than orderly processes. Take the story of Jews displaced by the Russian army during World War I, which tells of tragedies that include death from exposure, starvation, destruction and loss of property, and mistreatment on the road to safety. Due to ineffective governments, the chance to exact vengeance, and opportunity to take someone else’s belongings, transfer is usually accompanied by tremendous suffering. To be sure, none of this bears any resemblance to what is currently under discussion for Gazans, who, despite repeatedly launching and losing wars against their more powerful neighbor, are being presented with an American offer to rebuild their lives elsewhere.
Kassy Akiva: Civilians In Gaza Support Trump’s Relocation Plan, Say Their Home Is ‘Uninhabitable’
Some civilians living in Gaza say they’re in favor of relocating to more habitable locations outside of the Gaza Strip, in line with President Donald Trump’s proposed plan, according to video of interviews from inside the war-ravaged region.

“It is our right in Gaza to have freedom of movement and travel,” said a 22-year-old law student, her face blurred for safety, during an interview obtained by The Daily Wire. “In light of the suffering by the people of Gaza, the need to travel has become urgent, as it is no longer suitable for living a dignified life as other people live.”

“We want to feel safe and secure — to feel stability and live a normal life,” the female student said, adding that even with the ceasefire, the situation is still dire.

Trump has repeatedly discussed the humanitarian crisis in Gaza since announcing his plans during a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month. Trump, who has described Gaza as “unlivable” and a “demolition site,” said Gazans should move to new permanent communities in Arab countries where they may have a chance at a more peaceful life.

Trump said the United States would be responsible for dismantling unexploded bombs and other weapons, demolishing and leveling destroyed buildings, and creating an economic development zone that would “supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for the people of the area.”

The student added that she feels as if Trump has stopped talking about his plan which has caused “great frustration.”

“We don’t know if Trump has backed down or abandoned the idea,” she said. “The world forgot us in this situation where there is neither war nor peace.”

She added that Hamas refusing to hand over governance “terrifies” her and other Gazans because the terror group may cause the war to resume, and “with it, the fear of death.”

“We are just civilians,” she said. “We are not part of Hamas and we don’t want to die.”


Lapid says Egypt should take temporary control of Gaza, in exchange for debt relief
Yair Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader and former prime minister, laid out a plan on Tuesday for Egypt to take temporary control of Gaza for eight to 15 years after the war in Gaza, in cooperation with various other regional powers, in exchange for international relief of its foreign debt obligations.

Under the plan, after the end of the three-phase cease-fire and hostage-release deal between Hamas and Israel, Egypt, backed by a United Nations Security Council resolution with some partnership from the Gulf and others in the international community, would take “temporary guardianship” of Gaza, Lapid said in an event at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Lapid said that, based on the completion of “measurable benchmarks” in anti-corruption and deradicalization, Egypt would turn over control of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority at the end of its guardianship period, in coordination with Israel and the United States.

Lapid said that there’s precedent in the 1960s for such an arrangement, with support from the Arab League. He said that Saudi Arabia and the Abraham Accords states, as well as the U.S., would be part of the deal, with the U.S. and others making investments in reconstruction — a provision that Lapid claimed was consistent with President Donald Trump’s vision for Gaza.

“On the security side, Israel and Egypt have a deep and lasting strategic relationship supported by the United States. Egypt has an interest in the stability of Gaza and the region as a whole,” Lapid said. “Egypt wants to remove the idea of a population transfer from Gaza to Egypt.”

In exchange, the international community would pay off Egypt’s mounting international debts, both incentivizing Egypt to participate in the plan and stabilizing the Egyptian government.

“We can take these two problems and combine them into one solution,” Lapid said.

Any Palestinians who have somewhere else to move to would be allowed to do so, he continued.

Lapid framed his “Egyptian Solution” as having the effect of also solving long-running concerns from Israel and others in the region about the stability of the Egyptian government, a critical ally to Israel. Lapid warned that the fall of the Egyptian government could set off a chain reaction around the Middle East.
Smotrich: Israel to seize land if Gaza hostages not returned
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Monday that if Hamas fails to return all of the hostages it is holding by Saturday, Israel will permanently seize land in the Gaza Strip.

Speaking at the Sovereignty Conference 2025 in Jerusalem, the Religious Zionism Party head said that if the hostages, both the living and the dead, are not returned by then, “Israel will expand the agricultural areas of the kibbutzim Be’eri and Nir Oz into the perimeter area of ​​the Gaza Strip.”

Kibbutz agriculture, he continued, “will expand at the expense of Gaza—and this land will remain in our hands forever.”

This ultimatum was the most concrete action plan that came out of the conference, an annual event focused on making Judea, Samaria and Gaza inseparable parts of the State of Israel. This year’s conference was held at the Vert Hotel near Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, with some 200 people in attendance.

During his address, Smotrich also said that Israel would return to fighting in Gaza, but did not indicate when.

“We are preparing, gaining capabilities, and when we feel we are ready, we will open the gates of hell on Hamas again. It requires patience, but in the end we will bring about the desired outcome,” he said.

During a later Q&A with Channel 12 News journalist Amit Segal, Smotrich said that in a year from now, Gaza will be “held by us, with fewer Gazans and more Israelis moving there. If we take out 10,000 Gazans a day—within four months the Strip will be empty. That would be the best solution—for us and for them.”
A deep state doesn’t get any deeper than this
The extent to which Israel is ruled by unelected officials is difficult to convey to outsiders. It sounds too fantastic. So fantastic in fact, that it may be best described as “legal surrealism.”

Our rulers sound like they speak the language of politics and law, but much of what they say makes no sense at all. Consider the case of Benjamin Netanyahu’s testimony in his own trial.

Though Israel is in a state of war on several fronts, the judges presiding in that trial are forcing him to testify three days a week, every week, because, they have argued, it is “in the public interest” to bring the trial to a speedy conclusion. So, determining the exact number of cigars that Mr. Netanyahu received as gifts from friends has come to take precedence over his running of the war.

The judges know, of course, that they will pay no price for their risible definition of “the public interest,” which the public itself would undoubtedly have rejected. Because Israel’s deep state has achieved the dream of bureaucrats since the dawn of bureaucracy: the complete divorce of authority from accountability. The judges know that if their lopsided priorities hinder the war effort, it will be the prime minister, not those who coerced him, who will pay the political price.

At this late stage in the game, one may speculate that this is exactly the point of their whole exercise. Because the Netanyahu trial is not a real criminal procedure. It is a means for doing what elections could not: removing him from power. It is an arena of the struggle for supremacy between democracy on the one hand and the administrative state on the other.

The exacting schedule that the judges have imposed on the prime minister is less a reflection of any tangible public interest, and more part of a trap that our clever jurists have laid down for Netanyahu. You see, they have invented something they call “essential incapacitation.”
Israeli judiciary could torpedo Gaza resettlemenent plan
U.S. President Donald Trump has firmly reiterated his commitment to resettling Gaza civilians elsewhere, most notably during his recent meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Many responses to his plan focus on the alleged merits or flaws of such a proposal or on the challenge of finding willing host countries. Yet a major obstacle to Trump’s resettlement plans may well come from unexpected quarters: the Israeli judiciary.

Such judicial intervention against Trump’s relocation scheme might sound far-fetched, though only to those unfamiliar with the absurdities of Israeli jurisprudence.

Barak Medina, the former dean of Israel’s top law school whose theories often predict the rulings of the court, argued in a recent column that Netanyahu’s government has a compulsory legal duty to accept a deal with Hamas in which hostages are returned in exchange for a full withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war. According to Medina, this obligation stems from the hostages’ “right to life” and the government’s “disproportionate” preference for a better deal, and ought to be directly enforced by judges.

In a legal environment where such groundless judicial intervention in core national security decisions is routine, a court derailing Trump’s resettlement plan would be just another Tuesday.

Indeed, it seems that Gali Baharav-Miara, Israel’s attorney general (a position largely regarded as a proxy of the country’s supreme court) has demanded that she be “consulted” by the Israeli government as to the “legality” of implementing Trump’s plan.


How the U.S. Department of Justice Can Disrupt Hamas
The Trump administration established the Joint Task Force October 7, a unit within the Justice Department devoted to investigating Hamas activities in and outside the U.S.

The unit now has the painstaking task of bringing to justice Hamas leaders and all those involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and to dismantle Hamas activities in the U.S., where supporters have established extensive fundraising and propaganda networks.

Last September, the House Ways and Means Committee accused several U.S.-based organizations of spreading antisemitism and being financially linked to Hamas, including American Muslims for Palestine and Students for Justice in Palestine.
Trump rescinds Biden-era rule linking arms sales and human rights
The Trump administration on Friday axed a Biden-era regulation preventing United States arms transfers from being used in violation of international law.

The White House repealed the Feb. 8, 2024 National Security Memorandum (NSM-20), titled, “Safeguards and Accountability With Respect to Transferred Defense Articles and Defense Services,” in an order by U.S. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, The Washington Post reported.

The Biden directive required recipients of U.S. arms to provide written assurances within 45 days that they were abiding by international law. Israel provided those assurances in a letter on March 20, 2024.

The memorandum came about due to pressure from a group of Democratic senators who proposed an amendment the day before NSM-20 was produced that would have required the president to report to Congress whether countries receiving military equipment acted in compliance with international law.

That group was headed by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), whose anti-Israel rhetoric grew louder as the Gaza war wore on, accusing Israel of deliberately withholding food from Gazan children, which he called “a textbook war crime” in a Feb. 12, 2024 speech on the Senate floor.

“That makes those who orchestrate it war criminals. So now the question is, what will the United States do?” said Van Hollen.

Claims of starvation in the Gaza Strip (accusations which began immediately following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack) were later proven false.

The Washington Post suggested that Biden’s directive was motivated by his prospects in the coming presidential election, noting that images of the destruction in Gaza “emerged as a political liability as he faced mounting opposition from Arab Americans and Muslim Americans during his reelection campaign.”
Senators slam Abbas after he clarifies ‘pay-for-slay’ will continue
News that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had publicly refuted reports that he had put an end to the PA’s “martyr payments” was met with dismay and frustration on Capitol Hill.

Abbas said at a Fatah Revolutionary Council meeting on Thursday that the PA would continue paying terrorists who kill Israelis and their families “even if we have only one cent left.” The PA president said that those who carry out terror attacks against Israelis “are more precious than all of us combined.”

“I will never allow and you will never allow the reduction of any obligation, interest or cent that is given to them,” Abbas said. “They must receive everything as in the past.”

The PA originally posted the video to its social media platforms before quickly taking it down. It resurfaced after Khaled Abu Toameh of the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs shared the full speech. The address included a section on the “pay-for-slay” program, through which the PA has paid monthly salaries to terrorists in prison or the families of terrorists killed by Israel for over 30 years. The program has paid out hundreds of millions of dollars annually in recent years.

Senators on both sides of the aisle excoriated Abbas over the remarks and his refusal to shelve the program, which some lawmakers had been skeptical was ever going to be scrapped.

“Abbas and other top Palestinian Authority officials have said for years, over and over again, that they consider pay-for-slay payments and the terrorism those payments incentivize to be at the core of Palestinian governance and identity. They never stopped the payments, and they were never going to,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Jewish Insider in a statement.

“It’s baffling that anyone would have fallen for what was obviously a propaganda operation being peddled by biased activists masquerading as journalists and think tankers,” Cruz added, noting his longstanding distrust of Abbas and the PA.


WaPo Columnist, Confronted at a Book Event Over Her Hamas Sympathies, Says She Makes 'No Apologies' for Supporting October 7
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah said Monday that she has no regrets about retweeting a post supporting Hamas's October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and blamed racism for the backlash to her pro-Hamas sympathies.

"I make no apologies for standing on the side of Palestinian liberation, at all," Attiah said after a woman confronted her over the pro-Hamas post at a book signing, according to footage recorded by Algemeiner's Corey Walker.

The post, which Attiah retweeted soon after it was posted on the day of Hamas's massacre, read, "What did y'all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers."

Attiah said at the signing that the confrontation is "actually an example of … how violent it is, the response is, to anyone who speaks about, uh, Israel-Palestine and, frankly, I'd say, particularly if you're black." She did not mention that the woman who confronted her was also black.

The Post columnist has a long history of condemning the Jewish state and its people for defending themselves. One week after the October 7 attack, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Attiah in a column rebuked Israel for fighting back against terrorists. Around the same time, she said she would "never forgive" then-president Joe Biden for supporting Israel.

She has also defended former CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill, who has used the genocidal phrase "From the river to the sea," and the anti-Semitic "Squad," Commentary noted in December 2023.




Jonathan Tobin: Israel was right to stick with Trump at the UN
Despite Trump’s false claim that Ukraine started the war, there is no rational alternative to an effort to end a conflict that cannot be won by either side. A negotiated settlement that won’t give either Kyiv or Moscow all that they want is the only way to stop the killing and the enormous drain of American resources to continue a costly stalemate.

But there’s also no denying that backing Trump on this issue only heightens the growing isolation of the Jewish state. That is particularly true in Europe, where—outside of friendly outlier nations like Hungary—hostility for Israel is a function of the growing strength of a bizarre red-green alliance of leftists and Muslim immigrants. The European Union is horrified by Trump’s effort to end the war as well as by the administration’s willingness to note that, for all of its talk about democracy, free speech is on the wane on the continent.

Being caught in the middle between Russia and Ukraine is nothing new for Israel.

Since the war started, it has come under pressure to take an active part in Ukraine’s defense. Jerusalem denounced the invasion of Ukraine, took in refugees from the war and also provided considerable aid to Kyiv. But it refused to give it any of its precious Iron Dome air-defense batteries or completely break off relations with Moscow.

Ukrainian hypocrisy
At the time, Russia’s military presence in Syria, as well as the safety of those Jews who remained in the country after most had left in the last 35 years, provided a rationale for Jerusalem’s caution. Zelenskyy also undermined his own case when, in a virtual address to the Knesset, he falsely claimed that Ukrainians stood with the Jews during the Holocaust when, in fact, they were among the most ardent and brutal collaborators with the Nazis. Any other world leader making such an egregious claim would have been denounced as a Holocaust denier. But so great was the regard for Zelenskyy that it was largely ignored.

The same was true when it comes to how Ukraine votes in the United Nations. As Israel’s ambassador to Ukraine said in 2023, Kyiv votes against Israel more than 90% of the time and has come down on the side of antisemitic discrimination at the world body more often than not. How then can Ukraine’s fans condemn Israel’s voting?

The collapse of Russia’s Syrian ally, coupled with Israel’s victory over Hezbollah and Iran, means that Israel no longer has to worry as much about Moscow’s military might next door.

Though Trump’s victory in the 2024 elections returned a strong ally to the White House, the new administration’s flexing of its diplomatic muscles in the last month provides another reason for Israel to keep Ukraine at arm’s length.

Trump’s various statements about Hamas and the war in Gaza have brought moral clarity to the issue as well as comforted Israel. But as his Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff travels to the region seeking to keep the ceasefire/hostage release deal alive, in addition to beginning efforts to expand the 2020 Abraham Accords, Netanyahu knows full well that Trump is in charge in the region, not Israel. Washington’s positions are close to those of Israel’s though not on every issue. That’s especially true when it comes to Iran, where the president seems to prefer sanctions and negotiations to a military strike on its nuclear program.

Indeed, given the stakes involved in gaining the release of the hostages and what may be an inevitable return to the war on Hamas so as to ensure it doesn’t retain power in Gaza, Jerusalem has as much need to stick close to Trump as it ever has. Claims that he would betray Israel at the drop of a hat fly in the face of his record as a steadfast ally of the Jewish state. Still, the idea that Israel should regard Ukraine’s interests as having a greater priority than its own life-and-death struggle is risible. In that light, voting with the United States to oppose meaningless U.N. resolutions meant to make it harder to negotiate peace in Ukraine seems like a small and entirely defensible price to pay for firming up the alliance with Washington. That’s true even if it means also voting with Russia and its despicable allies.
Trump administration ‘insisted’ Israel vote against Ukraine at U.N.
The Trump administration pressured Israel to vote against a U.N. resolution on Monday affirming Ukraine’s territorial integrity and condemning Russia’s invasion of the country on its three-year anniversary, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

“There was a lot of pressure from the U.S., they really insisted,” an Israeli official told Jewish Insider on Tuesday. “It came at all levels, at the U.N., in Washington and in Israel.”

The resolution “is not our position,” the official added, and the vote, the first time Israel voted against Ukraine and with Russia since the beginning of the war, “wasn’t easy for us … We preferred to avoid this situation. We had no choice but to take a side.”

The official said that Israel “could have abstained, but I think because we asked for a lot from [the Trump administration] in recent weeks and days, the decision was to go all the way with them.”

The pro-Ukraine resolution passed with a majority of countries — 95 — supporting it. Thirteen countries opposed the resolution, including the U.S., Russia, North Korea, Hungary and others. Sixty-five abstained, including Argentina and Arab states. An American resolution calling to end the war without mentioning that Russia invaded Ukraine did not pass.

President Donald Trump says he is seeking a deal to end the war in Ukraine. He declared Ukrainian President Voldymyr Zelensky a “dictator” last week and accused him of starting the war, which began with a Russian invasion in February 2022.

Jerusalem declared its support for Kyiv in the first days of the war and sent humanitarian aid, including the first field hospital in Ukraine. However, Israel drew criticism from Ukraine in the early months of the war for not sending military aid. Israel maintained that it could not be more active in backing Kyiv because Jerusalem needed to communicate with Moscow about its presence in Syria and to keep an open channel to the Jewish community in Russia.

Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Kornichuk told JI that he was very disappointed in Israel’s vote.

“The resolution was blaming Russia for the war and supporting Ukrainian territorial integrity. Israel could have abstained, and it voted against it … It would be like if Ukraine would vote against returning the hostages to Israel,” Kornichuk said. “This is really harming our relations.”

Kornichuk did not accept the explanation that Israel needed to vote with the U.S., saying that its “neighbors Jordan and Egypt supported both the resolutions of the U.S. and Ukraine. Only Israel found itself in the position of voting with Russia and North Korea. That is sad.”

Ukraine has not voted with Israel once in the last decade on U.N. resolutions targeting the Jewish state, and voted against Israel 75% of the time, abstaining the rest of the time, according to UN Watch.
‘Hypothetical’: Huge Israel question dodged
Whether or not Australia would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in line with an international warrant remains unclear after a fiery exchange between senior government and opposition senators.

The International Criminal Court, of which Australia is a member, issued an arrest warrant for Mr Netanyahu and his former defence minister Yoav Gallant in November.

The court accused them of war crimes, including “starvation as a method of warfare”, in relation to the paused war in Gaza.

The Albanese government has not explicitly said if it would comply with the warrant, but has not ruled it out either.

Opposition senator Michaelia Cash on Tuesday put the question to Albanese government minister Don Farrell during a senate estimates hearing.

“Is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcome on Australian soil?” Senator Cash asked.

Senator Farrell, who was representing the Attorney-General, brushed the query off as a “hypothetical”.

“To the best of my knowledge, we’ve not had any request from Mr Netanyahu to come to Australia,” he said.

“So it’s something of a hypothetical question.”

But Senator Cash pressed on, shooting back that “perhaps … the reason we haven’t had a request from Prime Minister Netanyahu to come to Australia is because your government … has failed to rule out whether Mr Netanyahu would be arrested”.

“The Coalition has a very clear position on this – Mr Netanyahu is welcome in Australia and he will not be arrested,” she said.

“Will Prime Minister Netanyahu be arrested if he sets in Australia under this government, as requested by an International Criminal Court?”


Jake Wallis Simons: The Red Cross' shameful failure on Israeli hostages
In 1863, the Geneva Convention established the Red Cross emblem as a symbol of protection for medics during armed conflict.

How ironic, therefore, that in recent weeks, that same logo has appeared on the uniforms of officials taking part in the ritual mortification of hostages during those grotesque Hamas signing ceremonies, which contravene article three of the Geneva Convention prohibiting the “humiliating and degrading treatment” of prisoners of war.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, at the handover propaganda ritual on Shabbat, when hostages Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal were filmed by Hamas begging for mercy as they were forced to watch the release of their compatriots, they were sitting in a car just ten feet from Red Cross vehicles.

This came after 16 months in which the supposedly humanitarian organisation showed a marked partiality towards the war in Gaza. When it came to criticising the treatment of murderers in Israeli prisons, or posting on social media about the suffering of Palestinians, its voice was loud and clear.

But has it been straining every sinew to carry out its actual mandate of gaining humanitarian access to the hostages? In the eyes of many, not so much.

When great-grandmother Elma Avraham, 84, was released as part of the first deal, she was in critical condition, having been deprived of her medication.

Her daughter, Tal Amano, revealed that the desperate family had tried on several occasions to drop her drugs off with the Red Cross, but they refused even to accept them. After five months in hospital in Israel following her release, the elderly lady pulled through. Others weren’t so lucky.

Again, hardly a surprise. This was the organization that had refused to admit Israel’s Magen David Adom ambulance service as a member for 70 years before it eventually relented.

During the Second World War, it produced positive reports of both Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, the latter breezily whitewashed as having no “installations for exterminating civilian prisoners.”


Call me Back Podcast - with Dan Senor: The likelihood of Phase Two - with Amit Segal
As phase 1 of the ceasefire and hostage deal enters its final week, the fate of phase 2 of the deal remains uncertain. While hostages’ families are urging for a continuation of the deal to bring all the remaining hosages home, parts of the Israeli government are pressing for a return to the war.

With Mideast Envoy Steve Witkoff traveling to the region this week to push for an extension of the deal, we turned to a Call Me Back regular and leading Israeli journalist to make sense of the mixed signals we are seeing from every direction.

Amit Segal is a columnist for Yediot Ahronot, and a senior political analyst for Israel’s Channel 12.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:55 Hamas’s intentions re phase 2
08:15 Arab nations’ response to Trump’s proposal
10:58 Wittkoff’s comments on phase 2
14:00 Does the Israeli Gov. want to resume the war?
19:10 Feeling amongst Israeli public
23:33 The morality of the hostage debate
28:49 What can Israel achieve in phase 2?
32:02 Are the two objectives of the war completely at odds?
36:37 Outro


‘Another heartbreaking day’: Israel prepares for Bibas family funeral
Sky News host Sharri Markson says tomorrow will be “another heartbreaking day” for all who care about the Bibas family.

Ms Markson said the Bibas family will be “laid to rest” in a private ceremony close to Kibbutz Nir Oz.

“Where they were so cruelly taken over 500 days ago.”


Israel learned a ‘painful lesson’ from underestimating Hamas' ‘viciousness’
Former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren claims Israel “underestimated” Hamas’ savagery prior to October 7.

“It’s a question all Israelis ask themselves; how could we be shocked or taken off guard in that way? Where was the army? Why’d the army take so many hours to respond?” Mr Oren said.

“People just all the time underestimated Hamas’ viciousness, the fact that it didn’t care about getting money, it didn’t care about the safety and wellbeing of these Palestinian workers.

“We’ve had to learn a very, very painful lesson but Israel snapped back very, very quickly.”


Sharri Markson unmasks Australians who visited funeral of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon
Australians have attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in Lebanon, posing for selfies beside posters of the terrorist and filming his coffin.

Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel in September, was responsible for the murder of thousands during his three-decade reign of Hezbollah.

He also led prolific attacks against Israel from October 8, 2023.

Sky News can reveal Sydney-based religious leader, Abed AlMajeed Mourtada, attended Nasrallah's funeral.

Photographs and videos posted to social media show that he had prime seating in front of the stage, at the centre of the stadium.

Sky News submitted questions to Mourtada who confirmed that he did attend the funeral.

“Yes, I’m a proud Australian citizen. I flew to Lebanon to pay my respects to our beloved and esteemed clergy,” he said.

In Australia, he works as a religious and scout leader, teaching youth including children.

Another Australian, called Miriam, has also posted videos from Nasrallah’s funeral.

She wrote as a caption on one video:“4 Israeli jets flew above us twice.”

She also shared footage of mourners touching a coffin, writing: “Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah”.

Miriam posed for photographs in front of many tributes to Nasrallah.

On her Instagram account, she documented her travel route to Beirut, via Abu Dhabi.

In Australia, she has a children’s hair-braiding business where she claims on the Instagram page that “100 per cent of profits go to Palestine and Lebanon.”


Australia's spy chief: Antisemitism now agency's 'top priority'
Antisemitism is now the "number one priority" of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the director-general of the agency, Mike Burgess, told a Senate committee on Tuesday.

"In terms of threats to life, [antisemitism is] my agency's number one priority because of the weight of incidents we're seeing play out in this country," he told the Senate. "Antisemitism and significant antisemitism acts are prominent in our investigation caseload at this point in time."

When asked whether there had ever been a time before where a form of racism was the number one concern for ASIO, Burgess said, "I don't believe we've done that in history, certainly not my six years as director-general."

In a recent 2025 threat assessment on 19 February, Burgess said, "antisemitism festered in Australia before the tragic events in the Middle East, but the drawn-out conflict gave it oxygen – and gave some antisemites an excuse."

"Jewish Australians were also increasingly conflated with the state of Israel, leading to an increase in antisemitic incidents." He added that he was "concerned these attacks have not yet plateaued."

Expanding on this with the Senate, Burgess said he could not say whether the attacks and antisemitism had plateaued or not, but that he was concerned.

He did add that his agency has "seen a transition from harassment and intimidation through to physical targeting of communities places of worship and prominent Jewish Australians."


‘Ill-informed nonsense’: Rita Panahi blasts comments by Fatima Payman about Iran
Sky News host Rita Panahi slams Independent Senator Fatima Payman for comments she made praising the Iranian regime.

“Rogue Australian senator Fatima Payman who has described Iran, yes Iran, as an incredible place for women,” Ms Panahi said.

“As someone whose parents escaped Iran, as someone who can never go back to that country … I cannot believe the ill-informed nonsense from someone who should know better.

“This is a country who treats women like second-class citizens.”




Piers Corbyn to face trial over pro-Palestine protest outside BBC building
Piers Corbyn is set to face trial over his involvement in a pro-Palestine protest outside the BBC’s London headquarters.

Corbyn, 77, the brother of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, allegedly failed to move on when asked to do so by police during a rally in Westminster, central London, on January 18.

The Metropolitan Police had blocked plans by organisers to hold a march from Portland Place, near the headquarters of the BBC, because of its close proximity to a synagogue.

At a short hearing at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Monday, Corbyn, of Southwark, south London, spoke to confirm his name, date of birth and address.

The court heard Corbyn has previously pleaded not guilty and maintains he is not a part of the group Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC).

He was granted unconditional bail and will face trial at the same court on July 22.




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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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