Thursday, August 27, 2026

08/26 Links Pt1: Durban helped turn anti-Zionism into a global movement; Guterres: UN special rapporteurs are 'totally out of control,'; Yair Netanyahu was target of Iranian assassination

From Ian:

Gil Troy: Durban helped turn anti-Zionism into a global movement
Before commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11, it’s worth remembering another event the 9/11 horrors essentially upstaged: the UN World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa, from August 31 through September 7, 2001.

That hate-fest revived the UN’s “Zionism is racism” resolution, fueling today’s anti-racist anti-Zionism.

This irrational fury against Israel, Zionism, and the Jewish people masquerades behind the noble fight to eradicate race-based bigotry.

Remembering that conference, which negated years of Israeli attempts to compromise with Palestinians, provides a moral clarity about the conflict sadly lacking today.

It’s confusing. Sincere democratic critics offer thoughtful, patriotic reproaches of Israeli actions or leaders. But there are also satanic critics, violent evil enemies who wish to destroy the Jewish state. Durban became a Jew-hating jubilee that was so effective, it’s inspired millions of pathetic critics – driven by pathos, emotion – to hop along the legitimate anti-racist bandwagon, then vilify Israel, Zionism, and the Jews, unfairly.

Back then, most Americans mocked the absurd notion that Zionism, meaning Jewish nationalism, was racist. How tragic that today, this big Red-Green lie, uniting far-left radicals with Islamist jihadists, has seduced so many Americans.

Many pretend to be democratic critics, claiming it’s about what Israel does. But the hostility to the fact that Israel is, the obsessive Zio-trashing, and the distortions required to frame the nationalist clash between Israelis and Palestinians as a race-based conflict are downright devilish.

In 2001, the totalitarian anti-Zionism most Americans had long opposed, subordinating all other goals to the anti-Israel impulse, sabotaged yet another UN conference. 'An anti-American, anti-Israeli circus'

“Durban became the tipping point for the coalescence of a new, virulent, globalizing anti-Jewishness,” the Canadian parliamentarian and human rights activist Irwin Cotler lamented. The rhetoric there fused anti-Zionism with anti-Americanism, “laundered” through opposition to racism, Cotler noted.

The legendary Democratic congressman Tom Lantos called Durban “an anti-American, anti-Israeli circus,” often expressed in antisemitic terms – the trashing trifecta.

A Hungarian Holocaust refugee who became Congress’s human rights conscience, Lantos called Durban “the most sickening and unabashed display of hate for Jews I have seen since the Nazi period.”

Some delegates distributed a booklet caricaturing Jews with hook noses and fangs dripping blood. Seventeen thousand anti-Zionist protesters rallied, with some waving the banner “Hitler Was Right!” Other posters wished Hitler had “finished the job.”

Amid waves of Palestinian suicide bombings that destroyed the Oslo peace process and triggered Israeli army crackdowns, the conference showcased the Red-Green alliance’s global reach and anti-Zionist mania.

“Green” Islamist power hijacked the main UN conference, steering discussions away from the widespread problem of white-versus-black racism to denounce “the racist practices of Zionism” as “a new kind of apartheid.”

Although the official Durban Declaration ignored Zionism while condemning antisemitism and Islamophobia, the anti-Zionist rhetoric poisoning many speeches – backed by antisemitic hooliganism on the street – reinvigorated the “Zionism is racism” libel.

The parallel NGO forum celebrated “Red” – far-left – values, with leftist human rights organizations condemning racism, colonialism, and imperialism selectively. They found these afflictions only in the West, especially in Israel, the world’s favorite whipping boy.

The final NGO declaration launched the forum’s “Durban Strategy”: to reinstate the “Zionism is racism” resolution, boycott “Israel as an apartheid state,” and accuse the “Israeli racist system” of “acts of genocide” – in 2001.

The Palestinian firebrand Hanan Ashrawi inflamed these third-world leftist passions. Casting the Palestinians as virtuous victims facing violent victimizers, Ashrawi avowed: “in the struggle against oppression, injustice, racism, intolerance, colonialism, and exclusion, there can be no neutrality.”

The Zionism-racism charge and other categorical demonizations of Israel are accelerants. They infuriate, polarizing both sides. Which Palestinians would want to make peace with a supposedly racist, genocidal, settler-colonialist oppressor? And which Israelis would want to make peace with enemies who libel them so hysterically, while attacking them so violently?
Israel now has the power to respond to action against it with diplomatic consequences
Israel has the strength, ability to respond to action taken against it
The next test may be Britain. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband recently called Israel’s publication of tenders for construction in E1 “an unacceptable and destructive act,” demanded that Israel halt the project, and warned that the UK would not “stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution.”

Sa’ar rejected both the substance of Miliband’s statement and “the patronizing tone of his words.” That description was spot on. Britain is entitled to oppose Israeli policy. It isn’t entitled to lecture Israel as though addressing a misbehaving colonial ward whose role is to listen and obey.

Sa’ar also correctly called Miliband’s statement entirely one-sided. He then laid down the principle that should guide Israel’s response: “The UK government’s decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate. But Israel will not be a passive victim of this policy. Israel will defend its rights, its interests, and its people.”

Israel need not answer every criticism, nor should every response be maximal. But when criticism hardens into policy intended to damage the relationship, Jerusalem should determine which elements of that relationship Britain can no longer take for granted.

That may mean a diplomatic downgrade, exclusion from a particular forum, or a reassessment of specific forms of cooperation. The response should fit the offense and protect Israel’s interests – not merely vent anger.

But this is not your grandmother’s Israel. It is stronger, richer, larger, and less dependent on the goodwill of governments that demand much from it while asking little of its enemies. Its diplomacy should reflect that reality.
Netanyahu at Judea and Samaria event: This land ‘will remain ours’
Speaking at the Binyamin Regional Council’s annual flagship event highlighting the past year’s achievements in Judea and Samaria, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday night that the Land of Israel “will remain ours.”

“Today, many of our brothers and sisters around the world understand: This is our land and it will remain ours,” Netanyahu told Judea and Samaria leaders at the event, which he attended with his wife, Sara.

In remarks translated from Hebrew, he added, “And when I say our land, every Jewish man and every Jewish woman, the door is open. We are waiting for you. In the State of Israel, in the heart of the Land of Israel.”

Those attending the event, Netanyahu said, were “preparing the ground for a very large aliyah [immigration wave] that will come.”

The Binyamin Regional Council governs 47 Israeli communities in an area stretching from north of Jerusalem in Samaria to the Jerusalem Mountains in Judea.

The outgoing government has established and regularized 104 communities and 160 farms, Netanyahu said, adding that more were on the way.

Part of the work was carried out under the Biden administration and part under the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump, he said.

“It isn’t easy, it’s never easy. The Land of Israel is acquired through suffering,” Netanyahu said. “Sometimes also through smiles, sometimes also through arguments, but it is being acquired by us. We are not giving up, we have a vision, this is our land, and it will remain ours.”

Some wish to uproot Israelis not only from Judea and Samaria but “altogether from the State of Israel,” Israel’s longest-serving prime minister continued.

This campaign “has gained considerable momentum and exposure during the three years of the War of Revival,” he said, referring to the ongoing multifront war that began when thousands of Palestinian terrorists from Gaza invaded southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

“The axis [led by Iran] that we broke has not yet disappeared,” Netanyahu said. “But we are determined to ensure that there will be no threat—not from the Gaza Strip, and we have done a great deal on that front; not from Lebanon, and we have done a great deal there; not from Syria—we have security zones today inside those countries.

Netanyahu praised the Trump administration for tightening economic sanctions against those assisting the Iranian regime, describing the move as “very important.”


UN special rapporteurs are 'totally out of control,' Secretary-General Guterres admits in interview
The United Nations has several special rapporteurs who are "totally out of control" in regard to their perspective on Israel, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres admitted in an interview with the Financial Times on Tuesday.

"Now that UN Secretary-General Guterres is leaving office, admitting that many of the UN's human rights rapporteurs have gone 'totally out of control,' it's time to ask who let them go out of control in the first place," Israel's UN Ambassador, Danny Danon, told The Jerusalem Post in response to the interview. "It happened on his watch!"

However, Guterres also strongly denied the UN as a whole having an institutional bias against Israel.

"I totally refuse the idea of bias," he said. "On the contrary, I think we have been on the right side of history."

He added that, from his perspective, the UN had been "defending what is necessary for peace to come to the Middle East.

"There are two peoples, with a few million each one," he explained, "And there is no way one can destroy the other. So it's probably better to do everything possible to reconcile." Board of Peace is not threat to UN, Guterres says

Guterres also discussed US President Donald Trump's Board of Peace, and its attempts to achieve stability in Gaza.

The UN Secretary-General explained that he was not concerned that the Board of Peace would supplant or replace the UN.

"The truth is, if you look at what happens in Gaza, with the measures that were taken and you look at the progress that was made, let’s be honest, it is not for the UN to be worried," he said. "It is for others to be worried about what they are doing.”


Israel dismisses Guterres’s criticism regarding takeover of Jerusalem UNRWA compound
Israel on Wednesday rejected U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres’s criticism of its takeover of a former U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) facility in Kafr Aqab.

The U.N. agency had no property rights to the site, said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Oren Marmorstein, adding that it would be converted into an educational and community complex for local Arab residents.

“You’re simply not telling the truth,” he responded on X to Guterres, who on Tuesday accused Israeli authorities of unlawfully entering and remaining at the Qalandia Training Centre.

On Tuesday, the Jerusalem Municipality began work on a complex at the site with an estimated cost of more than 40 million shekels ($13.4 million), which is to include schools, a mosque, sports facilities and healthcare centers.

In X post on Tuesday, Guterres had called the move “wholly unacceptable” and inconsistent with Israel’s obligations under international law. He called on Israel to vacate the site and restore it to the United Nations “without delay.”

In 2024, the Knesset passed, by large majorities, two laws banning UNRWA following the exposure of UNRWA staff complicity in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, and despite pressure from the Biden administration and other countries against the move. The legislation came into effect in January 2025.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had announced the beginning of construction work on the compound earlier on Tuesday.

“Israel will not allow an organization whose employees were involved in terrorism and the Oct. 7 massacre to operate on its territory, and will act against it with all available means,” he said.

The complex is being built on a plot owned by the Jewish National Fund since 1937, which was allocated to the city following consultations with local residents.


UK’s Burnham said poised to ban trade with settlements; critics fear ‘de facto boycott’ of Israel
New UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is preparing to announce a complete trade ban on goods from Israeli West Bank settlements, British media reported on Wednesday.

The move has sparked opposition from pro-Israel voices in his Labour Party.

According to The Telegraph, the full trade embargo on all settlements could come in response to Jerusalem’s plan for a major, controversial settlement expansion in the hot-button EI area of the West Bank, which would block territorial contiguity between major Palestinian population centers.

At the same time, The Times reported Burnham could also enact sanctions against far-right ministers in the Israeli government and against individual settlers. The UK already sanctions and bans entry to National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

Britain warned Israel earlier this month that it considered the E1 settlement expansion to be “unacceptable and destructive,” and UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ed Miliband said his office was working to prepare a “comprehensive set of measures” in response, including sanctions against “those who participate in illegal settlement expansion.”

The measures come amid a series of condemnations of the Israeli plan from European and Middle Eastern governments.

The planned E1 expansion would connect the Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim areas, effectively scuttling the prospect of contiguous Palestinian sovereignty between the population centers of Bethlehem, East Jerusalem and Ramallah — long considered the basis of a future Palestinian state.

The project was frozen for years amid fierce opposition from the international community, including past US administrations, which feared that building a new settlement neighborhood on the mostly empty tract of land would rule out the establishment of a Palestinian state.


Australia concludes official hearing on antisemitism
Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism held its final day of hearings on Wednesday and is scheduled to deliver its report in December, shortly after the first anniversary of the Bondi Beach attack.

The official state inquiry was launched to examine the circumstances surrounding the single deadliest terror attack in modern Australian history, in which 15 people were killed during a Chanukkah celebration.

More than 340 witnesses gave evidence and 20,000 submissions were received during the 62 days of hearings.

An interim report into the mass shooting recommended increased security around Jewish public events and additional gun reforms.

“History has taught us the cost of allowing antisemitism to go unanswered,” said Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia. “The evidence before this Commission is a warning Australia cannot afford to ignore. Our hope is that this record leads to clear recommendations and practical action to keep Jewish Australians safe and strengthen Australia as a whole,” the statement continued.

“The Commission ... raised whether Australian institutions still meet the standards of safety and equal protections that all Australians expect,” said Joel Burnie, executive manager of Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council. “Whether in the workplace, at universities, in hospitals or at aged care facilities, Jewish Australians deserve to be safe and free from vilification.”

Australian Jewish organizations have long condemned the government for allowing a climate of incitement to violence following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre to run unchecked, leading to a series of hate-based assaults across the country which culminated in the Bondi attack.

About 110,000 Jews live in Australia, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney.
‘A hole in the report’: Ex-top security official warns royal commission may lack credibility
Former Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo has warned the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion could leave a critical gap in its final report by not examining federal ministers.

Mr Pezzullo said the inquiry needed to establish whether the government kept Australians, and particularly the Jewish community, safe from antisemitism and extremism.

His comments came as the commission concluded its final day of public hearings, despite growing calls for its work to be extended.

Commissioner Virginia Bell has rejected any meaningful extension and will instead delay the final report by four days to December 18.

Mr Pezzullo, who is among a group of former senior security figures calling for greater scrutiny of the government’s response, said the absence of ministers would become the inquiry’s “most critical gap”.

“The most critical gap that's now going to emerge in the final report, and there's no avoiding this now, is the lack of examination of ministers,” he told News24 host Sharri Markson.

He argued ministers hold significant powers in Australia’s counter-terrorism and national security arrangements and should be examined over how those powers were used.

“I think the public would be surprised at just how powerful and important ministers are in our counter-terrorism and national security arrangements,” he said.

“They personally exercise very significant powers.”

Mr Pezzullo said the issue went to the central question of whether the government had kept the public safe.

Concern grows as Royal Commission still fails to call on ministers
“But on the central question ... did this government keep us safe and particularly the Jewish community safe, but by extension all of us safe? That is going to be a hole in the report,” he said.

He argued the royal commission should use its powers to investigate how decisions were made, rather than operate primarily like a court.


Lack of ministerial scrutiny could leave ‘hole’ in Bondi terror report
Former Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo says the lack of examination into Australian ministers will leave a “hole” in the report into the Bondi terror attack.


‘Overwhelming public pressure’: TV host lashes Albanese for handing of RC
News24 host Sharri Markson recalls it took Prime Minister Anthony Albanese four weeks to call a royal commission into the Bondi terror attack, saying he used “every excuse”.

“The Prime Minister finally relented under overwhelming public pressure," Ms Markson said.


Royal Commission ‘didn’t even use all of the time available’ this week
News24 host Sharri Markson says the Royal Commission “didn’t even use all of the time available to it this week” as it wound down, making it one of the shortest in Australian history.


Former Army chief believes ‘more’ should have been done for the royal commission
Former Australian Army chief Peter Leahy says he and other “national security professionals” believe “more” should have been done for the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion as its final day ends.


Jewish community ‘begged’ government to address rise in antisemitism before Bondi attack
AIJAC Executive Manager Joel Burnie says he and the Jewish community “begged” the government to address the sudden rise in antisemitism “knowing that if nothing was done” it would result in the “events of December 14”.




US military court to put 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial in 2028
A military court will try the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks starting in June 2028, multiple US media outlets report, citing a judge’s ruling.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was considered one of Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants before he was captured in March 2003 in Pakistan.

He was imprisoned in secret CIA facilities for three years before arriving at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2006.
Alleged Kata’ib Hezbollah commander accused of plotting attacks on synagogues demands POW status
An alleged commander of the Iraqi terrorist group Kata’ib Hezbollah facing federal criminal charges in New York has demanded that he be afforded prisoner-of-war status, according to a court filing his lawyers submitted on Tuesday.

Mohammad Al-Saadi, a dual citizen of Iraq and Iran, is accused of plotting to bomb synagogues in the United States and of carrying out terrorist attacks in Europe, but argues that his alleged service to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps via its proxy Kata’ib Hezbollah means that he should be afforded protection under the Third Geneva Convention.

“Because the United States is involved in an international armed conflict in the Middle East, and because the pleadings drafted by the government allege that Mr. Al-Saadi is a commander in one of the adversary militias or militaries—and that his charged conduct was to coordinate responses to American and Israeli military attacks—he should be treated as a prisoner of war rather than as a common criminal in civilian court,” the filing says. “Any other conclusion would violate the United States’ obligations after it initiates a war, and it would forebode poorly for any of this country’s soldiers who face capture in the future by Kata’ib Hezbollah, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or their allies.”

Andrew Dalack, one of the attorneys for al-Saadi who filed the motion, told JNS that he is seeking an “improvement in his confinement conditions consistent with the minimum standards afforded to prisoners of war.”
Yair Netanyahu was target of Iranian assassination plot in Florida — report
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s 35-year-old son Yair was the target of an Iranian assassination plot while he was living in Florida, US outlet Newsmax reported Wednesday, citing a US law enforcement source.

The report came a day after Netanyahu told Israel’s Channel 14 in a phone interview that “Iran targeted one of my sons. Iran tried to kill, to murder one of my sons.”

He did not say which of his two sons was the target, or provide any further details on the plot. But according to the source that spoke to Newsmax, Israeli intelligence learned in December 2025 that Iran was planning to kill Yair in Florida, where he had spent much of his time in recent years.

Intelligence agencies believed that Iranian agents were “on the ground” in the Miami area conducting surveillance of the younger Netanyahu’s movements, according to the report.

Yair Netanyahu was told to immediately leave Florida and return to Israel, the report said, adding that he did so without packing his belongings and has been living in Israel ever since.

Yair Netanyahu had spent much of the previous several years living in the Miami area, where his reportedly luxurious lifestyle and the state-funded security provided to him repeatedly drew public attention in Israel.

His extended stay abroad drew criticism after the outbreak of the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, with critics questioning why the prime minister’s son remained overseas while hundreds of thousands of Israelis were serving in the military reserves.

Netanyahu defended the security provided to his sons in his Channel 14 interview, saying that without it, would-be assassins “would succeed.”
Israeli reserve soldier beaten, abducted by PA police in Area C, his lawyers say
An Israeli reserve soldier in civilian clothes was beaten, disarmed and abducted by Palestinian Authority police on Sunday night after they set up an illegal roadblock in Area C of Judea and Samaria, according to his attorney. The officers reportedly handcuffed the soldier, took his weapon and drove him into Area A near Ramallah before eventually transferring him to the Israel Defense Forces.

Under the Oslo Accords, Area C is under Israeli municipal and security control, while Area A is under full Palestinian Authority control.

The soldier, who was carrying his personal weapon, was traveling on Sunday night from the Gush Talmonim bloc in the Binyamin region of Samaria toward Route 443 when he encountered a police vehicle blocking the road near the P.A. town of Beitunia.

According to an account provided by his attorney, Chaim Bleicher of the Honenu legal-aid organization, the soldier approached the roadblock to determine whether it was an Israeli security force. He then discovered that the officers were Palestinian Authority police.

The officers reportedly surrounded his vehicle and called additional P.A. police to the scene. They attempted to take his weapon, but the soldier refused to surrender it.

The P.A. officers then pepper-sprayed him in the face and beat him before taking his weapon. They subsequently pulled him from the car, handcuffed him and placed him in a Palestinian police vehicle.

According to the soldier’s account, he was driven toward Ramallah, in Area A, and held for approximately an hour before being taken to the outskirts of the city and transferred to IDF forces.

According to Bleicher he suffered bruising and other injuries, as well as irritation and burns to his face from the pepper spray.

Bleicher subsequently sent a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz and IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth demanding the arrest of the Palestinian police officers involved.

“This is an extremely serious incident,” Bleicher wrote. “Armed Palestinian police officers entered Area C in violation of the law, endangered the security of the area, and assaulted and abducted an Israeli citizen.”

“This represents a serious and dangerous attack both on the individual soldier and on the sovereignty of the IDF and the security forces,” he continued. “We are requesting, on behalf of the victim, that arrests of the Palestinian police officers who attacked and beat him be carried out as soon as possible.”





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