Jews need to be united on a united Jerusalem
This is the time for the entire American-Jewish community to unite to keep Jerusalem united, because Biden’s move is about a lot more than the consulate.Itamar Marcus: UNRWA - the worst thing that ever happened to Palestinians
The Abraham Accords came from then-president Donald Trump making clear that there is no daylight between Israel and the US. He emphasized that lack of daylight with every step he took, from renouncing the dangerous Iranian nuclear deal, to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights to formally recognizing united Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moving the US Embassy.
Reopening the US consulate for the PA would be a destructive step on the way to undoing other moves courageously undertaken by Trump for Israel, America’s closest and most loyal ally. It would be a sign that the Biden administration is purposely creating daylight with Israel again.
It is understandable that the Biden administration would want to harm the Abraham Accords, which were an unprecedented accomplishment initiated by the president’s predecessor from a rival party. But it would be completely short-sighted and would distance Middle East peace after significant progress was finally made.
This move would isolate Israel in the international community and return to the intransigent Palestinian leadership the veto power that enabled them to quash all peace overtures by Democratic and Republican presidents and secretaries of state in the past. It would also harm chances of formally expanding the Abraham Accords to other countries, most notably Saudi Arabia, which was active behind the scenes in efforts to advance Middle East peace during the Trump administration.
The diverse Israeli government, which is divided on most issues, is united in favor of expanding the Abraham Accords, so failing to do so by refocusing diplomatic energies on the Palestinians again would be a tremendous missed opportunity.
In a shocking admission of the political agenda behind UNRWA, PA Social Development Minister Ahmed Majdalani recently told UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini how the PA sees UNRWA in an online article from Al-Quds on October 27. “Majdalani emphasized the necessity of protecting UNRWA not as an institution that provides services to the refugees, but rather because it is a political symbol of the refugees’ right of return,” the article reads.
UNRWA is not intended to help the refugees but to preserve them as refugees serving the PA’s goals. The world saw a tragic example of the PA’s ideology during the Syrian civil war. Palestinians in refugee camps were being killed and Israel offered to allow them into PA areas on the condition that they be taken off the UN refugee lists. Shockingly, Mahmoud Abbas refused. The PA preferred that they be killed as refugees than live as free people in the PA areas. Estimates are that as many as 4,000 camp residents were killed during the fighting.
As a supreme international priority, something must be done to save the 5.7 million victims of UNRWA, and there is a solution. The UNRWA infrastructure must be closed and the administration of all their camps must be transferred to UNHCR – free of the dictates of the PA. UNHCR will be tasked with solving the problem as opposed to UNRWA whose task has been to perpetuate the problem. UNHCR will go to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the PA areas with the mandate to take the chains off the refugees and give them freedom.
UNHCR will use its billions of dollars to train them, create jobs and give them homes in the countries where they were born and lived their entire lives, where they must be granted full citizenship. Countries that refuse to resettle their fellow Arabs must be ostracized by the international community and denied international aid until they agree. Instead of chaining an additional 100,000 new refugees every year, hundreds of thousands, and eventually millions can be resettled every year until all the political refugees are freed.
UNRWA as the PA’s “political symbol” does not fit the world’s values or serve the interests of those suffering in the prisons of UNRWA. Disbanding UNRWA and having UNHCR resettle these chained people is a human rights imperative. If the international community allows UNRWA to continue, by 2030 there will be seven million refugees, and by 2050 probably 10 million or more. Every day another 274 children are born into UNRWA’s 58 prisons. Every year another 100,000 children are denied their freedom. It is immoral to allow UNRWA to exist even one extra day.
1,500-plus rabbis rebuke US for abstention vote on UN resolution targeting Israel
The largest rabbinic public-policy organization in the United States called the Biden administration’s decision to abstain from a U.N. General Assembly draft resolution that targeted Israel “quite disappointing.”Mike Pompeo: Israel has 'duty' to defend itself from Iran absent US support | Global Perspectives
The text, called “Assistance to Palestinian Refugees,” demands “compensation” for descendants of Palestinian refugees who lost property when they fled their homes, as well as an unlimited “right of return” for Palestinian refugees to a sovereign Israel.
Israel would cease being the world’s only Jewish state as a result of the resolution, which is related to the work of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
Israel was the sole country that opposed the text, which passed the General Assembly on Tuesday 160-1 with nine abstentions from the United States, Canada, Cameroon, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papa New Guinea and Uruguay.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV), which represents more than 1,500 traditional Jewish leaders, said: “This resolution employed a blatantly anti-Semitic double standard, demanding ‘compensation’ for Arabs who left as advised by the genocidal Arab League, but no similar compensation from Arab states for the endemic ethnic cleansing of Jews and confiscation of their property, much less a ‘right of return’ to countries unsafe for Jews to enter.”
“The [Biden] administration abstained on an issue of hate and bigotry,” he added. “This is not moral leadership. The previous administration took the morally correct approach, and we did not expect its position to be so rapidly abandoned.”
IDF publishes a video of the joint two-week-long drill with the US Marines. pic.twitter.com/S4JpgPPorv
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) November 13, 2021