Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Saturday, February 08, 2025

02/08 Links: We swore ‘never again,’ yet Israeli hostages return skeletal and tortured; The Historical Case for Trump’s Riviera; USAID Sent Over $18 Billion to Islamic Terror States

From Ian:

We swore ‘never again,’ yet Israeli hostages return skeletal and tortured

Hamas’s brutal spectacle
Hamas paraded our hostages before their release, forcing them to stand on a stage in front of a crowd of jubilant Gazans. The cruelty was calculated. Hamas terrorists made sure the world saw Israeli suffering as a spectacle before begrudgingly handing them over to the Red Cross.

And speaking of the Red Cross, they are allowed to visit Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, while not one Israeli hostage met with them throughout their entire time in captivity. And yet, some in the international community still buy into Hamas’s narrative of victimhood, of “humanitarian suffering” in Gaza, as if those holding hostages in cages and underground tunnels can ever be cast as the oppressed.

Where are the human rights organizations? Where are the protests by the same voices that, at one time or another, joined in rapid succession to loudly condemn Israel? They are mute, unconcerned with Israeli victims unless the tragedy can somehow be contorted to become part of a Jewish state condemnation.

The return of Or, Eli, and Ohad should ring as a kind of wake-up call. There are still 76 hostages left in Gaza, some of them dead, all of them subjected to inhumane conditions. The haunting images of these released captives make one thing clear: Every moment they remain in Hamas’s grip is another moment of irreversible physical and psychological damage.

And yet, as Israeli families weep for their loved ones, as a nation wrestles with the horror of these images, politicians continue to play their games.

Opposition leader Yair Lapid seized the moment to accuse Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to act sooner. Simultaneously, Netanyahu vowed retaliation, his government issuing vague promises of “appropriate action.” But where is the concrete plan? Where is the strategy to bring them all home, alive, before they are too far gone?

Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar put it bluntly: “The pictures don’t lie: The Hamas terrorists and the Gaza residents look great. The Israeli hostages look like Holocaust survivors.”

Indeed, the contrast could not be starker. The hostages’ skeletal frames stand as a living indictment of Hamas’s barbarism, an undeniable crime against humanity. The fact that some still equivocate, still seek to “both sides” this horror, is a stain on the conscience of the world.

We must be clear: Hamas does not take hostages. It takes human lives and reduces them to bargaining chips. Never Again is now. And if Israel does not act decisively, if the international community does not finally recognize this evil for what it is, we risk failing those still trapped in the depths of Gaza.

They must be freed before it’s too late.

Or Levy, Eli Sharabi, Ohad Ben Ami freed from Gaza after 491 days

Three Israelis were freed on Saturday after 491 days in Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip, bringing the total number of hostages redeemed in the ongoing first phase of the ceasefire agreement to 21.

Or Levy, 34, Eli Sharabi, 52, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, were handed over by the Red Cross officials to Israel Defense Forces troops at around 11:15 a.m. local time and driven back to Israeli territory some 30 minutes later.

The IDF brought the freed hostages to a facility near the border for a preliminary physical and psychological examination, and to meet with their families.

Before their release, Hamas paraded the hostages on a stage in front of a raucous crowd of Palestinians in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah. The three men appeared frail and emaciated.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office released a statement welcoming home the captives. “The government of Israel embraces the three returnees,” it read, adding, “The shocking images that we have seen today will not go unaddressed.

“The government, together with all of the security officials, will accompany them and their families. The government of Israel is committed to returning all of the hostages and the missing,” it continued.

The PMO statement concluded with a quote from Psalms (31:15): “Deliver me from the hand of my enemies, from those who pursue me.”

“This is what a crime against humanity looks like!” Israeli President Isaac Herzog wrote in a post on X.

“The whole world must look directly at Ohad, Or, and Eli—returning after 491 days of hell, starved, emaciated and pained—being exploited in a cynical and cruel spectacle by vile murderers. We take solace in the fact that they are being returned alive to the arms of their loved ones,” Herzog wrote.

“Completing the hostage deal is a humanitarian, moral, and Jewish duty. It is essential to bring back all our sisters and brothers from the hell of captivity in Gaza—every last one of them!” he added.

After the handover was broadcast live across the globe, the Israeli Health Ministry called on the public to limit its consumption of such images.

“A psychological war is being waged that can cause harm to us,” said Dr. Gilad Bodenheimer, chief of the ministry’s mental health division. “We urge the public to minimize exposure to distressing images and videos and to be mindful of what they, their children and their loved ones are seeing.”

Added the Hostage and Missing Families Forum: “The disturbing images from the release of Ohad, Eli and Or serve as yet another stark and painful evidence that leaves no room for doubt—there is no time to waste for the hostages!”

02/07 Links Pt2: A deliberate new antisemitism that erases Jews; It Was Never About a Cease-fire; Former CAIR Director Launches into Antisemitic Tirade

From Ian:

Historical theft: A deliberate new antisemitism that erases Jews

In 2021, David Baddiel, a British Jewish comedian, screenwriter, and author, wrote a brilliant, incisive, and incredibly revealing book titled Jews Don’t Count.

In it, Baddiel argues that Jews are treated differently from all other minorities, perceived as “too white” to warrant the same consideration as other victims of racism.

He posits that antisemitism is a “second-class racism,” one that is tolerated or even ignored by those who claim to fight against bigotry in all its forms.

When I first read the book – prior to the seismic events of the past sixteen months – I felt it should be required reading for everyone.

It explains, with remarkable clarity, the modern phenomenon of Jew-hatred, which persists even in supposedly progressive circles. For a more nuanced and historically expansive exploration of the topic, one need only turn to the writings of the late, great Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt”l.

Rabbi Sacks wrote extensively about the mutation of antisemitism across history. First, they hated us because of our God.

Then they hated us because we “killed their God.” Then they hated us because we were different. Then they hated us because we tried to be the same. Next, they reviled us as a subhuman race without a home of our own – culminating in the Holocaust.

And now, in a perverse historical irony, they hate us because we do have a home of our own, and because we dare to defend it. The latest mutation: Historical theft

Now, a new mutation of antisemitism has emerged – one that builds on Baddiel’s observation that “Jews don’t count” and which has reached an even more malignant level: historical theft.

This involves the deliberate alteration of history to erase Jews from their own narrative. It facilitates the grotesque inversion that we are “Johnny-come-latelies,” colonial usurpers attempting to displace an indigenous people.

This phenomenon is not new. It began decades ago with the Palestinians manufacturing their own “ancient” peoplehood while simultaneously denying ours.

With the help of the unashamedly anti-Israel, antisemitic, corrupt, and morally bankrupt United Nations, the biblical and historical reality of Jewish existence in the Land of Israel for over 3,000 years has been steadily eroded.

The world, largely ignorant and disinterested, has been conditioned to accept fiction as fact.

However, last week, this historical theft stooped to a level that even the most cynical, world-weary Jew could scarcely have believed.

A suppressed voice for truth from within the United Nations

When histories of the war in the Gaza Strip are written—a war triggered by the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—the name of Alice Nderitu probably won’t garner more than a footnote at best. That’s an enormous shame because Nderitu’s courage in confronting the institutionalized obsession of the United Nations with the Palestinians takes us to the heart of the great issues wrapped up in this conflict—its purpose, the manner in which it has been fought and the manner in which it has been presented to the outside world.

The story of Nderitu’s ordeal as the U.N.’s Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide was the subject of an engaging piece by Johanna Berkman published last week by the online magazine Air Mail. Nderitu took over the unpaid position during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She lasted for nearly four years in the post before U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres decided against renewing her commission last November following a sustained and often abusive campaign directed at Nderitu—a storied human-rights advocate from Kenya—for her refusal to label the fighting in Gaza as a “genocide.”

At the time, Guterres’s decision to effectively sever Nderitu was the subject of a scathing Wall Street Journal editorial that accused the international organization of a “new low” in its efforts to tarnish Israel as the worst offender among its member states, which include such human-rights luminaries as Russia, China and North Korea. But by and large, the scandal passed unnoticed among the chattering classes, despite their tendency to dip their toes into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with agonized appeals on behalf of the “people of Gaza” from time to time. The same was true for the Air Mail piece profiling her; while the Free Press republished it, everyone else pretty much ignored it.

One key reason why was identified by Nderitu herself in her interview with Berkman. For nearly three of the four years of her U.N. tenure, she was incredibly busy but also mostly unnoticed. Her work took her to refugee camps in Bangladesh and Iraq, to the Brazilian interior to monitor the fates of indigenous tribes, and to Chad, where she saw firsthand the impact of the burgeoning ethnic slaughter that has raged, largely outside the media’s view, in neighboring Sudan. “For these other situations,” she said, “nobody seems to bother with what I say.”

Seth Mandel: It Was Never About a Cease-fire

Familiarity with anti-Zionism breeds contempt. And also a justified cynicism.

After 16 months of “well maybe the protesters really do just want a cease-fire” and “let’s give them the benefit of the doubt that they aren’t just twisted pro-Hamas sickos,” we can now acknowledge what we all knew to be true from the beginning: They’re just twisted pro-Hamas sickos.

According to documents obtained by the Telegraph, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign contacted London police while the Hamas rampage of Oct. 7, 2023, was in full swing. Their request: Permission to hold a public rally.

“By the time the PSC spoke to the police, Hamas had taken hostages and killed hundreds of people across towns and villages next to the Gaza Strip,” the Telegraph reports. “Videos had also circulated on social media, showing terrorists taking Israeli hostages to Gaza on motorbikes.”

The PSC reached out to the police before 1 p.m. on the day of the attack. It was at a time when the public already knew the attack was under way and some of the gruesome details, but before Israel could even contemplate a military response. The attack and the search for infiltrators went on for two days. During that time the PSC was planning its event.

Let there now be no doubt: This was a celebration rally. Like other such demonstrations in the West, Londoners were joyously reveling in acts of barbarism against Jews that hadn’t been seen since the Nazis. The police confirmed the timing to the Telegraph with a statement: “The Met was contacted on Saturday Oct 7 at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest. The Met committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place seven days after notification.”

It’s good to have confirmation, but we should remember that we already knew this about protests in the United States as well. Chicago saw hundreds march downtown on Oct. 8, the day after the attacks. No one would even bother to try and claim that such an event was spontaneous, right? That march was in the pipeline as soon as it became clear what Hamas was doing.

Oct. 8 also saw an “all out for Palestine” rally in Dallas and a demonstration in Athens, Georgia, which organizers said was to mark the fact that “the Palestinian people, yesterday, fought back successfully against Israeli occupation.”

The lesson: Some were honest, some weren’t—but the protest movement that began that hellish weekend was a movement celebrating the massacre and sexual torture of Jewish men, women, and children.

02/07 Links Pt1: Trump's Gaza Gambit and the Art of the Ultimate Deal; Or Levy, Eli Sharabi, and Ohad Ben Ami set to be released; Trump's AG to prosecute Oct. 7 crimes

From Ian:

Josh Hammer: Trump's Gaza Gambit and the Art of the Ultimate Deal

Prior to this week, Trump had alluded to the idea that he wanted Egypt and Jordan—the latter of which quite literally was established as the "Palestinian" state under the terms of the European powers' post-World War I settlement and the British Mandate for Palestine—to absorb the Arab population of Gaza. He has since doubled down. The idea of such a population transfer is unpopular in the Arab world, to put it mildly. But Trump has overcome such resistance before.

Three consecutive presidents—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama—failed to fulfill the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which mandated moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, by issuing "national security" waivers every six months. All were scared of the reaction in the proverbial "Arab street." Trump didn't care and did it anyway. The reaction, it turns out, was fairly muted.

Suffice it to say Jordanian King Abdullah II's trip to the White House on Tuesday will be interesting.

But it turns out population transfer to Jordan and Egypt is only the first half of what Trump has in mind. He shocked everyone around him—including, it seems, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles—when he casually but assertively stated that the United States intends to "take over" Gaza after Israel's war against Hamas. The U.S. will "own" Gaza, Trump said, and make it a "Riviera of the Middle East." If we are taking Trump literally and not just seriously, to alter Salena Zito's popular 2016 quip, it seems part two of the plan (U.S. ownership of Gaza) is contingent on part one (population transfer of the Arabs there).

Or perhaps we should not take Trump literally. Perhaps this is, much like the "Peace to Prosperity" plan in 2020, a negotiating chip in a bigger plan—the much-desired entrance of Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords alliance, maybe. And there is certainly some early second-term data in favor of the "negotiating chip" theory: Trump's recent deferral of 25% tariffs on both Canada and Mexico in response to those two countries' leaders agreeing to send troops to their respective borders with the U.S., for instance.

It's difficult to know exactly what Trump is thinking here. There are real reasons for skepticism—but there are also real reasons for hope. He's done this before. Let's be patient and watch the shibboleth-buster in action. He may very well surprise us yet again.

Phyllis Chesler: The Gaza plan makes sense

I just read the current Torah portion, Beshalach. As all Torah chapters are, it’s about … everything. But this one includes God leading our people out of slavery in Egypt; describing my people complaining each step of the way—like children, like slaves, without spiritual or moral strength. The phrase is kotzer ruach.

They’ve had the very breath knocked out of them. The complaints are almost funny, but they are also embarrassing. And, by the way: God also splits the sea, allows our people to walk across it on dry land, then drowns the Egyptians in that very sea, provides a pillar by day and by night to lead us across vast desert spaces, feeds us rather magically, and on and on.

This was my beloved son’s parshah reading for his bar mitzvah, oh so long ago.

Is it entirely a coincidence? This year, this very week, we read this chapter. We read it at the same time that U.S. President Donald Trump has dared to open the world’s imagination, dared to risk the world’s hard heart and dared to risk the hot ire of billions by simply stating that the emperor is truly naked.

Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understand that there are no Palestinian people; there are only Arabs who are living and dying in Gaza. There was never an ancient, or even a long-standing country, homeland or a state called Palestine.

And that it would be a humanitarian act to help those Arabs who have been under the boot of Iran’s terrorist organization, Hamas, to leave for another, nearby Arab Muslim country, like Egypt or Jordan—countries their ancestors came from no more than 100 years ago. And that under a Trump presidency, America could turn the Gaza Strip into the Riviera of the Middle East, a Las Vegas on the Mediterranean or Mar-a-Lago on the Med—a vacation destination that will employ many thousands of people. (This is not entirely my cup of tea but no matter. I’m not a businesswoman or a real estate broker. It might actually accomplish something good).

I don’t know what even a master dealmaker and bit of a bloviator will be allowed to accomplish. Will Trump be able to offer a deal to Egypt and Jordan that they will not be able to refuse?

The world is so invested in Jew-hatred and so determined to exterminate the State of Israel. The West and Muslim world deeply believe in the existence of a Palestinian people and a Palestinian homeland, and their propaganda battle has been hugely and dangerously effective. Most such true believers still refuse to recognize that Palestinianism is merely a relatively new incarnation of ancient antisemitism.

‘Transfer’ push enjoys broad consensus in Israel

Two weeks ago, the idea of “transfer” was as close to politically incorrect as possible in the context of Israeli politics.

“Transfer” is an umbrella term in Hebrew, referring to a family of policies, varying in their breadth and implementation, but unified in one characteristic: the movement of Arab populations out of contested areas as a method of resolving the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Left-wing politicians have dismissed the policies as “messianic” or a form of ethnic cleansing. Right-wing politicians have dismissed the idea as impractical or have refused to advance it through sheer political inertia.

However, after almost a year and a half of attack and retreat in Gaza, of thousands of rockets, terror attacks, ballistic missiles, exploding pagers, assassinations, hostage deals and terrorist releases, we found ourselves at the history-shifting moment when a United States president, of all people, put the “transfer” policy back on the political map.

In a joint press conference on Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced his administration’s intention to “take over the Gaza Strip.”

Trump unfolded his vision to remove the entire population of Gaza “to several other countries,” after which Gaza would be leveled, cleared of rubble, and turned into an international economic development.

“This proposal has tremendously shifted the Overton window. People who were recently afraid to even broach the possibility of ‘transfer’ are now talking about it absolutely openly,” Martin Sherman, a senior researcher at the Israeli Defense and Security Forum, told JNS.

(The Overton window is the range of subjects and arguments politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time.)

Certain corners of Israel’s news punditry responded with shock at Trump’s proposal, apparently confused as to why he did not receive the memo that you are not allowed to discuss the idea of ‘transfer’ in polite society. However, according to recent polling, Trump is more in line with the Israeli street than many of the talking heads who have been bashing the new proposal.

Robert Kraft's Super Bowl commercial against hate - is it effective? (update)

The New York Post reports:

Jewish activists slammed billionaire New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft for bankrolling a Super Bowl commercial against hatred – because it fails to mention the rise in antisemitism.

Kraft, who launched the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in 2019, paid an estimated $8 million for the 30-second spot, named “No Reason to Hate,” which will air during Sunday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles.

It features former Pats great Tom Brady and rapper Snoop Dogg, who trade increasingly spiteful digs.

However, the duo avoid touching on the bias faced by any specific groups, leading Jewish activists to claim Kraft fumbled the opportunity to highlight the spike in antisemitism since Hamas terrorists killed more than 1,200 in Israel on Oct. 7, 2003.

“Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism is afraid to say the word antisemitism. He all-lives-mattered it,” Samantha Ettus, a Jewish activist, told The Post on Wednesday.
“Imagine a foundation to combat Asian hate running a Super Bowl ad without Asians and without mentioning Asians.”

Here it is:

I mostly disagree with the criticism.

If the ad had been specifically against antisemitism, it would be attacked by the antisemites (and the antisemites who call themselves anti-Zionists.) They would complain about how Jews have so much money to spend on a Super Bowl ad to make it all about them. The haters would get press coverage from a media that is trying to find new Super Bowl stories. They would immediately say that the ad is meant to distract from Israeli actions in Gaza. Within a few days, the ad would be called "controversial" as if hating Jews is a reasonable opinion.

It would very possibly backfire. And we know this because we know how Israel haters work. - make a lot of noise, pretend they are bigger than they are, and let the media do their job for them.

The Super Bowl is not the proper venue for a specific ad against antisemitism. The "all lives matter" message is clear enough in this case since the name of the organization sponsoring it, Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, is pretty prominent at the end. It is on the screen for four seconds, a pretty long time for an ad. In fact, that is the longest scene in the video..

This can actually be more effective. The viewer sees an ad about how stupid hate is - and then sees that antisemitism is one of those kinds of hate. Forcing the viewer to put those two together makes the viewer more emotionally invested in the ad. (This is a standard technique of headline writers and advertisers - making things a little less obvious so the target audience becomes a partner in the message by figuring it out.)

One thing does bother me. When you go to the website on the screen, "StandUpToAllHate.org," it brings you to a page that does not mention antisemitism or Jews at all. That is exactly where you want the viewers who bother to go to the website to get the intended message, yet that site is a generic "all lives matter" page. That is the place where the circle between all hate and antisemitism should be closed.

Last year's similar ad did specify hate against Jews along with all hate. It was also a good ad.

But that didn't stop The Nation from criticizing it - before even seeing it - as a transparent ploy to distract the world from Gaza.

A lot of work needs to be done, at all levels, to combat antisemitism. A Super Bowl ad that only alludes to Jew-hatred should not be looked at in a vacuum but it should be part of a much larger effort.

In the end, an ad will do little, but it can make people think. When the ad does the thinking for the viewers, they don't remember it.

UPDATE: I was looking at the video itself, but I was not familiar with Snoop's support of Louis Farrakhan. He is not the right person to do this ad.

You missed the biggest problem with the Ad. This is the Ad that should have been run. pic.twitter.com/MalXge3kiq
— Jay Lampert (@MortChristenson) February 7, 2025

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Haters try to resurrect the fringe anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. Here's a brief history of the ACJ and the US Reform Judaism movement.

From Peter Beinart's socialist-Left Jewish Currents magazine:

Judaism Beyond Nationalism: The Revival of the American Council for Judaism

In the years immediately preceding and following the founding of the State of Israel, the American Council for Judaism (ACJ) was the most prominent American Jewish anti-Zionist organization, shaped by a long tradition of anti-nationalism in the American Reform movement. The Reform Movement’s now decades-long embrace of Zionism can make its anti-nationalist roots feel quite alien. Most Americans, too, are unaware of the ACJ and its goals of maintaining the early Reform norm. But the ACJ has recently embarked on a revival process, with the goal of supporting American anti-Zionist Jewish communities in the anti-Zionist Reform tradition.

Join us for a conversation with Jewish Currents associate editor Mari Cohen and Rabbi Andrue Kahn, the ACJ’s executive director, as they explore the history of Jewish Reform and its intersection with Zionism. They will discuss how Jewish Reform has shaped contemporary Judaism, the movement’s complicated relationships with assimilation and whiteness, and the original Reform vision of Judaism beyond nationalism. What might this history teach us in the current moment, and what role might a newly re-energized ACJ play in today’s American Jewish landscape?

OK, here's a brief history of the Reform Jewish movement and its relationship with Zionism.

The early Reform movement in the United States was strongly anti-Zionist. Reform leaders rejected the ideas of Jews as a nation, saying it was merely a religious group. Their 1885 Pittsburgh Platform explicitly rejected Jewish nationalism and the idea of a return to Palestine, emphasizing that Jews were fully integrated citizens of their respective countries. The goal was to be seen as Americans of Jewish faith, rather than as a separate nation. (Of course, their definition of "faith" was quite fluid. In 1883 their banquet celebrating their first graduating class of rabbis was quite deliberately non-kosher, with shrimp, crab, and meat and dairy served together. )

This anti-Zionist position changed in the 20th century as Reform leaders saw the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe and Russia. Their 1937 Columbus Platform marked a major shift, acknowledging the Jewish people’s historical connection to the Land of Israel and expressing sympathy for the Zionist movement.

After the Holocaust, the vast majority of Reform Jewish leaders realized their mistake and embraced Zionism. Their Union of American Hebrew Congregations recognized Israel in 1948.

A tiny fringe minority remained opposed to Zionism, ignoring the lessons of the Holocaust and clinging to the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. They started the American Council for Judaism, which was the Jewish Voice for Peace of its day, to combat Zionism.

We've discussed this marginal group before. Led by Rabbi Elmer Berger, they wrote articles that received lots of coverage. Like JVP, they put the word "Judaism" in their name to make them sound like they represent more than a tiny minority of Jews. Albert Einstein strongly criticized the group, comparing it to the infamous group Staatsbürger Jüdischen Glaubens that attempted to minimize their Jewishness in favor of being good Germans.

In 1950, the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis formally condemned the ACJ, stating that it did not represent Reform Judaism. In 1997, the Reform movement's Miami Platform affirmed the centrality of Israel to Jewish life.

Meanwhile, the ACJ and its leaders continued their jihad against Israel. I recently discussed the International Organization for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (EAFORD) which was founded by Libya's Moammar Qaddafi to support the "Zionism is Racism" UN resolution. Elmer Berger, who had left ACJ because they weren't anti-Zionist enough for him, was an official at EAFORD.

The ACJ pretty much only existed on paper for years, doing little beyond a newsletter written largely by one person.

Now, Andrue Kahn is trying to resurrect it. We've also looked at Kahn previously, showing how his own essays prove his own racism as well as anti-Judaism. He believes that Jews should actively oppose any Jewish traditions and embrace assimilation into American society - while at the same time he also decries Jews who did exactly that in the 1950s and 60s as being supportive, somehow, of "white supremacy."

He's as nutty as Elmer Berger.

The true irony is that the entire point of Reform Judaism is to change with the times. It reacted to world events appropriately and did "teshuva" for its early mistakes and anti-Zionism. It reformed. But Andy Kahn, who is so against traditional Judaism as it has been practiced for 2,000 years, is one of the very few Jews alive who is slavishly committed to the Reform movement of 1885.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

I found a 2010 article from former Palestinian Authority minister reminiscing about the good old days of UNRWA schools in the territories when they didn't even make a pretense of upholding UN neutrality standards - and enthusiastically supported terror.

It only changed when Israel controlled those areas after 1967.

It was decided in the regulations of UNRWA that its [school curriculum] policy is the policy of the host country, and therefore it is obligated to follow the Syrian laws in Syria, the Jordanian laws in Jordan, and the Lebanese laws in Lebanon, and thus it is obligated to follow the Palestinian laws in Palestine. In the fifties and sixties, school students (and I am one of them) lived this issue in all its dimensions, and we studied the history of Palestine in the school curriculum, and the morning anthem was Palestinian (Our country, our country.. for it our struggle.. for it our martyrdom.. our country, our country..).

The principals competed in decorating the walls of their schools with pictures of heavily armed soldiers heading to Palestine, fighting battles, tongues of flame and smoke filling the wall, while the soldiers stormed the Zionist settlements, while the Zionists turned their backs in terror. On the wall facing the main door, a map of Palestine covered the wall in every school, until the elementary school students memorized it, and their fingers ran spontaneously in drawing it, completing the morning anthem (From Rafah to Safad.. a map of my country... I drew it in my liver.. I bequeathed it to my son.. For tomorrow is our appointment... Our country, our country..).

The teacher was our role model, the guide, the revolutionary, the orator, the leader of the demonstration and the march... He planted in our hearts the sense of belonging to our occupied homeland, and we would see him the next day, standing on the shoulders leading the people in a revolutionary demonstration rejecting any peace settlement. I saw Ahmed Attia Abu Hashem, Rajab Al-Attar, and Abdul Rahman Al-Jamal in Rafah, and we knew that Muin Bseiso, Izz Al-Din Taha, and Fathi Al-Balawi were in the camps, inflaming the masses with enthusiasm whenever the teacher learned of a conspiracy against our cause, and whenever the anniversary of a disaster that befell our people passed; the Balfour Declaration, the partition, Deir Yassin, the tripartite aggression, the withdrawal of the Zionists from Gaza (March 57)... It was settled in our conscience that we would return, we would return... tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow.

There were delegations coming from Asia and Africa, and sometimes they were students our age, whom we would receive in our schools, and our schools would organize wonderful celebrations for them...
Our teachers trained us to master the arts of reception and farewell and explaining our cause, and we never forgot to explain in detail the injustice of the Nazi or fascist Zionists. We told them about the Haganah and what they did, and about the seven armies and how Lod and Ramla were lost, and UNRWA did not object, and never, never, did it even draw the attention of a teacher, student, mukhtar or guide. Rather, the directors participated in these activities and events until June 5, 1967, when the situation changed, but not the situation of the agency, but the laws that the agency had to abide by, which are the laws of the occupation after the Zionist entity became the host - so it prevented all of that - but we did not hear that the agency had expelled a teacher or student for his fedayeen activity, so the teacher would be absent from his work for the duration of his imprisonment, no matter how long, to return the next day after his release to resume his work.

As a UN agency, UNRWA was always obligated to be neutral and not to attack other UN member countries. Obviously it never did.

One reason was given by John Davis, former head of UNRWA, speaking at a debate on the future of UNRWA at the UN: (The Baltimore Sun, Nov 11, 1959)

Even then, UNRWA had been hijacked by Israel hating, Jew-hating Arabs and any efforts to keep it neutral were seen to be impossible. In the same debate Davis admitted that it was impossible for UNRWA to rehabilitate and resettle Palestinian refugees because their host countries forbade that activity, and that many of the people getting aid were not real refugees. Davis, an American, knew all this but argued that it still did more good than bad and should remain funded.

In 1966, the US started complaining that UNRWA was providing aid to PLO terrorists: (Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, Jun 24, 1966):

Just like UNRWA provides aid to Hamas today.

In the 1995 book "Refugees unto the third generation" by Benjamin N. Schiff we see that the PLO hijacked UNRWA in Lebanon and used its facilities for terrorist training and storing weapons.

The world has known that UNRWA was inherently corrupt for a long, long time.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

02/06 Links Pt2: Three male hostages expected for Saturday release; Anti-Israel activists planned London protest durring Oct 7 attack; Biden State Dept Downplayed Jihad in UNRWA texts

From Ian:

First request for UK pro-Palestine protest came during October 7 attack

The Met Police have revealed that the first request for a national demonstration against Israel came on October 7 2023 at 12:50pm – just hours after the Hamas attack began.

New documents, released following a freedom of information request, show that the force was first notified of the intention of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) to organise marches while the IDF was still fighting to expel terrorists from southern Israel.

“The MPS were contacted on Saturday 7 October at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest, the MPS committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place 7 days after notification,” the report said.

The assault on October 7 began at 6:30am and, by 12:50pm, Hamas militants were still actively killing and kidnapping civilians from the Nova music festival, Kibbutz Be’eri, Kfar Aza, and several other communities along the Israeli border with Gaza.

At 8:32am the IDF began mobilising its army reserves and two hours later, IDF fighter jets began conducting air strikes on the Gaza Strip. It was not until October 8 that Israel declared itself to be in a state of war and not until October 9 that Israel ordered a “complete siege” on the Gaza Strip, cutting off electricity, water, food and fuel from entering.

The Met report on the timing of the protest notification also stated that they were advised of the march by an organiser speaking on behalf of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign group.

Ben Jamal, the PSC’s director, has since been charged with breaching police conditions during one of its latest demonstrations.

In response to the report, activist group Stop the Hate UK wrote on X: “We thought the PSC couldn't surprise us. But even for them this is a new low. A couple of hours into the most brutal attack against Jewish people since the Holocaust - and while the attack was still ongoing - they were busy organising a national protest against the victims.”

Dave Rich, head of policy at the Community Security Trust (CST), wrote: “It’s hard to comprehend that while Jews around the world watched with horror as a pogrom took place in Israel on Oct 7, the ghouls at PSC saw the exact same images and thought ‘let’s have an anti-Israel demo’”.

Russell Langer, director of public affairs at the Jewish Leadership Council, also commented on the Met Police report, writing on X: “12.55pm on October 7th was when I finally found out my family had been rescued from the house set on fire hours earlier by Hamas. Many others were still being killed and kidnapped. 5 minutes earlier, those who hate Israel were making their plans to march against the victims.”

My family home was firebombed in a vile anti-Semitic attack in Sydney. This is what I kept quiet until now - and the question every Australian needs to ask themselves

Alex Ryvchin is the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

When I was shaken from sleep by my panicked wife early one Friday morning a few weeks ago, to the news that our former home was targeted in an anti-Semitic attack, many thoughts and emotions came to me.

Shock was not among them. There was nothing unusual in the morning's chaos.

In the past 15 months, many times, I have been woken by calls from media, staff, police or politicians informing me that a synagogue was burning, that cars daubed with anti-Semitic slogans were burning, and that yet another Jewish target was hit.

This time it was the place where my wife and I first brought our daughter home from the hospital and where during the pandemic we hunkered down as a family and I valiantly attempted to homeschool my eldest daughter before she refused to call me, 'Mr Ryvchin' and the whole thing ended in tears.

It was a deliriously happy home. Our sanctuary for five years from the carnage and chaos that occurs outside and over which we have so little control. But within those walls was only love.

Our old neighbour from across the street had recorded the scene and sent it to us. A fireball rising into the night sky.

Red paint splashed on the walls I had myself painted white. On the vehicle in the adjoining driveway, which belongs to a Jewish couple in their 80s, 'F—k the Jews' was scrawled on one side, 'F—k Israel' on the other. Two sides of the same car and two sides of the same coin.

For 15 months I have shrugged off questions about my own safety. Not out of any great valour but more a symptom of my optimism. Being afraid is also no way to live.

For 15 months, the community has reeled from such attacks.

In response, the common refrain by advocates and politicians has been to condemn them as 'un-Australian,' a great term that denotes conduct that runs contrary to who we are as a country.

But a country, like an individual, is defined not by how they see themselves but how they actually behave.

A part of Australian behaviour has become to harass, intimidate, abuse and burn motivated by a hatred of the Jewish people.

In the days after my former home was hit, a childcare centre in Maroubra was firebombed, a potentially devastating mass terror attack was disrupted, schools were daubed with more anti-Semitic slogans, and a man was arrested for allegedly daubing Stars of David on a private home in Melbourne before spitting and throwing bacon on a passerby.

A small minority is responsible for this conduct, but when the majority is silent, ambivalent or apathetic the conduct continues, it spreads and it starts to define a nation.

Biden State Dept Privately Downplayed Use of 'Jihad' and 'Occupation' in UNRWA-Made Study Materials, Saying Only 'Some Other Audiences' View the Terms as 'Inappropriate'

When the Biden administration resumed funding to the United Nations relief agency for Gaza, it penned an internal memo aimed at defending UNRWA over its production of childhood "educational materials" that encourage violence and demonize Israel. Some of those materials included references to "jihad" and Israeli "occupation"—terms that the Biden State Department wrote are "in line with U.N. principles" and only "viewed as inappropriate by some other audiences."

The memo, obtained by the Washington Free Beacon through a records request from watchdog group Protect the Public Trust, came roughly two weeks after the Biden administration restored tens of millions of dollars in funding to UNRWA in April 2021 following a pause during President Donald Trump's first stint in the White House. Written by deputy assistant secretary Nancy Izzo Jackson for Secretary of State Antony Blinken, it addressed "examples of criticism" targeting UNRWA and laid out the State Department's "response."

The first section, titled, "Educational Materials," notes that UNRWA made "home-learning 'cards,' based on the Palestinian Authority's educational curriculum, to supplement textbooks sent home" during the COVID pandemic. Some of those cards, according to a January 2021 report from research firm Impact-se, included the "encouragement of violence" and accused Israel "of deliberately dumping radioactive and toxic waste in the West Bank."

UNRWA, the State Department wrote, had already removed or changed the content before the report's release. Shortly thereafter, however, Impact-se issued a follow-up report that identified additional "problematic cards," including "references to jihad in and violence in Arabic language lessons for grades 6 and 9," as well as references to "the Israeli occupation." UNRWA determined that those terms did not violate "U.N. principles," according to the State Department memo, which states that only "some other audiences" may object to them.

"UNRWA removed or updated four cards while retaining a dozen cards it deemed as in line with U.N. principles (e.g. use of 'jihad' in the Quran or the term 'occupation') but are viewed as inappropriate by some other audiences," the State Department said.The memo offers a fresh window into the Biden administration's decision to restore funding to UNRWA—one that shows the Biden State Department was well aware of the issues plaguing the embattled relief agency but opted to barrel forward with funds anyway. It came just two months before the State Department privately assessed that Hamas was likely to benefit from more than $360 million in additional aid.

02/06 Links Pt1: How Trump Can Get Arab States to Solve the Refugee Problem Without Relocating Gazans; Trump Slaps Sanctions on International Criminal Court

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: How Trump Can Get Arab States to Solve the Refugee Problem Without Relocating Gazans

That is, the Arab states made a conscious, concerted decision to make Palestinians a permanent underclass so they could be used as a cudgel against Israel. Palestinians’ statelessness is the official policy of the Arab states, with the exception of Jordan, which granted Palestinian refugees citizenship while simultaneously insisting they keep their “refugee” status as far as the UN is concerned, thus obligating UN agencies to subsidize their absorption while artificially inflating the number of claimed Palestinian “refugees” in the region. (In the real world, you can be a refugee or you can be a resettled citizen.)

Lebanon has always made its position clear. In 2006, President Emile Lahoud explained: “We have today around half a million Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, their birth rate is three times higher than the Lebanese. That is a time bomb. It is the basic problem of our country, it led to the outbreak of civil war in 1975 and still remains unsolved today. Everybody today is talking about UN resolution 1559, but nobody mentions resolution 194, which recognizes the Palestinians’ right of return (to Israel). Lebanon is small and can’t integrate the Palestinians.”

That is, the Lebanese position has always been that Palestinians are a demographic threat and keep their host country constantly on the verge of civil war, so they should go to Israel.

In Lebanon, Palestinians still mostly live in camps. In addition, “Laws, decrees, and regulations of professional associations specify that members must hold Lebanese nationality for at least ten years or that there must be reciprocity of treatment for Lebanese professionals in the country of citizenship of the foreign professional applying to practice in Lebanon,” which means Palestinians cannot legally work in major industries.

In Syria, Palestinians are lucky if their camps even still stand. “The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before the war in Syria reduced it to row after row of blasted out buildings,” reported the Associated Press in December. Bashar al-Assad’s forces flattened Yarmouk and left it abandoned, then made it nearly impossible to legally rebuild.

What’s the purpose of all this? Very simply, the point is to prevent full acceptance of Israel’s existence and prepare the ground for a perpetual cycle of wars of annihilation against the Jewish state. The Palestinians suffer most from the Arab world’s policy, not because they are the target but because they are the weapon.

Egypt receives over a billion dollars a year in U.S. aid. In Syria, Assad has fallen, potentially opening up an opportunity to renegotiate its official policy of using Palestinians as cannon fodder against Israel. In Lebanon, Hezbollah has been greatly weakened and the U.S. is currently overseeing a ceasefire agreement there.

If Trump wants to save Israeli and Palestinian lives and keep the peace in the Middle East, he should use U.S. leverage to end the permanent refugee status of Palestinians.

Jonathan Tobin: Trump plan puts an end to the Palestinian state fantasy

Chances for a state
The notion of a two-state solution died a long time ago.
It could have easily been put into effect if only veteran terrorist and P.A. leader Yasser Arafat—newly off his title as chief of the Palestinian Liberation Organization with blood on his hands—had said “yes” to the offers of independence and statehood offered him by former President Bill Clinton and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. But after Arafat answered that peace offer with the terrorist war of attrition known as the Second Intifada, most Israelis understood that the land for peace schemes they had been sold was nothing more than land for terror. The conversion of Gaza into a terror state and missile launching pad against Israeli civilians after 2005 only confirmed that unhappy truth.

Still, the Palestinians had more opportunities and much international support. Statehood could have happened when President George W. Bush and then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert made an even sweeter offer to Arafat’s successor Mahmoud Abbas. And the opportunity for Palestinian statehood was always a theoretical possibility during the eight years of the presidency of Barack Obama, who did everything he could to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction.

But after Oct. 7 and the war that followed it, it’s safe to say that Palestinian statehood stopped being anything but a tired and meaningless policy concept that had outlived its sell-by date.

What lies ahead for the Palestinians or Gaza? It’s hard to say.

Trump pushed for a ceasefire/hostage release deal that could leave Hamas in power in Gaza. But his statements about the necessity for the removal of much, if not all, of the Palestinian population for the area to be rebuilt shows he doesn’t want that to happen. And as much as he would like for there to be no wars taking place on his watch, it seems unlikely that he would oppose further Israeli efforts to finish off Hamas—as Biden and Harris did—once it’s clear that the ceasefire will not force its disarming and eviction from power. The era of “daylight” between the United States and Israel is also over.

It’s entirely possible that the Palestinians in Gaza will insist on staying in the same state of limbo that they have chosen for themselves since 1948. They may continue waiting for Israel’s destruction so the descendants of the original refugees can go “home” to a country that never actually existed as a separate Palestinian Arab nation and never will. And it’s equally possible that with or without Hamas leadership, the political culture of the Palestinians is so twisted and intransigent that few will dare to take Trump up on his offer of the resettlement they’ve been denied for all these years for fear of being killed by Hamas operatives or their neighbors.

But there should be no doubt that despite the calumnies heaped upon Trump for having the temerity to discard foreign-policy conventional wisdom, this is the best offer the Palestinians will ever likely get.

There is no rational alternative
They may get the satisfaction of seeing Trump’s idea die for lack of support from anyone but Israel. But the alternative to the problem is for the Palestinian people to remain living in squalor, where they are only considered useful by their leaders, activists, university students and others who exploit the situation, as cannon fodder to wage war against the Jewish state.

What Trump has done is to consign the idea of Palestinian statehood to the ash heap of history, where it belongs. Along with his withdrawal from UNRWA—the U.N. refugee agency that has refused to resettle the Palestinians since 1948 and that helped perpetuate the war on Israel—and his recent defunding of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), whose “humanitarian” projects similarly helped prop up Palestinian intransigence, Trump has decisively shifted U.S. policy away from fantasy to realism.

American support was always essential for Palestinian statehood. That is finished. His critics may decry this all they want, but the bitter truth they fail to acknowledge is that their alternatives to Trump’s Gaza idea are even more unrealistic and dangerous than his.

Trump's Plan to Free Palestinians from Gaza

President Trump shocked the world with his proposal to resettle Gazans in nearby countries. The real disturbance is to think seriously about what it would mean to put Palestinian lives first rather than sacrificing them to the lost cause of Palestine as their leaders always do. Each major Palestinian leader has preferred his own generation to suffer rather than consent to live alongside a Jewish state on any part of the Jewish homeland.

This is the worst kind of nationalism, an eliminationist one that brings its people only misery. But Arab states have long indulged it. It relieved them of the burdens first of resettling Palestinians and then of starting and losing wars to annihilate Israel.

The world plays along. UNRWA was founded in 1949 to resettle the displaced from the defeated Arab invasion of Israel. The Arab and Soviet blocs made UNRWA into a permanent international commitment to the lost cause. Palestinians are radicalized in UNRWA schools and kept on the international dole rather than encouraged to build institutions of their own. That's the purpose of the Gaza. Trump now proposes to do the job UNRWA never would.

The scandal isn't that displaced Palestinians now could be "transferred" voluntarily out of Gaza; it's that they have been forced to stay there. When Palestinians tried to flee the war, as is their human right, Egypt forcibly closed the border - with the support of the international community. Their incarceration by UNRWA and Egypt is the brutal status quo, strangely unchallenged until now.

El Salvador OK Taking Violent US Criminals, But Palestinian ‘Refugees’ A Hard NO (PreOccupied Territory)

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El Salvador OK Taking Violent US Criminals, But Palestinian ‘Refugees’ A Hard NO

San Salvador, February 6 - The president of an up-and-coming Central American country clarified today that while he may be willing to contract with the Trump administration to imprison US residents convicted of various brutal felonies, such an arrangement cannot and will not apply to anyone fleeing the Gaza Strip, because those people are far too dangerous, a spokesman for Nayib Bukele disclosed today.

"The president has made clear his openness to working with the United States to incarcerate violent criminals," stated presidential aide Delito Violento. "President Bukele's dramatic success in crime reduction through strict enforcement and harsh penalties has driven crime way down in this country. We would be thrilled to partner with President Trump to work toward similar results in the US, which would benefit the entire region."

"The thing is," continue Violento, "not all criminals are the same. In the US, as in El Salvador, indeed, in almost all remotely civilized countries, crime, however rampant, does not form part of the ethos of the culture, of the society. The non-criminals, and even most of the criminals, understand the problematic nature of their behavior, powerless as they may feel to change it. Not so for Palestinians, certainly not Palestinians in Gaza. They live, breathe, glorify, and sanctify violence. We cannot take any of them. It would destroy El Salvador."

Bukele's unwillingness to accept Palestinians desperate to flee war-ravaged Gaza stems from the same opposition to it as every other country: no one wants to absorb a population steeped in radicalism, hatred, and violence as the answer to life's problems.

"El Salvador is hardly unique in this respect," observed political commentator Mehdi Hassan. "Muslims and Arabs make a lot of noise about loving and supporting Palestinians. Even if it were true a hundred years ago, it's definitely not true now. It's more about hating Jews and Israel than it is about helping or liking Palestinians. They're leeches. Crybullies. Entitled. Spoiled beyond belief. Not to mention a destabilizing force wherever they live, in Gaza or anywhere. El Salvador isn't staking out some bold new position at odds with global sentiment. They're giving us the consensus view, just not dressed up in the language of the conflict with Israel."

Aides to US President Donald Trump indicated that whether or not the El Salvador proposal works out - it might violate Constitutional law, according to some experts - the new administration has begun to weigh shipping the violent criminals to Gaza itself, which would raise the moral level of the territory by a significant margin.

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Thousands of Gazans are begging for money to escape to Egypt - but @Reuters, @CNN, @BBC and @Guardian cannot find a single one!

Reuters yesterday:

Reuters today:

Reuters can only find people willing to parrot what Hamas says. Hmmm.

And it isn't only Reuters. The BBC has a similar article, as does The Guardian (‘We would rather die here than leave’), The Nation, and CNN (I'd “rather eat the rubble”.)

Yet I have found thousands of Gazans who put up appeals on GoFundMe begging for money to escape Gaza.

Here are some GoFundMe appeals from Gazans to leave from only the past week:

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Don't believe me? Do the query yourself! Escape Gaza - Evacuate Gaza - Leave Gaza - Flee Gaza - Escape to Egypt . Hundreds of results are visible for each one. GoFundMe limits queries to 1,000 results, and many of these search terms have well over a thousand hits.

How come I can find these people and the major news media can only find people who improbably say they would rather keep their own families in the rain rather than find a safe refuge?

Beyond that, we know that before Egypt closed the Rafah border, according to Palestinian Authority officials, some 100,000 Gazans did scrape together the thousands of dollars needed to essentially bribe Egyptian officials to call them "VIPs" and let them in.

The narrative control is nearly absolute.

Media outlets won’t touch it because it contradicts their simplified victim/oppressor framing. Arab governments won’t discuss it because it exposes their own refusal to help. And Western activists ignore it because it makes their slogans meaningless.

At this point, it’s clear that the "Palestinian cause" is not about helping actual Palestinians—it’s about using them as a permanent, unresolvable grievance:

Arab governments use them to distract from their own failures.

The UN uses them to justify a bloated bureaucracy that will never solve the problem.

Western activists use them to signal virtue without having to support real solutions.

And who suffers?

Ordinary Palestinians who just want a future—whether inside or outside Gaza.

This is why trust in the news media is at an all time low. Normal adult human beings want their families to be safe, but Reuters and CNN want to tell people that they'd rather suffer and force their families to live in misery as well.

While some of the GoFundMe appeals are probably scams, read them yourself and see which version of events pass the smell test - the bravado of the people telling their loved ones to suffer in the rain, or the anguish of the people saying they want to leave?

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One week ago, the media was filled with warnings on how Israel's ban of UNRWA activities inside Israel would curtail aid to Gaza.

Since then, I cannot find a single news story that says that aid to Gaza has been affected one bit.

In fact, the number of stories about aid to Gaza have dropped to nearly nothing. One exception was from AP on Monday which did not mention UNRWA at all:

Two weeks after the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel took effect, aid is flooding into the Gaza Strip, bringing relief to a territory suffering from hunger, mass displacement and devastation following 15 months of war.

Israel estimates that at least 4,200 trucks have entered each week since the ceasefire took hold.

The main U.N. food agency, the World Food Program, said it dispersed more food to Palestinians in Gaza during the first four days of the ceasefire than it did, on average, during any month of the war. Over 32,000 metric tons of aid have entered Gaza since the ceasefire, the agency said last week.

Aid is now entering through two crossings in the north and one in the south. Aid agencies said they are opening bakeries and handing out high-energy biscuits, and Hamas police have returned to the streets to help restore order.

The article goes on to describe what WFP, UNICEF and UNMAS (explosive removal) are doing in Gaza - but nothing about UNRWA.

Somehow, all this is happening without UNRWA being open for business in Israel.

Since the news media lost interest in UNRWA, it is more difficult to understand exactly what Israel's ban encompasses. From what I can tell, it only closed down the UNRWA headquarters in Jerusalem. Clinics and schools in the West Bank are operating normally. Presumably the 13,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza are also still working since they are not dependent on working directly with Israel.

At least some UNRWA trucks have entered Gaza since the ban.

You can be sure that if there was a significant impact on aid to Gaza, the news media would be all over it.

Sometimes, the only way to understand the news is to see what isn't being reported. From everything we see, thousands of trucks filled with aid can enter Gaza and be distributed without UNRWA being a critical component.

UNRWA isn't nearly as important as the "experts" have said. Because the media is very reluctant to report on stories that disprove their confident predictions, the story simply disappears.

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