Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, February 10, 2025

A simple question that proves @UNRWA's worthlessness

Last week, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini tweeted:

The rights of the Palestinians continue to be violated.

Since the war began, people in #Gaza have undergone systematic dehumanization.

Palestinians do matter, including those in Gaza.
Their rights, lives & futures matter.

Human rights cannot be applied selectively.

As the UN Secretary General said: “Peace requires ending the occupation, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian State, with Gaza as an integral part; a viable and sovereign Palestinian State side-by-side with Israel”.

At @UNRWA, our teams are committed to continue providing critical assistance to #Palestine Refugees who need us most until empowered Palestinian institutions become a lasting & viable alternative.

Let's look at that last sentence a little closer.

UNRWA spends about $133 million a year on services in areas under full Palestinian Authority control. The PA is now over 30 years old. They can and do provide services to all their citizens, which include everyone registered with UNRWA.

The UNRWA recipients who live in the West Bank are not "refugees" by any normal definition. They live within the borders of British Mandate Palestine. They have a government that works on their behalf.

UNRWA runs a hospital in Qalqilya and numerous health clinics. Why? They are a wasteful duplication of administrative overhead from what the PA is already meant to provide.

Same for UNRWA schools. They use the PA curriculum and the PA provides public schools for all citizens. As far as I can tell, they do not refuse services to "refugees."

So why does UNRWA exist in the West Bank? The PA schools and hospitals are empowered, today, to provide all the services, and international aid to UNRWA could easily be directed to the PA to more than make up for any shortfall because of this parallel social services provided by UNRWA today.

By Lazzarini's own standards, UNRWA should have been dismantled in the West Bank back in the 1990s. And by UNRWA's own original mandate, it should not be providing services to people who do not need them anymore. Being a citizen of the "State of Palestine" which is recognized by over a hundred countries certainly qualifies.

But his statement here goes way beyond UNRWA's mandate as stated by the UN. UNRWA's mandate is for it to be a temporary agency. Its UN mandate and funding is renewed every few years, a vestige of the fact that it is not meant to be permanent. The 1949 resolution 302 that created it says "continued assistance for the relief of the Palestine refugees is necessary to prevent conditions of starvation and distress among them and to further conditions of peace and stability, and that constructive measures should be undertaken at an early date with a view to the termination of international assistance for relief."

But the UNRWA website shows that it has expanded its own mandate to exist "pending a just and lasting solution to their plight." That language is not in any UN resolutions on UNRWA that I am aware of.

UNRWA cannot, by definition, change its own mandate without a UN resolution. . But this is what UNRWA has done. And when Lazzarini says UNRWA must exist "until empowered Palestinian institutions become a lasting & viable alternative" he is making up a new mandate again. It is probably illegal, because UNRWA should not be able to go beyond the mandates that create and continue to fund it. Yet this is exactly what it is doing.

UNRWA itself defines whether its services are needed, and it adjusts its own mandate to allow it to continue to exist, instead of following UN resolutions.

The continued existence of UNRWA in the West Bank, and to a large extent Jordan (which also extends citizenship and protection to most of its Palestinian residents) proves that UNRWA has become a parody of what it was created for. By Lazzarini's own words, it should not exist in the West Bank even today.

This is far from the only reason to dismantle UNRWA today. But it is enough of one.

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Here's a little detail about the movement of Palestinians in Gaza that no one is reporting.

While it was widely reported that over half a million Gazans moved back to northern Gaza when circumstances allowed, what is not mentioned is that some 45,000 of them - as of February 5 - decided to go back south.

From UN-OCHA:

Since 30 January, SMWG [Site Management Working Group] observed that more than 45,678 people have been moving southwards. The Protection Cluster notes that this is due to the lack of services and the overwhelming destruction of homes and communities in the north, leaving people without viable shelter options. With more than half a million internally displaced persons (IDPs) estimated to have returned to Gaza and North Gaza governorates, the need for food, water, tents and shelter materials in that area remains critical. According to the Shelter Cluster, despite the entry of a large volume of supplies since the ceasefire took effect, priority was given to food during the first two weeks, significantly limiting the entry of shelter assistance.

It is interesting that when Israel set up humanitarian zones they ensured that there would be adequate tents and infrastructure - and yet Israel was blamed when things weren't to the Gazans' liking. But now when the UN and Hamas are in charge of supplies, and they are found inadequate, they simply keep the issues as quiet as possible.

(h/t Irene)

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02/09 Links: No one can now deny the evil that is Hamas; Trump creates task force to prosecute October 7 perpetrators; Erin Molan: Failure on a global scale

From Ian:

Stephen Pollard: No one can now deny the evil that is Hamas

The only difference was the presence of their Hamas captors; the Nazis had fled the camps by the time they were liberated.

Hamas, on the other hand, stood proudly by as the emaciated, almost crippled bodies of the hostages were forced by their captors on to a stage to take part in the latest of the terrorist organisation’s sick propaganda stunts.

I am not religious. But I know that evil exists and we have once more seen it on display.

Or Levy is just 33 years old. His only crime was to have gone to a music festival and to have been Jewish. Hamas murdered his wife and starved him for 491 days. There is only one word for the people that did this to him: evil.

Ever since October 7 we have heard glib platitudes from around the world about “peace”, about reaching an accommodation with Hamas and about Israel needing to accept a “two-state solution”.

But there will be no peace – indeed, there should be no peace – when that necessitates accepting the presence of evil.

As Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog put it: “This is what a crime against humanity looks like. The entire world should look at Ohad, Or and Eli – who returned from the hell of 491 days in captivity, painful, emaciated and wounded, and were used in a cynical and evil ritual by damned murderers.”

Throughout the war brought on by Hamas’s massacre we have been told by much of the media – and by Hamas’s useful idiots protesting on the streets and on campus – that the real criminal is Israel.

Look at the aid shortages! The simple fact is that, far from blocking aid, Israel has gone out of its way to facilitate its arrival in Gaza.

But just as Hamas deliberately uses Palestinian civilians as human shields for its propaganda so it can accuse Israel of targeting civilians, so too it both blocks aid from being distributed (often destroying it) and seizes it for its own use.

If you want to see what real targeted starvation looks like, look at the pictures of the Israeli hostages.

Brendan O'Neill: Who really wants ‘ethnic cleansing’ in the Middle East?

What’s exasperating about all this is that we’ve just come through 16 months of shameless agitation for the end of the Jewish State. Modern anti-Israel activism, at root, is a dream of ethnic cleansing. Consider Columbia. Its woke students are fuming over Trump’s Gaza idea. Yet this is a campus where apocalyptic Israelophobia has run riot since Hamas’s pogrom 16 months ago. Campus activists referred to Israel as ‘the pigs of the Earth’ and fantasised about a future when it would die. ‘We don’t want no two states / We want ’48!’, they cried, referring to 1948, when the modern state of Israel did not yet exist. Plainly put, they want the obliteration of the Jewish homeland.

‘Crush Zionism!’, the West’s activists cry. ‘End Zionism!’, their banners demand. They want the very belief in a Jewish homeland – which is all that Zionism is – killed off and buried. You should be grateful we’re not ‘going out and murdering Zionists’, said a spokesman for Columbia’s Gaza encampment last year. Trump might want to put up some plush condos in Gaza but at least he hasn’t raised the prospect of murdering everyone who believes in Palestinian statehood. Hostility to Israel’s right to exist is entirely commonplace on demonstrations in the West. That’s what ‘From the river to the sea’ means – the complete excision of the Jewish nation and its replacement by Palestine.

Anti-Israel agitation is the first ‘peace movement’ in history where the aim is not just to stop a war but also to stop the existence of a country. People have even chanted in favour of the Houthis, whose flag literally says ‘Death to Israel’. In polite society too, at literary soirees, at dinner parties, the question goes out: ‘Should Israel exist?’ These dreams of cleansing are incredibly influential. Hence, headlines like ‘Most young people think Israel should not exist’, after a poll of youthful Brits found that 54 per cent of them thought Israel should be brought to an end. And its people? What happens to them? Fuck off back to Poland?

Imagine the gall it takes to accuse others of ‘ethnic cleansing’ after you’ve spent more than a year mingling with people who lust after the wholesale dismantling of Jewish nationhood. If I had attended protest after protest at which people waved placards saying ‘Keep the world clean’ alongside an image of the Jewish flag being put in the bin, I’d probably stay quiet about Trump’s dream of making a holiday resort in Gaza. At least his proposal has proven controversial. In contrast, hatred for Zionism, and even calls for its ideological annihilation, have been mainstreamed these past 16 months. That terrifies me far more than Trump’s Gaza bluster.

Not one Palestinian should be forcibly removed from Gaza. Gaza is not America’s plaything and its people are not America’s property. They have a right to live in the towns they built over the decades, many of them sadly now destroyed in the war Hamas started with its pogrom of 7 October. But the West’s opinion-formers can’t have it both ways. They can’t treat Gaza’s inhabitants as a fundamentally homeless people, as permanent refugees, as the generational victims of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, and then reach for the smelling salts when Trump proposes rehousing them. Both the Israelophobic activist class and blundering Trump seem to think Gazans don’t truly belong in Gaza, and that is not conducive to the building of a free state there post-Hamas. For that’s what really needs to be wiped out: not Gaza, not Israel – Hamas.

Seth Mandel: The Conflict in Three Images

The third image is blood-boiling but important, and it was easily missed in the chaotic scene in Gaza. It is of a Red Cross official shaking hands with a Hamas terrorist in front of a banner that reads “We’re the flood,” which is both a celebration of Oct. 7, 2023, and an acknowledgement that so long as Hamas is in power, Oct. 7 is its North Star. The handshake is taking place in the presence of an emaciated Israeli hostage, a monument to the failure of the International Committee of the Red Cross to uphold its founding and guiding principles—or what we were told were its guiding principles.

The Red Cross did not so much as feign interest in the fate of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas. When one hostage’s mother pleaded with the Red Cross to try and deliver medicine her daughter needed daily, the Red Cross officials scolded her: “Think about the Palestinian side. It’s hard for the Palestinians, they’re being bombed.”

During the current ceasefire, the Red Cross has played a highly visible role as Hamas props. Its officials continue to willingly participate in Hamas’s pre-release ritual humiliation ceremonies—itself a violation of the rules governing the treatment of detainees. During the war, its employees had access to the hospitals where Hamas was holding hostages and between which Hamas fighters were moving freely. Despite this, the Red Cross denounced Israel’s attempts to clear those terrorists out of the medical complexes.

The scenes from the hostage releases reinforce what we already know, and why Israel exists: “Never Again” is an empty slogan to everyone but the Jewish people. If a nation wants a future, it must secure that future for itself.

We need to talk about being angry (Forest Rain)

By Forest Rain

We need to talk about being angry

This is for the nice people, angry that Hamas cruelty has made them hate

I know a lot of nice people. Really nice people. Some of them have expressed anger that the barbarism and cruelty of Hamas has made them hate – and they do not want to hate.

Most of us were taught to be kind. To love. Not to hate. In some of our families even expressing anger was considered inappropriate. Being raised this way creates people who are very gentle and nice.

The problem is, what do you do when you are confronted with evil?

Many of us end up having difficulty recognizing the situations when it is necessary to destroy evil – because we do not want to recognize them. The violence and harshness necessary to destroy evil is repugnant to people who were taught to be nice. We are “nice”. “We don’t do things like that.”

And this conditioning is so deep that we forget that if evil is ignored, it grows. That letting evil slide because the actions necessary to stop it aren’t “nice” creates evil that is stronger and more dangerous.

That is what righteous anger is all about. It’s not anger for the sake of being angry. It’s anger, even rage, evoked from the recognition of injustice and evil.

Like the anger we felt at seeing men of Israel starved, as Nazis starved Jews when there was no Israel to protect them.

Like the anger we felt at the look of terror in Shiri Bibas’s eyes when she was ripped from her home with her two babies in her arms.

The question is, do we have enough love for our own in order to set aside our fear of harsh emotions, feel the rage, and put it to use?

Turning the other cheek is not a Jewish idea. Jews believe in justice and that God helps those who help themselves.

Turning the other cheek is an idea that can work when confronting people who come from the same cultural and ethical background and can be shamed into setting aside cruelty and violence. That was how Mahatma Gandhi shamed the British Empire.

IT DOES NOT WORK WHEN BATTLING EVIL THAT IS COMING TO DESTROY YOU AND YOUR CHILDREN.

Rage is the difference between the IDF soldiers on the battlefield and the highest ranks of IDF Command (who are now being replaced for their failure to attain victory). Our soldiers saw the results of the October 7th invasion. They saw their sisters defiled and thrown aside like rag dolls. They saw homes destroyed, babies burned, and fathers who couldn’t save their wives and children. They felt the rage and they knew what was necessary. That is why they fought on when friends were killed. That is why when injured in battle, many of them went to the hospital, recuperated and RETURNED TO THE BATTLEFIELD.

Our soldiers do not love war. They love us enough to do what it takes to make sure this doesn’t happen again. They love us enough to sacrifice themselves to rescue hostages and redeem the dignity stolen from our nation.

They saw what happened and they understood that Amalek must be destroyed. Those who did not see with their own eyes could pretend that they did not know. That the perpetrators are not Amalek. That it is ok to allow them to live – and fight another day.

Those who were there, and saw, know better - and frankly, I don’t think we are anywhere near angry enough.

When confronted with evil it is necessary to feel anger. Even rage. That is the energy that must be channelled, to create justice. To make sure that NEVER AGAIN is more than an empty slogan.

Dear nice people, you are lovely. But it isn’t “nice” to let evil survive.

Ignoring evil because confronting it necessitates violence, harshness, or unpleasantness means that you are not just allowing it to grow, you are excusing it, strengthening it.

And that isn’t nice at all.

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The world claims to care about Gaza - but it doesn't send money to help Gazans. The probable reason? They know Hamas steals it.

In December, the UN issued a "flash appeal" for Palestinians saying that they need over $4 billion in humanitarian aid, 88% ($3.6 billion) earmarked for Gaza.

Nearly two months later, it has received only 3.6% of what it requested from the world, a mere $145.6 million as of February 4.

Why is the world so unwilling to help in what it claims is the most dire humanitarian crisis of our times? This is a situation that has taken over the bulk of the world media's international coverage, pushing Ukraine from the front pages for 16 months and relegating famine in parts of Africa and other crises as mere footnotes if mentioned at all in the media. How can we explain the disconnect between how much the world claims to care about Gazans and how little it actually wants to help Gazans who need help?

One obvious answer is that the world really doesn't care about Palestinians, and it is hate for Israel that fuels the coverage and attention, but not genuine concern for Gazans.

Beyond that, however, is probably a deeper reason.

The UN and NGOs insist that Israel is lying when it says that Hamas is stealing the aid and using it to finance its own operations, and they blame Israel for not allowing aid into Gaza even when the trucks were piling up inside the sector. Now there are few impediments to bringing in aid (Israel still restricts dual-use items but usually approves them after verification) and hundreds of trucks are entering every day, without any fighting or apparent security issues.

Yet despite the huge amounts of food being brought in, the price of food remains sky-high in Gaza. Food that is meant to be distributed for free to Gazans is being sold at inflated prices. The World Food Programme says that the price of the minimum expenditure basket (MEB) is up 552% compared to what it was before the war, but it should be practically zero because all the food staples in the basket are being donated to be given away for free to needy Gazans. Why are the prices still so high?

Because Hamas continues to steal the aid and then sell it at inflated prices, as they have done throughout the war. Everyone knows this.

This is why the world doesn't want to send more than a minimal amount of aid into Gaza. No one wants to waste money. But they don't want to admit this, so they obfuscate the truth by continuing to blame Israel.

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There have now been five hostage handovers from Hamas to the Red Cross.

Each has included scenes where the hostages are forced to promote Hamas propaganda and lie about how they were treated in captivity.

This is a direct violation of international law. The Geneva Conventions say that "outrages upon personal dignity" are war crimes.

In November 2023, before the first set of hostages were released, HRW said that forcing hostages to make videos is a war crime. Since then, I cannot find anything from HRW or Amnesty International that mention this again.

Now, we know the pattern. Israeli hostages are paraded around on stage, forced to make false statements that they were treated well, forced to hold "certificates" and to thank their captors, and forced to stand in front of Hamas propaganda backdrops.

NGOs are quite limited as to what they can concretely do to promote human rights. Their major weapon is to shame various parties to act humanely and follow international law. Hamas is very sensitive to being shamed. If major NGOs would directly and unequivocally condemn these staged events, Hamas would make sure that they aren't shamed again. Since we know that the same scenario will be acted out in the future, "human rights" NGOs are in a unique position of actually being able to do something good.

They choose not to.

Make no mistake - this is a choice. "Human rights" NGOs like Amnesty and HRW mount massive, expensive campaigns against Israel, but where they could actually do good - against Muslims who are sensitive to honor - they choose to respect their honor and downplay their criticisms, if they even say anything at all.

The ICRC, for its part, has only offered muted, ambiguous mumblings of concern. Their press release yesterday states, "The ICRC is increasingly concerned about the conditions surrounding release operations. We strongly urge all parties, including the mediators, to take responsibility to ensure that future releases are dignified and private. The ICRC has consistently conveyed this message privately and publicly. " By saying "all parties" they are equating Israel and Hamas, and therefore Hamas is not shamed - on the contrary, they are equating innocent hostages to convicted terrorists. It is true that the ICRC is committed to neutrality but that doesn't mean it cannot (and does not) call out abuses by one side when the abuses only happen on that side.

Most times that HRW and Amnesty condemn something, the event has already happened. Here the war crime is planned, scheduled, and livestreamed. This is one of the few times that the NGOs can influence Hamas to change its behavior ahead of time by publicly calling it out and demanding a change. That they choose not to do so tells you everything about how little they care about the human rights of Israelis.

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The Quran (62:5) says, "The example of those who were entrusted with observing the Torah but failed to do so, is that of a donkey carrying books. How evil is the example of those who reject Allah’s signs! For Allah does not guide the wrongdoing people."

Dr. Salama Dawoud, President of Al-Azhar University, says that this verse carries within it a great lesson about knowledge, learning, and benefiting from knowledge.

During an episode of the program “The Eloquence of the Qur’an and Sunnah,” broadcast on “Al-Nas” channel, Dawoud said that the comparison to a donkey carrying books is a very strange comparison, because it is not usual to see a donkey carrying books.

“The verse does not only refer to the Jews who carried the Torah, but to everyone who acquired knowledge but did not act upon it, whether in religion or in any other field. "

If the message was to all of humanity, why did Mohammed specify Jews as being the ones analogous to donkeys? In fact, the next three verses are also addressed to Jews specifically, saying that if they are really the chosen people, they should not fear death because paradise is automatic.

62:6 – Say, "O you who are Jews, if you claim to be Allah’s chosen ones, to the exclusion of (all) people, then wish for death, if you should be truthful."
62:7 – But they will never wish for it, ever, because of what their hands have put forth. And Allah is Knowing of the wrongdoers.
62:8 – Say, "Indeed, the death from which you flee – indeed, it will meet you. Then you will be returned to the Knower of the unseen and the seen, and He will inform you about what you used to do."

It is one of many examples where Islam applies its own peculiar worldview to Jews to define Jews as hypocrites. Jews value life because only in life can one do mitzvot and improve.

These verses are apparently the source of the bizarre taunt that Palestinians often say to Jews, "We love death and you love life."

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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.