Sunday, January 28, 2024

In 2005, the UN bent over backwards to NOT accuse Sudan of genocide in Darfur

In January 2005, an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur presented the results of its research to the United Nations Secretary-General - and determined that, contrary to what many nations insisted, there was no genocide in by the government of Sudan against the Black African tribes targeted in Darfur. They were behind some horrific war crimes but not genocide.

The report shows how high the bar is for determining genocidal intent. And part of that calculation is saying that if the Janjaweed or the government had the opportunity to murder someone in the targeted tribes and didn't, that is a good counterargument to the charge of genocide.

It says:

513. Was there a genocidal intent? Some elements emerging from the facts including the scale of atrocities and the systematic nature of the attacks, killing, displacement and rape, as well as racially motivated statements by perpetrators that have targeted members of the African tribes only, could be indicative of the genocidal intent. However, there are other more indicative elements that show the lack of genocidal intent. The fact that in a number of villages attacked and burned by both militias and Government forces the attackers refrained from exterminating the whole population that had not fled, but instead selectively killed groups of young men, is an important element. A telling example is the attack of 22 January 2004 on Wadi Saleh, a group of 25 villages inhabited by about 11 000 Fur. According to credible accounts of eye witnesses questioned by the Commission, after occupying the villages the Government Commissioner and the leader of the Arab militias that had participated in the attack and burning, gathered all those who had survived or had not managed to escape into a large area. Using a microphone they selected 15 persons (whose name they read from a written list), as well as 7 omdas, and executed them on the spot. They then sent all elderly men, all boys, many men and all women to a nearby village, where they held them for some time, whereas they executed 205 young villagers, who they asserted were rebels (Torabora). According to male witnesses interviewed by the Commission and who were among the survivors, about 800 persons were not killed (most young men of those spared by the attackers were detained for some time in the Mukjar prison).

514. This case clearly shows that the intent of the attackers was not to destroy an ethnic group as such, or part of the group. Instead, the intention was to murder all those men they considered as rebels, as well as forcibly expel the whole population so as to vacate the villages and prevent rebels from hiding among, or getting support from, the local population.

515. Another element that tends to show the Sudanese Government’s lack of genocidal intent can be seen in the fact that persons forcibly dislodged from their villages are collected in IDP camps. In other words, the populations surviving attacks on villages are not killed outright, so as to eradicate the group; they are rather forced to abandon their homes and live together in areas selected by the Government. While this attitude of the Sudanese Government may be held to be in breach of international legal standards on human rights and international criminal law rules, it is not indicative of any intent to annihilate the group. This is all the more true because the living conditions in those camps, although open to strong criticism on many grounds, do not seem to be calculated to bring about the extinction of the ethnic group to which the IDPs belong. Suffice it to note that the Government of Sudan generally allows humanitarian organizations to help the population in camps by providing food, clean water, medicines and logistical assistance (construction of hospitals, cooking facilities, latrines, etc.)

516. Another element that tends to show the lack of genocidal intent is the fact that in contrast with other instances described above, in a number of instances villages with a mixed composition (African and Arab tribes) have not been attacked. This for instance holds true for the village of Abaata (north-east of Zelingei, in Western Darfur), consisting of Zaghawa and members of Arab tribes.

517. Furthermore, it has been reported by a reliable source that one inhabitant of the Jabir Village (situated about 150 km from Abu Shouk Camp) was among the victims of an attack carried out by Janjaweed on 16 March 2004 on the village. He stated that he did not resist when the attackers took 200 camels from him, although they beat him up with the butt of their guns. Instead, prior to his beating, his young brother, who possessed only one camel, had resisted when the attackers had tried to take his camel, and had been shot dead. Clearly, in this instance the special intent to kill a member of a group to destroy the group as such was lacking, the murder being only motivated by the desire to appropriate cattle belonging to the inhabitants of the village. Irrespective of the motive, had the attackers’ intent been to annihilate the group, they would not have spared one of the brothers.

The report bends over backwards to find reasons not to call the actions genocide. It goes way beyond the Genocide Convention definition - there actually was a genocide in Darfur and the UN report whitewashed it.

The COI didn't even bother to catalog racist statements by the Sudanese government and its Arab allies. A 2009 study of women raped by the groups concluded that "Combined attacks by Sudanese government forces and Janjaweed militia forces led to racial epithets being used more often during sexual victimization in Darfur. Our results suggest that the Sudanese government is participating in the use of sexual assault as a racially targeted weapon against ethnically African civilians." Another observer said that the Janjaweed would frequently refer to the Blacks as "slaves". And before this study was published, the US State Department documented,

When describing attacks, refugees often referred to GOS soldiers and Jingaweit militias as a unified group; as one refugee stated, "The soldiers and Jingaweit, always they are together." The primary victims have been non-Arab residents of Darfur. Numerous credible reports corroborate the use of racial and ethnic epithets by both the Jingaweit and GOS military personnel; "Kill the slaves; Kill the slaves!" and "We have orders to kill all the blacks" are common. One refugee reported a militia member stating, "We kill all blacks and even kill our cattle when they have black calves."

What is clear is that by the criteria that the UN COI used in Darfur, it is absurd to charge Israel with genocide. Every reason that the UN gave to exonerate the Sudan government of genocide applies a thousandfold more to Israel.

As usual, standards applied to Israel do not apply to anyone else, no matter how heinous their crimes. The double standards show that this isn't a question of human rights, but of antisemitism.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

01/27 Links: The UN’s Complicity in Terrorism; 10 Countries suspend funding to UNRWA; A hollow Holocaust Remembrance Day

From Ian:

Seth Mandel: The UN’s Complicity in Terrorism

The timing of this disclosure is interesting for another reason. On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “UNRWA Exposed: Examining the Agency’s Mission and Failures.” Foundation for Defense of Democracy’s Richard Goldberg and UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer are two of the planned witnesses.

Last night, an administration official told Israel Hayom that “UNRWA continues to deliver critical assistance in Gaza and remains a trusted US partner. UNRWA will be a central pillar of stability in post-war Gaza, and we strongly support it.”

Perhaps that assessment, like U.S. funding to the agency, will come under some much needed reconsideration by the Biden White House. As it is, President Biden had restored U.S. funding to UNRWA after President Trump put a stop to it. Like the removal of the Houthis from the list of foreign terrorist groups, re-funding UNRWA looks to be another case of the president’s desire to undo the vestiges of Trump’s foreign policy without giving thought to whether those policies were correct. That’s a shoddy way for a superpower to act, and it ought to change.

UNRWA is not just corrupt; its existence is a corruption of international laws and norms. It has created its own definition of “refugee” only for Palestinians, because its goal is to keep the conflict unsolved so it can act as a vanguard of the war on the Jewish state. It is a cash conduit to one of the world’s major terrorist groups, which also happens to be an Iranian catspaw. May this be the beginning of a thorough investigation and the end of our complicity in UNRWA’s reign of terror.

Aviva Klompas: Holocaust Remembrance Means Rooting Out Oct. 7 Denial

Two years ago, the United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly condemned Holocaust denial. In all, 114 countries co-sponsored the resolution. They sent a statement to the one dissenting voice—Iran—that even the UN, a frequent critic of Israel, would not give quarter to distorting the history of atrocities against Jews.

As we approach International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27 this year, we face a startlingly different reality.

Hamas's Oct. 7 attack awakened a sense of horror and helplessness that Jews haven't felt since the Holocaust. Our shattered sense of security has been compounded by the vitriolic nature of protests that have sprung up all over the world.

Returning to a Scene of Horror
Just two days after the Saturday massacre, before all the bodies were collected or the full number of hostages known, protesters gathered outside the Sydney Opera House and chanted, "Gas the Jews."

This was not an isolated incident. It took frighteningly few days for revulsion at Hamas's attack to morph into revulsion at Israel's response. Since October, among the swells of protesters who have flooded major cities all over the world, it's not hard to spot overtly antisemitic sentiments, including calling for the obliteration of Israel and violence against Jews.

And it's not just on the streets. Individuals who have pledged their careers to defending civilians have applied an appalling double standard by denying or downplaying the atrocities committed on Oct. 7.

The former director of Human Rights Watch's Middle East Department blamed Israel for the massacre. The director of a sexual assault center at a Canadian university denied that Hamas committed rape and other sexual crimes. It is chilling to watch those who hold positions of influence downplay or deny the crimes.

Holocaust denial stretches back almost to the Holocaust itself. In the decades after World War II, Nazi sympathizers ignored forensic, first-person, and photographic evidence to claim the Holocaust never happened or that it wasn't as bad as claimed. The movement gained momentum in the 1970s with the rise of pseudo-academic organizations like the Institute for Historical Review and the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust.

Not surprisingly, these deniers found allies among Middle Eastern voices who oppose Israel's existence. If the Holocaust never happened, they reason, do Jews really need the protections afforded by having their own nation-state?

History is Repeating Itself Once Again

I recently watched the Oscar nominated film Zone of Interest and a few things really struck me. In case you haven’t seen or heard about it, it’s a work of historical fiction centered around an Auschwitz commandant and his family, who happen to live directly adjacent to the death camp. The most striking thing about the film, and this is no spoiler, was simply the juxtaposition of the world’s most notorious extermination factory and the idyllic, pristine family home of the camp’s commanding officer. The meticulously manicured garden, swimming pool—complete with a slide to delight their five Aryan children, the greenhouse and the lavish parties. They entertained guests, basked in their good fortune, all with billowing smoke ever-present in the distance and a muted soundtrack of desperate screams, barking attack dogs and intermittent gunfire eerily humming in the background. The scariest part was that no one—save for one of their blonde, blue-eyed children and a mother in-law with a hacking, human ash-induced cough–appeared to notice any of it. This model Nazi family and their guests were somehow able to inure themselves to what was happening just on the other side of a ten-foot cement wall. There was no empathy, conscience or even recognition of the horrors that were taking place a mere stone’s throw away. In their minds, they had reached their zenith. They were living in their dream home not despite the cruelty, but because of it–and their relishing of the spoils of war was yet another profoundly disturbing display of man’s inhumanity to man. And it made me wonder, “what did they tell themselves to justify their existence?” “What lies did they feast upon in order to dehumanize the screams and the wafting scent of burning flesh?” And then a chill ran down my spine as it dawned on me that this is precisely what’s happening right now.

On October 7, Hamas didn’t just attack Israel, it attacked every Jew on planet earth. It punctured the tenuous bubble that we were living in, resurrecting our generational trauma and once again reminding us of our vulnerability. And the aftershocks of this seismic shift in our collective psyche continue to reverberate as we witness not just silence, but pure, unadulterated hatred – from all corners. It’s as if the anti-Semites of the world now have license to unleash the venom they’ve been keeping under wraps. And how is this Jew hatred justified? With the same lies that everyday Germans told themselves when their neighbors were being thrown onto cattle cars—except now, the conduit for this disinformation isn’t leaflets, radio addresses and offensive caricatures, but something far more efficient and global in reach.

Social media is propaganda on steroids. Goebbels would have had a field day on TikTok, X and Instagram, with their supercharged ability to disseminate lies, conspiracy theories and blood libels with immediacy and on a massive scale. This capability, combined with a public that sees no value in truth or facts, and seeks only to reinforce pre-existing narratives propagated by terrorists and self-promoting influencers, has gotten us to the Twilight Zone in which we are living today. A world where GoPro footage shot by Hamas themselves is labeled as Israeli propaganda, where a sovereign nation that was savagely attacked on 10/7 is being charged with Genocide at the Hague for defending itself, where our supposed best and brightest are loudly and proudly calling for death to Jews on their Ivy League campuses, where morons in Keffiyehs are chanting “Allahu Akbar” mere steps away from the site of 9/11, where the Red Cross refuses to lift a finger to help our hostages, where the UN is complicit in funding and enabling Hamas’ terror tunnels, where feminists are silent in the face of barbaric sexual violence and where Queers for Palestine are rallying for savages who would throw them from a roof if they dared to wave a rainbow flag anywhere in the Middle East, other than Israel.

01/26 Links Pt2: Melanie Phillips: The rotten edifice of ‘humanitarianism’; Douglas Murray - Cowardice Is Killing The West; Israel considers ending water deal with Jordan

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The rotten edifice of ‘humanitarianism’

The United Nations was set up to promote peace and justice around the world. Instead of doing so, however, it has become a key weapon against peace and justice in the global armory of evil causes.

Nowhere has this been more baleful and done such appalling intergenerational harm than in the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which administers health care, education and welfare for the Palestinian Arabs of Gaza.

The U.N. maintains that its staff in Gaza merely deal with Hamas on an operational level as the authority in charge. This is disingenuous nonsense. Wittingly or unwittingly, UNRWA behaves as a Hamas tool.

Earlier this month, the monitoring group UN Watch revealed internal UNRWA group chats that took place on Telegram. They showed that more than 3,000 UNRWA staff and teachers celebrated the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel and praised the murderers and rapists as “heroes.” Their comments included calls to execute Israeli hostages, expressions of joy and support for jihad, and cheers for video footage of the atrocities with messages such as “just wait, sons of Jews.”

When the U.N. tried to deny this, UN Watch started to publish on Twitter the names of the Telegram participants, at which point the U.N. suggested it might investigate.

Meanwhile, as a result of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, the IDF has been uncovering copious evidence of UNRWA’s links to Hamas.

Jonathan Conricus, who until recently served as an IDF spokesman, told The New York Sun: “Every UNRWA school we entered had Hamas weapons in it. Each one was a place for Hamas to hide in and fight from.”

In these schools, the IDF found a number of books glorifying militancy and spreading antisemitism. Last March, a report by UN Watch and IMPACT-se—a research body that measures school curricula against UNESCO-defined standards of peace and tolerance—revealed that UNRWA teachers regularly call for the murder of Jews and create teaching materials that encourage terrorism, demonize Israelis and incite antisemitism.

UNRWA is itself complicit in Hamas’s activities.

Uncivil Combatants

The Biden administration declared in July that the laws of war require presuming persons and structures in combat areas are civilian, overturning longstanding Department of Defense (DOD) rules. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, echoing the administration’s new position, has pressured Israel to limit its self-defense, citing the effect on Gazan civilians and infrastructure. Hamas, of course, regularly disguises its combatants as civilians, and uses civilian structures such as homes, mosques, schools, and hospitals as military facilities.

Hamas’s regular violations of the laws of war, including its use of human shields, make it impossible for Israel to defend itself without also killing Gazan civilians. Hamas has long sought to force Israel to harm Gazan civilian targets in order to stop the terror group’s genocidal violence. Blinken’s blaming Israel for Gazan casualties reverses causality and rewards Hamas’s strategy.

The actual extent of civilian harm in Gaza is unknown, and given the fog of war, likely unknowable. It is also impossible to know what portion of the damage to Gaza was caused by Israel, by Hamas attacks targeting Israelis that misfired and killed Gazans, or by the explosion of Hamas munitions hidden throughout Gazan population centers. As President Biden stated, Hamas Health Ministry casualty statistics are not credible; the ministry’s reported causes of such casualties are no more reliable.

Blinken’s declaration that “far too many” civilians have been harmed in Gaza sidesteps the questions of who is a civilian, and what constitutes civilian infrastructure. As the current Department of Defense Law of War Manual notes, combatants include not just those firing weapons, but all those performing “acts that are an integral part of combat operations or that effectively and substantially contribute to an adversary’s ability to conduct or sustain combat operations.”

Gazans involved in Hamas infrastructure-building, weapons-production, transportation, and logistics are not civilians, but combatants. So are those aiding Hamas’s military operations, such as spotters, including women and children, who help gunmen target Israelis and monitor troop movements. Gazan families imprisoning in their homes kidnapped Israelis are combatants committing war crimes.

Part-time war participants do not attain protected civilian status during their down time. The DOD’s Law of War Manual rejects the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Convention (a document that the U.S. signed but has refused to ratify) provision stating that “civilians shall enjoy the protection [from being made the object of attack], unless and for such time as they take a direct part in hostilities.” In addition, Hamas combatants do not magically become civilians because they are not wearing uniforms, even if some are also reporters. In fact, Hamas’s practice of disguising its fighters as civilians constitutes “perfidy” under international law, which refers to “acts that invite the confidence of enemy persons to lead them to believe that they are entitled to, or are obliged to accord, protection under the law of war, with intent to betray that confidence.”

Eve Barlow: Think like your enemy

A while ago, a wise friend told me that when you’re trying to understand people’s motivations, or the state of play, and you’re overwhelmed and confused by trickery, the best thing to do is to think like your enemy. Put the enemy’s hat on, and ask: if you were them, what would you do?

Last week I listened to a brilliant podcast. It is one of the best explanations I've ever heard about why Islam is obsessed with Israel. It explains the wider conflict with the Arab world in a way I had never heard before courtsey of Haviv Rettig Gur of The Times of Israel. Here is an excerpt:

"The Jews – the refugees who they kicked out of every country, penniless and weak – are pushing back to conquer a piece of Islam. It’s not about the Jews, it’s about the fact that even Jews can push back on Islam. For the Iranian regime the problem of Israel isn’t that it exists, it’s that it cannot be destroyed by Muslims. If it could be, it wouldn’t have to be destroyed by Muslims because it wouldn’t be the standing symbol of Islamic weakness, and therefore distance from God. The path to Islamic redemption and renewal and return to a powerful agent in history cuts a bloody path through ‘Jewish arrogance’, which is what Israel is to them.” [This explains why there are crowds celebrating every time Israel is attacked; which is echoed across the globe in marches for Palestinian rights.] "Why would the Iranian regime, which doesn’t believe in human rights, invest billions that it doesn’t have in the idea of Palestinian rights? It has nothing to do with Palestinian rights. It has to do with Islam coming back as a force in history and proving that they are not far and distant from their god. Israel’s existence – because the Jews are so weak – is incontrovertible evidence that Islam does not have god’s grace."

This explains the intent of Hamas on October 7 while go-pro-ing and broadcasting their humiliation of Israel. That was the core message. Render Israel weak.

This coming Friday, just before Shabbat, and a day before the non-Jewish world’s annual attempt to let itself off the hook for the Shoah while talking about everything and anything except for the six million Jews who were killed by Nazis (ie, International Holocaust Rememberance Day), the International Court of (In)Justice will deliver its order on the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case South Africa vs Israel. I don’t have high hopes, despite the excellent defence provided by Israel’s legal team a few weeks ago.

Why? Well I’m thinking like the enemy. That’s what I’ve been doing more of. That’s why I’m scared about the ICJ. Because if I was thinking like the enemy I’d be wanting an international legal body to kosher all the propaganda I’ve just placed in every Western institution to truly isolate the Jews and Israel and I’d hire a willing assailant to perform this exercise (ie, South Africa, who I’ve built a great relationship with going back decades now, and who aren’t exactly beacons of morality themselves), and I’d effectively negotiate for the verdict I want. There’s precedent for this, proving that it may be successful (The Dreyfuss Affair in 1906). A result here legitimizing my decades’ worth of international investment and time with The UN, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Western universities including Harvard and Penn, and political leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn, and Ilhan Omar, would be of high value. Worth some business.

From El Watan News (Egypt) and other Arabic news sites:

"The Message" is a theatrical performance presented by the children of the schools of the Al-Ajami Educational Administration in Alexandria. It tells the history of the exile of the Jews to the land of Palestine. It reveals plans that were carried out and whose goal was to exile the Jews far from Europe and to expel them, because they are arrogant terrorists and the cause of the destruction of many European countries.

The goal of the theatrical performance is to introduce new generations to the history of the Palestinian issue with the Zionist enemy.

Ahmed Al-Rifai, the author of the play and head of the theatrical team in the schools participating in the show under the Al-Ajami Educational Administration, told Al-Watan that the show tells the story from the beginning of the Lebanese Sursock family buying land in Palestine from the Ottoman Empire and then the Jews obtaining it through gambling, and it was a haven for the Jews. Only after they were successively expelled from European countries by strict royal decrees, did they then flock to Palestine and formed a lobby that penetrated until there was a state, and they named it after the Prophet of God, Israel, “our master Jacob.”

30 children participate. 3 schools show and the work is presented in several languages at the same time.

Yes, most Arab children really do learn to hate Jews with their mothers' milk.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

01/26 Links Pt1: ICJ rejects South African bid to halt war against Hamas; U.S. halts UNRWA funding over staffers’ involvement with Oct. 7 terror attacks

From Ian:

Top UN court rejects South African bid to halt war against Hamas

The International Court of Justice, the main judicial arm of the United Nations, rejected a request on Friday from South Africa to order a halt to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

In its provisional ruling, the high court insisted that the Jewish state take all necessary means to prevent actions that could lead to genocide, and it dismissed South Africa’s demand that residents of the northern Gaza Strip be allowed to return to the area immediately.

A final decision from the court could take years. Friday’s ruling is binding according to international law, yet the court lacks an enforcement mechanism.

The court, which is based in The Hague, ordered Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent the commission of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, to ensure that Israel Defense Forces troops do not commit acts of genocide and to punish alleged public incitement to genocide.

The ruling also called on Jerusalem to “take effective measures to preserve evidence” of military actions that might fall under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and submit a report to the court within a month.

Israel must also take “immediate and effective measures to enable the provision of urgently-needed, basic services and humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians” in the enclave, which is controlled by the Hamas terror group.

‘Mark of disgrace’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the court “rightly rejected the outrageous demand to deny” Israel the right to defend itself against terrorism.

“The very claim that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians is not just false, it is outrageous, and the court’s willingness to discuss it at all is a mark of disgrace that will not be erased for generations,” he added.

Netanyahu vowed to continue the war against Hamas until “absolute victory,” and until all 136 hostages are returned and Gazans no longer pose a threat to Israel.

Ruth Wisse: Kafka at the International Court of Justice

“Are you reminded of Kafka’s The Trial?” a reporter asks me, echoing cries of “insane” and “Kafkaesque” that I’ve been hearing from many of my fellow Jews about proceedings at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) where South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide for defending itself against the explicitly genocidal attacks of Hamas. But no, the case before the ICJ is not like the work Kafka wrote in German in Prague during the First World War. Der Process was angst; this is evil.

Kafka’s classic novel opens on a mystery we expect the rest of the book to solve: “Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.” A regular legal case reveals who is leveling the accusation and provides relevant details of the alleged crime. But Joseph K. never learns what he stands accused of, by whom, or under what authority. In this state of indeterminacy, no man can prove his innocence. Unable to figure out the system that has put him on trial, he is ultimately killed. “It was as if the shame of it must outlive him.”

Joseph K.—the deracinated Jew with a truncated identity who stands politically and metaphysically at the mercy of forces he no longer understands—became a universal symbol of modern man’s fate at the hands of the very institutions he looks to for guidance. But Kafka himself came to realize the implications of what he had written, and by the time of his death in 1924 he was studying Hebrew with the intention of moving to Palestine. Several members of his Zionist circle did move to Jerusalem, and one brought with him Kafka’s archive, where it now rests in the National Library of Israel.

By the time Kafka’s sisters were murdered in Auschwitz, several waves of Jews had established the infrastructure for statehood in the land of Israel that had been under foreign occupation for 2,000 years. That return of the Jews to political sovereignty is one of the great chapters in human history. Had the Arabs, their fellow Semites, accepted the principle of coexistence, the Middle East—numbering one Jewish state among more than 20 Arab neighbors—would have flourished in peace and prosperity. Instead, Arab and Muslim factions still compete over who can best whom at destroying the Jews.

Hamas recently beat the competition with a demonstration of savagery unlike the earlier improvised pogroms in Europe to which it has been compared. October’s slaughters were plotted with crucial input from Gazans employed in Israeli homes they had scouted and mapped for the purpose, making this the first military campaign designed to culminate in acts of beheading, torture, and rape of predetermined victims. As attempts to destroy Israel through conventional warfare had only made Israel militarily stronger, the new tactics aimed at destroying the Jews’ will to remain among antagonists sworn never to leave them in peace. More than to intimidate, these attacks were made to demoralize.

Survivor-witnesses describe new refinements of psychological warfare. Hamas murdered parents and children in each other’s presence so as to sharpen the survivors’ agony. They took hostages—not, as others do, for eventual exchange—but to taunt the country with images of prisoners’ suffering, and fear that many would never be returned. Every Jewish value—respect for women, honoring the human being who was made in the image of God—was gleefully defiled.

As for the Jews living in nearby Gaza, many of them self-described Jewish “peaceniks,” they had prided themselves on the medical help and hospitality they extended to their Gazan neighbors, persuaded that cooperation was obviously to everyone’s benefit. The terrorists exploited the Jews’ desire for peace as a means of entrapment and further opportunity for torment. By attacking on a Jewish holiday and a secular festival, they intended to destroy the Israelis’ joy in life. Anyone reading Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s exhilarating book about the collective strengths that constitute The Genius of Israel will recognize how Hamas turned precisely those virtues into weapons of torture to tear the Jewish people apart.

Alan Dershowitz: This ICJ compromise means Israel will continue its honourable quest for justice

The ICJ’s decision was written by one of its real judges — an independent jurist who does not take orders from the nation that appointed her. Other judges on the court are simply pawns in their countries foreign policy. It’s surprising therefore that this compromise decision, despite its lecturing tone, was rendered by a court that includes a Hezbollah-appointed judge from Lebanon.

Previous decisions on the court have been entirely political and deserving of no respect. This decision deserves the respect of a thoughtful law review article written by a distinguished professor of international law, but because of the makeup of the so-called court, it does not deserve the respect accorded independent judicial authorities.

Wearing robes does not turn politicians and diplomats into judges. To be a real judge, a lawyer must be completely independent of the government that appointed her or him. The ICJ can never be a real court, as long as the appointment and removal process of its judges remain in the hands of individual countries. The International Criminal Court is somewhat better in this regard, because its judges are not answerable — at least in theory — to their countries of origin. But in practice, many of its judges are in fact beholden to their countries.

International law, and especially the law of war, is largely an academic enterprise. Enforced mechanisms are entirely political and not deserving of the respect accorded real judges.

So let Israel continue in its honourable quest for justice regarding the past atrocities committed by Hamas, and the prevention of future atrocities promised by Hamas leaders. When Israel next reports to the court in 30 days, hopefully the war will be winding down and fewer civilians will be killed. Already the number of civilian deaths has decreased dramatically, but the best way to reduce any further would be for the international community to enforce international law that prohibits the use by Hamas of human shields. Unless the ICJ addresses the Hamas war crimes, it will deserve no respect.

In the New York Times, an associate professor from The New School named Sean Jacobs gushes over the morality of his native South Africa charging Israel with "genocide" at the ICJ:

On the eve of the hearing, a friend messaged me from Cape Town: “It feels a little bit like Christmas Eve or something here. Or the night before a big final.” Because of the time difference, I watched a recorded version once I got to my office on Jan. 11, the first of two days of hearings. By then, Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on Palestine, had already sent a message on X that “watching African women & men fighting to save humanity” from the “ruthless attacks supported/enabled by most of the West will remain one of the defining images of our time. This will make history whatever happens.”

As a Black South African who grew up during the nation’s liberation struggle and came of age watching the birth of South African democracy, for me, Albanese’s words resonated.

[By] forcing the International Court of Justice to act, South Africa is putting down a marker for global civil society. South Africa stepped up. It showed what we could be and how groups that have faced oppression and violence can stand up confidently for one another on the world stage.

So moral! So righteous!

And so silent on Arabs deliberately murdering many black Africans on the same continent, in the same place that there has been a real genocide two decades ago!

As summarized in Just Security last month:

Less than 20 years after the Darfur genocide unfolded, history is repeating itself. The current conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group established by Sudan’s deposed president Omar al-Bashir, has already claimed the lives of more than 12,000 and displaced more than six million people since it broke out in April.

This is all happening against the backdrop of one of the world’s largest, most pressing humanitarian disasters. According to the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), approximately 25 million Sudanese people, or half the country, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. In Darfur, hundreds of miles away from Khartoum, the indigenous non-Arab ethnic groups are even more vulnerable, living under the reign of RSF terror and genocidal violence. The RSF has left a trail of mass atrocities in its wake with near impunity, reminiscent of the same brutal tactics used by the Janjaweed in the 2000s. Today, the RSF, as the Janjaweed’s successor entity, is committing the same atrocities and targeting the same indigenous groups on the international community’s watch. During the Janjaweed atrocities of the 2000s, policymakers not only failed to act in time to prevent genocide but even downplayed the nature of the violence to preserve other political interests. This time, there can be no debate over the magnitude of the horrors facing non-Arab ethnic groups at the hands of the RSF, or excuse for the repetition of our collective failure to uphold the promise of never again.

The Economist describes how the Arab RSF is murdering all the men they can find, shooting babies and raping women:

Hanan Khamis just wanted to get to safety. In mid-June, after surviving weeks of gunfire and rockets directed at the Masalit, a black African ethnic group, she fled el-Geneina, the capital of the state of West Darfur in Sudan. Hoisting her 23-month-old baby boy, Sabir, onto her back she started walking towards Chad. Yet fighters wearing the uniforms of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) soon surrounded them. They dragged men to the side of the road and told the women to run. Before she could do so, a gunman wrenched open the shawl on her back that covered Sabir. “No men can escape to Chad,” he shouted. Then he shot her baby in the head.

In Chad a humanitarian worker identifies four other mothers who tell of similar horrors. One says she was stopped at a roadblock where Arab militiamen murdered the men in her group. When they saw her 15-month-old son strapped to her, they shot him dead as he clung to her. The bullet burst through his tiny body and into hers, where it remains lodged. “If that isn’t a genocidal act, I don’t know what is,” says Mukesh Kapila, a former un chief in Sudan who blew the whistle on massacres in Darfur 20 years ago.

Zahara Adam Khamis, a women’s rights activist, weeps as she recounts how a 27-year-old university student she knows was gang-raped by five militiamen in front of her mother. ”The baby will be Arab,” they said as they finished.

In November, CNN aired this searing report showing videos of atrocities by the Arab gangs against Black African tribes:

Sean Jacobs founded a website called Africa Is A Country. But he hasn't written or tweeted a word about Darfur or Sudan over the past year. And he has tweeted obsessively about Israel, dozens of times, i the same timeframe.

And the government of South Africa has been curiously silent about the targeting and murder of Black Africans much closer than Gaza. The only statement they made was out the outset of the war, expressing concern - but the words "Masalit" and "RSF" or "Darfur" are not to be found in any of their official statements.

Using the ICJ case as proof of South Africa's concern over human rights is absurd, when that country doesn't defend Black Africans being systematically murdered on its own continent. The South African case against Israel while ignoring actual attacks against its fellow Africans in truth indicates antisemitism, not human rights.

Not surprisingly, in its bio of Jacobs, the New York Times edited a book titled "Apartheid Israel." The New York Times didn't mention that he has a vested interest in this topic.

And if you want one more example of the world's hypocrisy, in 2009, the UN said that what happened in Darfur was not genocide, saying, "the crucial element of genocidal intent appears to be missing, at least as far as the central government authorities are concerned."

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Israeli hacker group is sending very strong messages to Iran: "We can really, really hurt you if we want"

Wired has a fascinating story about the Israel-based Predatory Sparrow hacking group and their majr attacks against Iranian infrastructure.

These attacks go beyond defacing or taking down websites. They are actually affecting the lives of Iranians, and they show that cyberwar can not only affect cyberspace but the real world as well.

Predatory Sparrow is distinguished most of all by its apparent interest in sending a specific geopolitical message with its attacks, says Juan Andres Guerrero-Saade, an analyst at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne who has tracked the group for years. Those messages are all variations on a theme: If you attack Israel or its allies, we have the ability to deeply disrupt your civilization. “They're showing that they can reach out and touch Iran in meaningful ways,” Guerrero-Saade says. “They're saying, ‘You can prop up the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah in these proxy wars. But we, Predatory Sparrow, can dismantle your country piece by piece without having to move from where we are.’”

But the group is calibrating its message:

SentinelOne’s Guerrero-Saade argues that [their] actions suggest that Predatory Sparrow may be the first effective example of what cyber policy wonks refer to as “signaling”—using cyberattack capabilities to send messages designed to deter an adversary's behavior. That's because, he says, the group has combined a relatively restrained and discriminating approach to its politically motivated hacking with a clear demonstration of willingness to use its capabilities for broad effects—a willingness, he points out, that the United States’ hacking agencies, like the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, have often lacked.

“There’s no such thing as effective signaling if you can’t show credibly to the other person that not only do you have the capability, but that you’re willing to use it,” Guerrero-Saade says.

The article lists several specific attacks.

In 2021, Predatory Sparrow triggered malware on Iranian transportation systems, forcing train delays and other problems.

Later that year, the group performed a limited attack on Iranian gas station point of sale systems, but made it clear that they could have caused far more damage. They even warned Iranian emergency services to fill up their vehicles with fuel before the attack.

The next next attack was game changing. "In June of 2022, Predatory Sparrow carried out one of the most brazen acts of cybersabotage in history, triggering the spillage of molten steel at Iran's Khouzestan steel mill that caused a fire in the facility."

And recently, the group repeated its attack on gas stations in Iran, causing chaos for drivers.

There are other attacks attributed to Israel itself that have affected real world living in Iran. The Stuxnet attack on an Iranian nuclear plant was the most famous one. And in 2020, Israel is suspected to have mounted a cyberattack on an Iranian port, effectively stopping most imports to Iran from sea for days. This was in response to an Iranian attempt to poison Israel's water system in its own cyberattack.

Cyberwar is real. And it has real-world consequences. But it is not only limited to state actors, and talented private individuals and groups can cause mass chaos if they choose.

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Al Jazeera Arabic features a 30 minute long interview - in English - with Moshe Aryeh Friedman, who they describe as a "haredi Jewish rabbi" and "former chief rabbi of Austria."

He tells them what they want to hear - that the war in Gaza is a genocide that is the worst in history.

He said in the interview that history “will condemn everyone who stood silent in the face of the bloodbath now flowing in the Gaza Strip, which exceeds all the massacres of history,” including, he said, the Holocaust.

In reality, Friedman was never chief rabbi of Austria, and he does not appear to have even ever been ordained.

He attended the infamous Holocaust denial conference in Iran in 2007 and embraced then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the conference he said he didn't deny the Holocaust, but claimed that only one million Jews perished - which indeed makes him a Holocaust denier.

The Austrian Jewish community then excommunicated him, forcing him to move to Boro Park in Brooklyn.

There Friedman and his family moved into two apartments but refused to pay rent for two years. It appears he was evicted as a result, and then moved to Antwerp in 2011, where the schools refused to admit his children because of his noxious views on the Holocaust.

The supposedly religious "rabbi" then sued to allow his boys to attend an all-girls Belzer hasidic Jewish school. He lost that case on appeal.

This is the "rabbi" that Al Jazeera is pretending is a respected scholar and religious figure.

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01/25 Links Pt2: An ‘Eichmann Trial’ for Hamas’s Crimes; Niall Ferguson: “The Treason of the Intellectuals,”; Tu b’Shvat Is a Testament to Jews’ Connection to Their Land

From Ian:

Seth Frantzman: An ‘Eichmann Trial’ for Hamas’s Crimes

Putting Sinwar on trial for his war crimes would absolutely garner the attention that Eichmann’s trial received; we are after all in the era of social media and livestreaming. But that’s not necessarily a good thing. The Nazis had plenty of sympathizers, but their ideology was not dominant (though it was present) throughout American educational institutions from Harvard down to various public grade schools. The ideology that justifies Hamas’s Oct. 7 campaign of mass murder, sexual torture, and child kidnapping is dominant on campuses and has had no trouble worming its way into the curricula fabric at every level of education. Whether you call it “decolonization” or find some German compound word for it, the race-obsessed conspiracy-addled theory justifying the extrajudicial murder of Jews is all the rage, and Sinwar would be preaching to an aggravatingly large choir.

It would certainly be revealing to watch Intersectionality Eichmann be elevated to godlike status in the enlightened West. But it would also be unbearably dark, a point of no return if ever there was one.

It would, however, solve the representation problem. Eichmann found a German lawyer to defend him and Israel picked up the tab. Sinwar would have a line of high-profile American and British attorneys begging to take up his case pro bono.

Nevertheless, a legal process to establish facts for posterity would be of great benefit to society, even without an Eichmann figure at its center. The most intriguing angle is one Haaretz reported on a few weeks after the attacks, when Israeli domestic security and law-enforcement teams were put on the case: “A number of Israeli firms with expertise in digital intelligence were enlisted to build what is called ‘the library’ — a database of all the Hamas terrorists who entered into Israel and documentation of their actions, almost minute by minute.”

That “library” is being built on the foundations of Hamas’s own despicable pride: many terrorists wore body cameras to document their own descent into psychotic barbarity.

The massive amounts of evidence being gathered by investigative authorities and emergency responders and other officials is clearly intended to be used in a court of some kind, but Israel will not be taking its case to international or UN courts, whose legitimacy cannot be salvaged. Eichmann was tried in Israeli courts, and Hamas terrorists can be tried in those courts or in military tribunals, though the latter would somewhat defeat the purpose of the trials, which would be to place in the public domain an unimpeachable record of events. The Oct. 7 version of Holocaust deniers have come out of the woodwork already, existing as they do in a postmodern world of “living your truth.” The library of evidence that Israel is currently building is the proper antidote to the lobotomizing poison of such a world.

Brendan O'Neill: Why Are People More Agitated by the Gaza War than by Any Other?

This week, Scottish First Minister Humza Yousaf said there is a dearth of political concern for the poor people of Gaza. I'm sorry, what? There have been more public displays of sorrow for the people of Gaza than for any other people caught up in a war as far back as I can remember. Solidarity with Gazans is virtually mandatory at dinner parties across the land.

We've seen think piece after think piece about the pain of the Palestinians. Bourgeois youths have hit the streets every weekend to register their compassion for Gazans and their hatred for Israel. MPs have made tub-thumping speeches on the need for a ceasefire. Palestinian flags fly from lampposts. The keffiyeh has become the fashion item du jour for the ostentatiously virtuous.

The real question is not why people are silent on Gaza (they're not), but why they seem so much more agitated by this war than by any other of recent times. There's been a tsunami of media coverage on Gaza. Far more than there was for the Saudi-Yemen war, every African war of recent years, or the horrific return of Azerbaijan-Armenia hostilities last year. Our activist class have obsessively devoted themselves to the cause of Gaza, to the exclusion of every other issue on earth.

Where were these people when tens of thousands of Muslims, including Palestinians, were slaughtered in the war in Syria? Or when the mullahs of Iran massacred hundreds of their own citizens for the sin of standing up for women's rights? Do the lives of young women in Iran who want to show their hair in public have a "different value" to the lives of people in Gaza? The lives of Syrian dissidents?

Why did they not make as much noise over those violent assaults on Muslim life as they have done over Israel's war against Hamas? Because it is only when the Jewish state is involved in the loss of Muslim life that people take to the streets in vast numbers.

Tu b’Shvat Is a Testament to Jews’ Connection to Their Land

Today is the holiday of Tu b’Shvat, the “new year of the trees.” In the diaspora, this day over the centuries came to embody the Jewish longing for the Land of Israel. With the return from exile, it has taken on a new meaning as a day to be celebrated by planting trees. Alon Tal considers its significance:

There is no more concrete manifestation of the Zionist impulse as the national movement of an indigenous people, than Israel’s forests. Seventy years ago—when the country was an impoverished, developing nation, the founders set about returning the woodlands to a decimated land—a land where 97 percent of the original vegetation had been extirpated.

That is not Zionist propaganda. Empirical evidence from aerial reconnaissance photography of the British army in World War I confirms the absolute bareness of Palestine following 2,000 years of Jewish exile. Since then, almost two million dunams of woodlands have been planted. There is something deeply meaningful about this profound act of national, ecological revival during these troubled times.

Over the years, I was always annoyed that Palestinian leadership never respected the authenticity of my Israeli identity and Jews’ historic connection to their homeland. But invariably, I let it go. Many Jews working on coexistence even avoided openly defining themselves as “Zionists,” lest they create unnecessary antagonism. The main thing was to get on with the “peacemaking.” In retrospect, this was a mistake.

To-thousand years ago, the Mishnah codified the four new years that are built into our national calendar. . . . The fact that Israel has revived this arboreal birthday and turned tree-planting and tree-preservation into a national holiday is a sign of just how much our heritage informs our present-day lives.

Would the Holocaust have happened if Twitter existed in the 1940s? Yes, of course it would have, and the proof is from now

From Times of Israel:

On his first visit to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in Poland, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said that free speech would have prevented the murders that were perpetrated there.

“If there had been social media, I think it would have been impossible to hide,” Musk said of the murders committed at Auschwitz. “If there’d been freedom of speech as well,” Musk told Shapiro about his visit. Musk also said it was “deeply sad and tragic [that] humans could do this to other humans.”

Social media is not much different from the news sources available in the world in the 1940s. Polish fighters and Jews in Europe managed to get messages out about the Holocaust and other Nazi policies.

And that is the point. The details of the gassing and crematoria might have been obscured, but the general outlines were known not too long after the Wannsee Conference. It was spoken about, warned about, and Jews were distressed over their relatives.

It wasn't a secret. At all.

Jewish Press (Omaha), November 6, 1942

Philadelphia Inquirer, March 21, 1943

Indianapolis News,
bottom of page 2, August 27 1943

But the news media didn't make it a front page story.

Social media wouldn't have changed that. On the contrary: The Nazis (and their worldwide sympathizers) would have used social media the way antisemites do today.

In the 1940s, there were social media equivalents: self-published pamphlets and flyers, shortwave radio broadcasts, speeches, dinner party conversations, ethnic newspapers. Not exactly the same as Facebook but they served the same purpose, and they could either spread propaganda or the truth.

We've seen ourselves in recent months how social media has been used to deny atrocities against Jews as much as it is used to publicize them.

This is what Nazi Germany did as well.

Despite the public broadcast and publication of general statements about the goal of eliminating “the Jews,” the regime practiced a propaganda of deception by hiding specific details about the “Final Solution,” and press controls prevented Germans from reading statements by Allied and Soviet leaders condemning German crimes.

At the same time, positive stories were fabricated as part of the planned deception. One booklet printed in 1941 glowingly reported that, in occupied Poland, German authorities had put Jews to work, built clean hospitals, set up soup kitchens for Jews, and provided them with newspapers and vocational training. Posters and articles continually reminded the German population not to forget the atrocity stories that Allied propaganda spread about Germans during World War I, such as the false charge that Germans had cut off the hands of Belgian children.

We are seeing the same dynamic, from Hamas sympathizers and Iranian allies. The October 7 atrocities are denied, obviously faked videos are pushed as truth, and hostage videos taken at gunpoint are produced as "evidence" that Hamas treats them well.

It is the jihadist version of Theresienstadt. And the Red Cross did then what it is doing today in not protecting the Jews.

Then, as now, the atrocity deniers rely on a simple fact: there are a lot of Jew-haters in the world. They will believe anything anyone says bad about Jews and disbelieve anything the Jews say. Social media doesn't dilute their influence - it multiplies it.

Imagine what would have happened if social media existed in the 1940s and politicians in the UK or US accused Germany of war crimes. Nazi sympathizers would have shrilly denied it, publicized videos of happy Jewish children, and accused the Jews of murdering each other. Many people who don't spend the time on their own research would be convinced by the pro-Nazi messages. Nazi defenders would dig up dirt on these politicians - or make things up - and accuse them of being the real genocidaires. Daily protests would have formed instantly outside the homes of any of these politicians, which would inevitably prompt others to mute their own criticism of the Nazi death machine for fear of their families' lives.

We know this would happen because we see it happen today in response to the Nazi-style mass extermination event in October.

The more you research the propaganda techniques of the Nazis and their acolytes in the West, the more you feel a sense of deja vu with what people are saying today.

The Kansas City Times

17 Nov 1941

What, exactly, is the difference between today's antisemites and the antisemites of the 1940s?

Outside of using the terminology "Zionists," nothing.

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I Assure You The Red Cross Is Working As Hard As It Can To Facilitate Terrorism (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

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I Assure You The Red Cross Is Working As Hard As It Can To Facilitate Terrorism

by Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, president, International Committee of the Red Cross

Geneva, January 25 - Since its founding in 1863, this organization has led the world in first aid and disaster response, and continues to do so even in the most dangerous locations worldwide. This mission includes the Gaza Strip, where the ICRC has responded to the most recent outbreak of violence by making every imaginable effort not to get in the way of Hamas's operations, even going as far as to refrain from criticizing Hamas.

Unfair accusations have stemmed from the Red Cross's handling of Israelis held hostage in Gaza: that we have neglected to insist on visiting them; that we have cooperated with a terrorist organization; that when some hostages were freed, we served as little more than couriers. Those charges are profoundly insulting to anyone who knows what our organization does, the values it upholds, and how it operates.

To begin with, open criticism of Hamas in a Hamas-controlled area would put our personnel at risk and threaten the crucial functions that the Red Cross plays in Gaza. Without a robust ICRC presence, Hamas might be forced to provide health care for Gaza residents, and that would hamper the group's ability to, and resources toward, killing and torturing Israelis. Imagine how annoyed that would make Hamas! We cannot take that risk.

Thus our refusal to convey medications to hostages in need of it is understandable in context. The same for our silence on the question of hostages being raped or otherwise mistreated. We simply have to take Hamas at their word, since they are known for strict adherence to the truth in medical matters, such as the bombing of the Al-Ahli Hospital and the total absence of Hamas military infrastructure in or under health care facilities.

Also the death toll and classification of every single casualty as a noncombatant, which we all know to be unimpeachable and completely in line with every other urban combat situation in military history. The missiles into Israel are launching themselves!

Israeli sources enjoy no such credibility, as they contradict what everyone knows without checking. This is common knowledge. I cannot believe it requires explaining. It is precisely the attitude we were trying to get across when we told the family of an Israeli held hostage in Gaza, "Don't you feel sympathy for the Palestinians?" Because that it what one says to a suffering, grieving, terrified person.

If they're Jewish.

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01/25 Links Pt1: The Meaning of Gaza's Tunnels: Spare Us the Outrage, Qatar; American Troops Know: Iran Is Already at War with Us; Idan Amedi released from hospital

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: The Meaning of Gaza's Tunnels

Ever since Israel withdrew its soldiers and civilians from Gaza in 2005, critics have accused it of blockading the territory - turning it into an "open-air prison." The charge was always preposterous. Gaza shares a border with Egypt. Gazans were often treated in Israeli hospitals for cancer and other life-threatening conditions. Israel provided Gaza with much of its electricity and other critical goods even after Hamas came to power in 2007.

Gaza's vast underground tunnel network has turned the territory into a gigantic military fortress. How much did it cost to build these tunnels? How much concrete, steel and electricity did it divert from civilian needs? How many millions of hours of labor were given to the effort? Hamas stole from foreign donors, subtracted billions of dollars over several years from Gaza's gross domestic product, and diverted labor from productive to destructive ends, all to feed its war machine.

Hamas could have averted this tragedy if it had turned Gaza into an enclave for peace rather than terror, if it had not started four previous rounds of war against Israel, if it had honored the cease-fire that held on Oct. 6. It could have eased it by releasing all of its hostages. It could end it now by surrendering its leaders and sending its fighters into exile. Till then, Hamas bears the blame for every death in this war.

UN Agency in Gaza Alleged To Have ‘Blood on Its Hands’ in Aftermath of October 7 Massacre of Israelis

Worse, he adds, in the early stages of the war, the IDF brass approached Unrwa officials, asking for help in removing civilians from areas where the army planned to wage battle, and usher them to proposed safe zones. The organization made a decision “at the highest levels” to refuse, as Hamas objected to losing human shields.

“Had Unrwa agreed to the IDF plan, the lives of many civilians could have been spared,” Mr. Conricus says. “Not only did they refuse to cooperate, they actively prevented the creation of safe zones. They have blood on their hands.”

Yet Secretary-General Guterres is adamant that the agency will have a role in Gaza after the war. “Unrwa plays a critical role in supporting many Palestinians on education, on healthcare and other services, and it plays a stabilizing role in the region,” Mr. Dujarric told the Sun, adding that Mr. Guterres “continues to believe that.”

Nevertheless, “Unrwa has taken the decision to commission an independent review, to look at all the allegations regarding Unrwa and its activities in Gaza,” its commissioner general, Philippe Lazzarini, told Australia’s foreign minister, Penny Wang, last week.

After UN Watch published the trove of evidence of unethical conduct, Australia demanded an investigation. Under pressure from America’s former UN ambassador, Nikki Haley, America denied funds to Unrwa. President Biden renewed America’s status as the agency’s top donor, contributing nearly $1 billion to its coffers since 2021.

“Our constituents are horrified that their taxpayer dollars may have, through Unrwa failures, supported Hamas terrorists,” the House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman, Michael McCaul, wrote last week, inviting Mr. Lazzarini to testify.

Mr. Lazzarini takes these allegations “very seriously,” the UN spokesman, Mr. Dujarric, says, adding that Unrwa takes “disciplinary action when needed and when things are proven.” As yet, though, Mr. Lazzarini has indicated only that he would investigate “smears” against his agency, Mr. Neuer tells the Sun.

Seth Mandel: Spare Us the Outrage, Qatar

The Qatari statement is idiotic. If Netanyahu had said this publicly, one could argue that it would be a breach of diplomatic politesse. Ill-advised, at the very least. But if Netanyahu is explaining in private why the usual objections about Qatar shouldn’t disqualify them from the diplomatic process, then the reaction is thin-skinned bush-league whining.

Fact is, Qatar funds and enables Hamas. It hosts Hamas leadership. And as Jonathan Schanzer wrote here last month, “In their efforts to steer the Gaza conflict toward a permanent ceasefire, the Qataris have actively tried to help save Hamas from destruction, which is Israel’s stated war aim.”

Qatar is a major reason that Hamas has the capabilities it possesses to pull off barbaric invasions like its Oct. 7 rampage, which resulted in the hostage standoff that it is supposedly helping to solve. I’m glad they’ve played some productive role in all this, but it is the role of an arsonist putting out the flames in a few of the rooms of the building it set ablaze. The suggestion that they’re doing the world a favor is risible.

In fact, Qatar has been far less useful than it should have been throughout the hostage crisis. Israel has had to turn to the Egyptians time and again when Qatar’s gold-plated incompetence gets put on display. That ineptitude is one reason Israel is in Gaza collecting the bodies of its citizens. Qatar is very good at ensuring the money keeps flowing to its clients but not very good at predicting what, exactly, its clients are preparing to do with that largesse.

Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t say any of this, of course. Publicly, he said nothing unkind, and privately, he offered mild criticism but no objections to Qatar’s role in the hostage negotiations. Qatar should put a Band-Aid on its wounded ego and go back to helping to fix a fraction of the problems it has caused the free world.