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Saturday, January 27, 2024

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.


Jonathan Tobin: A hollow Holocaust Remembrance Day
The failure of Holocaust education A process of dehumanization of Jews led an educated nation to become “Hitler’s willing executioners” and active participants in the murder of 6 million Jews. The same “treason of the intellectuals” now does the same to the Jews of Israel and Jews elsewhere who stand with them.

The sort of Holocaust education and commemoration that became commonplace in the United States in the last generation, in which antisemitism is considered to be just another form of intolerance, does little to combat woke indifference to assaults on its designated “white” evil-doers. Antisemitism isn’t a function of ordinary unkindness but a weapon in which the Jews are demonized to achieve a political purpose. That is how Jewish victims of terrorism can be erased and their plight put down as what happens to oppressors who run afoul of an act of justified “resistance.”

Hamas, which is a movement that has the support of most Palestinians and now the sympathy of many Western intellectuals, explicitly seeks the elimination of the one Jewish state on the planet and the genocide of its 7 million Jews. What happened on Oct. 7 was merely the trailer for what it intends to do in the near future.

There is no middle ground on this subject. Anyone who is indifferent about what happened on Oct. 7, or who claims that of all the peoples in the world, the Jews alone are undeserving of a state or the right of self-defense (anti-Zionism), or who argues that Hamas must be allowed via a cease-fire to survive the current war and left in charge of any part of Gaza or anywhere else where it will rearm and prepare, as it pledges to do, commit many more such atrocities, can’t be allowed to call themselves “progressive” or opposed to genocide. Because what they are doing by taking such stands is essentially putting themselves on the side of those who wish for a second Holocaust in Israel.

That’s why I don’t want to hear a single word of Holocaust commemoration from anyone this year who isn’t prepared to unreservedly support Israel’s justified war to eliminate Hamas in the same manner that the Allies belatedly destroyed Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. In the months since Oct. 7, we have seen what this generation’s “treason of the intellectuals” has wrought as antisemitic ideas, conduct and speech have once again become commonplace. If you aren’t willing to stand with the Jewish state against Islamist murderers and their woke fellow travelers and useful idiots, then at least have the decency not to bother us with your insincere grief about the Holocaust.
Brendan O'Neill: The rise and rise of Holocaust envy
Britain’s Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is not famed for its astuteness. These omnipresent public-school leftists, who rock up to every radical demo to holler facile chants in fake accents they learnt from EastEnders, are about as far from scholarly as you can get. Yet a few years ago they did something that was world-beatingly dumb, even by their famed low standards. They handed out a leaflet about the Holocaust that described it as an unspeakable tragedy in which ‘thousands of LGBT people, trade unionists and disabled people were slaughtered’. Spot the omission?

Yes, they forgot the Jews. They forgot the Jews. It was 2008 and the SWP was skulking around a festival organised by the far-right British National Party (BNP). They handed their leaflets to anyone who’d take one. The leaflet denounced the BNP for ‘deny[ing] the Holocaust’, which was apparently an act of mass murder against gay people, trans folk and the disabled. No one else. Just them. The irony of the SWP slamming the BNP for ‘denying the Holocaust’ while simultaneously erasing from the record the six million souls obliterated by the Nazis was too much to take.

Their omission of the very people the Holocaust was designed to destroy did not go unnoticed. Even other radical leftists were appalled. The SWP seems to have discovered a ‘Jew-free Holocaust’, swiped the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. Perhaps the SWP is keen to appeal to people who think it was ‘all right that Hitler killed six million Jews, but think it too much that he also killed LGBT people’, the AWL said. Then came the AWL’s keenest observation: yes, the omission of the Jews was probably ‘a slip’, it said, ‘but for such a slip to pass unnoticed through writer, typesetter, printer, organisers and distributors, without anyone at any stage picking it up, must say something’ (my emphasis).

Indeed it must. And indeed it did. It spoke, at some level, however subconsciously, to one of the most disturbing trends of recent times: the ideological assault on the Jewishness of the Holocaust. The slow but sure divorcing of the Holocaust from the Jews and the Jewish experience. The transformation of the Holocaust from the mass burning – literally – of the ‘Jewish race’ into a tragedy that befell all sorts of people. The SWP’s ‘Jew-free Holocaust’ may have been ‘a slip’, but it also foretold a future in which the Holocaust would be ‘liberated’ from the Jews, turned from a concrete and unique crime against the Jewish people into a generalised sad event that any victim group can lay claim to. We’re in that future now.
Italian pro-Palestinian activists employ Holocaust symbols as a form of protest against Gaza war
‘There is a sizeable number of Arabs in Italy who have chosen this sacred day of commemoration to try to draw a comparison’

Israeli diplomat Avi Pazner tells Albert Lewitinn as Italian pro-Palestinian activists employ Holocaust symbols as a form of protest against Gaza war


The dangers of progressive antisemitism
Like most American Jews I know, I spent Oct. 7 scrolling through social media, listlessly pushing my toddler on a playground swing as I swiped between images of burning kibbutzim, fixing dinner to television images of a modern-day pogrom. Yet for all the horror of that day, I was not especially surprised that a group founded in 1987 to destroy Israel by killing Jews was doing just that. Hamas was, in comedian Chris Rock’s famous formulation, the tiger that “went tiger.”

It was the response of American progressives that left me by turns outraged and perplexed. As a group, we American Jews had proven ourselves to be reliable liberals who have voted Democratic for decades. We had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and fought to preserve Roe v. Wade. Some of the closest advisers to Presidents Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden were, or are, Jews.

None of that mattered anymore. Suddenly, our shade of blue was no longer palatable to factions of the liberal establishment. Oct. 7 marked the final phase of a rupture that had been widening for years. No longer is the Left’s hostility to Jews a fringe preoccupation. Since the Hamas attacks, large swaths of American elite culture have treated Jews like a transplanted organ the body suddenly refuses to accept. If history is a teacher — and history rarely misses an opportunity to teach the present a thing or two — we may be heading down a path any healthful democracy should strive to avoid.

The surety and swiftness of the progressive response felt almost like a catharsis, as if an antisemitism long held in abeyance was finally allowed to explode into the open. After all, some seemed to conclude perversely, what better time to heap scorn on the Jews than while they are being massacred?

So the podcaster Edward Ongweso Jr., whose critiques of Big Tech I had previously appreciated, posted a video of Gazans smashing through Israeli border defenses that morning. “This is a glorious thing to wake up to,” he wrote. “Staring down the barrel of a fascist government that has put you in a cage for your entire life and is itching for an excuse to kill everyone in it with you, I can’t imagine anything braver.”

Later, I messaged Ongweso to say that I was disappointed by his jubilant message precisely because I respected his thinking on other subjects.

In response, he simply blocked me.

It is telling that so much of the progressive response was recorded on X, formerly Twitter. The site had become a conservative clearinghouse since it had been purchased by Elon Musk, sanctimonious misinformation “experts” such as Ben Collins of NBC News had claimed. But much of the hate was now coming from the Left. If that animosity was somewhat more sophisticated than edgelord Pepe-in-Auschwitz memes, that only made it worse. The people celebrating Hamas or blaming Israel for the attack were not lonely teenagers looking to get attention by trolling. They were elites expressing genuine satisfaction at seeing Jews killed.
Hamas Is Still Hamas
Whereas some assessed that ruling Gaza would moderate, or at least co-opt, Hamas' inclination to violence, that did not prove to be the case. The Oct. 7, 2023, massacre demonstrated in the most visceral and brutal way that Hamas ultimately prioritized destroying Israel and creating an Islamist Palestinian state in its place over its governance project in Gaza, Palestinian national reconciliation, or the end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a two-state solution.

In July 2007, Hamas took over Gaza from Fatah by force of arms. It diverted funds intended for civilian public services to build tunnels and a robust weapons production program. Hamas played a long game, investing in efforts to instill a "culture of resistance" in Gaza society, with a focus on schools and youth. Hamas duped Israeli and Western officials into thinking it would not put its governance project at risk and therefore could be deterred.

After it consolidated power, by December 2008 Hamas initiated the first in a series of rocket wars with Israel. By 2015, after three rounds of rocket wars, some still assessed that Hamas would prioritize survival over "resistance."

Yet Oct. 7 was the war Hamas always wanted. Hamas remained committed to its core principle of prioritizing the destruction of Israel over the well-being of Palestinian civilians. That explains why Hamas executed the brutal Oct. 7 attack and why Israel responded with an assault aimed at ending the Hamas governance project in Gaza.
Netanyahu holds up Mein Kampf to protest ICJ ruling, calls Hamas 'new Nazis'
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu brandished a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf and called Hamas the “new Nazis’ as he attacked as “ridiculous” the International Court of Justice’s decision to give a nod to South Africa’s genocide claim against Israel.

“The very willingness in The Hague to discuss this ridiculous claim,” Netanyahu told reporters during a press conference in Tel Avi on Saturday night. “The very fact that it was not dismissed.. proves that many in the world have learned nothing from the Holocaust,” Netanyahu stated. 'South Africa came to ICJ in the name of the new Nazis'

“I have here Hitler's book in Arabic, "Mein Kampf". This book was “found by our soldiers in the homes of civilians in the Gaza Strip. They found extensive anti-Semitic and Nazi literature there. This is what they educate their children about.”Netanyahu said

He stressed that Hamas doesn’t just teach its children to execute terror attacks, but also about how to destroy Israel and the entire Jewish people.

He noted that the 17-member tribunal issued its first statements on the case, on Friday, just two days before International Remembrance Day, an event that was marked already on Friday by the United Nations.

Both events, the one marking Holocaust remembrance day and the reading out of the initial ICJ action on the genocide case, could be viewed simultaneously on the UN’s web page.

“There is no greater absurdity than that precisely yesterday, on the eve of International Holocaust Day, there were those who came to The Hague to accuse us of the false and outrageous charge of genocide.

“In whose name did they come? In the name of Hamas - in the name of the "new Nazis" - who came to commit genocide on us,” Netanyahu said.
FDD: ICJ Rejects Gaza Ceasefire Demand, Urges Hostages Released
Expert Analysis
“That the Palestinians and their South African and Islamic Republic sponsors welcomed this ruling is telling. Their case has been fatally flawed from the outset given the abundant evidence of Israel’s extraordinary efforts to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza and Hamas’s brutal use of human shields to kill as many Palestinians as possible. For them, the victory is that Israel, rather than Hamas, is in the dock. The genocidal Palestinian terrorist group has already described the ICJ proceedings as a means of ‘isolating’ the one Jewish state. Any countries that care about the law or basic sanity in geopolitics must now redouble their support for Israel’s justified war of self-defense.” — Mark Dubowitz, FDD CEO

“The ICJ rightly rejected South Africa’s attempt to deprive Israel of its right to defend itself. At the same time, the ICJ’s failure to entirely dismiss South Africa’s meritless claims undermines the Western world’s ongoing fight against authoritarian and terrorist leaders who are willing to drive up their own side’s casualties by using their own civilians as human shields.” — Orde Kittrie, FDD Senior Fellow

“It’s quite notable that not a single organization cited by the ICJ in its ruling recognizes Hamas as a terrorist organization. Instead, those sources of information have often been complicit in Hamas’s war crimes. Even so, the lawfare attempt by Hamas and its supporters to stop Israel’s just war against terrorism did not succeed.” — Richard Goldberg, FDD

Senior Advisor
“The ICJ’s reputation, not Israel’s, was on trial, and the results were mixed. Declining to dismiss the bogus charges outright will severely handcuff democracies fighting against terrorist groups that cynically use human shields to amplify civilian casualties.” — David May, FDD Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst Background on the Case

South Africa orally presented its case to the ICJ on January 11, and Israel responded to those charges the following day. Israel’s defense team highlighted the dangers facing Israel, challenged South Africa’s “deliberately curated, decontextualized and manipulative description of the reality of current hostilities,” and recounted the many ways in which Israel seeks to minimize civilian casualties. Rejecting South Africa’s assertion that several statements by Israeli officials demonstrate genocidal intent, Israel’s legal team pointed out that the quotes were taken out of context, rejected by Israel’s war cabinet, or uttered by people with no control over Israel’s decision-making process regarding the war.

ICJ Case Risks Undermining International Law
In its January 12 defense, Israel cautioned the court regarding the dangers of allowing anti-Israel animus to undermine international law. In his concluding remarks, Israeli Deputy Attorney General Gilad Noam warned, “Entertaining the applicant’s request would weaken efforts to punish genocide and instead of [the court] being an instrument to prevent terrorist horrors would turn it into a weapon in hands of terrorist groups who have no regard for humanity and rule of law.” Following the ICJ decision, Israel’s Foreign Ministry denounced South Africa’s spurious genocide charge, which would “empty the word genocide of its unique force and special meaning.”
Israel survived the display of hypocrisy at the International Court of Justice
Israeli ears found it hard to hear the International Court of Justice's (ICJ) statements issued by its president Joan Donoghue on Friday. The rhetoric used against Israel was harsh. The ICJ’s primary focus was directed at the Palestinian population in Gaza, and only a few words from the president were dedicated to the horrific massacre on October 7 and the hostages still held by Hamas. However, the bottom line is good for Israel – no order was given with practical significance in real-life situations.

In essence, the ICJ called on Israel to adhere to international law and prevent actions that could be contrary to the Genocide Convention. Actions that Israel currently already takes.

The significant achievement in the trial is that none of the ICJ’s 17 judges granted South Africa's request for an order to stop the fighting in Gaza. South Africa attempted to rely on precedents established in the case of Ukraine against Russia, where a temporary order was issued based on the Genocide Convention, instructing Russia to immediately stop all military operations in Ukrainian territory. However, no judge of the ICJ accepted South Africa's position on this matter.

Furthermore, no ICJ judge mandated that Israel should minimize its military operations or allow some of Gaza’s population to return to their homes, and no operative orders were given regarding the supply of a specific amount of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Additionally, no judge decided to issue an order instructing Israel to reduce or cease military operations "except actions necessary to exercise the right to self-defense."

In practice, the ICJ provided six general interim orders: to do everything required within its authority to prevent acts going against the Genocide Convention; to ensure the IDF doesn’t engage in actions contrary to the convention; to take all measures to prevent and bring to justice public statements encouraging the killing of Palestinians; to take effective measures to provide humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip’s residents; to preserve and prevent the destruction of evidence related to Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip; and to submit a report to the ICJ regarding the implementation of these actions.
UK says it has ‘considerable concerns’ about ICJ ruling, rejects genocide accusation
The British government said Saturday it had “considerable concerns” about a ruling by the United Nation’s top court that Israel should do everything it can to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague on Friday handed down its first judgment in a case brought by South Africa that also ordered Israel to allow humanitarian access to the Palestinian territory, but did not call for a ceasefire.

“We respect the role and independence of the ICJ. However… we have considerable concerns about this case, which is not helpful in the goal of achieving a sustainable ceasefire,” a Foreign Office spokesperson said in a statement.

“Israel has the right to defend itself against Hamas in line with IHL [international humanitarian law],” the spokesperson added.

“Our view is that Israel’s actions in Gaza cannot be described as genocide, which is why we thought South Africa’s decision to bring the case was wrong and provocative.”


Aharon Barak's chilling ICJ testimony: 'Nazis failed to take our humanity'
"Genocide is more than just a word to me," wrote Aharon Barak, former Israeli High Court President and Israel’s appointee to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) panel, where South Africa has accused Israel of committing genocide as it fights against Hamas in Gaza.

Barak wrote these words within the framework of the ICJ's decision in The Hague, in a document that, beyond being part of a legal ruling, also includes a personal testimony.

"I was a 5-year-old boy when, as part of Operation Barbarossa, the German army occupied my hometown of Kaunas in Lithuania," he wrote, "within a few days, almost 30,000 Jews from Kaunas were taken from their homes and placed in the ghetto. It was as if they were sentenced to death, and we awaited execution," he went on to say. "On October 26, 1941, all the Jews in the ghetto were ordered to gather in the central square, known as 'Democracy Square.' About 9,000 Jews were taken from the square that day, and executed by machine gun fire.

Barak opened his remarks by criticizing South Africa's appeal to the court. He then reminded Israel of its obligations under the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, alongside acknowledging Israel's right to defend itself, and emphasizing the importance of providing humanitarian aid to the residents of Gaza. He noted that the court emphasized that "all parties in the conflict in the Gaza Strip are subject to international law - which certainly includes Hamas as well."

Barak explained in great detail why he opposes the demand for an immediate cessation of hostilities, and the definition of Israel's actions in Gaza as "genocide," a concept that represents, in his view, "calculated destruction, and human behavior at its worst." According to him, "this is the most serious accusation possible, and it is woven in the experience of my personal life."
Canada takes no clear position on ICJ interim ruling in Gaza genocide case

UK, Finland, Italy join US in halt to UNRWA funds; Israel wants it replaced post-war
Britain, Italy, the Netherlands and Finland became the latest countries on Saturday to pause funding for the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA), after the body said Friday that it had sacked “several” employees accused by Israel of involvement in Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

The United States, Australia and Canada had already paused funding to the aid agency, a critical source of support for people in Gaza, after the allegations by Israel. The agency said on Friday it had opened an investigation into several employees and severed ties with those people.

Encouraging more donor suspensions, Israel’s Foreign Minister Israel Katz said Saturday UNRWA should be replaced once fighting in the enclave dies down and accused the agency of ties to Islamist terrorists in Gaza.

“In Gaza’s rebuilding, UNRWA must be replaced with agencies dedicated to genuine peace and development,” he added on X, formerly Twitter.

Deputy UN spokesperson Farhan Haq, asked about Katz’s remarks, said: “We are not responding to rhetoric. UNRWA overall had had a strong record, which we have repeatedly underscored.”

UNRWA has always rejected accusations of ties to terror in the past and maintained it is a relief and humanitarian agency.

The Palestinian Authority foreign ministry criticized what it described as an Israeli campaign against UNRWA, and Hamas condemned the termination of employee contracts “based on information derived from the Zionist enemy.”
Largest pro-Israel Christian group to Biden: Permanently defund UNRWA
The leadership of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) has questioned the long-term intentions and effectiveness of the Biden administration’s decision to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

This decision came amid an investigation into a dozen UNRWA employees who are alleged to have participated in the October 7 Hamas massacre against Israel. Canada, Finland, Australia, Italy, and the UK also froze funding.

“While we welcome the decision to stop funding UNRWA, the Biden administration should make this temporary pause permanent,” said CUFI Action Fund Chairwoman Sandra Parker. “Unfortunately, the State Department’s action in this context is typical of their too little, too late approach to the Middle East.

“No US taxpayer dollars should’ve been flowing to UNRWA, just as no sanctions relief should’ve been provided to Iran,” Parker continued. “I’d love to believe the Biden administration has learned its lesson, but how much time do we really believe will pass before the White House turns the spigot back on?”

CUFI has over 10 million members and is considered the largest pro-Israel organization in the United States. Its Action Fund works on Capitol Hill to ensure America’s elected officials hear the perspective of the millions of Christian Zionists across the country.
Israel asks UNRWA to vacate plot, pay fine in capital over illegal activity
The Israel Land Authority (ILA) has recently sent a letter to the UNRWA demanding that the UN Palestinian relief agency vacate the premises of a compound in the village of Kafr Aqab, a neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, citing its lack of permit to use the state-owned plot.

In the letter, the ILA's legal counsel for the Jerusalem District emphasized that UNRWA has taken over the land in the city without a permit and that the ILA demanded its evacuation and the retroactive payment of 17 million shekels ($4600) in usage fees.

The UNRWA compound in question was allegedly built without a proper permit for its current usage. The land, spanning 21 acres, is located near the Qalandiya checkpoint and was purchased at the beginning of the 20th century by Jewish philanthropists abroad, who donated it to a special fund for developing Jewish settlement in the Jerusalem area. UNRWA-affiliated people took over the land and built on it, among other things, a school and a memorial for terrorists who were involved in terror activities in Jerusalem.

On January 14, the ILA sent the letter to UNRWA in Jerusalem, demanding retroactive payment of the fee due to the illegal construction and usage "You are hereby required to immediately cease all unlawful use, demolish everything you have built illegally, evacuate the land of all persons and/or objects and restore the situation to its previous state, within 30 days of the date of this letter," the letter reads.

Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Arieh King, sent a letter to Chairwoman of KKL-JNF Ifat Ovadia Luski, noting that the organization should act to reclaim the place that it rightfully owned. King wrote: "The school in Kafr Aqab sits on a plot purchased 100 years ago by overseas donors, who transferred ownership to KKL-JNF for the purpose of reclaiming land." King added that "in the past, part of the land contained a KKL-JNF forest called Qalandiya; UNRWA personnel uprooted most of the trees."


Scotland announces suspension of funding to UNRWA, calls allegations 'concerning'

Italy suspends financing for UNRWA: Foreign Minister Tajani

Canada suspends UNRWA funding after employees implicated in Oct. 7 terror attacks

Australia pauses funding for United Nations agency amid October 7 terror allegations

Jan 4th: Biden aide: UNRWA not responsible for Hamas’s depraved use of civilian infrastructure for terror purposes

Palestinian Authority panics, official calls to reverse UNRWA funding cut

Israel says WHO ‘colluding’ with Hamas by ignoring ‘terrorist use’ of Gaza hospitals
"Israel on Thursday accused the World Health Organization of collusion with Hamas by ignoring Israeli evidence of the ‘terrorist use’ of hospitals in the Gaza Strip, during a session when the global health body’s chief described conditions in the coastal enclave as ‘hellish.’

Israeli ambassador Meirav Eilon Shahar told the WHO’s executive board that there could not be health care in the Palestinian territory when Hamas ‘embeds itself in hospitals and uses human shields.’

In ‘every single hospital that the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) searched in Gaza, it found evidence of Hamas’ military use,’ she said. ‘These are undeniable facts that WHO chooses to ignore time and time again. This is not incompetence; it is collusion.’

Israel has repeatedly said Hamas is using civilians as human shields, including by locating operations bases under hospitals. Captured Hamas terrorists have confirmed the claims, explaining that Hamas knows Israel will not bomb a medical center.

On X, formerly Twitter, the ambassador insisted there was evidence of Hamas’s ‘terrorist use’ of hospitals.

During the same session on the organization’s work in health emergencies, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who lived through war as a child and whose own children hid in a bunker during bombardments in Ethiopia’s 1998-2000 border war with Eritrea, became emotional describing conditions in Gaza...

‘I think all of you have said the two-state solution and so on, and hope this war will end and move into a true solution,’ he said, before breaking down, describing the current situation as ‘beyond words.’...

Eilon Shahar said Tedros’s comments represented a ‘complete leadership failure.’

‘The statement by the director-general was the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the WHO since October 7th. No mention of the hostages, the rapes, the murder of Israelis, nor the militarization of hospitals and Hamas’ despicable use of human shields,’ the Israeli ambassador said in comments sent to Reuters...

‘Murdered hostages in a tunnel’
Netanyahu doubles down on Qatar criticism: 'I don't retract a single word'
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on his harsh critique of Doha ahead of an anticipated meeting by US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns with Qatari, Egyptian, and Israeli officials in Europe on the possibility of a second hostage deal.

“I do not retract a single word I said,” Netanyahu exclaimed during a Saturday day press conference with reporters in Tel Aviv.

“I will not give up even one option of placing pressure on Hamas or on anyone who can pressure it,” he stated.

Netanyahu spoke on Channel 12 last week and published a leaked tape in which he referred to Qatar, which along with Egypt, is attempting to mediate a deal to free the remaining 136 hostages held in Gaza. Qatar has since said that such comments have harmed the negotiations for a deal.

On Saturday night Netanyahu stated that “Qatar hosts the leaders of Hamas and finances the organization. It has leverage over Hamas.”

Netanyahu also pointed to the deal made earlier this month with France’s help by which medicine was supposed to be delivered by the hostages, but no proof has been given It has pledged that the drugs will reach the abductees.”

“Qatar has put itself forward as a mediator, so it should prove it by making sure that the medication reaches the hostages and by securing their release,” Netanyahu stated.
Biden Israel aid package in jeopardy
U.S. President Joe Biden’s $106 billion supplemental foreign aid package, with $14.3 billion for Israel, appeared to be in jeopardy Friday with House Republicans signaling that they would oppose a Senate-led compromise bill.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.), speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, wrote a letter to Republican colleagues on Friday suggesting that the supplemental foreign aid bill, which also includes $61 billion for Ukraine and billions for Taiwan, Gaza and other global hotspots, would be unacceptable to House Republicans even if it included reforms to U.S. border security policy.

“I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border, since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement,” Johnson wrote to colleagues. “If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway.”

Biden first proposed the aid package in October, shortly after the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The Republican-controlled House passed the Israel portion of the aid in November but attached it to budget cuts to the Internal Revenue Service that were not viable in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Gaza's "Day After": A Year of Low-Intensity Warfare
There is increasing talk of some "day after" formula for Gaza, but there is not going to be a bright line between war and peace there. Israel has made it clear that it will not subcontract security along its border to anyone else.

The vision is a managed intermittent conflict without a large permanent Israeli presence, said Yediot Ahronot columnist Nahum Barnea. The military envision a situation akin to that in the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin, where the IDF goes wherever it wants. It envisions operating from a buffer zone inside Gaza, now being constructed, and going deeper into the territory from time to time on specific operations, based on intelligence.

While President Biden has said he would like a "revitalized Palestinian Authority" eventually running Gaza, at a minimum this would require the retirement or "emeritus" status of the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, internal reform, and some form of Palestinian elections, senior American officials say. But new elections would almost surely result in some political role for Hamas.

Yaakov Amidror, a former general and national security adviser, said he sees 2024 as a year of low intensity warfare. The next year or 18 months will be dedicated to finding and destroying Hamas tunnels, infrastructure and fighters. At the end, by mid-2025, he believes Hamas will no longer have military and political capacity to run Gaza. And the Israeli army may be in a position to operate in Gaza along the lines of its West Bank model. There is a long road ahead to a true "day after."
Preventing Hamas' Recovery
The IDF has successfully dismantled Hamas' operational framework in northern and central Gaza. More than 11,000 rockets have been fired into Israeli territory. More than 95% of those that threatened to hit targets inside Israel were intercepted by Israel's aerial defense systems.

Much of the humanitarian aid that enters Gaza through the Rafah border crossing does not reach northern Gaza because Hamas members and criminal elements hijack the trucks as they make their way northward.

Hamas' emergency councils, which are responsible for civilian activity in wartime, are still functioning and have regained their strength in northern Gaza after the IDF withdrew from neighborhoods and refugee camps. Hamas civilian police are starting to operate openly. Hamas is trying hard to create a myth whereby it cannot be defeated, in the expectation that domestic and international pressure on Israel will force it to halt the war.

Israel needs to recapture northern Gaza to prevent Hamas from returning to the area, allowing a new local leadership to emerge who have no connection to Hamas, to run civilian matters, stabilize northern Gaza, and start the reconstruction process. Only if the IDF has military control of the region will a local leadership emerge that is not afraid of Hamas. Israel must also hermetically seal the Philadelphi corridor separating Gaza from Egypt to prevent Hamas from rearming.
In north, IDF drills for urban warfare as health system preps for attack scenarios

IDF strikes Hezbollah targets in Lebanon after rocket, drone attacks on north

Intense battles rage in heart of Khan Yunis

Gazans call for overthrow of Hamas as they flee through IDF humanitarian corridor

UN official, accused of silence on Oct. 7, to visit Israel to learn of Hamas sexual violence
Pramila Patten, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general on sexual violence in conflict, plans to arrive in Israel on Monday, the United Nations announced on Thursday.

Patten, who was invited by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also plans to visit Palestinian-controlled areas in Judea and Samaria on the trip, which is expected to last into early February.

The Mauritian barrister will “gather information on sexual violence, reportedly committed in the context of the attacks of Oct. 7 and its aftermath,” the international body announced earlier this month.

The United Nations and its agencies have come under heavy scrutiny for failing, for two months, to acknowledge credible, mounting allegations of sexual violence committed by Hamas and Palestinian civilians from Gaza during the Oct. 7 massacre.

The Israeli mission to the United Nations told JNS that Gilad Erdan, Israel’s U.N. ambassador, will accompany Patten on parts of the trip.

The U.N. official was involved in a confrontation days ago with Linor Abargil—an Israeli lawyer, actress and former “Miss World,” who is a rape victim and who advocates against sexual violence.

Abargil approached Patten during a U.N. event and told her, “I have to tell you that as a rape victim, I’m so disappointed from your behavior and from you not condemning all the abuse that happened to our women.”

Patten responded, “Maybe you should have all the facts.”

“I have the facts, and after two months you didn’t have even one response,” said Abargil as one of Patten’s apparent handlers asked her, “Can we not have this in front of the camera?”

Undeterred, Abargil continued, “Why? You saw the testimony. This is now the time for action.”

“If it was your daughter, would it take you two months? If it was your sister?” she pressed. “Tell me. Why you don’t answer?”

Patten promptly departed the event.


Daniel Greenfield: Biden Admin Won’t Stop Pro-Hamas Protests in U.S., But Demands Israel Stop Hostage Families From Blocking Hamas Aid

Rape crisis centre supporting pro-Hamas rally another low in Toronto

Israel-Hamas war will end after ‘destruction of Hamas’ and ‘release of hostages’
Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy says the war on Hamas will end when their goals of “the destruction of Hamas” and the “release of hostages” have been achieved.

The International Court of Justice is demanding Israel do all it can to avoid acts of genocide in its war against Hamas.

Judges in the Hague are considering a case brought forward by South Africa, which alleges Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians.

“This war will end when we have achieved our goals – the destruction of Hamas and the release of the hostages,” Mr Levy told Sky News Australia.

“We wished that we had a magic wand that we could wave and the hostages would come home, and Hamas would stop being a genocidal terror organisation committed to our destruction, but the first thing Hamas did after slaughtering 1,200 people and abducting 253 was to tell us that it wants to do it again and again.

“We’re fighting Hamas so they can’t do it again and again, and we’re fighting to release the hostages we fear are being tortured and executed and raped in its tunnels right now, and there is no way we’re going to abandon them, and so we will continue to fight, not because we want to, but because we must.

“Hamas declared war on us, it started this war, and we are going to end this war – and we are going to end this war in a way that makes sure it can never hurt us again.”


Douglas Murray: Palestinian Authority 'rewarding terrorism' with international taxpayers' money
Author Douglas Murray has sensationally pointed to the Palestinian Authority’s “slay-for-pay” policy where international taxpayer funds are used to “reward and incentivise terrorism”.

"Western politicians seem to think the Palestinian Authority are sort of good guys and Hamas are admittedly the bad guys – sometimes they admit that,” Mr Murray told Sky News Australia host Liz Storer.

“Therefore you should give stuff to the good guys, the thing is, the Palestinian Authority are not good guys – among other things, they have amazing amounts of support for Hamas.”

“Much of the Palestinian Authority’s current budget is paid for by international taxpayers including Europeans, Americans, and, I think, Australians.

“Much of the budget of the Palestinian Authority’s budget goes to the so-called ‘slay-for-pay’ awards which is money from the Palestinian Authority budget, which goes to the terrorists who carry out attacks on Jews and, if they are killed, to their families to reward them on a scale that advances depending on how high in casualty figures your terrorist attack was.

“This is money for terrorists paid by the PA, paid to the families of terrorists to reward and incentivise terrorism – that’s the Palestinian Authority.

“And they have just admitted, boasted in fact, they are going to pay the terrorists and families of the October 7 attack.”


FDD PODCAST | Colonel Richard Kemp on Israel's Long War
Colonel Richard Kemp has spent three decades fighting terrorists and insurgents around the world, including as commander of British forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has been present during each conflict between #israel and #hamas since 2008 and has been in Israel since the beginning of the current #gaza war.

Col. Kemp joins Cliff to discuss why Israel is not guilty of genocide and why Hamas, #hezbollah and their patrons in #tehran *are* guilty of genocide; the measures taken by Israel to reduce civilian harm — including their unparalleled ratio of civilians to combatants killed — in what the Col. calls the “single most challenging battlefield”; how South Africa and other members of the so-called ‘international community’ reinforce Hamas’ use of human shields; and the Colonel’s thoughts on the recent U.S.- and UK-led defensive strikes targeting Houthi assets in Yemen.

Col. Kemp also shares a battlefield assessment from his time spent in Ukraine and explains to Cliff why he fears the war is likely to end in defeat for Kyiv.


The Israel Guys: Over 19,000 HAMAS Terrorists Are Now Killed, Wounded, or Captured by ISRAEL
Israel is winning control of Khan Yunis in the heart of Gaza, and have now killed and captured over half of Hamas’ fighting force. Also amid truce talks, Israel strikes the Iranian airport in Lebanon possibly escalating the situation. This is going to be a packed show, so hold on.


Marc Lamont Hill DEBATES “Ultra-Zionist” Joseph Cohen About Israel and Palestine!!!



John Fetterman greets protesters outside his home by waving Israeli flag

Spiked: The Islamist war on education

Real Time with Bill Maher: Hamas in Higher Education
Bill argues that student support for Hamas, a terrorist organization, can be traced to their college professors.




Anti-Israel NYC elementary teachers twist ‘Wheels on the Bus’ song to celebrate the eradication of Jewish state
A pair of Brooklyn public school teachers are plying kids as young as eight with anti-Israel propaganda, drawing lessons from material that twists the classic “Wheels on the Bus” song into a hateful screed that cheers the eradication of the Jewish state, The Post has learned.

In Giuseppe Rebaudengo and Anna Battaglia’s third-grade classrooms at PS 705 in Prospect Heights, young minds are being molded into “social justice warriors,” learning from materials that morph the beloved 1939 kiddie tune into a Palestinian resistance cry called “The Wheels on the Tank.”

“The wheels on the tanks go round and round, all through the town. The people in the town they hold their ground, and never back down,” the sick new rhyme goes, illustrated with Palestinian kids hurling rocks at Israeli tanks.

“The bombs in the air go whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, all through the skies. From every river to every sea the people cry, cry, cry. Free Palestine till the wheels on the tanks fall off.”

The lessons are inspired by the ultra-left wing website Woke Kindergarten, including one that demeans Israel as a “made up place” that has “settlers called Zionists who are harming and killing the Palestinian people.”

And drawings of watermelons — used as a symbol of resistance by anti-Israel activists — line the hallways at PS 705, according to a post from the NYC Public Schools Alliance, which fights bias in schools.

Critics ripped the lessons as nothing more than hateful indoctrination.

“I want teachers to have leeway but we should also embed teaching with fact, not propaganda,” said Tova Plaut, founder of the NYC Public Schools Alliance, which fights bias in schools.

“When we embed this bias inside young children, removing it is nearly impossible,” she added.
NYPD Warns Pro-Hamasniks: We Will ‘Flood’ Our Jail Cells With You
New York’s Finest warned pro-Hamas demonstrators this weekend via social media not to carry out their announced plans to “flood” a highway leading to JFK International Airport, and to attempt to shut down Terminal 4 at the airport itself.

The anarchists’ use of the word “Flood” is a direct reference to “Al Aqsa Flood,” the name of the war against Israel launched by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists on October 7th. On that Shabbat Simchat Torah, some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel and slaughtered more than 1,200 people, including hundreds who were attending the “Super Nova” music festival at nearby Kibbutz Re’im, plus soldiers and local residents of 22 Jewish communities and several IDF military bases along the Gaza border. In many cases, the terrorists tortured their victims, mutilating, raping and dismembering them. Thousands were grievously injured in the attack, and more than 250 others were kidnapped and dragged into Gaza captivity.

The “Flood JFK for Gaza” event was set to begin from Brooklyn and Queens, first at 12 noon with a car caravan heading out from Brooklyn, then at 1 pm with a pedestrian “mobilization” at the Air Train station in Jamaica, Queens. The pro-terrorist activists were then set to “rally” at 2 pm outside the Arrivals Hall at JFK’s Terminal 4, the terminal that hosts El Al Airlines and other carriers flying to and from the Middle East.

“Trying to shut down an airport?” NYPD Assistant Commissioner Kaz Daughtry wrote in a post on the X social media platform. “You will be the one getting shut down! We respect peaceful protest but will not tolerate lawlessness. The NYPD stands ready to ensure that our airports are operational and that hardworking New Yorkers going on vacation are not inconvenienced.”

Retweeting that post, NYPD Chief of Patrol Chief John Chell added, “What can I say that has not been said. Dont (sic) flood our highways and inconvenience our hard working tax paying New Yorkers. If you do, we will try to flood our jail cells with you and take your car! On behalf of the 99.9% of New Yorkers, enough already! Strength and Honor!!!!!”


Pro-Palestine protesters clash with cops - with at least four arrested - at massive protest outside American Israel Public Affairs Committee headquarters in NYC

MEMRI: Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad On Al-Jazeera TV: The U.S. Was, And Still Is, A Settler Colonialist Country; America Supports Israel Because It Reminds It Of Its White Supremacist Past

America’s foreign enemies stoke Jew hatred on campus
Immediately after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, in which Hamas murdered and tortured 1,200 while capturing 240 hostages, celebrations of this “victory” over the Jewish state broke out in leftist bastions all over the United States. The firestorm of antisemitism on college campuses and in major cities ever since is unique in coming almost exclusively from left-wing sources. David Bernstein, founder and CEO of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values, told the Washington Examiner he used to consider left-wing antisemitism “like climate change, slow-moving and corrosive. But that’s no longer the case. On the Left, antisemitism is now a complete tsunami.”

Dr. Charles Small, executive director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, told the Washington Examiner that intolerance in the U.S. “was even shocking to me, [and] I knew that antisemitism was increasing exponentially.”

Hatred on college campuses has had a staggeringly damaging effect on Jewish students. A survey by the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International found that following Hamas’s pogrom, only 46% of Jewish students feel “physically safe” and 33% feel “emotionally safe” on campus. A reported 73% have witnessed antisemitism in the 2023-24 school year.

Research from Small and the ISGAP and indications from foreign adversary watchdogs point to the likelihood that overseas provocateurs have played a role in creating today’s intolerance. Terrorist propaganda, possibly from terrorists themselves, is being shared on U.S. campuses. Some countries, including Qatar, Iran, and China, are involved in long-term efforts to stoke college antisemitism. In more recent efforts, Russia, Iran, and China have worked online to foment further discord, widening the fractures in American society. Identifying and counteracting these efforts is a vital necessity if we are to create an environment in which American Jews are not attacked for events unfolding in the Middle East.
MIT Parents Press School To Address 'Threatening' Anti-Israel Disruptions

Brown University’s Middle East Studies Faculty Profiles in Extremist Anti-Israel Bias
Recently, CAMERA published two important reports detailing anti-Israel and often antisemitic bias emanating from Brown University’s Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) and the university’s Choices Program, which provides curricula for secondary schools.

As one of those reports explained, nearly one in three faculty members of the CMES are supporters of the BDS Movement against Israel. According to the AMCHA Initiative organization that produced this data, “the presence and number of faculty who expressed support for an academic boycott of Israel prior to the onset of the [2021] Israel-Hamas war were strongly and reliably associated with every measure of faculty and student-perpetrated antisemitic activity…” Brown University has one of the highest numbers of faculty BDS supporters, comparable to Harvard University which has three times as many total faculty.

But the bias, extremism, and antisemitism among faculty in the CMES goes far beyond just support for the BDS Movement. Provided below is a non-exhaustive list of anti-Israel and antisemitic public rhetoric from many of the Center’s faculty members. The rhetoric shown helps demonstrate the level of bias and hostility toward the Jewish state.




Sky News apologizes after anchor compares idea of relocating Gazans to Holocaust

Rep. Jamaal Bowman loses key Jewish organization’s endorsement over Israel stance
Rep. Jamaal Bowman lost a major Jewish endorsement this week after making a joint appearance with an accused antisemite who publicly celebrated Hamas’ Oct 7 attack on Israel.

J-Street, a politically left-leaning Jewish advocacy nonprofit, removed Bowman’s name on Friday from a list of 122 members of Congress it is backing in 2024.

“When the rhetoric, the framing and the approach go too far, that’s where we are going to hold our line,” J-Street boss Jeremy Ben-Ami told The Forward, which first reported the story. “And that’s when we felt that Bowman crossed the line here.”

“The rhetoric around genocide, the singling out of Israel, and at times Jewish people, that happens in some of these events — that needs to be called out in real time,” Ben-Ami continued.

The J-Street leader specifically cited Bowman’s recent appearance with Norman Finkelstein as the last straw. Finkelstein, who has been denounced by critics as an “antisemite” for decades, wrote the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre “warms every fiber of my soul.”


Iceland may pull out of Eurovision over Israel’s attendance in light of Gaza war

Palestinians Must Reject Hamas' Suicidal Adventures
I left Gaza one month before the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. Since Hamas' horrendous Oct. 7 attacks on Israelis, difficult, uncomfortable questions are surfacing about the future of the Palestinian national project. Hamas' terror, which the group presented as legitimate armed resistance, seriously harmed the Palestinian cause and has led to thousands of Palestinians killed in Israeli retaliation. Armed resistance by Hamas and others failed to liberate any territories.

Gaza's destruction is forcing unprecedented questioning of Hamas and the viability of armed resistance by its displaced, hungry, sick, and exhausted residents. Hamas propaganda has consistently told Palestinians that its resistance prevents Israel from operating freely in Gaza. The 2023 war decimated this notion and claims that asymmetric guerilla power can seriously challenge Israel's overwhelming military superiority. No amount of rockets, tunnels, or violent attacks emanating from Gaza is going to address Palestinian grievances or result in the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Gaza should have become a model for what a prosperous, developed Palestinian state would look like. It was Hamas' choices that took Gaza down a dark path of recurring cycles of war, destruction, temporary reconstruction, and stalemate. The international community and the Arab world are tired of having to foot the bill for Hamas' suicidal adventures.

There must be a cultural shift within Palestinian society to reverse decades of incitement and anti-peace sentiments. There must be a once and for all disposal of the notion that Israel can be dismantled or erased. It is time for the Palestinians to embrace peace, reject violence, and genuinely believe in coexisting with their Israeli neighbors.


'F*** Israel' and 'Viva Hitler' scrawled across Jewish Simpsons memorial in Milan hours before Holocaust Memorial Day - as officials postpone pro-Palestine marches across Italy


Fury as Labour MP claims Holocaust Memorial Day should recognise ‘Gaza genocide’
A Labour MP has infuriated Jewish local party members after claiming “Gaza” should be added to a list of “recent genocides” to be remembered alongside the murder of six million Jews on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Kate Osamor, the MP for Edmonton, and a former frontbencher under Jeremy Corbyn, was photographed signing the Holocaust Educational Trust’s commemoration book in Westminster.

In her weekly mailout on Friday to local members in her north London constituency, the MP noted that Saturday is HMD, and said there was an “international duty to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust” as will as the millions of others people murdered under Nazi persecution.

Then, listing the “more recent genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia” to be remembered on HMD, Osamor wrote in the newsletter “and now Gaza”.

Karen Pollock, chief executive, Holocaust Educational Trust, responded to the MP’s comments telling Jewish News: “This disgusting post is a malicious distortion of the truth, a painful insult to survivors of the Holocaust and particularly distressing to see on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day.”

A Jewish Labour Movement spokesperson added: “This is wholly inappropriate. This week we have been commemorating the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust – and those who perished in subsequent genocides, as listed by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

“Unilaterally co-opting the war in Gaza, despite the horrific suffering there, on to that list is wrong and offensive.”

The Jewish Leadership Council also confirmed they would be raising Osamor’s conduct with Labour.


Jacksonville killer’s ‘madman diary,’ full of vitriol, includes Jew-hatred
Jewish leaders issued statements last summer after Ryan Christopher Palmeter killed three people, all of them black shoppers, and then himself on Aug. 26 at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Fla. At the time, the city’s sheriff T.K. Waters referred to writings of Palmeter’s that were discovered as “the diary of a madman.”

The sheriff’s office recently released that “diary,” a manifesto that runs 27 pages and cannot be easily quoted for its hateful ranting and racist language. At one point, the killer expressed some skepticism about Jews controlling the word.

“While the evidence points strongly towards the existence of a cabal of elite jews [sic] conspiring (seemingly telepathically) to destabilize the nations of the world so that they can make a quick buck in the aftermath, the idea seems far-fetched, and Occam’s Razor leads me to believe that there is no centralization among those behind the West’s decay,” he wrote at one point.

“I encourage the reader to investigate the world’s most powerful people and form their own conclusions on whether their religions and ethnicities correlate and causate (hint: look into how many major players in media companies and big tech are jews [sic]), or whether this is mere coincidence,” he wrote.

He then posed: “Why is it that Adolf Hitler’s speeches are shown so often on television, and yet never given subtitles? If the man were such a villian [sic], there would be no reason to censor his words. “Perhaps coincidence, perhaps an attempt to conceal arguments against the jew [sic] crafted more convincingly than any others, especially mine.”


‘Horrified’: Australian PM condemns neo-Nazis after arrest of ‘disguised’ group
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned on Saturday domestic neo-Nazi activity after a black-clad group was arrested on the country’s national day, which saw rallies in support of its Indigenous people.

Police said late on Friday, a holiday known as Australia Day, that they arrested six people and issued 55 others with infringement notices for offensive behavior at a train station in Sydney, the capital of New South Wales state.

The group was “heavily disguised,” police said.

“I was horrified,” Albanese told reporters in the town of Orange, about 203 kilometers (126 miles) from Sydney, when asked about the group on Saturday.

“I don’t want to see people in balaclavas dressed in black from head to toe, who are engaged in neo-Nazi activity in this country,” Albanese said.

Such activity “is rightly being condemned by all decent people,” he said, adding that Australia had seen a rise in neo-Nazism.
Actor Michael Rapaport, activist Emily Austin and rapper Kosha Dillz attend star-studded event to help stop the rise of anti-Semitism in the US after devastating October 7 attack
A philanthropic event aimed at supporting an organization that aides IDF soldiers rallied some of the most unapologetically pro-Israel voices in the entertainment industry, all conveying a unified message: 'Do something.'

The Let's Do Something Gala, in support of 'Soldiers Save Lives,' held in the heart of New York City Thursday night, was in honor of David Newman, a close friend of the founder, who was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7.

The lineup featured keynote speaker Michael Rapaport sharing inspiration, Israeli Activist Emily Austin advocating for change, and a lively musical performance by rapper Kosha Dillz.

The stories shared throughout the night reinforced the gala's message: to turn tragedy into triumph and contribute to the fight against anti-Semitism, noting the importance of holding the event one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Rapaport expressed his commitment to supporting Israel and the Jewish community.

He acknowledged the somber circumstances of the evening while simultaneously highlighting the joy and importance of unity at this time.

'The event is nice, it's nice to talk to people but anything around Israel right now theres going to be a sense of sadness and heartbreak,' he said. 'But it's good to see people come together, and see Jewish people stand up and stand together and stay brave under the insane circumstances that we are under right now.'

He emphasized the need to raise funds for a great cause and dispelled the myth that all Jewish people are wealthy.

'My goal is to continue to raise money. A lot of uniformed people think every Jew is gazillionaire - that's not the case,' he said in an exclusive interview with Dailymail.com.

'This is a great cause. these kids put this into action. I want to try to keep my and other Jewish people's morale as positive as it can be under these circumstances.'

Rapaport concluded the event with a powerful message: 'Keep fighting.'
Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Biden warns against downplaying Oct. 7
Ahead of Saturday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day, US President Joe Biden has warned against an alarming rise in antisemitism after Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught against Israel, along with efforts by some parties to minimize what happened that day.

Biden, who launched the first US national strategy to counter antisemitism in May 2023, said Friday the need to remember the Holocaust and the “scourge of antisemitism” was more pressing than ever after the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 people, the biggest loss of life on a single day since Israel’s founding in 1948. Two-hundred fifty-three people were also taken hostage, with 132 still in captivity.

“In the aftermath of Hamas’s vicious massacre, we have witnessed an alarming rise of despicable antisemitism at home and abroad that has surfaced painful scars from millennia of hate and genocide of Jewish people. It is unacceptable,” Biden said in a statement.

“We cannot remember all that Jewish survivors of the Holocaust experienced and then stand silently by when Jews are attacked and targeted again today,” he said, calling for forceful pushback against Holocaust denial and “efforts to minimize the horrors that Hamas perpetrated on October 7, especially its appalling and unforgivable use of rape and sexual violence to terrorize victims.”

UN experts this month demanded accountability for sexual violence against Israeli civilians during the October 7 attacks, including allegations of rape, mutilations and gunshots to genital areas.

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in November said the rise in antisemitism since the start of the Israel-Hamas war was a “five-alarm fire” that threatened the safety of Jews worldwide and the future of Israel.


The first Arab Israeli delegation to visit Auschwitz

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, survivors mark 79th anniversary of Auschwitz liberation
A group of survivors of Nazi death camps will mark the 79th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during World War II in a modest ceremony Saturday in southern Poland.

Some 20 survivors from various camps around Europe were to lay wreaths at the Death Wall in Auschwitz and hold prayers at the monument in Birkenau. They will memorialize some 1.1 million camp victims, mostly Jews. The attentively preserved memorial site and museum are located near the city of Oswiecim.

Nearly 6 million European Jews were killed during the Holocaust.

Marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the survivors are to be accompanied by Polish Senate Speaker Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, Culture Minister Bartlomiej Sienkiewicz and Israeli ambassador Yacov Livne.

The theme of the observances is the human being, symbolized in simple, hand-drawn portraits. They are meant to stress that the horror of Auschwitz-Birkenau lies in the suffering of people held and killed there.

A memorial ceremony with prayers was held Friday in Warsaw at the foot of the Monument to the Heroes of the Ghetto, who fell fighting the Nazis in 1943.

Earlier in the week, the countries of the former Yugoslavia signed an agreement in Paris to jointly renovate Block 17 in the red-brick Auschwitz camp and install a permanent exhibition there in memory of some 20,000 people who were deported from their territories and brought to the block. Participating in the project will be Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia.

Preserving the camp, a notorious symbol of the horrors of the Holocaust, with its cruelly misleading “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Makes One Free”) gate, requires constant effort by historians and experts, and substantial funds.
Netanyahu: Unless We Destroy ‘New Nazis’ of Hamas, Next Massacre Is a Matter of Time
In an address to the nation on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu charged that South Africa took Israel to the Hague “at the behest of the new Nazis” of Hamas. The leader condemned the fact the “ludicrous” accusation got a hearing at the International Court of Justice.

Netanyahu held aloft an Arabic copy of Mein Kampf, the notorious autobiography by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, as he condemned the indoctrination of Palestinians to the genocidal hatred of the Jews that erupted on October 7, the worst antisemitic massacre since the Holocaust.


PM Netanyahu delivers statement on the International Holocaust Memorial Day



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Carl in Jerusalem: "...probably the most under-recognized blog in the JBlogsphere as far as I am concerned."
Aussie Dave: "King of the auto-translation."
The Israel Situation:The Elder manages to write so many great, investigative posts that I am often looking to him for important news on the PalArab (his term for Palestinian Arab) side of things."
Tikun Olam: "Either you are carelessly ignorant or a willful liar and distorter of the truth. Either way, it makes you one mean SOB."
Mondoweiss commenter: "For virulent pro-Zionism (and plain straightforward lies of course) there is nothing much to beat it."
Didi Remez: "Leading wingnut"
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