Dr. Yohanan Manor
May 2, 2010
No. 97
- The singling out of Zionism as a supposed form of racism was a device invented by the Soviet Union to justify its refusal to condemn anti-Semitism during the negotiation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in the mid-1960s.
- The failure of the Soviet-Arab strategy to expel Israel from the United Nations and replace it with Palestine led to the adoption in 1975 of UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 (XXX), which determined that “Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.”
- For almost a decade, Israel and the Jewish people remained passive and did not attempt to challenge Resolution 3379. They greatly underestimated its impact and the damage it caused all over the world, expecting unrealistically that it would fade away by dint of its sheer inanity.
- The resolution’s revocation in 1991 was not an inevitable outcome of the end of the Cold War but was achieved mainly by convincing the United States to take the lead on the issue; the ostensible UN “automatic majority” was a manifestation of lack of leadership. Today, the efforts to undermine Israel’s legitimacy come mainly from an NGO network inspired and supported by Israel’s enemies, calling for a new counterstrategy.
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 (XXX) of 10 November 1975, defining Zionism as a form of racism, was revoked by the General Assembly sixteen years later on 16 December 1991.
The story of the rise and fall of this libel teaches a good deal about the role of anti-Semitism in international politics, its paralyzing effect on both the Jewish state and the Jewish people, and how such a libel was finally challenged successfully. Since the revocation of 3379, Israel’s international standing and legitimacy have steadily improved, increasing its ability to thwart ongoing attempts to negate its legitimacy.
How It Began
The idea of having Zionism condemned by the United Nations originated with the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s, before the Six Day War. It stemmed from the Soviet refusal to have anti-Semitism condemned by the UN. Since the Soviet Union could not openly voice such a position, it conditioned its acceptance of condemning anti-Semitism on a demand to condemn Zionism and Nazism. This occurred in 1964 and 1965 during the negotiation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination within the framework of the UN Commission on Human Rights.[1]
The Six Day War inflicted a severe blow on the Soviet Union’s weaponry and prestige, and it subsequently developed a more militant policy to regain and enlarge its influence in the Middle East. This policy was based on a near-total backing of the PLO. It was expected that this backing would bring both the “Arab street” and the Arab states to the Soviet Union’s side. This scheme went well and enabled the Soviet Union to gain strongholds in the Middle East, notably in Syria and Egypt, which were on the verge of becoming Soviet colonies.
The expulsion of the Soviet advisers from Egypt, the Israeli-Egyptian disengagement negotiations of November 1973, and the Israeli-Syrian disengagement agreement of May 1974 with the active involvement of the United States, apparently led to a Soviet-PLO plan to bring about Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations, with the PLO taking its place.[2]
On 22 November 1974, the PLO obtained UN observer status as a national liberation movement. In August 1975, the Organization of African Unity explicitly referred to depriving Israel of “its status as member.” At the General Assembly on 1 October 1975, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin called upon
the people of the United States of America…to rid their society from the Zionists in order that the true citizens of this nation may control their own destiny and exploit the natural resources of their country to their own benefit. I call for the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations and the extinction of Israel as a state so that the territorial integrity of Palestine may be ensured and upheld.[3]
In parallel, the Soviet Union and the PLO advanced an initiative to bring about a condemnation of Zionism. In December 1973, for the first time, Zionism was associated with racism in a General Assembly resolution on South Africa’s apartheid policy, condemning in particular “the unholy alliance between Portuguese colonialism, South African racism, Zionism and Israeli imperialism.”[4]
In July 1975, the Soviet Union and the PLO succeeded to have Zionism explicitly condemned at the UN International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City, which stressed in its final declaration that “Peace requires the elimination of colonialism, neocolonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms.”[5] In August 1975, the Organization of African Unity in Kampala stated that “the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin…organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being”; while the Non-Aligned conference in Lima “severely condemned Zionism as a threat to world peace.”
Stern Western, above all American, opposition to Israel’s expulsion or suspension, notably an American warning that such a move would force the United States to reassess its UN membership,[6] thwarted this initiative – but also much increased the eagerness to advance a substitute for it, namely, the condemnation of Zionism as racism. This was formally achieved first within the framework of the Third Committee of the General Assembly on 16 October 1975, and then on 10 November 1975 by the GA plenary with Resolution 3379 (XXX), which “Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The Soviet-Arab coalition won by 72-35 with two abstentions.
Although this result was far from resounding and fell short of the one hundred and more votes this coalition was used to obtaining at the General Assembly, it was followed by an explosion of joy. As Judge Hadassa Ben Ito, then a member of the Israeli delegation to this session, strikingly described this:
It was not only an excitement. The hatred was crawling on the floor. People embraced as if they had won the biggest victory of their lives…. We felt like pariahs. It is not only a sentimental reflection…. We should know that it was not just another resolution of the United Nations. Somebody like myself, who has never really felt personally attacked by, or maligned by an act of anti-Semitism, really felt it physically while sitting there.[7]
Two procedural attempts to postpone the debate and the vote on the draft resolution were rejected. In the Third Committee, a motion put forth by Sierra Leone was defeated by 68-45. In the plenary, a Belgian motion was rejected by 67-55, with fifteen abstentions and five absences.
It is likely that a resolute and coordinated effort by the United States, Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and Latin American and African countries could have mustered the additional votes necessary to secure a postponement (see Table 1). But this did not occur, probably, on the one hand, out of relief that the most ominous threat, Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations, had been foiled, and on the other, out of the inner conviction that this farfetched, aberrant, and shameful resolution from “Um-shmum” – a play on words coined by David Ben-Gurion to express the UN’s impotency -would actually have no palpable weight and the UN would do its best to forget it.
Table 1: Voting Patterns on Resolution 3379 by Blocs
|
UN Body
|
Third Committee
|
Third Committee
|
Assembly Plenum
|
Assembly Plenum
|
|
Motions and resolutions
|
Sierra Leone
postponement
motion
|
A/C.3/L.2159
|
Belgium
postponement motion
|
UNGA
3379(XXX)
|
|
Blocs
|
Y
|
N
|
An
|
As
|
Y
|
N
|
An
|
As
|
Y
|
N
|
An
|
As
|
Y
|
N
|
An
|
As
|
|
Western 21
|
19
|
1
|
|
1
|
2
|
19
|
|
|
21
|
|
|
|
1
|
19
|
|
1
|
|
Latin America 26
|
10
|
5
|
7
|
4
|
5
|
8
|
6
|
7
|
17
|
3
|
6
|
|
5
|
10
|
11
|
|
|
Eastern Europe 10
|
|
10
|
|
|
9
|
|
1
|
|
|
9
|
|
1
|
9
|
|
|
1
|
|
Other Communist
countries 5
|
|
5
|
|
|
5
|
|
|
|
|
5
|
|
|
5
|
|
|
|
|
Arab
League 20
|
|
20
|
|
|
20
|
|
|
|
|
20
|
|
|
20
|
|
|
|
|
Muslim Countries 6
|
|
5
|
|
1
|
5
|
|
|
1
|
|
6
|
|
|
6
|
|
|
|
|
African 38
|
13
|
16
|
4
|
5
|
17
|
2
|
14
|
5
|
13
|
18
|
3
|
4
|
20
|
5
|
12
|
1
|
|
Middle Eastern 5
|
|
4
|
|
1
|
4
|
|
|
1
|
|
4
|
1
|
|
4
|
|
1
|
|
|
Asians 11
|
3
|
2
|
5
|
1
|
3
|
|
6
|
2
|
4
|
2
|
5
|
|
2
|
1
|
8
|
|
|
Total 142
|
45
|
68
|
16
|
13
|
70
|
29
|
27
|
16
|
55
|
67
|
15
|
5
|
72
|
35
|
<p ” align=”center”>32 |
3
|
Note: Y=Yes; N=No; An=Abstain; 4 As=Absent.
Source: Yohanan Manor, To Right a Wrong (New York: Shengold, 1996), 56.
The Jewish World’s Passive Posture
Except for the African American lawyer Eleanor Holmes-Norton’s statement[8] days after the resolution’s adoption that “an international committee of women had been set up to annul [it],” there was no other attempt, not even an Israeli or Jewish one, to act for its revocation. Instead, the Israeli and Jewish world viewed the resolution with disdain. For instance, soon after the adoption Rabbi Israel Miller, then chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was told by the Israeli embassy to “ignore the whole issue, since it was nonsense.”[9] Israel expected that this nonsense would go away by itself and that disregard would achieve this result. This position, which was maintained for almost a decade, was itself sheer nonsense.
During 1976-1984 the “Zionism is racism” resolution was reiterated time and again, sometimes by even larger majorities (see Table 2). In 1980, at the United Nations’ Second World Conference on Women in Copenhagen, the notion of eliminating Zionism was for the first time included in an operative document, “The Program of Action for the Second Half of the UN Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace.” This meant that the administrative units of the UN secretary-general, notably the Office of Public Information, would have to include the defamation of Zionism in their activities.
Table 2: Resolutions on 3379 Adopted by International Bodies, 1976-1984
|
Year
|
International body
|
Venue
|
Direct/
Indirect
|
Yes
|
No
|
An
|
|
1976
|
UN Conference on Human Settlement
|
Vancouver
|
Indirect
|
89
|
15
|
10
|
|
1978
|
UN World Conference to Combat Racism
|
Geneva
|
Indirect
|
67
|
18
|
18
|
|
1979
|
UNGA
“Inadmissibility of hegemonism”
|
New York
|
Direct
|
111
|
4
|
26
|
|
1979
|
Non-Aligned Movement
|
Havana
|
Direct
|
|
|
|
|
1980
|
UN World Conference on Women
|
Copenhagen
|
Direct
|
94
|
4
|
22
|
|
1980
|
International Youth and Student Movement for the UN
|
Geneva
|
Direct
|
34
|
3
|
|
|
1981
|
Non-Alignment Movement
|
New Delhi
|
Direct
|
|
|
|
|
1981
|
OAU, African Charter of Human Rights
|
Banjul
|
Direct
|
|
|
|
|
1982
|
UNGA on “Living conditions of the Palestinian people”
|
New York
|
Indirect
|
145
|
2
|
3
|
|
1982
|
UNESCO Conference on Cultural Policies
|
Mexico
|
Direct
|
45
|
29
|
75
|
|
1983
|
UN World Conference to Combat Racism
|
Geneva
|
Indirect
|
87
|
15
|
16
|
|
1983
|
UN-sponsored Conference on Palestine
|
Geneva
|
Indirect
|
|
|
|
|
1983
|
Non-Aligned Movement Summit
|
New Delhi
|
Direct
|
|
|
|
|
1984
|
International Parliamentary Union
|
Geneva
|
Direct
|
677
|
137
|
241
|
Source: Yohanan Manor, To Right a Wrong (New York: Shengold, 1996), 63.
After the resolution’s adoption, Zionism began to assume “mythical proportions in international discourse as a global cause of most world problems.” This trend was not confined to Arab-Muslim countries and the Third World; it also substantially penetrated Western circles, especially universities. For instance, in Britain in 1976 and 1977, eight student unions adopted “Zionism is racism” resolutions, openly flouting previously held policies not to deal with the Middle East.[10] Subsequently several student unions, such as those at the University of York and the University of Salford, decided to strike Jewish societies from their registers and to restrict their activities.
Some U.S. universities refused to invite lecturers recommended by Jewish organizations on the ground that most Jews were Zionists and, as Zionism was racism, Jews were racists. At the University of California at Riverside, Arab students prevented Jews from attending a program on racism on the ground that “Zionism is a form of racism.”[11]
The trend began to burgeon and win increasing academic sanction. In September 1983 at the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York, Ernest Dube, a professor in the African Studies Department included Zionism in a course on “The Politics of Race” as one of the three forms of racism, the two other being apartheid and Nazism. One of the research subjects he proposed to his students was “Zionism is as much racism as Nazism,” and he defended this formulation by evoking Resolution 3379.
In Canada, a Jewish group asking to join Québec contre Racisme, an organization set up by Yvon Charbonneau, president of the teachers’ trade union of Quebec, was denied entry unless it renounced Zionism. In 1982, the general student organization of Ontario condemned Israel’s operation in Lebanonstressing that “The state of Israel is Zionism, Zionism is racism,” and decided not to admit Jewish student groups to its ranks. That same year the student federation at Ottawa University decided to prevent the Jewish students’ organization from meeting on the campus on the ground that Zionism was racism.[12]
During this period the vilification of Zionism turned into a permanent feature of international life. That Zionism was a metaphor for universal evil became part of “common knowledge,” accepted or at least not contradicted by almost the entire international body politic. This was not anticipated when Resolution 3379 was adopted, and it came not instead of but in addition to the consequences that were expected, placing Israel beyond the pale and giving anti-Semitism international sanction. During 1969-1972 there were four anti-Israeli resolutions per year at the United Nations. During 1973-1978 this number grew to sixteen per annum, and in 1982 it reached a peak of forty-four.[13]
The vilification of Zionism was not merely a second-best strategy to the one aiming to expel Israel from the United Nations altogether. In a sense it was even worse. Although Israel’s formal membership in the UN was indeed maintained, it was increasingly deprived of its basic rights as a member state. As explained by Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to the UN from 1981 to 1985, this involved “denying membership by denying participation,”[14] thereby instilling Israel’s illegitimacy by placing it in a state of growing irrelevancy
As noted by the Israeli academic Ehud Sprinzak, this meant Israel lost “the right to speak or debate in certain forums.” For him, labeling Zionism as racism was much more than an attack on particular policies of the Israeli government; it signified that “every war Israel has ever fought, including the War of Independence and the Six Day War, has been a racist war. Every military response to Arab terror has been a racist response. And of course every domestic law …is a racist one.”[15]
Nevertheless, official Israel did not regard the huge and mounting damage inflicted by “Zionism is racism” as sufficient reason to openly fight the resolution and act to overturn it. The Israeli Foreign Ministry often used two arguments to justify this inertia: that initiating action would be counterproductive since the “automatic majority” at the disposal of the Soviet Union and the Arab-Muslim states would result in reiterations; and that it was formally impossible to overturn a General Assembly resolution as there was no such precedent.
An Urgent Need to Act
By now, however, it was clear that reiteration by other international bodies had been an inevitable consequence from the start, and that the resolution constituted the global legal and political foundation for turning the Jewish state into an illegitimate one. Thus it came to be acknowledged, even by official Israel, that the resolution needed to be fought in itself directly, and not as merely another expression of anti-Semitism.
The question, at this point, was how? A central body was needed to direct this struggle. It took the form of the Steering Committee against the Zionism Is Racism Resolution, set up jointly by the World Zionist Organization and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. It was crucial to seek to overcome the so-called automatic UN majority, namely, by at least preventing reiterations and, more essentially, by undermining the validity and legitimacy of the resolution.
A first success was scored in neutralizing a Kuwaiti initiative seeking to obtain a reiteration of the resolution by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) at its annual session in September 1984 in Geneva. This was achieved by mobilizing both Israeli parties and Jewish communities worldwide to use their links with the political parties of delegates to the IPU to defeat the Kuwaiti initiative.[16]
The real challenge, however, was to find ways to undermine the validity and legitimacy of the resolution and divest it of any moral value. This was achieved mainly through a long series of international, national, and regional conferences in Israel, the United States, Europe, and Latin America, an international petition to the United Nations signed by over a thousand worldwide personalities calling on it to “disavow the abusive Resolution 3379 and rededicate itself to its founding charter,” and by parliamentary resolutions in the same spirit.
The first of these was a “Sense of the Congress resolution” adopted by the U.S. Senate in July 1985. Senate Joint Resolution 98 “formally repudiates UNGA Resolution 3379 and calls upon the Parliaments of all countries which value freedom and democracy to do the same.”
This draft resolution also needed to be adopted by the House of Representatives, and was, several weeks later. It proved decisive in preventing the reiteration of 3379 at the Nairobi Conference closing the UN Decade for Women. Ambassador Alan Keyes, chief adviser to the U.S. delegation, included references to the Senate resolution in his statements and received clear instructions from Washington that Zionism was not to be included in any paragraph of the final document to be adopted by the conference; if this occurred the U.S. delegation was to leave.
All this demonstrated that fighting Resolution 3379 directly could prevent its reiteration and that its abrogation was not a mission impossible but, rather, an attainable goal, albeit still very difficult. Although the Israeli Foreign Ministry began to count the prospective votes in the General Assembly, there was still a very long way to go.
At the initiative of the local Zionist Federation, the Australian government was convinced to table before the Australian parliament a remarkable resolution proclaiming that 3379 was inconsistent with the United Nations’ goals and recommending that “the Government of Australia lend support to efforts to overturn Resolution 3379 (XXX) in the UN.” Moreover, the Australian government further involved itself by checking what would be the position of each of the Asian countries. The results, however, were extremely disappointing.
Only a few other parliamentary resolutions were passed. These were in Peru (1987), the European Parliament (1987), and Uruguay (1988). Their wording was far less committing then the Australian and American ones. Most of the democratic countries remained uninvolved.
How the Repeal Was Achieved
It would take another five years to overturn “Zionism is racism.” The repeal was finally achieved not only thanks to the end of the Cold War, but first and foremost because the United States took the lead in this endeavor. This active involvement resulted from unabated pressure on the administration by Congress and American Jewish organizations. The U.S. administration put this issue even higher on its agenda than it was on Israel’s.
In his address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on 14 May 1989, Secretary of State James Baker called on the Arab countries to take measures to advance the peace process, end the economic boycott of Israel, and “repudiate the odious line that ‘Zionism is racism.’”[17] He thereby put the onus on the Arab states to show that they were serious about the peace process, while linking the peace process to the repeal.
At Yeshiva University on International Human Rights Day on 11 December 1989, Vice-President Dan Quayle did not link the repeal to the peace process but rather to the renewal of the United Nations. Referring to a UN General Assembly resolution cosponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union and calling on all UN members to respect the principles set forth in the UN Charter, Quayle made a resounding statement:
I call on the Soviet Union and other nations to join us in cosponsoring a second resolution in the General Assembly. That resolution will affirm that Zionism is what Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko rightly called it back in 1948: the National Liberation Movement of the Jewish people. This resolution would state that Zionism is not and never has been a form of racism, and would have the Zionism-is-Racism declared null and void. And this resolution would promote, and not set back the prospects for peace by focusing on the real issues in dispute, not on Israel’s right to exist.[18]
The official Soviet reaction was extremely disappointing, as the regime still clung to its traditional anti-Zionist stance. What was more surprising was the lukewarm response from many Western democracies, which held that the repeal was impossible without a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process. For instance, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher reacted skeptically to Quayle’s appeal by arguing that the necessary majority would be secured only if the repeal offered some substantial quid pro quo to the Arab side.[19] Actually, the democracies did not even make such an attempt.
On 30 March 1990, a public hearing in the Senate chaired by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan adopted a joint resolution calling on UN member states to repeal the “Zionism is racism” resolution and requesting the U.S. president to report periodically on progress toward repeal. John Bolton, representing the State Department, gave an optimistic assessment of the prospects for an overturn.[20] Moynihan, however, was infuriated by Bolton’s apparent self-satisfaction and criticized the State Department for its lack of energy in fighting the resolution, saying he wanted to see more action.
Moynihan went on to say: “The West imposed no consequences of any kind on those nations that associated themselves with this filthy proposition of the Soviet Union. I want to see the US cut assistance to countries which supported the resolution. How many of them received and are still receiving US aid?” Bolton replied that of the seventy-two that had voted in favor of the resolution, a clear majority were at that point receiving U.S. aid, and probably still did. Moynihan then asked him: “Did we ever tell one country, just one country, that you are getting American money, and you are not getting it any more until you change your mind?” On the defensive, Bolton answered: “I don’t know that any country’s ever been told that, Senator, but if I could leave one message with the committee here today, it is that the Bush Administration is most serious about having this resolution repealed.”[21]
Joint Resolution 246 was not only adopted by the Senate and House but also officially endorsed by President George H. W. Bush. However, Bush still found it appropriate to add a paragraph on the United States’ “determination to pursue efforts toward a comprehensive, just and lasting Middle East peace. In our view this peace must be achieved on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the principle of territories for peace. It must provide for Israel’s security and recognition and for Palestinian political rights….”[22] Several weeks after Bush’s endorsement of 246, the troika then heading the European Union made a commitment to act for the repeal of “Zionism is racism.”
In mid-August 1990, the projected General Assembly vote for a repeal stood at 60-60 with forty abstentions. In mid-September, it was decided to postpone the repeal initiative. The U.S. press claimed this was an American decision aimed at preserving Arab support for sanctions against Iraq. Yohanan Bein, then deputy director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was in charge of the issue of repealing the resolution. He claimed the postponement was an Israeli decision based on evaluation of how much support could be obtained.[23]
During the summer of 1991, there were once again indications that some were seeking postponement. A first indication came from J. S. Wall, private secretary of UK prime minister John Major, then another from Gareth Evans, Australian minister of trade and foreign affairs; they were concerned that there was not yet a majority in favor of a repeal. But the biggest blow came from the United States, which feared that a motion to defer concocted by Egypt, arguing that the repeal should be delayed until a peace conference opened or the peace process was firmly on track, would easily pass in the General Assembly in September.
Although this inclination to postpone probably reflected genuine concern for the repeal’s success, it also manifested tensions between Israel and the United States over the desirable framework for a Middle East peace conference. In June 1991, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir expressed Israel’s reservations over UN participation in such a conference given the world body’s treatment of Israel over the years. Among many other one-sided UN positions, he mentioned Resolution 3379. Shamir never, though, cited the repeal of 3379 as a condition for accepting UN involvement in such a peace conference.
At the opening of the UN General Assembly in September 1991, Bush took an unprecedented step and raised the issue of the repeal plainly and directly, without linking it to any other issue. Pointing to the renewed role of the United Nations, which had put in place more peacekeeping missions in the previous thirty-six months than during its first forty-three years, he asserted
We should take seriously the Charter’s pledge to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors.
NGA resolution 3379, the so-called Zionism is racism resolution, mocks this pledge and the principles upon which the United Nations was founded. And I call now for its repeal.
Zionism is not a policy, it is the idea that led to the creation of a home for the Jewish people, to the State of Israel. And to equate Zionism with the intolerable sin of racism is to twist history and forget the terrible plight of the Jews in World War II, and indeed throughout history. To equate Zionism with racism, is to reject Israel itself, a member of good standing of the United Nations. This body cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel’s right to exist. By repealing this resolution unconditionally, the United Nations will enhance its credibility and serve the cause of peace.[24]
From then on there was a massive U.S. investment in the repeal endeavor. Undoubtedly arm-twisting was used in the spirit of Moynihan’s exhortations. President Bush gave “unprecedented instructions to all his ambassadors [to warn] countries that failure to vote for revoking the resolution could affect their ties with the US.”[25] Finally, the draft resolution for a repeal was sponsored by eighty-six states and passed by 111-25 with thirteen abstentions.
Unfortunately, the revocation of the “Zionism is racism” resolution was not exploited for political and diplomatic advantage by Israel and its supporters. Perhaps the sole, tardy exception was the initiating of a research on the overturn, which was to become this author’s book To Right a Wrong. It was donated to the libraries of more than 1,200 universities, mostly in the United States.
Israel’s Legitimacy Today
Since the overturn of Resolution 3379 more than eighteen years ago, two opposite trends have occurred. On the one hand, Israel’s legitimacy has been strengthened; on the other, there are ongoing attempts to undermine that legitimacy.
On the positive side, there has been an improvement of Israel’s international standing, notably at the United Nations where it has ceased to be a pariah state, regained full membership, and fully takes part in all activities at all levels and in all the specialized agencies. This represents a complete departure from Jeane Kirkpatrick’s diagnosis of “denying membership by denying participation.”
Moreover, in 2005 the General Assembly unanimously supported the establishment of an annual Holocaust Remembrance Day, and the UN Holocaust Education Program was established. In January 2007, the United Nations adopted a resolution condemning any denial of the Holocaust, which it characterized as “tantamount to approval of genocide in all its forms.”
Progress regarding the condemnation of anti-Semitism was less clear-cut. Soon after the repeal of 3379, for the first time in the history of the United Nations, anti-Semitism was condemned in March 1994 by an official UN body. The fifty member states of the UN Human Rights Commission passed a resolution on “Measures to combat contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.” It referred explicitly to anti-Semitism both in its introduction and its operative paragraph, and it
requests the special rapporteur to examine according to this mandate incidents of contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, any form of discrimination against blacks, Arabs and Muslims, xenophobia, negrophobia, anti-Semitism and related intolerance as well as governmental measures to overcome them, and to report on these matters to the commission at the fifty-first session.[26]
In December 2003, a General Assembly draft resolution on anti-Semitism was withdrawn under the pressure of the Arab-Muslim bloc. This effectively canceled a deal whereby Israel would drop efforts to include anti-Semitism in a draft resolution on religious intolerance in exchange for Ireland’s commitment to introduce a new resolution specifically on anti-Semitism. In “compensation,” on 21 June 2004 a seminar on anti-Semitism was held at the United Nations in New York. But again, in August that year, Arab states vehemently opposed the introduction of a draft resolution on anti-Semitism to be adopted by the General Assembly.
In addition to this persistent reluctance to openly condemn anti-Semitism, UN bodies have adopted a series of anti-Israeli positions. Examples include the advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that “the construction by Israel of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and its associated régime are contrary to international law”; the positions expressed by the two Durban conferences in 2001 and 2009; the large number of anti-Israeli resolutions adopted since 2006 by the UN Human Rights Council, which replaced the discredited UN Human Rights Commission; and the Goldstone report.
Regarding the advisory opinion of the ICJ, Israel could probably have obtained a more objective and balanced one if it had cooperated with the court and presented the position taken by Israel’s High Court of Justice on this issue.
At Durban I, much of the hatred against Jews and Israel was manifested in the six-day NGO forum that was attended by six thousand representatives of about two thousand NGOs; the attacks on Jews were no less virulent than those on globalization. As for the official conference, its final report expressed concern about “the plight of the Palestinian people under occupation,” recognized “the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to the establishment of an independent State,” and recognized “the right to security for all the States in the region, including Israel.”
Although European countries and a few others blunted the more extreme anti-Israeli language introduced by Arab countries and Iran, in the end these European and other countries agreed to single out Israel albeit in more moderate and balanced terms. In addition, all states were called upon to counter anti-Semitism and the Durban I final report declared that “the Holocaust must never be forgotten.”
At Durban II, despite a statement by the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, that “all disputed points such as reference to Israel, Zionism and Middle East had been deleted from the [conference’s final] declaration,”[27] nine countries decided to boycott the conference and twenty-three sent only low-level representatives. When Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took the floor, most of the European delegations left the hall.
As for the UN Human Right Council, the twenty-seven resolutions it has adopted since 2006 have addressed four issues: human rights in Palestine (nineteen), human rights in Lebanon (three), human rights on the Golan Heights (three), and the council’s general mandate (two). In other words, they focused predominantly on the Arab-Israeli conflict and were always sponsored by the Arab-Muslim groups, which represent over 30 percent of UN members.
Thus, not surprisingly, Israel’s enemies, notably Arab and Muslim counties, are still using the United Nations to condemn Israel and undermine its legitimacy. This is, however, becoming more and more difficult for them and is actually largely confined to the sphere of the Human Rights Council.
Countering the Delegitimators
The bulk of the efforts to undermine Israel’s legitimacy do not come presently from the United Nations, but first and foremost from a coalition of NGOs that are functioning as the spearhead of an anti-Israeli network. This development was recently noted by the Reut Institute (Tel Aviv) in its report on the “Challenge of Delegitimization.”[28] It provides a preliminary analysis of this network’s components, differentiating between those genuinely criticizing Israel’s policies and the “delegitimators” who seek exclusively to ruin Israel’s legitimacy and bring an end to the Jewish state. Although the latter are presently using the Palestinian issue to achieve their aim, they are not dependent on it and even a settlement of the conflict would not put an end to their endeavor. The report contends that “It takes a network to fight a network” and indicates ways to create and operate such a complex.
The Reut Institute has rightly drawn attention to what seems today the most active factor in attacking Israel’s legitimacy. One of the lessons of Resolution 3379 should indeed be kept in mind: not to disregard what may be perceived as a less serious or even innocuous threat compared to a more serious one that had been foiled. In this case, the defeat of the attempt to expel Israel from the United Nations enabled “the planes to fly under the radar.” It is vital not to disregard and underestimate threats to one’s existence.
It is, however, not certain that Reut’s operative conclusion, “It takes a network to fight a network” is the supreme answer to the delegitimization endeavor. There is also still much room for exploiting successes in the United Nations and using them both to bolster Israel’s legitimacy and undermine that of the delegitimators.
In this spirit, Israel and the Jewish people should use all the existing means at their disposal, such as the repeal of 3379, the 1994 instructions to the special rapporteur on racism, and the 2005 establishment of the UN Holocaust Remembrance Day and Holocaust Education Program. Amazingly, the revocation of 3379 is seemingly not mentioned in Israeli textbooks whereas it is mentioned in Palestinian textbooks![29] The directive to the special rapporteur to review anti-Semitic deeds seems to have been utilized by Israel only for the first year. After that it seems that Israel did not provide him with adequate and reliable data on anti-Semitism.
By contrast, a British MP, Louise Ellman, provided a good example of how existing instruments can be used. On 28 January 2010, in the House of Commons, she took advantage of a session dedicated to Holocaust Remembrance Day to emphasize Hamas’s explicit aim of liberating all of Palestine and eliminating its Jews, quoting excerpts from a report on Hamas’s online magazine for children, Al-Fateh.[30]
In addition to exploiting successes, it is important to strive to bring about additional UN resolutions. These should include, among other things, the formal condemnation of anti-Semitism and the adoption of UN educational instruments to recognize and combat it.
All this is achievable despite the so-called automatic majority, which for too long has been a cheap pretext for inaction. As proved clearly by the voting results for the two 1975 attempts to postpone a debate and vote on Resolution 3379, even in those days the automatic majority was not so automatic, and it is even less so nowadays. Pertinent here is the 1985 observation by James Jonah, then assistant UN secretary-general, that the majority of the UN member states were moderate but tended to adopt extreme positions for lack of alternative leadership, whereas, with proper leadership, moderation could have taken the upper hand.[31] It is still not too late to promote, or assume, such proper leadership.
* * *
Notes
[1] “Haseif leginui Haantishemiut Behatzaat Haamana Lebeur Kol Tsurot Haaflaia Hagizit” (The Paragraph to Condemn Anti-Semitism in the Draft Convention to Eradicate All Forms of Racial Discrimination), top-secret report by Meir Rosenne, New York, 25 October 1965, p. 1, CZA (Central Zionist Archives) S110/12. [Hebrew]
[2] Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan noted that the Soviet side had not yet been properly researched and recommended scholarly investigation “to discover and reveal the origins and the motivations of the lie.” See Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Z=R, Plus 9,” address to the study day “Refuting the Zionism Is Racism Equation,” President’s Residence, Jerusalem, 11 November 1984, p. 3, CZA/S110/40.
[3] Plenary Meetings, Official Records of the General Assembly, Thirtieth Session.
[4] Resolution 3151 (XXVIII), Section G, 14 December 1973.
[5] Final Declaration of the “Conference on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development and Peace,” Mexico City, 2 July 1975.
[6] S.J. (Senate Joint) Resolution 98, adopted on 18 July 1975.<
[7] Tape-recording of the study day “Refuting the Zionism Is Racism Equation,” President’s Residence, Jerusalem, 11 November 1984, CZA/S110/40.
[8] The statement was made at a press conference at the UN press club several days after the resolution was adopted. Eleanor Holmes Norton was then heading the Human Rights Committee of New York. She is presently the District of Columbia’s nonvoting representative to the U.S. Congress.
[9] Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Suzanne Weaver, A Dangerous Place (London: Secker & Warburg, 1979), p. 180.
[10] Ann Hubert and Peter Wallison, “Zionism, Racism, and Free Speech,” Commentary, October 1978, 72; “Anti-Zionism at British Universities,” Patterns of Prejudice, July-August 1977, pp. 1-3.
[11] Ruth Raeli, The Implications of Resolution 3379 on Zionism, World Zionist Organization, Information Department, Research Division, May 1986, p. 45, CZA/S110/48.
[12] Ibid., pp. 45-46.
[13] Michael Curtis, “The United Nations, Zionism and Racism,” Global Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Spring 1986), p. 20.
[14] Jeane Kirkpatrick, address to the conference on “Z-R: An Assault on Human Rights,” cosponsored by the BBI, the WJC, and the WZO, Washington, 10 December 1984, CZA/S110/26.
[15] Ehud Sprinzak, “Anti-Zionism: From Delegitimization to Dehumanization,” Forum, 53 (1985), p. 5. In this article Sprinzak pointed to three major types of damage inflicted by Resolution 3379. The first was political: the harassment, isolation, and delegitimization of Israel. The second was cultural-symbolic: the introduction and activation of anti-Semitic stereotypes; the resolution had broken a taboo and provided a new justification for Jew-hatred. Third, there was psychopersonal damage: the tendency among Jews to feel unease over Zionism and Israel, fostering a restoration of the anxiety toward Zionism that Jews had felt before Israel’s establishment.
[16] The draft resolution tabled by Kuwait stressed that the Israeli military, legislative, and administrative measures designed to prevent Palestinians from implementing the right of return constituted “a crime against humanity” (paragraph 12). A memorandum attached to this draft resolution claimed that the “Jews were never planning to establish a national homeland for themselves…since its inception the Zionist movement was characterized by ethnic and racial discrimination based on the theory of the chosen people of God which is instilled in the mind of every Zionist.”
[17] Near East Report, 9 May 1989, 87. See: www.wrmea.com/backissues/0789/8907007.htm.
[18] US Information Agency (USIS), Wireless File, 11 December 1989
[19] JTA, 8 March 1990.
[20] US Information Service (USIS), Official Text, “Text of Senate Testimony by John Bolton,” Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, 2 April 1990.
[21] USIS, News Report, “Moynihan Links Aid Cutoff to Zionism Is Racism View,” Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, 2 April 1990. Moynihan added that he was awaiting the responses for a list of aid recipients and wondered whether these countries understood that their aid was in jeopardy: “We don’t like that resolution one damn bit…. Do they know that we don’t like it?” Bolton replied: “We are making it abundantly clear in our consultations in capitals.”
[22] The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, 29 June 1990.
[23] Jerusalem Post, 18 September 1990.
[24] President Bush’s address to the UN General Assembly, New York, 23 September 1991. See: www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=20012.
[25] William Harrop, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, disclosed the existence of these unprecedented instructions. Jerusalem Post, 29 July 1991.
[26] It was sponsored by Turkey with the support of Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Russia, Sweden, and the UK. The reference in the introduction was adopted by thirty-four votes with seventeen abstentions, while the operative paragraph was adopted by fifty-one votes with two abstentions.
[27] Deutsche Welle, 17 April 2009.
[28] This report was submitted to the Israeli cabinet on 11 February 2010. See: http://reut-institute.org/en/Publication.aspx?PublicationId=3766.
[29] Modern and Contemporary History of Palestine, Grade 11, Part 2 (2008), 71; History of the Arabs and the World in the Twentieth Century, Grade 12 (2009), 120-121. [Arabic]
[30] A report issued in 2009 by IMPACT-SE, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education. See: http://www.impact-se.org/.
[31] Yohanan Manor, The UN and Zionism According to James Jonah, 31 March 1985, CZA/S110/16. [Hebrew]
Filed under: Anti-Semitism
Dr. Yohanan Manor
Dr. Yohanan Manor is a co-founder of IMPACT-SE and was the Board Chairman from 2005 to 2011. He is a graduate of the Ecole Nationale d’Administration (ENA) and received his Ph.D. at the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques for his thesis on “Palestine in the Foreign Policy of Gamal Abd El Nasser.” He was a lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Political Science Department (1970-1984) and coordinator of the campaign (1984-1991) that brought about the revocation of the UN General Assembly resolution equating Zionism with racism.
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UN, UNRWA and Terror
This is what the war is all about
The Building of the 3rd Holy Temple in Jerusalem
Judenstern_Yellow Star of David
Symbol that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust, so that they could be identified as Jews.
UN and Women’s rights groups Silent About Hamas Attacks on Women
Children Soldiers
The Truth Behind the Israel Hamas War: Israel’s War for the Holy Temple
Latma – Fake it Out (Israel-Hamas Satire)
UN Propaganda
United Nations |
Peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet |
The United Nations came into being in 1945, following the devastation of the Second World War, with one central mission: the maintenance of international peace and security.
UNICEF-United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund
UNICEF works in over 190 countries and territories to save children’s lives, to defend their rights, and to help them fulfil their potential, from early childhood through adolescence. And we never give up.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)
vs Reality
Click to Download Systemic Anti-Israel Bias in the United Nations Institutional Apparatus
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Obama and the UN betray Israel (yet again)
Caroline B. Glick
“The Caroline Glick Show IN Focus”
(October 25, 2023 / JNS) On her show, Caroline Glick tackles the following: U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres justifies the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on southern Israel; former President Barack Obama lectures and lies about Israel; and the moral depravity of the world continues to be exhibited in cities and on college campuses.
Caroline Glick: Obama and the UN betray Israel (yet again)
Obama and the UN Betray Israel…Again | The Caroline Glick Show IN Focus
Posted 25October2023 JNS TV:
The UN Secretary-General justifies Hamas attacks, Obama lectures and lies about Israel, and the moral depravity of the world continues to shine through. All this and more on the Caroline Glick Show IN Focus!
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Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-26October2023-Finally someone says it
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-26October2023-Finally someone says it
Finally someone says it! “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.”
And isn’t it great that the person who said it is UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres, who presides over the organization that has played a defining role in creating, sustaining, and nourishing the fertile soil from which Hamas has sprung?
Let us examine the evidence (Part 1, Part 2 in the first comment):
Exhibit A: UNRWA.
This still temporary agency, established more than 70 years ago to settle the Arab refugees from the war of 1948 (Israel settled the Jewish refugees), was unable to carry out its mission throughout the 1950’s due to the complete refusal of the Arab refugees (later to be known as Palestinians) to be settled, knowing that this would mean they have abandoned their ongoing war against there being a state of sovereign and free Jews anywhere in the land.
Having failed in its resettlement mission, UNRWA was then hijacked by the Palestinians themselves to become the organization that enables Palestinians, uniquely among all the world’s refugees, to persist in the view that they do not need to accept new realities, new borders, and can go on thinking of themselves as perpetual refugees, generation after generation, until such moment that they can turn back the clock, have a “redo” and win the war against there being a state for Jews anywhere in the land.
UNRWA, its compounds, its education system, its almost exclusively Palestinian staff, have been the womb in which not only a unique Palestinian identity was consolidated, but one that was singularly focused on “revenge” and “return”. As a result, from the planners and perpetrators of the massacre of Israeli athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics, to the current planners and perpetrators of the Oct 7 mass massacre, every generation trained murderers rose up to realize the dream of “return”, “Free Palestine” and “From the River to the Sea”.
(For more on this you may read this post of October 13 https://x.com/einatwilf/status/1712875687407726766?s=61&t=7v41xX2_j-eRVLBysOWtgA or the book “The War of Return” for the full and definitive review of UNRWA’s uniquely destructive goal in sustaining the Palestinian dream of “no Israel”)
Exhibit B: A whole administrative UN structure devoted uniquely to Palestinians
In 1975, the carefully developed Soviet replacement for the Tsarist “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” known as respectable “It’s only Anti-Zionism” was inserted into the UN through the “Zionism is Racism” UN General Assembly resolution. While the resolution was repealed in 1991 under US pressure, the entire infrastructure that it erected remained intact. These include three UN bodies with staffs and budgets that only exist to promote the Palestinian vision that the Jews deserve no state in any part of the land and it is worth noting that no other people have an entire division in the UN Secretariat dedicated to it:
(1) The Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People (CEIRPP)
(2) The Division for Palestinian Rights (DPR)
(3) The Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Human Rights Practices (SCIIHRP)
(For more on this go to https://ajiri.us/about)
Exhibit C: The UN “Human” “Rights” “Council” obsession with condemning Israel
In 2006 the UN established Orwellian named “Human Rights Council” to replace the rabidly anti Israel UN Commission on Human Rights. And yet, surprise, surprise, nothing changed. For example, every (every!) session of the UN Human Rights Council features a standing agenda item targeting Israel. No other country in the world is singled out in this fashion. In addition, since 2006 UNHRC passed 104 resolutions against Israel alone, compared with 97 against all (all!) other countries combined. Mind you, it’s not just the number. Resolutions against other countries are always framed in the softest language as in “we commend Sudan/Syria/Iran for their efforts to do better and if they could just try a bit harder, that would be nice”. Resolutions against Israel are always phrased in the darkest of dark words with clear definitive blame. And of-course these resolutions often establish more bodies and commissions with more staff and budgets entirely devoted to criminalizing Israel.
(For more on UNHRC’s obsession with Israel: https://unwatch.org)
Exhibit D: The UN General Assembly and its obsession with Israel
The legendary Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Abba Eban, already in the 1960’s made the evergreen observation (remember, this was before the “occupation” which Mr. Gutteres thinks is the cause of Hamas atrocities) observed that: “If Algeria introduced a resolution that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” (Or my version that in the United Nations, the nations are only united against Israel).
The UNGA, with its automatic majority against Israel, has been the arena whereby repeated anti-Israel resolutions get passed, where days of “solidarity” with Palestinians are marked, and where ideas that exist in no other context, such as a “right of return” are repeatedly affirmed, leading people with little knowledge of how the UN works to assume that these form “international law” (they don’t).
I sometimes wryly conclude that it seems as if the UN General Assembly momentarily voted in November 1947 to uphold the international legitimacy to the establishment of a Jewish state in half of the land initially allocated by the League of Nations… and then has spent all subsequent decades trying to backtrack that.
And why does this matter so much? Because some of us might think that it should be obvious by now that the UN is useless and corrupt and hijacked, but it still retains the post WWII halo of an organization birthed on noble principles to create a more peaceful world. And this halo is why so much of the war against the Jews having a state is being waged in that arena. Those who seek the eradication of the world’s only Jewish state (“Keep the World Clean” in recent placards), need the authority of the UN to legitimize their annhilitionist cause. (For more on how high authority is needed to legitimize anti-Jewish ideologies in my speech here: https://youtu.be/1qGewRDWJGo?si=2IDhytGfl2uPbdbQ).
And that’s the UN. That’s the fertile soil from which generations of trained murderers of Jews emerged, whether they were called Fatah, DFLP, Hamas or Jihad. The names change. The soil doesn’t. Indeed, none of the carefully planned massacres by Palestinian terror organizations of sovereign Jews ever “happened in a vacuum”.
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-26October2023-Finally someone says it
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-26October2023-Exhibit C-The UN Human Rights Council
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Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-1November2023-Why are there even places called “refugee camps” in Gaza?
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-1November2023-Why are there even places called “refugee camps” in Gaza?
Why are there even places called “refugee camps” in Gaza? And why are two thirds of the people living in Gaza, who were born there and lived there their entire lives, called “refugees” from a war that ended more than seven decades ago? The answers to these question unlock the core of the conflict. Here they are (Part 1; Part 2 in the first comment):
1.The 20th century has been marked by a transition from empires to states. We begin the 20th century when much of the world is divided between empires. We end it when much of the world is divided between states. When lucky, those states were based on the self determination of a people who share a common history, language, ethnicity, background religion and connection to a territory. (Zionism emerged in this context based on the idea of self determination for the Jewish people in the only territory to which they were ever connected as a people). When unlucky those new states were artificially created by receding empires drawing boundaries, forcing different peoples to share one state, leading almost always to civil war, dictatorship, or both. This transition has been bloody. It involved two world wars and numerous regional and civil wars. In the bloody process of empires receding and new states emerging to replace them, tens of millions of people were displaced, fleeing across newly created borders, typically to new countries with an ethnic makeup similar to their own. This was true of Hindus and Muslim, Ukrainians, Poles and Germans, Bulgarians, Greeks and Turks and Arabs and Jews. This was not unique.
2.What was unique is that one group only of refugees from that time and those wars were allowed to maintain themselves as endless refugees in anticipation of one day winning a war they had lost. Those were the Arab refugees from the war of 1948, later to be known as Palestinians. All other refugee groups, except the Palestinians, were presented with a clear message: “it’s tough, it’s tragic, move on”. There was a clear understanding that in the most fundamental sense there is no going back – not in place and not in time (thus, there was no such thing as “a right of return”). To seek to go back would mean endless war. And so the message was forward looking and future facing. Tens of millions of refugees and displaced persons, among them millions of Jews, would build new lives in the new countries to which they fled.
3.Except Palestinians. The war that the Arabs of the land and the surrounding countries waged to prevent a Jewish state from emerging and gaining independence failed to achieve its goals. Despite the violent onslaught of 1947-49, Israel emerged as a sovereign state. But the Arabs of the land, sustained by broader Arab support, refused to accept this outcome. They proceeded to undo it through a variety of means, including repeated wars, economic boycotts, international condemnations and a complete refusal of the refugees themselves to be settled, as it would effectively mean accepting that the war was over.
http://4.To that end of keeping the war of 1948 alive until its goal of undoing the Jewish state could be achieved, a temporary agency established to resettle the refugees – UNRWA (initially called REWA, but the Arabs insisted on the letters UN so that it would appear to enjoy international legitimacy) – was hijacked by the Arab refugees. As a result of this hijacking UNRWA effectively became a Palestinian entity devoted singularly to sustaining and stoking the idea that uniquely among the world’s refugees, Palestinians don’t need to move on and can keep insisting on “return”, both in space and in time, to a time when there was no Israel. UNRWA thus became the mechanism by which the Jewish people alone were denied the right to to consider their hard won self-determination and sovereign statehood as a done deal.
(Part 2 continues in the first comment:)
5.One of the most important means by which UNRWA fulfilled its mission is inflating the number of Palestinians it registers as refugees. It does so by engaging in several unique practices, not applied to any other refugee population in the world: (1) Counting descendants of the original refugees displaced by the War of 1948 in perpetuity (by now into the fifth generation) automatically and with no qualifications; (2) Never removing any “refugees” from the count even if they acquired citizenship of another country, a status that for all other true refugees ends their refugee status; (3) Counting Palestinians who continue to live in the West Bank and Gaza, so in “Palestine” as refugees “from” Palestine. Once UNRWA’s inflationary practices are removed, almost none of the Palestinians who claim to be “refugees”, either as registered by UNRWA (around 5.7 Million) or self-claimed by Palestinians living in the West (a total of 8-9 Million) are actually refugees by any international standard. The vast majority of them are either (1) living in the West Bank and Gaza, and so clearly are not refugees “from” Palestine, still very much living there, and since almost all of them are by now second to fifth generation claimants they have also never been displaced by war – 2.2 Million; (2) Citizens of countries such as Jordan – 2.2 Million or various countries around the world – 2-3 Million. Citizens of countries are not refugees by any international standard. This leaves about 250,000 Palestinians who remain stateless in Syria and Lebanon, despite having been born there and never having been displaced by war. Those countries refuse to give them citizenship. They are certainly no longer refugees, but they are stateless. Of them, perhaps 30,000 are indeed refugees by international standards in that they were displaced by war, crossed the border and have not been given citizenship by any other country. Them, and only them, should be recognized as refugees. That is less than 1% of the total number of Palestinians who claim to be “refugees”.
http://6.In addition to its inflationary practices, the UNRWA compounds (“Refugee Camps”) and schools are the incubators in which the Palestinian national ethos of “revenge and return” was created and shaped. It is the ground zero Palestinian political organization in that it daily reinforces the Palestinian ethos that the Jews have no right to a state in any of the territory between the Jordan River and the Sea, and that Palestinians will one day undo Israel by means of “return”. Since the days of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, planned and perpetrated by UNRWA graduates, to the October 7th massacre by Hamas, also planned and perpetrated by UNRWA graduates (Muhammad Deif was raised in an UNRWA compound and studied in its school), UNRWA has sustained, nourished, educated and raised generation after generation of Palestinians dedicated to undoing Israel by “all means”, primarily violence and terror. Hamas, like Fatah before it, merely recruits UNRWA graduates ready to commit any atrocity in the name of “revenge and return”. It’s no coincidence that the two places where the perpetual refugee culture is strongest – Gaza and Lebanon – are also the most violent.
In short, why are there still millions of people claiming to be refugees from a war that ended more than seven decades ago? Because to the Palestinians, that war has never ended, and they continue to believe that one day, with enough patience and violence, they could still win it to achieve their original goal: no state for the Jewish people anywhere from “The River to the Sea”.
(The full history is of-course available in “The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream has Obstructed the Path to Peace”).
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-1November2023-Why are there even places called ‘refugee camps’ in Gaza-1
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-1November2023-Why are there even places called ‘refugee camps’ in Gaza-2
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Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-27February2024-We need to understand that UNRWA is Palestinian
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-27February2024-We need to understand that UNRWA is Palestinian
“We need to understand that UNRWA is, first and foremost, a Palestinian organization. UNRWA started with the best of intentions to settle Arab refugees from the war, was hijacked by the Arab refugees themselves to become a purely Arab Palestinian organization, for the singular cause of ensuring that the Jewish state knows not a day of peace until it is undone.
UNRWA is a classic case of you get what you pay for.
So we need to make sure that we pay for something else.
For 75 years, money, legitimacy, support, services, aid, were given – were funneled – to the perpetuation of the myth that Palestinians are still – uniquely, from all the tens of millions of refugees throughout the 20th century – refugees from a war that we think ended 75 years ago. But they don’t think it ends until they win it to their cause of no Jewish state.
So all the Western legitimacy, the global legitimacy, the funding, the aid, the services were funneled to the perpetuation of the myth of the refugee status and to the belief and the fictional idea of a right of return.
And lest we think that return is an innocent idea of just feelings of nostalgia to a home that belonged to a great-grandparent in today’s Israel, October 7th is return.
October 7th is the realization of the Palestinian vision of return. It was never an innocent idea. It always had the element of violent, brutal triumphalism over the Jewish state. All the money supported that for 75 years.
So what we need to ask right now is not who will replace UNRWA – that doesn’t matter – but what? What will replace UNRWA?
And what needs to replace UNRWA is any mechanism that only funnels legitimacy, support, money and aid to those who are taken off of UNRWA’s rosters; those who are no longer registered as refugees; those who sign and make it clear that they understand that they’re not refugees and that they posses no such right of return. Only then can something be built.
So this is what we need to say: It doesn’t matter who replaces UNRWA – but what replaces UNRWA? Reverse the equation. Legitimacy, money, aid, services will flow only to individuals who have been stricken off UNRWA’s rosters, if it still exists, and who themselves testify that they understand that they’re not refugees, that they do not possess the right of return, and they have no intention of liberating Palestine from the river to the sea.
And I want to end with one thought: October 7th should put an end to the notion of “the poor Palestinians” – the ones who constantly need aid, aid, money, support. The Palestinians are a highly capable people. October 7th required years of planning, massive investment in infrastructure, strategy, discipline, vision – a perverse vision – but vision. The Palestinians are not an incapable people. They are a people with terrible priorities.
For a century they decided to devote all their substantial capabilities not to building something for themselves, but in order to destroy the Jewish state. And as long as this is their ideology, anyone who gives them any kind of funding, aid and legitimacy is guaranteed that this will be funneled to the destruction of the Jewish state and to continued war. And if people really want peace, and really want to abide by the principles and the vision of the United Nations, reverse the equations: Support those who want to put the war behind us, not the ones who want to keep fighting that war.”
My words yesterday at the @UNWatch Summit on Replacing UNRWA. Link to video here:
https://unwatch.org/einat-wilf-at-the-international-summit-for-a-future-beyond-unrwa/
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-27February2024-We need to understand that UNRWA is Palestinian
UN Watch-tweet-27February2024-Palestinian vision of return
“October 7th is the realization of the Palestinian vision of return. It was never innocent. It always had the element of violent, brutal triumphalism over the Jewish state. Aid should go only to those who declare no intention of ‘freeing Palestine from the river to the sea.’”
UN Watch-tweet-27February2024-Palestinian vision of return
Einat Wilf at the International Summit for a Future Beyond UNRWA
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Israeli refugees receive ZERO AID from the UN
The Persian Jewess-tweet-2March2024-Israeli refugees receive ZERO AID from the UN
500,000 Israelis are currently displaced due to the events of October 7 and nonstop rocket barrage from Gaza and Lebanon.
Many have nothing more then the clothes in their backs.
They receive ZERO AID from the UN.
#StandWithIsrael
#DefundTheUN
The Persian Jewess-tweet-2March2024-Israeli refugees receive ZERO AID from the UN
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Israel gets a VASTLY disproportionate amount of criticism by the UN
Brianna Wu-tweet-12March2024-Israel gets a VASTLY disproportionate amount of criticism by the UN
I used to think America disproportionately protected Israel from the international community until I looked into it. Now I see it the other way around. Israel gets a VASTLY disproportionate amount of criticism by the UN and the wider international community.
Here is evidence for this belief:
✅ The number of UN resolutions condemning Israel is VASTLY more than countries with much more serious records of human rights abuses.
✅ The UNHRC has a permanent agenda item focused on Israel/Palestine, Item 7. No other country is singled out like this
✅ Objectively, the UN focuses much more time and attention on Israel than other extremely serious global issues
I know no one wants to hear the A word, but I think antisemitism is a primary factor. There are roughly 500 million Arabs in the MENA region and 9 million Jews.
America is often alone standing with Israel because we are a democracy, and American Jews and their allies work to elect leaders that understand the value of the alliance. This is unsurprising to me since we have the second highest population of Jewish people.
Alex Fleck-tweet-12March2024-
Hi Brianna. Yes, I understand the time constraints.
Do you agree with the substantive aspect of my argument though? That the US has acted unilaterally to defend Israel diplomatically in a way that is quite radical and different from what other Western countries have done?
Brianna Wu-tweet-12March2024-Israel gets a VASTLY disproportionate amount of criticism by the UN
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Judenstern_Yellow Star of David
Symbol that Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust, so that they could be identified as Jews.
Israel Ambassador to UN: We Will Wear the Yellow Star Until You ‘Condemn the Atrocities of Hamas’
“Some of you have learned nothing in the past 80 years. Some of you have forgotten why this body was established.”
Posted by Mary Chastain 30October2023 https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/10/israel-ambassador-to-un-we-will-wear-the-yellow-star-until-you-condemn-the-atrocities-of-hamas/
Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Gilrad Erdan, has had enough of the farce that is the United Nations.
Erdan and his team will wear the yellow star the Nazis forced Jewish people to wear until the UN comes to its senses and condemn Hamas:
Yonatan Gonen-tweet-30October2023-
Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan wore the yellow badge at the Security Council:
“When Jewish babies were burned in Auschwitz the world was silent. Today Jewish babies were burned in Be’eri and the southern towns of Israel by the Nazi Hamas and the world is silent again. I will make you remember the shame of your silence every time you look at me.”
Yonatan Gonen-tweet-30October2023-Israel’s ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan wore the yellow Star of David at the Security Council
Translation from Google:
Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-30October2023-
היום הודעתי במועצת הבטחון שאענוד טלאי צהוב כדי להזכיר את החרפה של שתיקתה אל מול מעשי הזוועות שהנאצים של חמאס עוללו. הבהרתי לחברות המועצה, שאנחנו נשבענו לאחר השואה, NEVER AGAIN ולכן לא תהיה הפסקת אש ונמשיך עד להשמדת חמאס, כדי שזוועות כאלו לא יקרו שוב לעולם. צפו ושתפו >>
Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-30October2023
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Israel halts UN staff visas as officials pan Guterres’s ‘truly insane’ Hamas remarks
After UN chief says terrorist massacres ‘didn’t happen in vacuum,’ Foreign Ministry says words ‘tarnish both him and organization he heads’; Edelstein says they fan antisemitism
By Michael Bachner and ToI Staff 25October2023 https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-halts-un-staff-visas-as-officials-pan-guterress-truly-insane-hamas-remarks/
UN Ambassador Gilad Erdan, left, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, center, and Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan browse the Yad Vashem Book of Names of Holocaust Victims Exhibit at United Nations headquarters, January 26, 2023. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Israel stopped issuing visas to UN officials Wednesday, a day after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appeared to say Hamas’s murderous October 7 assault on southern Israel was brought on by Israeli occupation.
The development came as Israeli officials continued to rail against the UN chief and demand his apology or resignation, with a senior lawmaker branding his words “truly insane” and adding that they were fanning the flames of antisemitism. The chairman of Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust museum accused Guterres of having “failed the test” of the refrain “Never again.”
An Israeli official confirmed the new visa policy to The Times of Israel on condition of anonymity, after Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan gave additional details in an interview with Army Radio.
“Due to his remarks we will refuse to issue visas to UN representatives,” Erdan said. “We have already refused a visa for Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths. The time has come to teach them a lesson.”
During a UN Security Council meeting Tuesday on the Israel-Hamas war, Guterres said, “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
“The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing,” Guterres said.
He later added that “the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. And those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza began after the terror group sent thousands of gunmen over the border to ravage Israeli border communities. Terrorists killed some 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, massacring them at their homes and at a music festival. They also kidnapped at least 224 people and took them into the Strip.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks during a Security Council meeting at United Nations headquarters, October 24, 2023. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Israel evacuated all settlements and military forces from the Gaza Strip under the 2005 Disengagement. Since then it has faced years of rocket attacks from Hamas, which rules the Strip, and from other terror groups there, as well as multiple rounds of intense combat.
It has maintained a tight blockade of the territory since Hamas took control in 2007, as has Egypt, with Jerusalem saying it must do so to limit the terror group’s ability to arm itself for attacks. In the West Bank, settlements have expanded under consecutive governments with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly arguing the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority is not a partner for peace, having rejected several offers in the past.
Guterres’s comments drew outrage in Israel. On Tuesday evening, Erdan called them “shocking” and demanded that the secretary general resign, Foreign Minister Eli Cohen canceled a meeting with Guterres, and Minister Benny Gantz labeled the UN chief a “terror apologist.”
The strongly worded reactions continued on Wednesday morning.
The Foreign Ministry tweeted that Guterres’s remarks “provoke anger and astonishment and tarnish both him and the organization he heads,” reflecting “a biased and distorted attitude towards Israel on the part of the UN and especially on the part of the Secretary-General himself.”
“The UN Secretary-General must retract his words, engage in deep personal soul-searching and apologize for his statement, which distressed millions of Israelis who are still experiencing the consequences of the murderous terrorist attack of October 7,” the ministry added.
Israel Foreign Ministry-tweet-25October2023-
The severe assertions of the UN Secretary-General in his speech at the Security Council provoke anger and astonishment and tarnish both him and the organization he heads.
The Secretary-General’s assertions reflect a biased and distorted attitude towards Israel on the part of the UN and especially on the part of the Secretary-General himself.
The UN Secretary-General’s words support the monstrous violence of the Hamas terrorists and legitimize the heinous massacre of October 7.
The atrocities committed by the Hamas terrorists on October 7, the slaughter of women, children and the elderly, the abuse of bodies, the burning of bound children and the rape and abduction of hundreds of Israelis should be censured—there is no way to justify such monstrous atrocities.
The UN Secretary-General must retract his words, implement deep personal soul-searching and apologize for his statement, which distressed millions of Israelis who are still experiencing the consequences of the murderous terrorist attack of October 7.
@UN @antonioguterres
Israel Foreign Ministry-tweet-25October2023-UN Secretary-General in his speech at the Security Council
Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, the chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affair and Defense Committee, sent an English-language public letter addressed to Guterres expressing “a profound sense of shock” and saying it would have been “best had you said nothing at all.”
“Mr. Secretary-General, you opened by saying that ‘nothing can justify the deliberate killing, injuring and kidnapping of civilians.’ However, you then [made] an about-face and added that the ‘attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.’ Statements of this kind legitimize murderers, rapists, and terrorists around the world — rendering your condemnations null and void,” Edelstein charged.
Edelstein tweeted a photo of the letter, adding in a Hebrew-language post that Guterres’s remarks had been “truly insane” and that “against the backdrop of surging antisemitism around the world, his grave remarks are fueling a giant fire [of hate].”
Yuli Edelstein letter 24October2023 to UN Secretary General
Yuli Edelstein-tweet-25October2023-UN Secretary General crazy words
Israeli leaders and US President Joe Biden have noted that the October 7 atrocities were the single worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
Yad Vashem chairman Dani Dayan, who met with Guterres earlier this year at a Holocaust-related exhibit at the UN headquarters in New York, said the UN chief had “failed the test” regarding ensuring atrocities against Jews don’t repeat.
“The slaughter of Jews by Hamas on October 7th was genocidal in its intents and immeasurably brutal in its form. Part of why it differs from the Holocaust is because Jews have today a state and an army. We are not defenseless and at the mercy of others,” a statement from Dayan said.
“However, it puts to test the sincerity of world leaders, intellectuals and influencers that come to Yad Vashem and pledge ‘Never Again,’” he continued. “Those who seek to ‘understand,’ look for a justifying context, do not condemn the perpetrators, and do not call for the unconditional and immediate release of the abducted – fail the test.
“UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres failed the test.”
In a shock assault on October 7, Hamas bombarded Israel with thousands of rockets while over 2,500 gunmen breached the border with the Gaza Strip. The terrorists rampaged murderously through southern areas, slaughtering those they found, butchering entire families in some communities and also killing 260 at an outdoor music festival. Some victims were mutilated, raped and tortured. Dozens of babies were killed. Over 220 people of all ages were abducted and dragged to Gaza as captives. Four have since been released.
Israel has responded to the Hamas assault by vowing to destroy the terror group and launching intensive strikes in Gaza, saying it is hitting terror targets while trying to avoid civilian casualties. It has told over one million Gaza residents to evacuate the northern part of the Strip ahead of an expected ground incursion.
The Hamas-controlled Health Ministry says the strikes have killed over 6,000 Palestinians so far. Those numbers cannot be independently verified and are believed to include Hamas’s own members, as well as civilians killed by hundreds of misfired Palestinian rockets.
Agencies contributed to this report.
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UN special rapporteur BANNED, Refused visa to enter Israel
Israel Katz-tweet-12February2024-The time for Jewish silence is past
The time for Jewish silence is past. For the @UN to regain its credibility, its leadership @antonioguterres must unequivocally renounce the anti-Semitic statements made by their “Special Envoy” @FranceskAlbs and remove her from her position immediately. Barring her entry to Israel will serve as a stark reminder of the atrocities committed by Hamas, including the ruthless targeting of innocents.
Israel Katz-tweet-12February2024-The time for Jewish silence is past
Jewish News Syndicate-tweet-12February2024-UN special rapporteur BANNED
⛔BANNED
UN special rapporteur for the Palestinians, Francesca Albanese, has been refused a visa to enter Israel after comments that seemed to justify Hamas’s October 7 massacre.
https://www.jns.org/jerusalem-denies-entry-to-un-official-who-blamed-israel-for-oct-7-massacre/
Jewish News Syndicate-tweet-12February2024-UN special rapporteur BANNED.png
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UNIFIL act or IDF will be Forced to
OSINTdefender-tweet-21November2023-UNIFIL act or IDF will be Forced to
The Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs, Eli Cohen has Delievered a Warning to the U.N. National Security Council from the Government of Israel which states that if the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is not able to get the Situation in Southern Lebanon back under Control and Remove the Military Capabilities of Hezbollah away from the Border in following with Resolution 1701, which Ended the Lebanon War of 2006, the Israeli Defense Force will be Forced to take “Military Action” which could lead to a Regional War.
OSINTdefender-tweet-21November2023-UNIFIL act or IDF will be Forced to
Israel Defense Forces-tweet-10December2023-Hezbollah launched rockets from UN compound
Hezbollah launched several rockets toward Israel last night, including from a point 20 meters away from a @UN compound in southern Lebanon. Additional launches have been made from the area toward Israel in recent days.
By continuing to fire at Israel from near a U.N. compound, Hezbollah endangers the lives of @UNIFIL_ personnel and continues to systematically violate UNSC Resolution 1701. UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander @aroldo_lazaro was notified of the incident.
Israel Defense Forces-tweet-10December2023-Hezbollah launched rockets from near UN compound
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UN and Women’s rights groups Silent About Hamas Attacks on Women
Amb. Erdan: UN Women maliciously disregards Hamas rape and murder
Israeli Ambassador to the UN lambasts UN agencies at Security Council for deliberately ignoring Hamas crimes against women and humanity.
Israel National News
22November2023, http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380775
Erdan shows photo of Hamas leader with child
Erdan shows photo of Hamas leader with child UN Photo/Evan Schneider
In an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting held today on the situation of women and children in Gaza, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan harshly criticized UN Women for its malicious disregard of the rape and murder of Israeli women by Hamas terrorists and UNICEF for its disregard of Hamas’ indoctrination of children to terror and use of children as human shields.
The Ambassador presented a photo of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, “This is Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas. And the child he is holding, is a victim of UNICEF’s indifference. A picture is worth a thousand words and this says all you need to know about Hamas’ treatment of children in Gaza.”
The Ambassador asked the Executive Director of UNICEF Catherine Russell, “Executive Director Russell, have you never seen this picture? Are you unaware of the terror summer camps that Hamas runs every year in Gaza to indoctrinate children to murder? So many Gazan children were born into a culture of hate. A culture that glorifies violence and educates kids to murder. It is a death cult that puts martyrdom ahead of life, coexistence, and the pursuit of peace. How many UNICEF reports have been written on this? None. While we teach our children to love and accept others, the children of Gaza are taught that the murder of Jews and Israel’s annihilation is their life goal. They are educated on this in their schools – yes, including UNRWA schools. Why has this child abuse never bothered UNICEF? There is absolutely no chance that UNICEF is unaware of this. So, Executive Director Russell, where has your organization been all this time?”
“Rockets have been found in children’s bedrooms in Gaza. Rocket launchers were located inside a scout’s youth movement clubhouse. Missile manufacturing facilities were found under mosques. And caches of assault rifles were found in UNRWA schools. We have not heard UNICEF’s outcry over Hamas’ exploitation of Gazan children as human shields. Where is it?”
The Ambassador presented a photo of Hamas terrorists surrounded by children, “This is a photo taken a few days ago in Gaza. These savage Hamas terrorists are walking around in broad daylight armed and in uniform, after effectively strapping children to themselves as live body armor. This is the enemy that Israel is defending itself against. This is who you hardly have a single word of criticism against.”
The Ambassador asked members of the Council, “Where have the briefers been for all of these years? Where are their voices now? Why are Hamas’ crimes almost non-existent in this briefing, when Hamas – and only Hamas – is solely responsible for the situation in Gaza? There is no other explanation for this other than apathy towards Gazans, coupled with burning hatred for Israel. This is not a briefing – this is an inquisition.”
Ambassador Erdan presented a photo of Naama Levy, one of the women taken hostage by Hamas who was raped by her captors. “I sent this picture of Naama Levy who was dragged out of the trunk of a jeep by a Hamas terrorist, as part of a video, wearing sweatpants soaked in blood around her backside….You want to discuss women in conflict? Women’s rights? Women’s dignity? What about the dignity of Naama Levy…Sadly, to our briefers, the horrors endured by these young women are not worthy of mentioning. After all, they’re Israeli – and as today’s briefing has made abundantly clear, Israeli victims don’t matter.”
“Nearly fifty days have gone by since these atrocities were committed – since young girls were savagely violated – yet the world is still waiting to hear a clear, public condemnation from UN Women against Hamas sexual crimes. Shame on you UN Women, shame on you. Is UN Women not charged with ensuring that, I quote from their website, “All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence?” Doesn’t the banner of the UN Women website currently say “Hashtag ‘No Excuses'”? Hasn’t the world come to believe women? Hasn’t the UN? To the UN and its agencies, Israeli women are not women. Israeli children are not children.”
The Ambassador presented a picture of Shani Louk, a German tourist who became an international symbol of Hamas’ atrocities when a video was posted of terrorists parading her nearly dead body in Gaza. “I also sent this picture of Shani Louk. Shani was dancing at the peace festival before she was abducted and murdered by Hamas. This is what her body looked like, with a Hamas terrorist on top of her. Look at her. Look at Shani.”
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MeToo_UNless_UR_a_Jew
StandWithUs-tweet-17November2023-MeToo_UNless_UR_a_Jew
To the UN and leading women’s rights groups: The mass rape and sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on and since October 7th towards Israeli women is being shamefully denied, minimized…and even justified.
Hamas terrorists have admitted to these atrocities. Why are you ignoring them?
Apparently, it’s: #BelieveAllWomen…unless they’re Israeli.
#MeToo_UNless_UR_a_Jew
StandWithUs-tweet-17November2023-MeToo_UNless_UR_a_Jew
Shurat HaDin-tweet-17November 172023-Enough with the double standard
Enough with the double standards!
Hamas’ rape and murder of Israeli women is met with global indifference of feminist movements.
Shurat HaDin-tweet-17November 172023-Enough with the double standard
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Women’s Rights Organizations Still Stunningly Silent About Attacks on Women on October 7th
“The absurdity has reached peak levels since October 7”
Posted by Mike LaChance, 22November2023 https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/11/womens-rights-organizations-still-stunningly-silent-about-attacks-on-women-on-october-7th/
Hamas attacks on Women 7October2023
Remember when Michelle Obama and celebrities launched a #BringBackOurGirls campaign on Twitter when girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram? No such campaign this time.
Benjamin Folkinshteyn writes at the Times of Israel:
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MeToo unless you’re a Jew
Feminist groups are whitewashing Hamas’s crimes
BY Nicole Lampert
17November2023 https://unherd.com/2023/11/metoo-unless-youre-a-jew/
Women Kidnapped by Hamas (Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
After accompanying British troops as they liberated Bergen-Belsen in April 1945, Richard Dimbleby produced one of the most viscerally horrifying — and powerful — dispatches in the BBC’s history. “I find it hard to describe adequately the horrible things that I’ve seen and heard,” he began, “but here unadorned are the facts.”
His language was spare, his descriptions factual — and yet, his bosses didn’t want to broadcast the report. A compromise was only reached after he threatened to resign and his script was cut in half. The reason, his son Jonathan later revealed, was that “the BBC needed more sources to support what had happened to Jews and worried that if you mentioned one group of people and not others, it might seem biased or wrong”.
The events of October 7 do not compare to the Holocaust, but a similar reluctance to consider both its primary victims remains. We see it in the defaced posters of kidnapped Israelis by people who claim they are “propaganda”, in the antisemitic disinformation peddled online, and in the weekly pro-Palestine demonstrations that fail to call out Hamas’s terrorism. But perhaps most peculiarly, we also see it in the silence of organisations and activist groups dedicated to fighting for women’s safety.
After Hamas terrorists set about murdering, raping and abducting as many women as they could, one might have expected widespread condemnation from the West’s feminist groups. After all, Hamas had provided enough evidence of its crimes — within hours, they were posting footage of abducted young women in bloodied trousers being paraded around Gaza. Even beforehand, its feminist credentials were hardly glowing: it mandates the hijab, has made it illegal to travel without a male guardian, and refused to ban physical or sexual abuse within the family.
The response among the majority of groups committed to ending violence against women and girls (VAWG) was threefold: to keep quiet, to disbelieve the victims, or to insinuate they deserved their fate. In the words of 140 American “prominent feminist scholars”, to stand in solidarity with Israeli women is to give in to “colonial feminism”.
Here in the UK, this approach is perhaps best embodied in the work of Sisters Uncut, a charity that boasts its own “Feministo” committed to “taking direct action for domestic violence services”. Until this month, the activists’ work has generally taken the form of media-savvy stunts: dyeing the water of Trafalgar Square’s fountains red, setting off rape alarms outside police stations, occupying the roofs of council buildings. Yet all paled in comparison to the demonstration it organised earlier this month: a call for Israel to put down its weapons that ultimately shut down London’s Liverpool Street Station.
Afterwards, the charity issued a 600-word statement, filled with references to “apartheid”, “genocide” and disproved reports that the IDF had bombed Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital. There was no mention, however, of the 239 abducted Israelis, roughly 100 of whom are believed to be women, or the sexual assaults that took place on October 7. When journalist Hadley Freeman pointed out this wasn’t terribly feminist of them, the group responded by claiming reports of Hamas’s sex attacks amounted to “the Islamophobic and racist weaponisation of sexual violence”. Towards the end of their rambling statement, they concluded: “no people would ever accept being murdered, humiliated, dispossessed, racially targeted, oppressed, cleansed, exiled and colonised without resisting.”
Other feminist groups fell into a similar victim-blaming step. Southall Black Sisters, another charity committed to ending violence against women, did at least mourn the loss of life on both sides, but blamed it on “the Israeli government’s declaration of war on Gaza”. Elsewhere, Women for Women UK, which specialises in helping “women survivors of war” and calls itself a “non-partisan organisation”, has decided to raise money only for Palestinian women. Even Women’s Place UK, once viewed as an outlier for its brave campaigning for women-only spaces, decided to call for an “immediate ceasefire” without mentioning sexual violence.
In fact, the only VAWG charity in the UK to call out Hamas’s sexual violence was Jewish Women’s Aid. “Such acts have a permanent impact on survivors and damaging psychological effects on women, particularly women who are victim-survivors of sexual violence,” it said in a statement. “The public silence from many UK domestic/sexual abuse sector organisations further impacts the isolation and fear our clients are experiencing.”
For one British Jewish VAWG worker, who has been in the sector for 20 years, the silence of other organisations was to be expected: “I have seen this become a real thing in the last few years — where ideas are imported from America: that if you are white, you will always be the oppressor. If you are working for one of these charities, you are used to a victim/perpetrator narrative which is normally true in the domestic violence context, but not when it comes to geopolitics.”
She describes how, during mandatory training at the last charity she worked for, her team was told that Jews don’t experience racism. “Incredibly, they used the Second World War as an example of racism, but of anti-black racism because of how people from the West Indies were treated.”
For those whose daughters have been abducted by Hamas, the sense of betrayal is palpable. “It is unbelievable that groups like the Red Cross and UN Women are doing nothing to help our people,” Keren Sharf Shem, whose 21-year-old French-Israeli daughter Mia was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, tells me. “It is right that the people of Gaza are getting humanitarian aid, but we deserve the same… I know from a message Mia sent to a friend that she was shot in the leg. She also has a medical condition, and the hostage video showed her after surgery for an operation on her arm. That was weeks ago — I don’t know whether she is still alive. And there are other sick people there, as well as babies and a pregnant woman. Too many people seem to have forgotten them.”
To remedy this, Israeli feminists this week launched #MeToo_Unless_Ur_A_Jew, a campaign calling for the UN Women group to focus on the gender-based violence against Israeli women. “The UN Women is turning a blind eye to Hamas’s vicious war crimes by remaining silent,” they said.
In a similar vein, Claire Waxman, London’s first Victims’ Commissioner, wrote to Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, to ask why the organisation has stayed silent. In response, Waxman tells me, Alsalem claimed the evidence was “not solid” enough to warrant a statement. An incredulous Waxman points out that November 25 is the UN’s International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls: “How can we talk about eliminating violence against women and girls if we are tacitly saying it’s acceptable to rape Jewish ones?”
To counter this narrative, the Civil Commission on October 7 Crimes by Hamas Against Women and Children was also founded this week, and is currently collecting testimony about Hamas’s atrocities, ranging from victim reports and eyewitness accounts to footage released by Hamas itself. Many of those raped are dead or abducted; others are too traumatised to speak. But the story that has begun to emerge is unbearable in its horror — one of gang rape of women and children, of the dead bodies of women being hacked during or after sexual assault, and of genital mutilation.
Nachman Dyksztejna, a Ukrainian-Israeli, is one of those whose testimony bears witness to these horrors. A volunteer first responder with an organisation called Zaka, he was sent to several scenes of the massacre, including the site of Nova festival and several kibbutzim. To avoid repeating his trauma, Zaka recorded his statement alongside psychological support and sent me a written translation. Zaka also provided photographs that corroborate his descriptions. (The editors of this publication have also seen them.)
Dyksztejna’s testimony — reproduced in the next two paragraphs — is among the most harrowing I have read, and can be skipped if necessary:
In 1945, Dimbleby broke down several times while making his report about Belsen. “I passed through the barrier and found myself in the world of a nightmare,” he explained. But he knew he had to bear witness to the horror — just as Israelis today feel they have no choice but to report what they have seen. But when videos created by the perpetrators aren’t deemed “solid” evidence, is that enough? For so long the mantra for feminist organisations has been to “believe her”. Yet as the past month has revealed, it only goes so far — and becomes meaningless if you live in Israel.
Nicole Lampert is a freelance journalist who writes about arts and politics. nicolelampert
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The Silence From International Bodies Over Hamas’ Mass Rapes Is a Betrayal of All Women | Opinion
Nov 22November2023 https://www.newsweek.com/silence-international-bodies-over-hamas-mass-rapes-betrayal-all-women-opinion-1845783
By Michal Herzog
First Lady of the State of Israel
Two days after the horrific Hamas attack of October 7, I met Rotem, a young mother of two small children from a Kibbutz on the Gaza border. I held my breath as she recounted how she ran with her children to hide while terrorists rampaged through their home, how they made it to the safe room and desperately held the door, praying the terrorists wouldn’t enter.
Her terror echoed accounts I’ve heard from abused women, except now the threat was not from a violent husband. And Rotem was not alone; she is one of thousands of Israeli women who simultaneously faced murder and rape by Hamas terrorists on that fateful day.
At the President of Israel’s Residence in Jerusalem, we are preparing for the day the United Nations General Assembly has designated the International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women, which is observed every November 25. Every year, I host victims, civil-society leaders, activists, and scholars committed to women’s rights and safety on this day.
But this year will be different. Many things changed on October 7 when thousands of Hamas terrorists massacred Israeli families, burnt children and the elderly, and kidnapped hostages. This deeply impacted our visceral understanding of the cruelty of gender-based sexual violence—and our faith in the international organizations that claim to care about women.
It took me several days to grasp the monstrous nature and scale of violence suffered specifically by women on October 7. My first realization came when meeting volunteers of the Association of Rape Crisis Centers who discreetly told me of conversations with survivors. They heard testimonies that shocked them to the core.
Israel’s First Lady Michal Herzog on a visit to the Levinstein Rehabilitation Center, embraces Noam, who was injured in the the NOVA music festival attack on October 7. Bar Netzer
At the Nova music festival, where more than 350 young people were slaughtered and dozens kidnapped, witnesses hiding in the bushes saw terrorists gang-rape, then murder and mutilate women. A Hamas video from a kibbutz shows terrorists torturing a pregnant woman and removing her fetus. Our forensic scientists have found bodies of women and girls raped with such violence that their pelvic bones were broken. Those of us unlucky enough to have seen video evidence broadcast by the terrorists themselves witnessed the body of a naked woman paraded through Gaza, and another, still alive, in bloodied pants held captive at gunpoint being pulled into a jeep by her hair. This evidence, along with the explicit recorded confessions of captured terrorists, makes abundantly clear that mass rape was a premeditated part of Hamas’s plan.
And this crime is ongoing: The 240 hostages held in Gaza include many women and girls, and only when they are released will we know what they have endured.
In the 1990s, international agencies and legal experts finally began to see violence against women as a particular category of war crime. Organizations like UN Women exist to protect women from such crimes, while Israeli experts and activists have been involved in these international efforts. Thus, our second shock: The inconceivable and unforgiveable silence of these organizations when faced with the rape and murder of Israeli women.
The parents and relatives of children kidnapped on October 7, along with families of hostages and their supporters take part in a demonstration outside the UNICEF headquarters to protest their silence to 40 children held hostage in Gaza on World’s Children Day on November 20, 2023 in Tel Aviv, Israel. Hamas and Israel leaders have both indicated progress is being made to release hostages taken after October 7. Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty Images
It is not that condemnations of gender-based violence by Hamas have been weak or insufficient – there have been none at all. Statement after statement by organizations like UN Women, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) have failed to condemn these crimes. They failed us, and all women, at this critical moment.
As a woman and a mother, my heart goes out to women and children in Gaza suffering the consequences of the war started by Hamas. I believe they deserve aid and support. But this does not mean the erasure of the atrocities committed by Palestinian terrorists on October 7. The silence of international human rights organizations, and the unwillingness to believe Israeli women in the face of overwhelming evidence has been devastating.
For the Israelis who have always been on the forefront of the fight for women’s rights worldwide, this was a moment of crushing disappointment. A disappointment shared with me by one of our most prominent women’s rights advocates, Prof. Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, a former CEDAW vice-chair.
Israel’s First Lady, Michal Herzog Igal Slavin
“I knew it would be difficult to get them to issue a reasonable statement,” she said of the UN committee in a Harvard Medical School video conference., “but never did I imagine that when faced with such undeniable atrocities – given the very purpose for which they have been established,– – that they would actually resort to not acknowledging it at all.”
Ignoring the “unprecedented, premeditated and extreme cruelty of the sexual violence committed by Hamas,” Prof. Halperin-Kaddari added, meant not only failing Israeli women but failing the entire international human rights system. “I still am a believer in this system. But this was a huge blow to this belief.”
I agree with every word.
To mark this year’s International Day for the Prevention of Violence against Women, Israeli women – Jews, Muslims, Christians, and Druze – will gather at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem. We will meet in the lingering shock of the violation of our rights, and with the profound sense that all of us who believe in those rights have been betrayed.
Yet we will persist in presenting the truth to the world and to every human rights organization. We owe it not only to our own victims, but to all women who will face these crimes in the future and must know that they are not alone.
Michal Herzog is First Lady of the State of Israel.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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UN Women took 1,176 hours to respond
StopAntisemitism-tweet-25November2023-UN Women took 7Weeks to respond
7 weeks.
49 days.
1,176 hours.
That’s how long it took @UNWomen to issue a statement condemning the raping and sodomy of Jewish women.
StopAntisemitism-tweet-25November2023-
7 weeks.
49 days.
1,176 hours to denounce these horrors.
Why?
Because they’re Jews.
StopAntisemitism-tweet-25November2023-UN Women took 7 Weeks to respond
JerusalemCats-tweet-26November2023-UN_Women-screenshot-2023-11-26
This is a “Form Letter” sent to both Gaza and Israel. @UN_Women DO NOT CARE about women.
JerusalemCats-tweet-26November2023-UN_Women-screenshot-2023-11-26
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After backlash over silence, UN Women tweets, then deletes, statement condemning Hamas attack in Israel
BY JACKIE HAJDENBERG 27NOVEMBER2023 https://www.jta.org/2023/11/27/israel/after-backlash-over-silence-un-women-tweets-then-deletes-statement-condemning-hamas-attack-in-israel
Israeli women protest outside UN Headquarters in Jerusalem, Nov. 27, 2023. (Flash90)
(JTA) — Nearly 50 days after Hamas’ attack on Israel left 1,200 dead, and after weeks of criticism over its silence about allegations of sexual violence during the attack, the women’s rights group UN Women issued a statement condemning the terror group on Friday.
Then it deleted the post.
“We condemn the brutal attacks by Hamas on October 7 and continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages,” read the initial statement, posted on UN Women’s instagram page. It was soon replaced with a statement that dropped the condemnation of Hamas and only called for the release of the hostages.
Word spread quickly among Jewish women activists and Israelis, reigniting their contention that UN Women — an official arm of the United Nations focused on promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment — holds a double standard when it comes to gender-based violence against Israeli women. Some of the critics — including Sheryl Sandberg, a former top Meta executive — have lobbied openly on the topic. Many have used the hashtag “#MeToo_UNless_UR_A_Jew.”
Reached for comment, UN Women told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the Instagram post had been scheduled in advance and was deleted because the message in it no longer reflected where the organization wanted to put its main focus.
“In any social media team managing multiple campaigns and during a very busy time like the one we are now with 16 Days of Activism, mistakes can occur,” a representative for UN Women said in a statement sent to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
In particular, said the media specialist, the release of some hostages over the weekend as part of a temporary truce changed the organization’s priorities.
“UN Women social media team had pre-planned days in advance [of] this particular post, but then the news broke on the release of hostages and we really wanted to focus on that,” she said. “UN Women has condemned the attacks by Hamas and the deaths of Israeli civilians from the beginning as well as called for the release of hostages, and we will continue doing so until the conflict ends. We have also called for all allegations of gender-based violence to be rigorously investigated, prioritizing the rights, needs, and safety of those affected.”
In late October, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza but voted down a provision condemning the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. On Monday, Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, held a session on crimes against humanity committed against women during the Oct. 7 massacre.
After an initial statement on Oct. 13 condemning the attacks on civilians in Israel, all of UN Women’s public comments about the war and its impact on women had centered only on Palestinians. Last week, Sima Bahous, the group’s executive director, called for an extension of the current temporary truce into a permanent ceasefire and for the release of all hostages.
The National Council for Jewish Women, which had previously criticized UN Women’s silence on sexual violence against Israeli women, said the group’s second statement last week was inadequate.
“The delayed issuance of a statement that fails to explicitly address the severity of Hamas’ terrorist attack on Israel — such as the brutal murder of over 1,200 people in Israel, torture, and rape of women, as well as the targeting of civilians and families — is equally reprehensible,” the statement said. “Immediate and unequivocal acknowledgment of these atrocities is imperative, given the blatant violation of international law.”
JerusalemCats-tweet-26November2023-UN_Women-screenshot-2023-11-26
This is a “Form Letter” sent to both Gaza and Israel. @UN_Women DO NOT CARE about women.
JerusalemCats-tweet-26November2023-UN_Women-screenshot-2023-11-26
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Sarah Douglas, the Deputy Chief of Peace and Security at UN Women and Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi
Exposed: UN Women Deputy Chief Endorsed 153 Tweets Attacking Israel & Zionism
18December2023 United Nations https://unwatch.org/exposed-un-women-deputy-chief-endorsed-153-tweets-attacking-israel-zionism/
A top official of UN Women addressed the United Nations by webcam from her home with a large “Palestine” poster and flag showing in the background, and since the October 7th Hamas massacre she has publicly endorsed 153 anti-Israel and anti-Zionist tweets, revealed a Swiss watchdog group today.
Sarah Douglas, the Deputy Chief of Peace and Security at UN Women, should be fired for her blatant and systematic violations of the the UN’s minimal requirements of neutrality and impartiality, said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, an independent non-governmental organization based in Geneva that released the following report documenting her partisan political activity.
Hillel Neuer-tweet-18December2023-Meet Sarah Douglas-UN Women
Meet Sarah Douglas, the Deputy Chief of Peace and Security at neutral UN Women. Last week she spoke to the UN from home next to a giant “Palestine” poster. Turns out she’s also endorsed 153 tweets since Oct. 7 accusing Israel of “genocide” & other sins: https://unwatch.org/exposed-un-women-deputy-chief-endorsed-153-tweets-attacking-israel-zionism/ 🧵
Hillel Neuer-tweet-18December2023-Meet Sarah Douglas-UN Women
Sarah Douglas’ Political Activity Violates UN Impartiality
Sarah Douglas’ overt political activity, including her public endorsement of extreme statements by politicians and political organizations, as detailed below, amount to a material breach of her UN obligation to be neutral and impartial. Article 101(3) of the UN Charter states that the “paramount consideration” in employing staff is “securing the highest standards of efficiency, competence and integrity.” The concept of integrity under the core values of the UN Staff Rules and Staff Regulations includes “impartiality.” Specifically, under Rule 1.2(f), UN staff are expressly prohibited from making “any kind of public pronouncement” that may adversely reflect on their independence and impartiality. While UN staff members may exercise the right to vote, they are prohibited from engaging in any political activity that reflects adversely upon “the independence and impartiality required by their status as international civil servants.”
Repeatedly Accused Israel of “Genocide”
Sarah Douglas liked a tweet by the Palestinian Feminist Collective accusing “the forces of empire” of helping Israel to commit “genocide” and “annihilate the Palestinian people.”
Similarly, Douglas has repeatedly liked tweets accusing America of funding and arming “the genocide of Palestinians” and “the genocide in Gaza.”
Likewise, she liked many tweets accusing Israel of “war crimes against the people of Gaza” and indiscriminate bombing of Gaza.
By contrast, the UN Women’s Deputy Chief of Peace and Security failed to like a single tweet condemning Hamas for its open calls for genocide, including its pledges to repeat the October 7th mass murder, torture and rape of Israelis.
Sarah Douglas liked 11December2023-Genocide-Gaza-JVP
Sarah Douglas liked 15December2023-JVP-US-funding-genocide
Sarah Douglas liked 16October2023-JPal-Fem-Collective-genocide
Falsely Accused Israel of Bombing Hospital
Douglas liked the tweet by UN Women chief Sima Bahous which falsely implied that Israel attacked the Al Ahli Arab Hospital on October 17th and “strongly condemned” the strike that “killed and injured hundreds of civilians.” In fact, the rocket was from Islamic Jihad; it did not hit the hospital but the parking lot of the courtyard; and the actual casualties were a fraction of that amount. The tweet was never deleted and remains on Douglas’ feed of liked tweets.
Celebrated Shutdown of American Bridges and Highways, Takeover of Party Conventions
Sarah Douglas liked tweets that celebrate shutting down bridges and highways in eight American cities.
She liked a tweet by IfNotNow celebrating the takeover of the California Democratic Convention to protest “the mass murder of Palestinians.”
And she liked a tweet by “Jewish Voice for Peace Action” that celebrated their shutting down of the Democratic National Committee headquarters.
Palestine Poster
Speaking via webcam from her home, Sarah Douglas addressed a UN meeting last week next to a large “Palestine” poster with the colors of the Palestinian flag. This is in breach of the UN rule that speakers show only a neutral background.
Sarah Douglas addressed a UN meeting
Openly Endorsed “Squad” Politicians Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC
Sarah Douglas likes numerous tweets of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Bernie Sanders and other far-left politicians.
Douglas liked a tweet by Rashida Tlaib claiming that “Israel is starving Gaza.”
She liked a tweet by AOC calling to condition aid to Israel, and others about pressing the Biden administration for a ceasefire and preventing the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians.
She liked a tweet by “IfNotNow” endorsing pressure on Senator Warren.
She liked a tweet by “Jewish Voice for Peace Action” which thanked 13 named Democratic members of Congress for opposing H. Res. 894, which condemnied the drastic rise of antisemitism in America. So a UN official is openly supporting and opposing specific votes in the US Congress and at the UN.
She also liked tweets by numerous other far-left and politicians who attack or criticize Israel, including Ayanna Pressley, Cori Bush and Bernie Sanders.
Endorsed Code Pink and Other Radical Groups
Despite her obligation to be neutral in her public pronouncements, Sarah Douglas supports radical groups like Code Pink, liking their tweet that accused US Senators Graham and Rubio “and other AIPAC $$$ recipients” over the violence they’re backing against Palestinians, accusing them of “hate and lies.” She liked another Code Pink tweet that celebrated shutting down Chicago’s main highway to “free Palestine.”
Douglas repeatedly liked tweets by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), a Geneva-based group that was long accused of being a Soviet front organization, and whose officials went to Libya in 1992 to sing praises of the “Gaddafi Human Rights Prize.” Douglas liked a WILPF tweet accusing Israel of “apartheid policies” which is allegedly a “feminist demand.”
She also routinely liked tweets from additional NGOs and lobby groups that advocate what Hamas wants, including tweets by Democratic Socialists and Amnesty International.
Promoted Fringe Jewish Groups That Oppose Israel and Zionism
Douglas has a particular fondness for liking tweets by fringe Jewish individuals or groups that condemn Israel.
She liked numerous posts by “Jewish Voices for Peace,” including one tweet saying “We’re proud anti-Zionistsm,” with the image of a placard reading, “Zionism breaks every single Jewish value.”
She liked a tweet by IfNotNow promoting their “#JewsForCeasefire” campaign.
In violation of UN rules against overt partisan political activity, Sarah Douglas openly engaged in political campaigning by publicly liking numerous posts such as a tweet by “Jewish Voice for Peace Action” lobbying for the US government to change its policy and demand a ceasefire, which read: “Keep writing, keep calling, keep pushing. Check our tracker… to see who in Congress is working to save lives.”
Liked an article by radical academic who invoked his Jewish identity to accuse Israel of “genocide” and “Jewish supremacy.”
Intervened On UN Votes, Rebuked Countries For Not Backing Anti-Israel Resolutions
UN employees do not comment on country votes in UN bodies. For example, when the UN Secretary-General is asked about the UN election of dictatorships to the Human Rights Council and women’s rights bodies, he systematically declines to comment.
By contrast, Douglas has repeatedly endorsed tweets rebuking member states for their UN votes that she opposes. She liked a tweet by the group Karama which criticized “states who claim to support women’s rights looking the other way on violence against Palestinian women.” Similarly, she liked an AOC tweet slamming a US vote in the Security Council.
Notably, Sarah Douglas has never liked tweets criticizing country votes on any other matter.
Her “Hero” is Antisemitic Denier of Hamas Massacre
Sarah Douglas tweeted a photo of herself with former PLO official and spokeswoman, gushing that she was “So excited to meet one of my sheroes today: Dr Hanan Ashrawi!!”
In fact, Ashrawi is someone who has promoted antisemitic blood libels, falsely accusing Israel of throwing a Palestinian child into a well. Ashrawi founded an organization, Miftah, that claims Jews consume Christian blood, and which praises suicide bombers.
Speaking on Sky News, Ashrawi recently justified the Hamas massacre and mass rape of October 7th, saying, “This was a deliberate act of resisting an occupation army.”
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UN International Women’s Day-Oct. 7 Rape Report-Israel_Hayom_EN
After 150 days of being thwarted, condemned, lied to and investigated by UN, UN gives Oct 7 Rape Report
Israel Katz-tweet-6March2024-critical to hear your voice as international women leaders
Distinguished women leaders, Following the publication of the @UN report on sexual violence committed by the Hamas terror organization, it is critical to hear your voice as international women leaders, in order to put an end to the atrocities that Israeli women are going through in the captivity of the Hamas.
#BringThemHome 🎗️
@VP @HillaryClinton @GiorgiaMeloni @Statsmin @katrinjak @nmusar @ZuzanaCaputova @SerbianPM @kajakallas @Zourabichvili_S @XiomaraCastroZ @EvikaSilina @IngridaSimonyte @sandumaiamd @KristoBorjana @DameSandraMason @Sheikh_Hasinaa @presidenciaperu @SigridKaag @MinColonna @KensingtonRoyal @MichelleObama @ABaerbock @melaniejoly @Kamikawa_Yoko @HankeBruinsSlot @hadjalahbib @Odobes1Luminita @GabrielMariya @gabisommerfeld @DianaMondino @SenatorWong @elinavaltonen
Israel Katz-tweet-6March2024-critical to hear your voice as international women leaders
United Nations-tweet-5March2024-7 Oct attack by Hamas
In context of 7 Oct attack by Hamas & others, UN special representative for @endrapeinwar finds reasonable grounds to believe sexual violence occurred in multiple locations.
She also finds sexual violence committed against hostages & may still be ongoing. https://www.un.org/sexualviolenceinconflict/press-release/israel-west-bank-mission/
Malkah Fleisher-tweet-5March2024-After 150 days of being thwarted, condemned, lied to
After 150 days of being thwarted, condemned, lied to and investigated by you:
WE DON’T WANT YOUR STUPID SUPPORT, GET AWAY FROM US, YOU’RE DISGUSTING.
🇮🇱 Am Yisrael Chai
Malkah Fleisher-tweet-5March2024-After 150 days of being thwarted, condemned, lied to and investigated by you
Jessica S-tweet-5March2024-67 Different Men Raped her
You know it occurred in multiple locations the DAY IT HAPPENED they filmed themselves doing it and you have had the evidence all along ! Shame on you for taking months to recognize the atrocities that have had an are still happening.
#DefundTheUN
Jessica S-tweet-5March2024-67 Different Men Raped her
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Israel forbids doctors from speaking to the antisemitic UN Human Rights Council
Israel forbids doctors from speaking to UN group investigating Oct. 7 atrocities
Officials say commission of inquiry formed by UN Human Rights Council in 2021 is led by three people with antisemitic and anti-Israel views
By Renee Ghert-Zand 16 January 2024, https://www.timesofisrael.com/government-forbids-doctors-from-speaking-to-un-group-investigating-oct-7-atrocities/
Click on the Title for the full article
Demonstrators gather outside the UN headquarters in New York City on December 4, 2023, to protest the international community’s perceived silence on sexual violence committed by Hamas terrorists against Israeli women during the October 7 massacre. (Carli Fogel)
JerusalemCats Comments:
The UN Human Rights Council Commission of inquiry to investigating Oct. 7 atrocities of Hamas on Israel is led by three people with antisemitic and anti-Israel views. Israel forbids doctors from speaking to the commission.
The UNHRC has a very long history of antisemitism
he U.N. Human Rights Council is made up of human rights violating thugs who are against Israel. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.
The U.N. Human Rights Council
Hillel Neuer-tweet-20September2021-The U.N. Human Rights Council
The U.N. Human Rights Council—whose members include China, Cuba, Libya, Eritrea, Mauritania, Pakistan, Russia and Somalia (soon to be joined by Qatar, Malaysia & Kazakhstan)—is a key supporter of this week’s Durban 4 racism conference which has a tainted history of antisemitism.
Hillel Neuer-tweet-20September2021-The U.N. Human Rights Council
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UN Secretary-General activating Article 99 of the UN Charter to put pressure on Israel
Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-December 6, 2023-UN Secretary-General activating Article 99 of the UN Charter
Today, the Secretary-General has reached a new moral low. He writes that he is activating, for the first time, Article 99 of the UN Charter in relation to the Israel-Hamas war, an article that can only be invoked in a situation where international peace and security are threatened.
The Secretary-General decided to activate this rare clause only when it allows him to put pressure on Israel, which is fighting the Nazi Hamas terrorists. This is more proof of the Secretary-General’s moral distortion and his bias against Israel.
The Secretary-General’s call for a ceasefire is actually a call to keep Hamas’ reign of terror in Gaza. Instead of the Secretary-General explicitly pointing to Hamas’ responsibility for the situation and calling on the terrorist leaders to turn themselves in and return the hostages, thus ending the war, the Secretary-General chooses to continue playing into Hamas’ hands.
The distorted positions of the Secretary-General only prolong the fighting in Gaza, because they give hope to the Hamas terrorists that the war will be stopped and they will be able to survive. I again call on the Secretary-General to resign immediately – the UN needs a Secretary-General who supports the war on terror, not a Secretary-General who acts according to the script written by Hamas.
Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-December 6, 2023-UN Secretary-General activating Article 99 of the UN Charter
the Reaction
Eli Cohen-tweet-6December2023-Guterres’ tenure is a danger to world peace
Guterres’ tenure is a danger to world peace.
His request to activate Article 99 and the call for a cease fire in Gaza constitutes support of the Hamas terrorist organization and an endorsement of the murder of the elderly, the abduction of babies and the rape of women.
Anyone who supports world peace must support the liberation of Gaza from Hamas
Eli Cohen-tweet-6December2023-Guterres’ tenure is a danger to world peace
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UN General Assembly rejects motion to condemn Hamas, calls for ceasefire
29October2023 https://unwatch.org/un-general-assembly-rejects-motion-to-condemn-hamas-calls-for-ceasefire/
The UN General Assembly adopted an Arab-drafted resolution today calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza, after rejecting a Canadian amendment that would have condemned the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas and demanded immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.
Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan called it “a day that will go down in infamy.”
The resolution was adopted by a vote of 120 to 14 with 45 abstentions.
Outrageously, the resolution failed to condemn Hamas for its October 7th massacre of 1400 Israelis, or for its abduction of more than 200 Israelis including children and babies, or even to mention the word Hamas.
The resolution also failed to recognize Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens against terrorism.
The resolution calls for “immediate, full, sustained, safe and unhindered humanitarian access…to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid” but, as noted by the Czech Republic, doesn’t provide assurances that this will not be abused by Hamas and other terrorists.
The text also calls on Israel, “the occupying power,” to rescind its order to evacuate northern Gaza.
Prior to taking action on the resolution, an amendment led by Canada did not pass, as it failed to reach the required two-thirds majority. That amendment would have “unequivocally reject[ed] and condemn[ed] the terrorist attacks by Hamas that took place in Israel starting on 7 October 2023 and the taking of hostages.”
UN Watch-tweet-27October2023-LIST OF SHAME: These EU countries just joined Iran, Syria and Russia in voting for a resolution that fails to name Hamas or specifically call for release of hostages.
Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland,Norway
UN Watch-tweet-27October2023-LIST OF SHAME: These EU countries just joined Iran, Syria and Russia in voting for a resolution that fails to name Hamas or specifically call for release of hostages.
Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Norway
UN Watch-tweet-28October2023-Proving Abba Eban’s timeless observation: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring the earth was flat and Israel had flattened it, it would pass by 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” This UN text fails to condemn the Hamas massacre or to support Israel’s right to self-defence.
United Nations-tweet–27October2023-
120 in favor
14 against
45 abstentions
Countries adopt resolution calling for immediate & sustained humanitarian truce in the Middle East during an Emergency Special Session of https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/10/1142847
UN Watch-tweet-28October2023-Proving Abba Eban’s timeless observation
[EDD: The Reaction]
Hillel Neuer-tweet-28October2023-
BREAKING: 🇨🇿 Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová has just called to leave the UN for cheering Hamas terrorists. “Exactly 3 weeks ago, Hamas murdered over 1400 Israelis, more victims for their population than the militant Islamist organization al-Qaeda murdered in the US on 9/11. And only 14 countries, including ours, have spoken out clearly and understandably against this unprecedented terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas terrorists! I am ashamed of the UN. In my opinion, the Czech Republic has no place in an organization that cheers on terrorists and does not respect the fundamental right to self-defence. Let’s get out.”
Hillel Neuer-tweet-28October2023-Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová has just called to leave the UN
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The 1975 “Zionism Is Racism” Resolution: The Rise, Fall, and Resurgence of a Libel
Dr. Yohanan Manor
May 2, 2010
No. 97
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 3379 (XXX) of 10 November 1975, defining Zionism as a form of racism, was revoked by the General Assembly sixteen years later on 16 December 1991.
The story of the rise and fall of this libel teaches a good deal about the role of anti-Semitism in international politics, its paralyzing effect on both the Jewish state and the Jewish people, and how such a libel was finally challenged successfully. Since the revocation of 3379, Israel’s international standing and legitimacy have steadily improved, increasing its ability to thwart ongoing attempts to negate its legitimacy.
How It Began
The idea of having Zionism condemned by the United Nations originated with the Soviet Union in the mid-1960s, before the Six Day War. It stemmed from the Soviet refusal to have anti-Semitism condemned by the UN. Since the Soviet Union could not openly voice such a position, it conditioned its acceptance of condemning anti-Semitism on a demand to condemn Zionism and Nazism. This occurred in 1964 and 1965 during the negotiation of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination within the framework of the UN Commission on Human Rights.[1]
The Six Day War inflicted a severe blow on the Soviet Union’s weaponry and prestige, and it subsequently developed a more militant policy to regain and enlarge its influence in the Middle East. This policy was based on a near-total backing of the PLO. It was expected that this backing would bring both the “Arab street” and the Arab states to the Soviet Union’s side. This scheme went well and enabled the Soviet Union to gain strongholds in the Middle East, notably in Syria and Egypt, which were on the verge of becoming Soviet colonies.
The expulsion of the Soviet advisers from Egypt, the Israeli-Egyptian disengagement negotiations of November 1973, and the Israeli-Syrian disengagement agreement of May 1974 with the active involvement of the United States, apparently led to a Soviet-PLO plan to bring about Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations, with the PLO taking its place.[2]
On 22 November 1974, the PLO obtained UN observer status as a national liberation movement. In August 1975, the Organization of African Unity explicitly referred to depriving Israel of “its status as member.” At the General Assembly on 1 October 1975, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin called upon
the people of the United States of America…to rid their society from the Zionists in order that the true citizens of this nation may control their own destiny and exploit the natural resources of their country to their own benefit. I call for the expulsion of Israel from the United Nations and the extinction of Israel as a state so that the territorial integrity of Palestine may be ensured and upheld.[3]
In parallel, the Soviet Union and the PLO advanced an initiative to bring about a condemnation of Zionism. In December 1973, for the first time, Zionism was associated with racism in a General Assembly resolution on South Africa’s apartheid policy, condemning in particular “the unholy alliance between Portuguese colonialism, South African racism, Zionism and Israeli imperialism.”[4]
In July 1975, the Soviet Union and the PLO succeeded to have Zionism explicitly condemned at the UN International Women’s Year conference in Mexico City, which stressed in its final declaration that “Peace requires the elimination of colonialism, neocolonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms.”[5] In August 1975, the Organization of African Unity in Kampala stated that “the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin…organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being”; while the Non-Aligned conference in Lima “severely condemned Zionism as a threat to world peace.”
Stern Western, above all American, opposition to Israel’s expulsion or suspension, notably an American warning that such a move would force the United States to reassess its UN membership,[6] thwarted this initiative – but also much increased the eagerness to advance a substitute for it, namely, the condemnation of Zionism as racism. This was formally achieved first within the framework of the Third Committee of the General Assembly on 16 October 1975, and then on 10 November 1975 by the GA plenary with Resolution 3379 (XXX), which “Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination.” The Soviet-Arab coalition won by 72-35 with two abstentions.
Although this result was far from resounding and fell short of the one hundred and more votes this coalition was used to obtaining at the General Assembly, it was followed by an explosion of joy. As Judge Hadassa Ben Ito, then a member of the Israeli delegation to this session, strikingly described this:
It was not only an excitement. The hatred was crawling on the floor. People embraced as if they had won the biggest victory of their lives…. We felt like pariahs. It is not only a sentimental reflection…. We should know that it was not just another resolution of the United Nations. Somebody like myself, who has never really felt personally attacked by, or maligned by an act of anti-Semitism, really felt it physically while sitting there.[7]
Two procedural attempts to postpone the debate and the vote on the draft resolution were rejected. In the Third Committee, a motion put forth by Sierra Leone was defeated by 68-45. In the plenary, a Belgian motion was rejected by 67-55, with fifteen abstentions and five absences.
It is likely that a resolute and coordinated effort by the United States, Canada, Australia, Western Europe, and Latin American and African countries could have mustered the additional votes necessary to secure a postponement (see Table 1). But this did not occur, probably, on the one hand, out of relief that the most ominous threat, Israel’s expulsion from the United Nations, had been foiled, and on the other, out of the inner conviction that this farfetched, aberrant, and shameful resolution from “Um-shmum” – a play on words coined by David Ben-Gurion to express the UN’s impotency -would actually have no palpable weight and the UN would do its best to forget it.
Table 1: Voting Patterns on Resolution 3379 by Blocs
UN Body
Third Committee
Third Committee
Assembly Plenum
Assembly Plenum
Motions and resolutions
Sierra Leone
postponement
motion
A/C.3/L.2159
Belgium
postponement motion
UNGA
3379(XXX)
Blocs
Y
N
An
As
Y
N
An
As
Y
N
An
As
Y
N
An
As
Western 21
19
1
1
2
19
21
1
19
1
Latin America 26
10
5
7
4
5
8
6
7
17
3
6
5
10
11
Eastern Europe 10
10
9
1
9
1
9
1
Other Communist
countries 5
5
5
5
5
Arab
League 20
20
20
20
20
Muslim Countries 6
5
1
5
1
6
6
African 38
13
16
4
5
17
2
14
5
13
18
3
4
20
5
12
1
Middle Eastern 5
4
1
4
1
4
1
4
1
Asians 11
3
2
5
1
3
6
2
4
2
5
2
1
8
Total 142
45
68
16
13
70
29
27
16
55
67
15
5
72
35
3
Note: Y=Yes; N=No; An=Abstain; 4 As=Absent.
Source: Yohanan Manor, To Right a Wrong (New York: Shengold, 1996), 56.
The Jewish World’s Passive Posture
Except for the African American lawyer Eleanor Holmes-Norton’s statement[8] days after the resolution’s adoption that “an international committee of women had been set up to annul [it],” there was no other attempt, not even an Israeli or Jewish one, to act for its revocation. Instead, the Israeli and Jewish world viewed the resolution with disdain. For instance, soon after the adoption Rabbi Israel Miller, then chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was told by the Israeli embassy to “ignore the whole issue, since it was nonsense.”[9] Israel expected that this nonsense would go away by itself and that disregard would achieve this result. This position, which was maintained for almost a decade, was itself sheer nonsense.
During 1976-1984 the “Zionism is racism” resolution was reiterated time and again, sometimes by even larger majorities (see Table 2). In 1980, at the United Nations’ Second World Conference on Women in Copenhagen, the notion of eliminating Zionism was for the first time included in an operative document, “The Program of Action for the Second Half of the UN Decade for Women: Equality, Development and Peace.” This meant that the administrative units of the UN secretary-general, notably the Office of Public Information, would have to include the defamation of Zionism in their activities.
Table 2: Resolutions on 3379 Adopted by International Bodies, 1976-1984
Year
International body
Venue
Direct/
Indirect
Yes
No
An
1976
UN Conference on Human Settlement
Vancouver
Indirect
89
15
10
1978
UN World Conference to Combat Racism
Geneva
Indirect
67
18
18
1979
UNGA
“Inadmissibility of hegemonism”
New York
Direct
111
4
26
1979
Non-Aligned Movement
Havana
Direct
1980
UN World Conference on Women
Copenhagen
Direct
94
4
22
1980
International Youth and Student Movement for the UN
Geneva
Direct
34
3
1981
Non-Alignment Movement
New Delhi
Direct
1981
OAU, African Charter of Human Rights
Banjul
Direct
1982
UNGA on “Living conditions of the Palestinian people”
New York
Indirect
145
2
3
1982
UNESCO Conference on Cultural Policies
Mexico
Direct
45
29
75
1983
UN World Conference to Combat Racism
Geneva
Indirect
87
15
16
1983
UN-sponsored Conference on Palestine
Geneva
Indirect
1983
Non-Aligned Movement Summit
New Delhi
Direct
1984
International Parliamentary Union
Geneva
Direct
677
137
241
Source: Yohanan Manor, To Right a Wrong (New York: Shengold, 1996), 63.
After the resolution’s adoption, Zionism began to assume “mythical proportions in international discourse as a global cause of most world problems.” This trend was not confined to Arab-Muslim countries and the Third World; it also substantially penetrated Western circles, especially universities. For instance, in Britain in 1976 and 1977, eight student unions adopted “Zionism is racism” resolutions, openly flouting previously held policies not to deal with the Middle East.[10] Subsequently several student unions, such as those at the University of York and the University of Salford, decided to strike Jewish societies from their registers and to restrict their activities.
Some U.S. universities refused to invite lecturers recommended by Jewish organizations on the ground that most Jews were Zionists and, as Zionism was racism, Jews were racists. At the University of California at Riverside, Arab students prevented Jews from attending a program on racism on the ground that “Zionism is a form of racism.”[11]
The trend began to burgeon and win increasing academic sanction. In September 1983 at the Stony Brook campus of the State University of New York, Ernest Dube, a professor in the African Studies Department included Zionism in a course on “The Politics of Race” as one of the three forms of racism, the two other being apartheid and Nazism. One of the research subjects he proposed to his students was “Zionism is as much racism as Nazism,” and he defended this formulation by evoking Resolution 3379.
In Canada, a Jewish group asking to join Québec contre Racisme, an organization set up by Yvon Charbonneau, president of the teachers’ trade union of Quebec, was denied entry unless it renounced Zionism. In 1982, the general student organization of Ontario condemned Israel’s operation in Lebanonstressing that “The state of Israel is Zionism, Zionism is racism,” and decided not to admit Jewish student groups to its ranks. That same year the student federation at Ottawa University decided to prevent the Jewish students’ organization from meeting on the campus on the ground that Zionism was racism.[12]
During this period the vilification of Zionism turned into a permanent feature of international life. That Zionism was a metaphor for universal evil became part of “common knowledge,” accepted or at least not contradicted by almost the entire international body politic. This was not anticipated when Resolution 3379 was adopted, and it came not instead of but in addition to the consequences that were expected, placing Israel beyond the pale and giving anti-Semitism international sanction. During 1969-1972 there were four anti-Israeli resolutions per year at the United Nations. During 1973-1978 this number grew to sixteen per annum, and in 1982 it reached a peak of forty-four.[13]
The vilification of Zionism was not merely a second-best strategy to the one aiming to expel Israel from the United Nations altogether. In a sense it was even worse. Although Israel’s formal membership in the UN was indeed maintained, it was increasingly deprived of its basic rights as a member state. As explained by Jeane Kirkpatrick, the U.S. ambassador to the UN from 1981 to 1985, this involved “denying membership by denying participation,”[14] thereby instilling Israel’s illegitimacy by placing it in a state of growing irrelevancy
As noted by the Israeli academic Ehud Sprinzak, this meant Israel lost “the right to speak or debate in certain forums.” For him, labeling Zionism as racism was much more than an attack on particular policies of the Israeli government; it signified that “every war Israel has ever fought, including the War of Independence and the Six Day War, has been a racist war. Every military response to Arab terror has been a racist response. And of course every domestic law …is a racist one.”[15]
Nevertheless, official Israel did not regard the huge and mounting damage inflicted by “Zionism is racism” as sufficient reason to openly fight the resolution and act to overturn it. The Israeli Foreign Ministry often used two arguments to justify this inertia: that initiating action would be counterproductive since the “automatic majority” at the disposal of the Soviet Union and the Arab-Muslim states would result in reiterations; and that it was formally impossible to overturn a General Assembly resolution as there was no such precedent.
An Urgent Need to Act
By now, however, it was clear that reiteration by other international bodies had been an inevitable consequence from the start, and that the resolution constituted the global legal and political foundation for turning the Jewish state into an illegitimate one. Thus it came to be acknowledged, even by official Israel, that the resolution needed to be fought in itself directly, and not as merely another expression of anti-Semitism.
The question, at this point, was how? A central body was needed to direct this struggle. It took the form of the Steering Committee against the Zionism Is Racism Resolution, set up jointly by the World Zionist Organization and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. It was crucial to seek to overcome the so-called automatic UN majority, namely, by at least preventing reiterations and, more essentially, by undermining the validity and legitimacy of the resolution.
A first success was scored in neutralizing a Kuwaiti initiative seeking to obtain a reiteration of the resolution by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) at its annual session in September 1984 in Geneva. This was achieved by mobilizing both Israeli parties and Jewish communities worldwide to use their links with the political parties of delegates to the IPU to defeat the Kuwaiti initiative.[16]
The real challenge, however, was to find ways to undermine the validity and legitimacy of the resolution and divest it of any moral value. This was achieved mainly through a long series of international, national, and regional conferences in Israel, the United States, Europe, and Latin America, an international petition to the United Nations signed by over a thousand worldwide personalities calling on it to “disavow the abusive Resolution 3379 and rededicate itself to its founding charter,” and by parliamentary resolutions in the same spirit.
The first of these was a “Sense of the Congress resolution” adopted by the U.S. Senate in July 1985. Senate Joint Resolution 98 “formally repudiates UNGA Resolution 3379 and calls upon the Parliaments of all countries which value freedom and democracy to do the same.”
This draft resolution also needed to be adopted by the House of Representatives, and was, several weeks later. It proved decisive in preventing the reiteration of 3379 at the Nairobi Conference closing the UN Decade for Women. Ambassador Alan Keyes, chief adviser to the U.S. delegation, included references to the Senate resolution in his statements and received clear instructions from Washington that Zionism was not to be included in any paragraph of the final document to be adopted by the conference; if this occurred the U.S. delegation was to leave.
All this demonstrated that fighting Resolution 3379 directly could prevent its reiteration and that its abrogation was not a mission impossible but, rather, an attainable goal, albeit still very difficult. Although the Israeli Foreign Ministry began to count the prospective votes in the General Assembly, there was still a very long way to go.
At the initiative of the local Zionist Federation, the Australian government was convinced to table before the Australian parliament a remarkable resolution proclaiming that 3379 was inconsistent with the United Nations’ goals and recommending that “the Government of Australia lend support to efforts to overturn Resolution 3379 (XXX) in the UN.” Moreover, the Australian government further involved itself by checking what would be the position of each of the Asian countries. The results, however, were extremely disappointing.
Only a few other parliamentary resolutions were passed. These were in Peru (1987), the European Parliament (1987), and Uruguay (1988). Their wording was far less committing then the Australian and American ones. Most of the democratic countries remained uninvolved.
How the Repeal Was Achieved
It would take another five years to overturn “Zionism is racism.” The repeal was finally achieved not only thanks to the end of the Cold War, but first and foremost because the United States took the lead in this endeavor. This active involvement resulted from unabated pressure on the administration by Congress and American Jewish organizations. The U.S. administration put this issue even higher on its agenda than it was on Israel’s.
In his address to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on 14 May 1989, Secretary of State James Baker called on the Arab countries to take measures to advance the peace process, end the economic boycott of Israel, and “repudiate the odious line that ‘Zionism is racism.’”[17] He thereby put the onus on the Arab states to show that they were serious about the peace process, while linking the peace process to the repeal.
At Yeshiva University on International Human Rights Day on 11 December 1989, Vice-President Dan Quayle did not link the repeal to the peace process but rather to the renewal of the United Nations. Referring to a UN General Assembly resolution cosponsored by the United States and the Soviet Union and calling on all UN members to respect the principles set forth in the UN Charter, Quayle made a resounding statement:
The official Soviet reaction was extremely disappointing, as the regime still clung to its traditional anti-Zionist stance. What was more surprising was the lukewarm response from many Western democracies, which held that the repeal was impossible without a breakthrough in the Middle East peace process. For instance, British prime minister Margaret Thatcher reacted skeptically to Quayle’s appeal by arguing that the necessary majority would be secured only if the repeal offered some substantial quid pro quo to the Arab side.[19] Actually, the democracies did not even make such an attempt.
On 30 March 1990, a public hearing in the Senate chaired by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan adopted a joint resolution calling on UN member states to repeal the “Zionism is racism” resolution and requesting the U.S. president to report periodically on progress toward repeal. John Bolton, representing the State Department, gave an optimistic assessment of the prospects for an overturn.[20] Moynihan, however, was infuriated by Bolton’s apparent self-satisfaction and criticized the State Department for its lack of energy in fighting the resolution, saying he wanted to see more action.
Moynihan went on to say: “The West imposed no consequences of any kind on those nations that associated themselves with this filthy proposition of the Soviet Union. I want to see the US cut assistance to countries which supported the resolution. How many of them received and are still receiving US aid?” Bolton replied that of the seventy-two that had voted in favor of the resolution, a clear majority were at that point receiving U.S. aid, and probably still did. Moynihan then asked him: “Did we ever tell one country, just one country, that you are getting American money, and you are not getting it any more until you change your mind?” On the defensive, Bolton answered: “I don’t know that any country’s ever been told that, Senator, but if I could leave one message with the committee here today, it is that the Bush Administration is most serious about having this resolution repealed.”[21]
Joint Resolution 246 was not only adopted by the Senate and House but also officially endorsed by President George H. W. Bush. However, Bush still found it appropriate to add a paragraph on the United States’ “determination to pursue efforts toward a comprehensive, just and lasting Middle East peace. In our view this peace must be achieved on the basis of UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and the principle of territories for peace. It must provide for Israel’s security and recognition and for Palestinian political rights….”[22] Several weeks after Bush’s endorsement of 246, the troika then heading the European Union made a commitment to act for the repeal of “Zionism is racism.”
In mid-August 1990, the projected General Assembly vote for a repeal stood at 60-60 with forty abstentions. In mid-September, it was decided to postpone the repeal initiative. The U.S. press claimed this was an American decision aimed at preserving Arab support for sanctions against Iraq. Yohanan Bein, then deputy director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, was in charge of the issue of repealing the resolution. He claimed the postponement was an Israeli decision based on evaluation of how much support could be obtained.[23]
During the summer of 1991, there were once again indications that some were seeking postponement. A first indication came from J. S. Wall, private secretary of UK prime minister John Major, then another from Gareth Evans, Australian minister of trade and foreign affairs; they were concerned that there was not yet a majority in favor of a repeal. But the biggest blow came from the United States, which feared that a motion to defer concocted by Egypt, arguing that the repeal should be delayed until a peace conference opened or the peace process was firmly on track, would easily pass in the General Assembly in September.
Although this inclination to postpone probably reflected genuine concern for the repeal’s success, it also manifested tensions between Israel and the United States over the desirable framework for a Middle East peace conference. In June 1991, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir expressed Israel’s reservations over UN participation in such a conference given the world body’s treatment of Israel over the years. Among many other one-sided UN positions, he mentioned Resolution 3379. Shamir never, though, cited the repeal of 3379 as a condition for accepting UN involvement in such a peace conference.
At the opening of the UN General Assembly in September 1991, Bush took an unprecedented step and raised the issue of the repeal plainly and directly, without linking it to any other issue. Pointing to the renewed role of the United Nations, which had put in place more peacekeeping missions in the previous thirty-six months than during its first forty-three years, he asserted
Children Soldiers
Kosher Kockney-tweet-1December2023-Askar-UNRWA
A must watch, and a must share.
Mind-blowing.
Comment and let me know your thoughts.
Honestly, if there is one video you should watch today. This is the one.
UNRWA – Askar (2023) a short but extremely revealing video by David Bedein.
UNRWA have created a Palestinian terrorism education system. UNRWA school and “refugee camp” where they breed terror.
It’ll take 7 minutes 55 seconds of your time.
Grab a coffee (or a cigarette, you’ll probably need one)
This is proof that the UN must be completely dissolved and all it’s staff members fully investigated.
I am stunned.
Kosher Kockney-tweet-1December2023- Askar-UNRWA
Askar-UNRWA Cradle of Killers – Summer 2023
Kosher Kockney-tweet-4December2023-UNRWA’s Child Soldiers
UNRWA’s Child Soldiers .
A must watch and a must share.
Take 12 minutes to watch this.
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Hamas & Islamic Jihad Military Summer camp for UNRWA students.
How on earth can UNRWA be getting away with all this?
UNRWA schools send their students to a Hamas terrorism training camp:
“This summer, armed operatives (Hamas) signed up tens of thousands of UNRWA students ages 10 to 17”
“UNRWA youngsters learned to view the United States and Israel as the Devil”
Quotes from the children:
“Purify it of the Jews” – UNRWA school child talking about “Palestine”
“We’ll die as Martyrs” – UNRWA school child
“The Jews will not remain on this land, I say to the Jews: go back to where you came from. Get out of here before we annihilate you” – UNRWA school child
We need to pressure our governments and leaders to stop funding UNRWA immediately.
Film produced by the Bedein Center
Kosher Kockney-tweet-4December2023-UNRWA’s Child Soldiers
UNRWA’s Child Soldiers
Aviva Klompas-tweet-23November2023-Children Soldiers
When you read that children were killed in Gaza fighting Israel – remember that some of these “children” were handed guns and sent to fight while Hamas hid in their tunnels.
Aviva Klompas-tweet-23November2023-Children Soldiers
Alon Lavi-tweet-12December2023-Gaza is a dangerous place for children from Hamas
Gaza is a dangerous place for children, any place controlled by a terror organization like Hamas=ISIS will be.
A call to @UNICEF and @unicefchief to stop Hamas and make Gaza a better place.
Alon Lavi-tweet-12December2023-Gaza is a dangerous place for children from Hamas
Kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza
Visegrád 24-tweet-27November2023-Kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza
Kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza.
To be allowed to start elementary school, it seems like Palestinian kids need to prove that they know how to fire off a couple of mortar rounds, take some hostages and storm a building.
Hamas must be vanquished for good
Visegrád 24-tweet-27November2023-Kindergarten graduation ceremony in Gaza
leekern-tweet-3December2023-THIS IS THE CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT
THIS IS THE CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT. Palestinian society conditions their children to become violent racist sociopaths. That’s how they created monsters who cut the heads off babies whilst yelling Allahu Akbar on October 7th. If you want peace: call this out
leekern-tweet-3December2023-THIS IS THE CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT
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From the 2014 Gaza War Operation Protective Edge: מִבְצָע צוּק אֵיתָן, Israel Deserves an Apology
New map confirms: the Shuja’iya neighborhood is a terrorist stronghold where Hamas uses residents as human shields. pic.twitter.com/NVTPEbydq4
Elder of Ziyon logo http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/
We were ordered to close all חלון תריסים (Window Shutters) at night. Arab Snipers?
UNRWA incitement
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) employees are constantly on Facebook inciting the Arabs to kill Jews. Here is just one example. http://elderofziyon.blogspot.co.il/2015/10/unrwa-teacher-wants-her-kids-to-die-for.html#.VihIr6fhlTA 20October2015
UNRWA teacher Hiba Yassin’s Facebook page:”The #intifada of Ramadan” (meaning July 2014. Yes, UNRWA teachers were calling for a new intifada last year too,)
This is an ongoing battle with UNRWA and the UN on what they claim to do and the reality.
UNRWA suspends employees after UN Watch exposed incitement to anti-Semitic violence
22october2015 http://www.unwatch.org/unrwa-suspends-employees-after-un-watch-exposed-incitement-to-anti-semitic-violence/
י״ד מרחשון תשע״ו – 2015/10/26 Another disgusting incitement cartoon on @UNRWA teacher page
י״ה מרחשון תשע״ו – 2015/10/27 .@UNRWA uses Hamas human shield victim for fundraising and demonizing Israel
ט״ו מרחשון תשע״ו- 2015/10/28 .@UNRWA teacher posts “Stab the Jews” video
UNRWA teacher Najlaa Nojom lives in Bethlehem.
She recently shared this video, glorifying stabbing Jews, on her Facebook timeline.
ל׳ מרחשון תשע״ו – 2015/11/12 Elder gets results – and @UNRWA teachers are angry that they cannot post incitement and Jew-hatred
…It should be noted that some of the most influential leaders of the Palestinian resistance were teachers in UNRWA schools who were able to perform their work without any restrictions on political freedom, and they are active politically.
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-12March2024-UNRWA is all about serving Palestinians until Return
Just listen to Palestinians:
This sign at the entrance to a “refugee camp” near Bethlehem says it all (why on earth are Palestinians “refugees” under the Palestinian Authority?!?):
UNRWA is all about serving Palestinians until “Return”
(reminder that Oct 7 is what “return” is).
Dr. Einat Wilf-tweet-12March2024-UNRWA is all about serving Palestinians until Return
This sign at the entrance to a “refugee camp” near Bethlehem says it all (why on earth are Palestinians “refugees” under the Palestinian Authority?!?):
UNRWA is all about serving Palestinians until “Return”
(reminder that Oct 7 is what “return” is).
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UNRWA’S TERRORGRAM – HOW A TELEGRAM GROUP OF 3,000 UNRWA TEACHERS IN GAZA CELEBRATED THE OCTOBER 7TH HAMAS MASSACRE
Hillel Neuer-tweet-28January2024-UNRWA Telegram group
Just a few bad apples?
Here is our saved copy of the UNRWA Telegram group of 3,000 UNRWA teachers: https://groupchat.unwatch.org
There are 249,000 messages, replete with celebrations of Hamas terrorism: https://unwatch.org/unrwa-terrorgram/
There is not one case where an UNRWA teacher objected.
Hillel Neuer-tweet-28January2024-UNRWA Telegram group
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UN finds out that UNRWA staff ties to Hamas terrorism
Hillel Neuer-tweet-28January2024-UNRWA staff ties to Hamas terrorism
1/ UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said he was “horrified” to learn of UNRWA staff ties to Hamas terrorism.
That’s odd.
September 3, 2015: UN Watch Report: UNRWA Officials Operating 12 Separate Facebook Accounts Inciting Terrorism
https://unwatch.org/images-of-unrwa-incitement-to-antisemitism-violence/
Hillel Neuer-tweet-28January2024-UNRWA staff ties to Hamas terrorism
Hillel Neuer-tweet-7February2024-Seven years ago we sent warnings to UNRWA
Seven years ago, we sent warnings to UNRWA estimating that thousands of their employees were implicated in terrorism.
They did nothing. Worse, UNRWA attacked us.
Last week it was revealed in the WSJ that in Gaza alone, 1,200 UNRWA staffers belong to Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
Hillel Neuer-tweet-7February2024-
Secretary-General Guterres was “horrified” to learn UNRWA staff participated in the Hamas massacre of October 7.
Yet in 2016, UNRWA’s top backer in Canada admitted: “Hamas dominates the UNRWA trade unions and its staff is replete with Hamas supporters.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-canada-should-restore-funding-for-palestinian-relief-agency/article28781261/
Hillel Neuer-tweet-7February2024-Seven years ago we sent warnings to UNRWA
12,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza, 2,500 are official Hamas operatives
Dr. Eli David-tweet-21February2024-12000 UNRWA employees in Gaza 2500 are official Hamas operatives
🚨 Breaking: New evidence revealed by @kann_news shows that out of 12,000 @UNRWA 🇺🇳 employees in Gaza, 2,500 are official Hamas operatives, out of which 500 in “combat units” (i.e., terrorists whose job is to carry out terror attacks).
@antonioguterres, you there? Resign!
Dr. Eli David-tweet-21February2024-12,000 UNRWA employees in Gaza, 2,500 are official Hamas operatives
Visegrád 24-tweet-5February2024-unwra terrorist
UNRWA is over
Visegrád 24-tweet-5February2024-unwra terrorist
Eretz Nehederet-tweet-30January2024-We are UNRWA
The @UNWRA trend
@UN @StandWithUs
Eretz Nehederet-tweet-30January2024-We are UNRWA
We are UNRWA [Eretz Nehederet satire]
Aizenberg-tweet-20February2024-Israel seized ~$280 million of cash from Hamas safes in Khan Younes
Israel seized ~$280 million of cash from Hamas safes in Khan Younes. This equals 80% of UNRWA’s total annual budget for all activities in Gaza. Yet the lie that Gaza was impoverished continued for decades while Hamas funded tunnels, rockets, RPGs etc. Time for the scam to end.
Aizenberg-tweet-20February2024-Israel seized ~$280 million of cash from Hamas safes in Khan Younes.png
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Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA so deeply that it is no longer possible to determine where UNRWA ends and where Hamas begins.
Oren Marmorstein-tweet-22April2024-Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA so deeply that
Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA so deeply that it is no longer possible to determine where UNRWA ends and where Hamas begins.
More than 2,135 UNRWA workers are members of either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), while one-fifth of UNRWA school administrators are Hamas members.
The problem with UNRWA-Gaza isn’t that of a few bad apples; it is a rotten and poisonous tree whose roots are Hamas.
The Colonna report ignores the severity of the problem, and offers cosmetic solutions that do not deal with the enormous scope of Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA.
This is not what a genuine and thorough review looks like. This is what an effort to avoid the problem and not address it head on looks like.
Israel calls on the donor countries to refrain from transferring their taxpayers’ money to UNRWA-Gaza, as these funds will go to the Hamas terrorist organization, and that violates legislation in the donor countries themselves.
Israel calls on the donor countries to transfer their funds to other humanitarian organizations in Gaza.
UNRWA-Gaza is part of the problem and not part of the solution.
There are other solutions.
UNRWA can not be part of the solution in Gaza not now, and not in the future.
Oren Marmorstein-tweet-22April2024-Hamas has infiltrated UNRWA so deeply that
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The tunnel system beneath UNRWA Headquarters in Gaza used by Hamas as their main intelligence server hub
Yaari Cohen-tweet-10February2024-hamas data center under UNRWA HQ
Official IDF Statement on the massive terror tunnel located underneath @UNRWA HQ in Gaza:
Acting on ISA intelligence, the forces discovered a tunnel shaft near an UNRWA school, leading to an underground terrorist tunnel beneath UNRWA’s main headquarters. The forces found electrical infrastructure inside the tunnel connected to UNRWA’s main HQ, suggesting it was supplying the tunnel with electricity—generated by the fuel provided through humanitarian aid. This 700-meter-long tunnel, 18 meters deep, contained multiple blast doors and various intelligence assets seized by the forces. Intelligence and documents found confirmed the offices’ use by Hamas terrorists. Large quantities of weapons, including rifles, ammunition, grenades and explosives, were uncovered hidden in the building’s offices.
📸: Footage showing the tunnel’s location, near a school.
Yaari Cohen-tweet-10February2024-Hamas data center under UNRWA HQ
These Findings Were Found Within UNRWA Facilities [Hamas data-center under UNRWA HQ]
Elder of Ziyon-tweet-11February2024-Amazingly, no one in Gaza noticed!
Construction workers
Tilers
Electricians
Metalworkers
Plumbers
General contractors
Heavy digging machinery
Transportation workers
Truckers to bring in supplies and remove debris
Carpenters
Network engineers
Systems administrators
HVAC
Years of digging in and under crowded neighborhoods
Amazingly, no one in Gaza noticed!
Elder of Ziyon-tweet-11February2024-Amazingly no one in Gaza noticed
Dr. Eli David-tweet-11February2024-all cables go down beneath the floor to some unknown destination
Imagine you find lots of cables in your server room, connected to the main power supply, and all go down beneath the floor to some unknown destination.
What do you do? Nothing, according to head of @UNRWA. You simply “didn’t know” anything about the tunnel underneath 🤡
Dr. Eli David-tweet-11February2024-all cables go down beneath the floor to some unknown destination
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UNRWA staff linked to October 7th Massacre
Hillel Neuer-tweet-29January2024-1,200 UNRWA employees are Hamas or PIJ
BREAKING: The “few bad apples” line pushed by the UN has just been obliterated. The Wall Street Journal front page is reporting that an estimated 1,200 Unrwa employees in Gaza are actual “operatives” of Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and about half have close relatives who belong to the Islamist terrorist organizations, according to Israeli intelligence estimates shared with the U.S. government.
The report said 23% of Unrwa’s male employees—the agency has a total staff of 12,000 in Gaza—took active part in the Hamas organization’s military or political framework, a higher percentage than the average of 15% for adult males in Gaza.
The information in the Israeli intelligence reports is based on sensitive signals intelligence as well as cellphone tracking data, interrogations of captured Hamas gunmen and documents recovered from dead terrorists.
Nearly half of all Unrwa employees—an estimated 49%—also had close relatives with official ties to Hamas and other terrorist groups.
The Oct. 7 intelligence reports seen by the Wall Street Journal identified an Unrwa Arabic teacher who was also a Hamas terrorist commander and took part in a terrorist attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, where 97 people were murdered, and about 26 people were kidnapped and taken as hostages to Gaza.
Another Unrwa employee, described in the dossier as an Unrwa social worker, played a role in absconding with the body of a dead Israeli soldier, which was taken to Gaza, the reports said. He also coordinated trucks and munitions distributions for Hamas before being killed.
📍Full story by @cjkeller8 & @davidluhnow @WSJ: https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/at-least-12-u-n-agency-employees-involved-in-oct-7-attacks-intelligence-reports-say-a7de8f36
Hillel Neuer-tweet-29January2024-1,200 UNRWA employees are Hamas or PIJ
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How UNRWA Grooms Terrorists
by Bassam Tawil
26December2023 https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20258/unwra-grooms-terrorists
A still shot from the documentary film “Camp Jihad,” featuring a summer camp in Gaza sponsored and funded by UNRWA
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was originally a small agency mandated to provide basic humanitarian relief for Palestinians, including a vote for renewal every three years. Seventy-three years and four generations later, and with more than 30,000 employees and an annual budget of more than $1 billion, it has astonishingly become one of the largest UN agencies.
In the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, UNRWA has, in fact, long been operating as the de facto government. By providing the residents of the Gaza Strip with various services, UNRWA exempted Hamas from its responsibilities as the governing body, such as creating a working economy that would pay for education and healthcare, and allowed it, instead, to invest resources in building tunnels and manufacturing weapons. If UNRWA were not there, Hamas would have been forced to fill the vacuum and, for example, build hospitals and schools and find solutions to economic hardship, including unemployment and poverty.
As senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk said, in explaining why no cement could be spared from terror tunnels to build bomb shelters for Gazan citizens:
Hamas was effectively saying: We are responsible for what happens underground, while UNRWA is responsible for what happens above ground.
In addition to evolving into a monster-sized agency, UNRWA has also morphed into a very costly incubator for terror. UNRWA-run schools emphasize and promote the “right of return,” a euphemism for flooding Israel with millions of Palestinians and turning it into a Muslim-majority Islamist state backed by Iran.
More than 50% of UNRWA’s annual budget of $1.6 billion is dedicated to funding Palestinian schools. These schools have been fostering war-mongering hatred against Israel, and against Jews in general, from the youngest, most impressionable ages and onward throughout the school years, while predictably churning out their final product: terrorists and terrorist sympathizers.
“They [UNRWA] teach us that the Al-Aqsa Mosque belongs to us [Muslims], that Palestine belongs to us,” said Atif Sharha, a student at a UNRWA school in the Shuafat refugee camp, north of Jerusalem.
“I hate the Jews,” said Yousef, another student at a UNRWA school in Kalandia refugee camp, south of Ramallah.
“Yes, they teach us that the Zionists are our enemy,” said Nur Taha, a third student from Kalandia. “We should carry out an [terror] operation against them [Zionists].”
Marcus Sheff, Chief Executive Officer at The Institute for Cultural Peace and Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) studying these hate-policies, laments:
UNRWA then re-inserts many of these hate-infused people right back into its institutions, perpetuating what the UN is keen on blaming Israel for: “the cycle of violence.”
UNRWA schools have been the focus of media scrutiny on many occasions. UNRWA’s textbooks, compiled by the Palestinian Authority, have been blasted for showy, hate-provoking and terror-inciting material such as “a grammar exercise that encourages Palestinians to ‘sacrifice their blood to liberate Jerusalem.'”
Palestinian textbooks produced by UNRWA contain “antisemitic, hateful, and violent passages,” according to IMPACT-se. Some of these passages in an Islamic education drill include labeling Jews as inherently treacherous. A poem included in the educational content glorifies the killing of Israelis, and portrays dying as martyrs by killing Israelis as a “hobby.”
In a grammar exercise, Jews, it is implied, are impure and supposedly defile the Al-Aqsa Mosque. (They do not. The Jews peacefully tour the exterior grounds, called The Temple Mount, a plateau on which the Al Aqsa mosque now sits. The site is the third-holiest in Islam, but in Judaism the holiest. The plateau is where two Jewish Temples once stood, mentioned in the Bible, before they were destroyed — the first by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar in 586 BCE; the second by the Roman Empire in 70 CE).
Despite years of considerable condemnation of the textbooks, newly produced editions, approved by UNRWA, are exponentially worse.
According to the textbooks used in UNRWA schools, Jews have no rights whatsoever or any legitimate status in Israel. A Jewish presence in the country is denied historically, geographically and religiously. No reference is made in the books to the history of the Jews throughout the region, either in Biblical or Roman times. Any connection is also denied of the Jews to their ancient capital, Jerusalem, which is presented as an Arab city since its establishment thousands of years ago. The Jews’ presence in Jerusalem today is bewilderingly presented in the books as an aggression against the city’s Arab character.
Beyond the textbooks, both UNRWA administrators and teachers have proudly displayed their approval of terrorism and hatred on countless occasions, including Hamas’s recent October 7 massacre, according to a report published by UN Watch, an independent non-governmental human rights organization, as well as IMPACT-se.
UNRWA math teacher Adnan Shteiwi, for instance, glorified Diaa Hamarsheh, the perpetrator of the March 2022 Bnei Brak shooting attack — in which he murdered four Israeli civilians and one policeman — as a “martyr” whose name should “forever remain in letters of fire, might, and magnificence.”
UNRWA’s Asma Middle School for Girls B encouraged schoolgirls to ” liberate the homeland by sacrificing ‘their Blood’ and pursuing jihad.”
Roni Krivoi, one of the Israeli hostages recently freed from Hamas captivity, reported that he had been kept prisoner in an attic for more than a month and a half, mostly starved and medically untreated. His jailer was an UNRWA teacher.
In Gaza — as with Ahmad Kahalot, Director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, who admitted that he was the equivalent of a brigadier general for Hamas and that 16 of the hospital’s staff were also “terror operatives for Hamas” — the mesh of Hamas and UNRWA is also illustrated in the high-profile case of Dr. Suhail al-Hindi.
Al-Hindi served as both the principal of an UNRWA elementary school and as the chairman of the UNRWA employee’s union in Gaza. In 2017, UNRWA suspended al-Hindi after it received information that he had just been elected to the Hamas political bureau. UNRWA announced that al-Hindi no longer worked for the agency, but did not say whether he had resigned or been fired. Al-Hindi first said he “resigned” from UNRWA, but later clarified that he was taking early retirement.
The case of al-Hindi and other UNRWA employees suspected of supporting terrorism makes the point that UNRWA is “the money,” while thug terror-groups such as Hamas are “the muscle.”
UNRWA tries to keep up public pretense that its hands are clean, and has taken a belligerently defensive stance against these and other accusations, as it publicly claims that it has a “zero-tolerance policy for hatred.”
The Israeli news site Ynet , however, wrote recently about a UN Watch report:
One UNRWA employee portrayed Adolf Hitler in a favorable light: “Wake up Hitler, there are people left to burn.”
In addition, as is well-documented, UNRWA has allowed its school buildings to be used by Hamas as storehouses for rocket and other weapons, terror tunnels, and to shelter jihadi terrorists. Hamas and other terror organizations have bet on the media frenzy that would ensue if Israeli forces strike a UN institution (or hospital, mosque, or even a church) that is being used for military purposes. Hamas has been launching rockets at Israel from alongside UNRWA schools, and, when possible, shooting from inside the schools, thereby taking advantage of the sanctuary that a UN institution, especially a “protected space” such as a school, ought to offer under legitimate circumstances.
Last week saw the media explode in condemnation of the Israel Defense Forces for blowing up an UNRWA school, despite the disclosure that the school had been used as a weapons depot and terror tunnels were found in its area.
UNRWA kindergartens have been discovered with weapons hidden inside toys or even in UNRWA bags, and UN officials are charged with being complicit in holding hostages, despite protestations to the contrary. It seems that “zero tolerance” had devolved into “zero oversight.”
When rockets were discovered in UNRWA schools in the past, UNRWA would reassure everyone that they had been turned over to “local authorities.” Those authorities, of course, were Hamas, who most likely relocated them to another equally inappropriate location.
Occasionally, UNRWA officials will make a minor fuss or put on a shocked and affronted façade for donors or the media, but reportedly do nothing in the way of changing the practice. In the upper echelons of UNRWA management, there have been accusations of serious breaches of ethics in the forms of nepotism, bullying, mismanagement of funds — as well as lack of accountability.
This is no small matter, considering that in 2022, annual worldwide contributions to UNRWA alone — not including direct donations to Palestinian governing agencies such as Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, nor to the many NGOs and other Palestinian-specific aid agencies — from 68 donor nations, including the Holy See, was $1.1 billion.
Extensive reports released by UN Watch and IMPACT-se have highlighted the malignant influence of terror organizations such as Hamas, Fatah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad on UNRWA institutions that either feign ignorance or offer enthusiastic complicity. The repercussions of these revelations are becoming an embarrassment.
Switzerland’s Parliament recently voted to stop funding UNRWA ($21 million annually), labelled Hamas a terrorist organization and unanimously banned it. “Hamas’ brutal terrorist attacks against Israel necessitate a clear position from Switzerland,” they said.
In 2018, the Trump administration, calling UNRWA an “irredeemably flawed operation,” completely cut America’s $300 million annual donation. The aid was reinstated by President Joe Biden almost immediately after he took office.
Many have called the very inception of UNRWA into question, as the UN already has an agency specifically designated for refugees: the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
UNRWA remains a refugee organization distinctly apart from UNHCR based upon two premises: first, that the Palestinians will “return” to their homes in Israel by means of a the “right of return“; and second, that there will never be a resolution not to “return,” thereby making these refugees an eternal stick in the eye to Israel.
The first premise would effectively destroy Israel by imposing a demographic shift: flooding millions of Palestinians, demonstrably none too peace-oriented, into Israel.
The second premise would, and has been, effectively enslaving Palestinians as the crying faces that keep the international “pity-cash” flowing into the coffers of both Palestinian and UNRWA leadership.
Perhaps this may be at least one answer as to why, when UNRWA recently cried for more aid money for Palestinians, the organization was found to have an entire warehouse “filled to the brim” with food. When Gazans stormed the warehouse in October, they discovered copious amounts of rice, lentils, flour and oil.
Whatever hopes that anyone may have held for the trustworthiness of UNRWA have long expired, and were arguably misplaced at the outset. UNRWA, in its current state, has proven itself irremediably defective, unworkable and yet another massive stain on the already scandalously stained UN [such as here, here, here, here and here.] The agency has perpetuated the issue of the “refugees” by keeping them in camps while providing them with basic services, only.
Worse, UNRWA has deliberately created new generations of “refugees” by insisting that the descendants of refugees inherit the status of “refugee” – which on its face is nonsense. It is high time for the international community and those who actually want a better future for the Palestinians to liquidate UNRWA and take actions that truly help the Palestinians move forward to a golden life.
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UNRWA: Your child abuse must stop
Lilia Gaufberg, 5February 2024, https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/unrwa-your-child-abuse-must-stop/
As a former elementary school teacher and a human being, my heart breaks for the children of Gaza.
Picture a 5-year-old eagerly skipping to school, still navigating the intricacies of being in the world. In those formative years, curiosity knows no bounds, and imagination has no limits. Having witnessed this as an educator and experienced it as a child myself, I understand the permeable line between a young mind and the world it inhabits — a realm where everything appears possible. Drawings created, songs learned, and playtime activities all lay the groundwork for shaping one’s future self. A simple art class might spark dreams of becoming a sculptor, while an inspirational gym teacher fosters aspirations of winning the World Cup. Papier-mâché volcanoes explode with baking soda and vinegar, and a chemist is born.
Now, imagine you are a child in Gaza. You attend a school run by a UN agency, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), one of whose primary goals is to keep you, a child, in a perpetual state of victimhood by indoctrinating you into believing that you are, and will always be, a refugee, and that there is no way to escape from this identity. At school, you are taught that there’s an evil force — the Jews — out to destroy you and your people. Your textbooks in all subjects, from writing to math, are embedded with calls to maim and murder these nefarious Jews, and you are taught that if you don’t wage jihad against them, your life is rendered meaningless. You learn that heroes are people who blow themselves up on buses or massacre young adults at a music festival, rather than visionaries who cure diseases or write groundbreaking books. Dreams are maliciously stolen, and a singular path is laid out by teachers, leaving malleable minds with no choice but to succumb to the incitement. Oh, and there’s a good chance your teachers are Hamas members, too.
This is what the children of Gaza learn, day in and day out.
An excerpt from a textbook used in UNRWA schools (Our Beautiful Language, Vol. 2, Grade 1, 2023, p. 53). Source: IMPACT-se
source: chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/PA-Reports_-Selected-Examples_Update_Sept-2020.pdf
Evidence continues to mount of UNRWA staff’s involvement in the October 7th Hamas massacre, their assistance to Hamas in hiding Israeli hostages in Gaza, and the ties of thousands of UNRWA employees to terror groups. Dozens of countries around the world are freezing their aid to UNRWA in response, sparking outrage from some prominent voices, such as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. When I think about those children in Gaza, I say that any country who has not ceased financing UNRWA is complicit in child abuse. Anyone expressing horror at cuts to UNRWA funding by exclaiming something along the lines of, ‘b-b-but the children of Gaza!’ is actually perpetuating the abuse of the children of Gaza.
There is a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. That is a fact, and it is heartbreaking. We should all be concerned about it, and it must be effectively addressed. Let us be clear, however: it is a Hamas-perpetrated, UNRWA-upheld humanitarian crisis. The UN has mechanisms in place to effectively deal with humanitarian disasters. It is perfectly capable of bringing trucks of supplies into areas that need them and providing support for at-risk communities around the globe. I saw one example of this myself when I worked with South Sudanese refugees in Uganda: the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, was there, day in and day out, to assist people in need. There are alternatives to UNRWA, even within the confines of the UN itself. Calling to keep UNRWA in place because there is ‘no other solution’ is naïve and lazy at best and malicious at worst.
I have yet to have children of my own, but when I imagine my younger sisters and me growing up in an UNRWA school system instead of the American public school system, I feel sick. As kids, my sisters and I were instilled with the value of living meaningful lives and repairing the world. Who would we have become if we had attended UNRWA schools? I shudder at this chilling possibility; we would not be ourselves. If the children of Gaza are to have a real chance to dream, to play, to create, to evolve, and to think for themselves, two things must happen: Hamas must be eliminated, and UNRWA must be disbanded.
I dream of a real future for the children of Gaza, a future in which they can dream, too.
About the Author
I am an artist, writer, and content creator employed by the international and non-partisan Israel education organization StandWithUs. I grew up in Boston, MA and lived in Israel from 2017 to 2023, during which time I served in the Israel Defense Forces’ COGAT unit as a lone soldier. I recently returned to the United States, and I currently reside in New York. All ideas expressed on this blog are reflective of my personal opinions, perspectives, and experiences.
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UNRWA: Raising the next generation of Terrorists
Dr. Eli David-tweet-14November2023-UNRWA-Raising the next generation of Terrorists
Palestinian children talk about the education they get in @UNRWA 🇺🇳 schools.
It’s all about killing the Jews. “I want to stab them again and again”, “I want to become a suicide bomber”, etc.
Thanks @UN 🇺🇳 for raising the next generation of terrorists.
Dr. Eli David-tweet-14November2023-UNRWA-Raising the next generation of Terrorists
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The truth about UNRWA
By Ted Belman 25February2019 https://www.israpundit.org/trumps-war-against-unrwa-will-benefit-the-palestinian-refugees/
Not all refugees are the same.
The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), created in 1951, is dedicated to the resettlement of all refugees except the Palestinian refugees, who fall within the purview of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).
According to UNCHR, a refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her home because of persecution, war or violence and who crosses an international border.
UNRWA, on the other hand, defines a Palestinian refugee as “persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine during the period 1 June 1946 to 15 May 1948, and who lost both home and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 conflict, and their descendants.”
Unlike UNHCR, UNRWA does not seek to resettle its refugees, but rather is dedicated to preserving their status as “refugees”. In addition, it includes their descendants which UNCHR doesn’t. Finally, they need not have been “forced to flee”.
In August 2017, Pres Trump challenged UNRWA by rejecting UNRWA’s estimate of over 5 million refugees suggesting that the number was more like 500,000. In effect he was saying that a new definition should be operative. If he was to exclude descendants, there would be less that 20,000 people still living who fled in 1948
On Aug 31, 2018, The State Department announced that the US would make no further contribution to UNRWA. Therefore the pressure will build to find an alternate solution.
In 1920, the British Government’s Interim Report on the Civil Administration of Palestine stated that there were hardly 700,000 people living in Palestine. By 1948, the population had risen to 1,900,000, of whom 68% were Arabs, and 32% were Jews (UNSCOP report, including Bedouin).
This population growth took place under the Palestine Mandate pursuant to which, Great Britain was responsible to “facilitate Jewish immigration” in line with the “establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.
Rather than doing so, she hindered it, while at the same time, she encouraged Arab immigration. She went so far as to prevent Jewish immigration, even during the Holocaust, when it was desperately needed.
The end result was that the Jews in Israel in 1948, were millions fewer in number than would otherwise have been the case and the Arabs were far greater in number than they should have been.
This great injustice to the Jews must be born in mind when crafting the Deal of the Century.
The vast majority of the Arab inhabitants of Mandatory Palestine in 1948 were economic migrants who entered Palestine illegally right up until the War of Independence in 1948.
The vast majority of Arabs who fled Israel or remained West of the Jordan River were illegal migrants and their children.
Joan Peters, after considerable research, made this case in her opus, From Time Immemorial.
Daniel Pipes, in his 1984 review of her book, wrote “In the course of research on this subject, she came across a “seemingly casual” discrepancy between the standard definition of a refugee and the definition used for the Palestinian Arabs. In other cases, a refugee is someone forced to leave a permanent or habitual home. In this case, however, it is someone who had lived in Palestine for just two years before the flight that began in 1948.”
Had the standard definition been used, there would have been few refugees to deal with. Furthermore, by rejecting the standard definition, the Arabs who didn’t flee, who are registered as refugees under UNRWA, now number 2 million west of the Jordan River and 1.3 million in Gaza.
In 1948, though living in Palestine, they considered their home of origin to be Syria, in the main, but including Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.
Not only were their numbers greatly inflated due to this new definition, but the Arab League prevented their naturalization in the countries they fled to, including their true countries of origin. Furthermore, the Arabs living outside of Israel as defined by the 1949 ceasefire line, yet still within the Mandatory lands, were also prevented from being naturalized. This applies to Jordan also where there are currently 2 million registered Palestinian “refugees”.
Pipes concludes his review by stating “Thus, the “Palestinian problem” lacks firm grounding. Many of those who now consider themselves Palestinian refugees were either immigrants themselves before 1948 or the children of immigrants. This historical fact reduces their claim to the land of Israel; it also reinforces the point that the real problem in the Middle East has little to do with Palestinian-Arab rights.”
It is now 34 years after Pipes wrote his review. Like it or not, these Palestinian Arabs have put down roots making it more problematic to dispossess them. But one thing must be kept in mind. The reason that they consider themselves to be refugees is because they all claim the right of return to Israel as currently delineated. The corollary to this is that they do not claim the right to stay where they are. They can’t have it both ways.
Since Israel will not permit them to return, whether to Israel as it now stands or to Israel when its eastern boundary is extended to the Jordan River, the best option open to them is to relocate them in Jordan. Because Jordan was part of Mandatory Palestine, to which they originally migrated, these people should be considered as internally displaced persons (IDP) who fled their residences but never crossed an international border.
King Abdullah is dead set against this but his days as king are numbered. When Mudar Zahran, the Secretary General of the Jordanian Opposition Coalition, becomes the leader of Jordan in the not too distant future, he will invite all these Palestinians to relocate in Jordan where they will be naturalized along with the 2 million “refugees” already there. In addition, over 75% of Jordan’s population of 9.7 million are Palestinian.
According to Zahran, they will be provided with housing, jobs and social security.
In my article International Law and the State of Israel, I discuss the issue of population transfer and its legitimacy.
“After WWII and the crushing defeat of Germany and its allies, the victors changed borders and moved populations. It was their right.
Der Spiegel reported;
“But the people fleeing the Red Army were unaware that the Allies had already agreed with the Polish government-in-exile to hand over large parts of eastern Germany to Poland and resettle the Germans who were living there.
“All those who didn’t manage to escape in time fell victim to the frenzied expulsions that were carried out until July 1945. The organized resettlement of Germans and ethnic Germans from Germany’s former eastern areas and the Sudetenland began in January 1946. In all, some 14 million Germans lost their homes.”
“These expulsions were often done in a brutal manner and were carried out as part of a broader program of nation-building pursued by the new communist government between 1945 and 1949. “The centre-piece of this programme was an attempt to achieve the ethnic homogenization of the state, to ensure as close a match as possible between its ethnic and political borders.”
At no time did the allies object to this “ethnic homogenization”.
The flight of the Arabs from the Palestine Mandate and Israel, whether voluntary or forced, must be viewed in this context. It happened at the same time. The hypocrisy of the West is glaring. In post war Europe, they insisted on the ethnic cleansing as the path to stabilization and peace whereas in the case of the “Palestinian refugees”, the UNGA passed Res 194 in Dec 11/48 even before the war was over in which they recommended that the “Refugees” should be permitted to return. Fortunately for Israel, a recommendation has no binding affect and can be ignored.
President Trump, in configuring his Deal of the Century, should embrace the idea of ethnic homogenization as fundamental to establishing peace and assist in the relocation of as many Arabs as possible to Jordan which will be considered the Palestinian State. There can be no objection to him doing so because of Zahran’s intention to provide them with housing, jobs and social security. Besides, no one is suggesting that they should be forcibly expelled. Instead they should be induced to relocate or emigrate of their own free will. It will be for their benefit.
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The UNRWA Constellation: Partnerships with UN Agencies and Terror-Linked NGOs
31January2024 https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/unrwa-constellation-partnerships-with-un-agencies-and-terror-linked-ngos/
Introduction
The mandate of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), while highly controversial, is widely perceived as relating to humanitarian and educational objectives. UNRWA’s website lists “primary and vocational education, primary health care, relief and social services, infrastructure and camp improvement, microfinance and emergency response.”
However, beyond its core role in fueling the conflict for the past 74 years, as well as severe problems with terror links, antisemitism (discussed briefly below) and corruption, UNRWA also engages in extensive politicized anti-Israel “advocacy work in response to the needs of Palestine refugees affected by the Israeli occupation,” such as “in-person protection briefings to external partners including the donor and diplomatic community.” This activity often involves partnerships with international and local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), as well as other UN agencies.
In this regard, UNRWA is part of the UN-NGO network dedicated to campaigns to demonize and delegitimize Israel, in contrast to humanitarian principles and promoting peace. Post-October 7, this entire system must be reviewed and reconsidered.
Moreover, UNRWA’s failure to engage in due diligence and to safeguard its aid from diversion by Hamas, as well as its intense involvement in political advocacy, demand a comprehensive independent audit and reform process. If the UN is unable to take these steps, donors should pull their funding.
Background: Funding
The United States is the single largest donor to UNRWA, having pledged $344 million in 2022 (29% of all commitments). Major funders also include Germany ($202M), the EU ($114M), and Sweden ($61M).
Background: UNRWA’s Terror-links
UNWRA, as part of the UN system, does not consider Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) to be terror groups. As such, it does not hesitate to partner with these groups, which are proscribed by UNRWA’s main donors. Nor does it screen employees for ties to Hamas et al, which is particularly concerning as, according to UNRWA’s 2022 Annual Report, 99.77% of staff in Gaza and the West Bank – 15,589 out of 15,624 – were local Palestinians.
Hamas’ and other terror groups’ exploitation of UNRWA and its facilities is well documented:
Since October 7, these phenomena have been confirmed:
Advocacy through UN-OCHA “Clusters”
A primary channel for UNRWA’s cooperation with NGOs and other UN agencies is through the UN’s OCHA-oPt branch. The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the “humanitarian arm of the United Nations Secretariat,” is tasked with coordinating “the global emergency response…in humanitarian crises.” OCHA-oPt acknowledges that its involvement in intense political warfare against Israel – as documented by NGO Monitor – is “unique as compared to other OCHA country offices globally.” While other OCHA missions in conflict identify critical humanitarian interventions such as “saving lives” as the top priority, OCHA-oPt’s Strategic Objective 1 is “The rights of Palestinians living under occupation, including those living under the blockade and other restrictions, are protected, respected and promoted … while duty-bearers are increasingly held to account” (emphasis added).
OCHA-oPt activities are implemented through Clusters – “groups of humanitarian UN and non-UN organizations [i.e. NGOs] in each of the main sectors of humanitarian action.” These “clusters” focus on issues such as food security, health and nutrition, education, sanitation, and protection.
UNRWA is an implementing partner in all OCHA-oPt clusters (see UN document from 2021) and participates in their political advocacy. For instance, according to OCHA-oPt’s 2023 Humanitarian Response Plan, “In 2023 UNRWA will seek to address the acute needs of the Palestine refugees [in the West Bank]… [by] monitoring and documentation of protection incidents to advocate…including persuasion, mobilization and denunciation – targeting duty bearers as well as international and national interlocutors.” In other words, UNRWA will level accusations of “war crimes” and “violations of human rights,” and seek condemnations of Israel from international bodies and various governments.
Lawfare and partnerships with terror-linked NGOs
UNRWA activities under the heading of “Monitoring and documentation” and “targeting external actors and duty bearers” are central to the NGO-led “lawfare” campaign against Israel.
UNRWA partners with the main NGOs behind anti-Israel lawfare, Al-Haq, Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), and Al Mezan. For instance, UNRWA was listed as an implementing partner on their joint project titled “Advocacy, monitoring and documentation of HR and IHL violations and related trends (with focus on grave violations against children across the oPt; IHL violations in Gaza; and settler violence and excessive use of force in the West Bank).”
The three NGOs have ties to the PFLP terror group:
Al-Haq
Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)
Al Mezan
Two of the other implementing partners, Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCIP) and Addameer, also have established links to the PFLP. See NGO Monitor reports, “Defense for Children International – Palestine’s Ties to the PFLP Terror Group” and “Addameer’s Ties to the PFLP Terrorist Group,” for more details.1
Islamic Relief Worldwide
According to UNRWA, “Partnering with Islamic Relief’s chapter in the US has opened opportunities for UNRWA to engage with Islamic Relief chapters in the UK and France, and with the umbrella organization Islamic Relief Worldwide.”
Footnotes
Reflecting a lack of transparency, perhaps in response to NGO Monitor research, UNICEF no longer publishes a list of its NGO and UN partners. As of September 2017, members of the UNICEF “Working Group” were: UNRWA, Defense for Children International – Palestine (DCI-P), Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan, B’Tselem, Terre Des Homme – Suisse, Save the Children, War Child Holland, World Vision, OCHA, UNESCO, UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS), and WHO.
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Gaza resident tells IDF: Hamas has control of UNRWA in Gaza
Civilian in Gaza tells soldier Hamas has control over the humanitarian aid which is brought into the Gaza Strip.
Gary Willig / 26December2023 / http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382584
A resident of the Gaza Strip told the IDF that the Hamas terrorist organization directly controls the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), the New York Post reported.<
In a recording obtained by the Post, the man stated that “the situation is terrible because the humanitarian people, those responsible for the humanitarian aid, are thieves.”
He further stated that “Hamas has their hands on UNRWA administration workers, and it manages UNRWA” and that Hamas ensures its own operatives receive any aid first before it is distributed to the civilians of Gaza as intended.
The IDF stated that the conversation was recorded when an IDF officer was delivering warnings to civilians in Gaza where they should evacuate in order to escape the fighting between Israel and Hamas and where to go to receive humanitarian aid.
UNRWA has long been criticized for its cooperation with Hamas, antisemitic incitement, and employment of Hamas terrorists.
It has been revealed that a teacher employed by UNRWA held one of the hostages kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7 massacre in an attic for 50 days without proper food or medical care.
Yesterday (Monday), the IDF reported that dozens of explosive devices were found inside UNRWA bags during operational activity in the area of the “Al Rafaa” and “Zavaha” schools in Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip. This is not the first time Hamas weapons and explosives have been found inside UNRWA bags.
Earlier this month, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “UNRWA is part of the problem – not part of the solution. The organization educates to incitement to terror, and ignores Hamas’ cynical use of Gaza residents as human shields.”
Last week, Israeli President Isaac Herzog accused the United Nations of failing to facilitate the transfer of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip, saying that three times as much aid could have entered the enclave if the UN had done its job properly.
“Unfortunately, due to the utter failure of the UN in its work with other partners in the region, they have been unable to bring in more than 125 trucks a day,” Herzog told French Senate President Gérard Larcher.
“Today it is possible to provide three times the amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza if the UN — instead of complaining all day — would do its job,” he said.
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UNRWA-Hamas isn’t stockpiling fuel
HonestReporting-tweet-28October2023-Isn’t it amazing that @UNRWA’s commissioner-general seems to be under the impression that Hamas isn’t stockpiling fuel?
What are they firing rockets with? Willpower?
HonestReporting-tweet-28October2023-Isn’t-it-amazing-that-@UNRWA’s-commissioner-general
Wall Street Silver-tweet-3December2023-Heaven has strict immigration Laws Hell has open borders
This is how it also works for countries and quality of life.
Heaven has strict immigration Laws Hell has open borders
Wall Street Silver-tweet-3December2023-Heaven has strict immigration Laws Hell has open borders
Heaven has strict immigration Laws Hell has open borders
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Gaza: As Defenses Collapse And Men Surrender, Hamas Reportedly Turning To Female Terrorists For Help
IDF uncovers sniper rifle and ammo stuffed inside teddy bear in Gaza school.
Posted by Vijeta Uniyal, 9December2023 https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/12/gaza-as-defenses-collapse-and-men-surrender-hamas-reportedly-turning-to-female-terrorists-for-help/
Israeli ground forces encircle the terrorist bastion of Khan Younis
With Israeli military tightening the noose around terrorist strongholds across Gaza, the Hamas leadership is pressing female terrorists into service, the Israeli media reports citing IDF sources.
As Israeli ground forces encircle the terrorist bastion of Khan Younis, where Hamas’s Gaza chief and the planner of the October 7 massacre Yahya Sinwar is believed to be hiding, the Islamic terror group is sending women jihadists into harms way.
“In the past 24 hours, the elite IDF 98th Brigade has encountered multiple terrorists in Khan Younis, including the first time in which female terrorists were used in battle,” the Israeli news website Ynet reported Friday evening. “The females are reportedly taking on roles as observers, closely monitoring the movements of the brigade’s forces, and, according to suspicions, may also be carrying explosive devices.”
The news comes as Hamas terror fighters are surrendering to the IDF in large numbers, instead of dying in jihad in the hope of ‘heavenly’ rewards.
Yishai Fleisher-tweet-7December2023-Mass surrender and arrest of #Hamas terrorists in southern Gaza
Mass surrender and arrest of #Hamas terrorists in southern #Gaza
Yishai Fleisher-tweet-7December2023-Mass surrender and arrest of #Hamas terrorists in southern Gaza
Hamas terrorists continue to use Gaza civilians as human shields, firing at Israeli troops from well dug-in positions insides schools, hospitals and residential buildings. On Saturday, terrorists attacked IDF soldiers from a United Nations-run school.
“Israeli forces fought a string of battles with Hamas terrorists in northern Gaza on Saturday as they pressed ahead with the ground offensive, with troops being attacked in at least two instances from within schools, the military said,” the Times of Israel reported. “At least two of the clashes took place inside a mosque and schools, including one run by the United Nations.”
Yoseph Haddad-tweet-9December2023-Hamas terrorists beat Gazian and take humanitarian aid from them
This documentation proves how Hamas terrorists beat the residents of Gaza and forcibly take humanitarian aid from them!
This proves only who Hamas terrorists are and that the aid entering Gaza mostly ends up in the hands of Hamas!
Yoseph Haddad-tweet-9December2023-Hamas terrorists beat Gazian and take humanitarian aid from them
IDF uncovers sniper rifle and ammo stuffed inside teddy bear in Gaza school
During the subsequent search inside the school, the IDF uncovered a weapons cache hidden inside a large teddy bear. “A teddy bear stuffed with sniper rifles and ammunition, along with various weaponry, was found in schools in Gaza,” the military disclosed Saturday.
Israel Defense Forces-tweet-9December2023-Hamas hid sniper rifles and ammunition inside a teddy bear
Israelis placed teddy bears to remind the world of the 137 hostages still held by terrorists in Gaza.
Hamas hid sniper rifles and ammunition inside a teddy bear.
Can you see the difference between the two?
Israel Defense Forces-tweet-9December2023-Hamas hid sniper rifles and ammunition inside a teddy bear
The IDF reported the last bust inside a Gaza school:
Dr. Eli David-tweet-9December2023-Hamas terrorists firing from within an UNRWA School
🚨 Breaking: Footage of Hamas terrorists firing from within an @UNRWA
🇺🇳 school in Gaza 👇
Yesterday @antonioguterres said 130 UN staff have been killed in Gaza.
Now you know why and how…
Dr. Eli David-tweet-9December2023-Hamas terrorists firing from within an UNRWA School
Defense minister Gallant: Hamas-rule beginning to ‘crumble’ in Gaza
The Israeli military struck further terrorist targets, including Hamas commanders, terror tunnels and weapons depots, spread across Gaza. “IDF operational activity in the Gaza Strip continues. IAF fighter jets struck terror targets and terrorists as ground troops continued combat in different locations,” the military revealed Saturday morning.
Amid recent IDF successes on the ground, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant assured that Hamas-rule is beginning to ‘crumble’ in Gaza.
The i24NEWS reported:
Report: Biden WH gives Israel ‘until the end of the year’ to wrap up Gaza op
Meanwhile, the Biden White House is reportedly ramping up to pressure on Israel to ‘wrap up’ the military operation against Hamas. According to the latest news reports, the Biden administration has given Israel little over three weeks to end its counter-terrorism operation in Gaza.
“Biden admin has given Israel ‘until the end of the year’ to wrap up Gaza operation,” the newspaper Israel Hayom reported Saturday. “Israeli officials cited as saying the deadline was relayed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit to Israel last week.”
Hamas militants encounter Israeli troops in Gaza school
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Palestinians deserve to starve according to Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzouk
Tamer Masudin-tweet-25December2023-Palestinians deserve to starve according to Hamas
Palestinians deserve to starve according to #Hamas leader Musa Abu Marzouk.
“The aid that comes to Gaza must be distributed to the resistance fighters, and what remains is done Distribute it to the people. The attempt of some citizens to seize aid, as happened today in Rafah, will be fought with all force, and the people must offer what is expensive and what is cheap for the sake of the resistance, not steal the food of the resistance.”
According to #Hamas if you are a hungry #Palestinian, you deserve to be shot.
Tamer Masudin-tweet-25December2023-Palestinians deserve to starve according to Hamas
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Hamas stealing UNRWA humanitarian aid
Adam Albilya-tweet-13December2023-Hamas stealing UNRWA humanitarian aid
Well, nothing new to see here—just Hamas’ freedom rapists violently stealing the humanitarian aid from their civilian all over again.
Breaching the understanding they signed off to when they still acted like they’re just worried, caring, and need it for nothing but their people.
Adam Albilya-tweet-13December2023-Hamas stealing UNRWA humanitarian aid
Hamas Steals Humanitarian Aid
Oli London-tweet-17December2023-Hamas Steals Humanitarian Aid
Hamas terrorists have hijacked yet another humanitarian aid convoy after it crossed over the Rafah border from Egypt.
Oli London-tweet-17December2023-Hamas Steals Humanitarian Aid
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Video of UNRWA Camps Showing Children Calling for Jihad Attracts Renewed Attention
by Deborah Danan 9August2014 https://www.algemeiner.com/2014/08/09/video-of-unrwa-camps-showing-children-calling-for-jihad-attracts-renewed-attention/
Camp Jihad from המרכז לחקר מדיניות המזה”ת CFNEPR on Vimeo.
A video of summer camps run by UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, is making the rounds on pro-Israel social media networks again with footage that shows Palestinian children as young as 6 calling for “Jihad against the Jews.”
“The resistance in Gaza is not enough,” says one camper in UNRWA’s school in Balata. “We need to unite and fight together.”
The Lawfare Project, which promoted the video, that was produced by the Center for Near East Policy Research, headed by David Bedein, makes the claim that US and Europe-sponsored UNWRA is abusing children with brainwashing methods that include games aimed at teaching the values of war and the Arab “right of return” to Israeli cities. It portrays children writing names on kites of the Israeli cities that they will one day recapture as theirs.
Children are taught to chant mantras such as “Palestine is an Arab land from the river to the sea. We want Haifa, we want Natanya.” Camp counselors tell stories of how their grandparents lived in places like Jaffa and Jerusalem and the many cars, palaces, villas and ships they owned before the “wolf” came. “Isn’t it true that Jews are the wolf?” asks one counselor.
“I dream that I will return to Sheikh Munis [Tel Aviv],” says one child, roughly 10-years-old. “I hope Abu Mazen will achieve this goal and will not disappoint, he has built great hopes.”
Another adds, “The right of return is our holy right. If not me than my grandchildren [will return].”
The songs that are sung include inciteful lyrics which range from tamer verses like “I will not forget my promise to take back my land” and “collect stones, throw them at Israelis” to the more radical such as “we are the revolutionaries and we are filled with rage”, “when we die as martyrs we go to heaven” and “with God’s help we will wage war.”
Another child who appears to be about 7-years-old is asked who the Jews are. “They are a gang of infidels and Christians,” she says. “I will defeat them.”
An older teenager is filmed as saying, “Attacking stage by stage is not the answer. We need to attack all at once.” He continues by saying “There will never be peace between us and Israel.”
In one instance, an older child explains one of the differences between UNRWA schools and regular schools within the PA. “UNRWA schools teach us about the Naqba,” she says. “Government schools also but the course load is less than our schools. They teach us a lot about the right of return, how life was before 1948.”
The video explains how funding for UNRWA comes from 20 donor nations, with most of the money coming from the US, Canada, and Britain. UNRWA schools hold summer camps on their premises every year in Gaza, Jerusalem, Nablus and Jenin.
UNRWA services 5 million descendants of Palestinian refugees from 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
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Report: Teachers at UNRWA-run schools celebrated Hamas massacres
6November2023 https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/report-teachers-at-unrwa-run-schools-celebrated-hamas-massacres/
Teachers at schools run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees have celebrated Hamas’s October 7 massacre of Israeli civilians, according to a new report.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), says it found at least 14 cases of teachers at UNRWA schools who lauded Hamas’s atrocities and other attacks by the terror group.
It also notes that an UNRWA-run school posted to its official Facebook page an event celebrating Hamas and its “jihad warriors” at the school.
It says textbooks used at UNRWA schools celebrate Hamas as “heroes” of jihad.
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IDF reveals: Proof Gazan teachers worked for Hamas
In letters addressed to the head of the Gaza Education Directorate, the terror organization requests to make it easier for teachers to devote themselves to their work with the terror organization.
Israel National News 18January2024 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383821
IDF Arabic Language Spokesman Lt. Col. Avichay Adraee on Thursday revealed documents that indicate that teachers in the Gaza Strip worked in the ranks of the Hamas military complex.
In letters, which were apparently addressed to the head of the Gaza Education Directorate, Dr. Mohammad Hamdan, Hamas asks the Education Directorate to make it easier for teachers to devote themselves to their work with the terror organization.
The official letters were located during IDF operational activity in the Gaza Strip.
In the first letter, Hamas asks the Gazan Education Directorate to relieve the teachers from their educational requirements so they can work full-time for the organization. In the second letter, Hamas demands that an easy schedule be made for the teachers due to their work in the military arm.
Other letters ask to exempt the teachers from adhering to the teaching schedule so they can train with the organization. The letter notes that the “schedule is not flexible.”
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IDF: Troops in Gaza finding caches of Hamas weapons in schools, mosques and homes
By EMANUEL FABIAN 13November2023, https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/idf-troops-in-gaza-finding-caches-of-hamas-weapons-in-schools-mosques-and-homes/
This handout photo released by the Israel Defense Forces on November 13, 2023, shows Israeli ground forces in the Gaza Strip amid the war against Hamas. (Israel Defense Forces)
The Israel Defense Forces says ground troops continue to find Hamas weaponry and infrastructure during raids in the Gaza Strip, including inside schools, mosques, and the homes of terror operatives.
Troops of the 401st Brigade operating on the outskirts of the al-Shati camp located Hamas infrastructure in Al-Quds University, and a cache of explosives inside the Abu Bakr mosque, the IDF says.
It says that troops seized dozens of weapons, military equipment, and Hamas battle plans.
Troops of the 551st Reserve Brigade meanwhile raided the home of a senior Palestinian Islamic Jihad operative in the Beit Hanoun area, and found a weapons cache, including some in a child’s bedroom.
In another raid in Beit Hanoun, troops found a tunnel shaft, intelligence materials, and weapons, the IDF adds.
idfonline-tweet-13November2023-401st brigade’s combat team
לוחמי צוות הקרב של חטיבה 401, ממשיכים בביצוע פשיטות בפאתי מחנה ‘שאטי’ תוך מיקוד בתשתיות טרור הממוקמות במוסדות שלטוניים מרכזיים בלב אוכלוסייה אזרחית ובהם- בתי ספר, אוניברסיטאות, מסגדים ובתי פעילים >>
Translated from Hebrew by
The fighters of the 401st brigade’s combat team continue to carry out raids on the outskirts of the ‘Shatti’ camp while targeting terrorist infrastructures located in central government institutions in the heart of a civilian population, including schools, universities, mosques and activist homes >>
idfonline-tweet-13November2023-401st brigade’s combat team
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Explosives found in UNRWA bags, terrorists hiding in schools
Nahal Brigade troops battle Hamas, Islamic Jihad terrorists hiding in schools in northern Gaza, dozens of explosives found in UNRWA bags.
Israel National News / 25December2023 /https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/382526
After receiving information regarding Hamas terrorists hiding inside schools, IDF soldiers of the Nahal Brigade in the 162nd Division conducted operational activity in the area of the “Al Rafaa” and “Zavaha” schools in Tuffah in the northern Gaza Strip.
During the encounter with the terrorists and their elimination, the soldiers located dozens of explosive devices in UNRWA bags, Kalashnikovs and 15 explosive belts. In one of Hamas’ attempts to attack the soldiers, a terrorist fired an anti-tank missile at IDF soldiers. Immediately afterward, the terrorist was eliminated by a precise strike from a tank.
Many terrorists who hid inside the schools were identified as operatives of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad and were brought in for questioning. Some of the terrorists that were brought in for questioning took part in the October 7th massacre.
“This is further evidence of Hamas’ use of the civilian population and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip as human shields for its terrorist activity,” the IDF stated.
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The UN has officially become Hamas’ accomplice
Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-2December2023-UN has officially become Hamas’ accomplice
The UN has officially become Hamas’ accomplice‼️
Our soldiers have irrefutably exposed how UNRWA aid – aid that is meant to benefit Gazan civilians – is exploited by Hamas to conceal missiles and rockets used to murder Israeli civilians.
I showcased Hamas’ cynical use of the UN’s aid, at the UN and to UN officials. The UN’s indifference to terrorists exploiting UN resources makes the UN a direct accomplice in terror!
Watch and retweet to spread the truth>>
Ambassador Gilad Erdan-tweet-2December2023-UN has officially become Hamas’ accomplice
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UNRWA-FAFO
Adam Albilya-tweet-1December2023-UNRWA-FAFO
Israel in Clear Statement: “Every resident of Gaza who held hostages — is a terrorist marked for elimination”
First publication: Following the exposure of News 13 last night regarding a teacher at UNRA and a doctor who held hostages in their home – today it was reported that the IDF is threatening those kidnapping terrorists: “Every person who held any of the hostages is a deadly terrorist.”
The meaning of this is that the IDF will not separate between “active” Hamas terrorists and ” mostly peaceful civilians” who held the hostages like Jew slaves. Whether they thought they were only “guarding” them or held them in exchange for making money:
Around they fucked — find out THEY WILL. [EDD: Proper Translation: THEY FUCKED AROUND – THEY WILL FIND OUT]
UNRWA-tweet-1December2023-UNRWA
🛑 Spreading unsubstantiated claims about @UNRWA
must stop immediately.
Making serious allegations in the public domain, unsupported by any evidence or verifiable facts in support thereof may amount to misinformation.
FULL Statement ⬇️
https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/official-statements/spreading-unsubstantiated-claims-about-unrwa-must-immediately-stop
Claims against UNRWA have been documented for a long time.
The headmaster of an UNRWA school was a terrorist.
https://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSL05686115/
Film by David Bedein in Jenin, UNRWA policies and practices
https://vimeo.com/856467890
UNRWA teachers celebrated Oct 7 massacre
https://unwatch.org/report-u-n-teachers-celebrated-hamas-massacre/
UNRWA teacher holds hostage in attic
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/united-nations-gaza-teacher-israeli-hostage-attic
Adam Albilya-tweet-1December2023-UNRWA-FAFO
Hillel Neuer-tweet-2December2023-UNRWA’s tweet complaining
UNRWA’s tweet complaining about “unsubstantiated claims about UNRWA” just got Community Noted with lots of substantiated claims.
Hillel Neuer-tweet-2December2023-UNRWA’s tweet complaining
UNRWA funding has fallen from $1.17 billion to just $254 million.
Visegrád 24-tweet-4February2024-UNRWA funding has fallen
UNRWA funding has fallen from $1.17 billion to just $254 million.
Visegrád 24-tweet-4February2024-UNRWA funding has fallen from $1.17 billion to just $254 million.
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UN staff and UNRWA School director among the Hamas Terrorists who surrendered today
miha schwartzenberg-tweet-7December2023-UN-UNRWA staff are Hamas Terrorists surrendered
🚨❗️
A @UN staff and a @UNRWA School director, among the #HamasTerrorists who surrendered today.
Don’t take my word for it, the info is from Palestinian accounts, who thought…it’s a good idea to tell us all:).
These terrorists are from Shejaiya Battalion, responsible for heavy attacks on Israel.
miha schwartzenbergs-tweet-7December2023-UN-UNRWA staff are Hamas Terrorists surrendered
Palestinian source:
Ramy Abdu-tweet-7December2023-Among those taken today in Beit Lahia
Among those taken hostage today in Beit Lahia are:
-Khalil Hashem Al-Kahlot, 65,
– Rafiq Ahmad Al-Kahlot, 60,
– Muhammad Ismail Al-Kahlot, 57
– Darwish Gharbawy, @unrwa
School director, 48
– Ahmed Akram Lubad, 56, @UN
staff
In addition to the children
-Muhammad Hamza Al-Kahlot, 15 years old.
– Youssef Khaled Lubad, 15 years old
@EuroMedHR
Ramy Abdus-tweet-7December2023-Among those taken today in Beit Lahia
Adam Albilya-tweet-10December2023-Terrorists are a bunch of cowards
Terrorists are no longer what they used to be…
Oh, wait, they actually are what they’ve always been: a bunch of cowards who are only brave against kids and elderly.
Their ongoing investigation reveals that the most commonly used excuse for surrender is cited as “loss of communication with the leadership.”
Adam Albilya-tweet-10December2023-Terrorists are a bunch of cowards
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From the 2014 Gaza War
The Price of Hamas’ Underground Terror Network
26July2014 https://www.idf.il/en/articles/hamas/the-price-of-hamas-underground-terror-network/
Hamas could be investing in the people of Gaza. Instead it invests in terrorism.
Construction materials meant for Palestinians routinely enter Gaza from Israel. To be exact, 4,680 trucks carrying 181 thousand tons of gravel, iron, cement, wood and other supplies have passed through the Kerem Shalom crossing since the beginning of 2014.
Imagine what Hamas could build with these resources instead of tunnels. Hundreds of homes and civilian structures for the residents of Gaza go unbuilt while the underground terror network continues to expand.
The price of Hamas underground terror network
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UN and Hamas: Partners in Crime
by Robert Williams
4December2023 https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20192/united-nations-hamas
When a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad exploded outside Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital, Hamas claimed within minutes that Israel had bombed the hospital and falsely asserted that hundreds of people had been killed there. The United Nations rushed to blame Israel, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres used his speech at the Belt and Road Summit in China to condemn Israel for the explosion. Pictured: The parking lot of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza on October 18, 2023 after a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad landed there. (Photo by Shadi Al-Tabatibi/AFP via Getty Images)
Since October 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and massacred at least 1,200 and kidnapped another 240 Israelis and people of other nationalities, the United Nations has been acting as the unofficial propaganda arm of the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist organization.
The propaganda campaign’s main aim – besides smearing Israel – appears to be to build overwhelming international pressure on Israel to agree to an indefinite ceasefire , which will give Hamas the needed time to regroup and replenish to continue its terrorist activities and to avoid being eliminated by the Israeli Defense Forces.
To understand how the UN effectively runs the Hamas propaganda war, it is important to know that the UN, through its agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is effectively embedded with Hamas in the Gaza Strip: it can be difficult to make any meaningful distinction between the two organizations. On October 7, in fact, as the Hamas massacre of civilians in Israel unfolded, UNRWA employees in Gaza celebrated. UN Watch wrote in a report last month:
According to Associated Press:
The UN, through UNRWA in Gaza, likely knows everything that happens there, including the terrorist infrastructure of the underground Hamas tunnels and their use of hospitals and ambulances. Yet throughout this war, the UN has done nothing but feign “horror and shock” at Israel’s necessary measures against Hamas terrorists embedded within civilian society in Gaza. As the executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, pointed out:
On October 24, UN Secretary-General António Guterres stooped to a new low when pushing a typical Hamas narrative of grievances. He said that the October 7 attacks “did not happen in a vacuum,” thereby seemingly justifying the terrorist attacks. Meanwhile, the UN has not bothered in the least to address in concrete and horrifying detail what happened during the October 7 massacre – the mass rapes, the horrific torture, the ruthless murders and the kidnappings.
This silence on what happened on October 7 is, sadly, in keeping with the UN’s demonization of Israel around the clock. The UN invokes international humanitarian law – which Hamas, not Israel, is breaking by building military installations in protected civilian spaces (which, when used for military purposes become unprotected) and using civilians as human shields. Meanwhile, the UN never calls for Hamas to stop using its civilians as human shields to protect its weapons and show dead babies to the television cameras – to imply that their deaths were Israel’s fault.
Why are Gazan civilians not allowed to take shelter from aerial bombardments in Hamas’s 300 km of underground tunnels? Why did the Israel Defense Forces have to protect the Gazans fleeing south for their lives — as Israel had cautioned them to — while Hamas tried at gunpoint to prevent them from leaving?
Everything that the UN says and does regarding to Israel’s military operations in Gaza turns Hamas’s war crimes on their head — to try to blame them on Israel. Meanwhile, the UN parrots as fact whatever outlandish claims Hamas produces, including Gazan casualty numbers, which oddly never include any mention of Hamas terrorists, but mostly women and children.
When Hamas claimed on October 17 that Israel had bombed Gaza’s Al-Ahli hospital, falsely asserting that hundreds of people had been killed, the UN rushed to blame Israel. Guterres used his speech at the Belt and Road Summit in China to condemn Israel for the explosion outside the hospital and to call for an immediate ceasefire, while Dennis Francis, president of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly announced that he was “shocked and horrified.”
On October 18, Israel published evidence showing that the strike on the hospital compound was a misfired rocket aimed at Israel and launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The UN said nothing. Instead, the UN has sustained an incessant campaign, especially on social media, that accuses Israel of deliberately targeting schools, children, civilians, hospitals and healthcare workers. While those are protected from attack during war by international law, that protection does not apply to schools, hospitals and other civilian sites that are used for military purposes.
Hamas’ unlawful military use of hospitals, schools and other civilian sites was first exposed years ago. Former US President Bill Clinton spoke about it in 2016. “When Hamas chooses to rocket Israel, it insinuates itself into hospitals and into schools,” he said.
NATO published a report in 2019, which bluntly stated:
When Israel carried out an airstrike on an ambulance in northern Gaza, which was being used by Hamas terrorists, Guterres expressed that he was “horrified” with Israel’s action, while ignoring Hamas’s war crimes. In practice, the UN and Hamas act as partners in crime.
A Hamas terrorist who participated in the October 7 mass-murder of Israelis and was captured, said during a recent interrogation intercepted by Israel:
Another captured Hamas terrorist said:
Yet another captured terrorist said that ambulances were useful to transport “important people” such as Hamas commanders because “the Jews don’t attack ambulances.”
When Israel published evidence of the Hamas military command center beneath Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who covered up the transmissibility of the COVID-19 pandemic for China and is accused of trying to cover up three cholera epidemics in Ethiopia, immediately castigated Israel.
UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths, wrote:
While these high-ranking UN officials disingenuously feign ignorance and expect the public to believe that they knew nothing about the Hamas base in Al-Shifa Hospital, foreign doctors and journalists have apparently been aware of it for years.
An unnamed British doctor, who worked at Al-Shifa hospital three years ago, recently said in a television interview:
A journalist from Italy related that in 2009, upon arriving in Al-Shifa Hospital to interview wounded members of Fatah, he came almost face to face with the Hamas command and control center beneath the hospital:
It is also likely that the UN, with its 13,000 employees in Gaza, knew, as did the nurses and doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital, that Israeli hostages were being held at Al-Shifa. Israel recently revealed that Hamas terrorists brought hostages there in broad daylight on October 7, with healthcare staff even holding doors open for the terrorists.
The UN’s pretend show of “shock and horror” that Israel is eliminating its Hamas partner in Gaza is too transparent for anyone to take seriously, although the international mainstream media certainly does, parroting whatever Hamas and the UN allege as facts.
Above all, the UN’s transparent complicity with Hamas should convince the US, finally, that much of the UN is a destructive organization that prolongs wars, and needs immediately to have its funding decimated, and be reduced in importance to the corrupt relic that it is, deserving no place in this century.
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THIRD Rocket Arsenal Found At UN School In Gaza
29July2014 http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/07/29/THIRD-Rocket-Arsenal-Found-At-UN-School-In-Gaza
The United Nations Relief & Works Agency For Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) announced Tuesday that another rocket stockpile has been found at one of its schools in Gaza. This instance marks the third time since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge that a weapons arsenal has been found at an UNRWA school in Gaza.
Dan Williams-tweet-29July2014-UNRWA says rockets found on Tuesday
UNRWA has yet to place blame on any individuals or organizations for placing the weapons stockpile within a children’s school. The UN body refused to do so on the past two previous occasions as well.
The UN body, after both previous findings, has handed the rockets it had found back into the possession of “the local police,” otherwise known as the terrorist group Hamas.
This week, UNRWA supplies and building materials had been found in Hamas’s tunnel infrastructure, which has been used to smuggle weapons and carry out attacks on the State of Israel.
The UN agency has a well-documented history of using their US taxpayer-funded facilities to promote anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda. It has in the past been accused of aiding and abetting radical Islamists in Gaza and elsewhere.
UNRWA was created in 1949 to provide relief and public works programs for displaced Arab refugees that had formerly inhabited the British mandate of Palestine. UNRWA is currently the largest agency-subdivision of the entire UN, employing over 30,000 staff. UNRWA has objectively failed in its primary goal of finding homes for those it has deemed “refugees”. From 1949 to present day, refugees recognized by UNRWA has grown from 750,000 to 5,000,000 people.
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,h1>How Hamas assembles and fires rockets near Gaza homes
NDTV exclusive – how Hamas assembles and fires rockets
Published on 05August2014
Minutes before the 72-hour ceasefire began, this rocket was fired from deep within a civilian zone.
Watch more videos: http://www.ndtv.com/video?yt
They waited until they left Gaza to air the report.
Exclusive: Hamas rocket launch pad revealed near Gaza homes
Published on 05August2014
FRANCE 24 has exclusive footage of a Hamas rocket launching pad that appears to prove the militant group has been firing from areas heavily populated with civilians.
Comment:
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United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA)
How the UN and the international community (including the US) keep Hamas going
08August2014 http://israelmatzav.blogspot.co.il/2014/08/how-un-and-international-community.html
UNRWA – United Nations Rocket Warehousing Agency
The United States is UNRWA’s largest donor. And rather than reevaluate, some Americans have a vested interest in keeping it that way.
What could go wrong?
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Israel Foreign Ministry-tweet-9November2023-Hamas doesn’t care about Gaza’s civilians
Hamas doesn’t care about Gaza’s civilians.
While Israel is doing everything possible to prevent civilian casualties, Hamas is INTENTIONALLY putting innocent Palestinians in harm’s way.
Watch:
#PleaseGoSouth
Israel Foreign Ministry-tweet-9November2023-Hamas doesn’t care about Gaza’s civilians
Israel Hayom 385_eng South Gaza UNRWA Camp 11-30-2023
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