The Amsterdam pogrom is what happens when the world tolerates antisemitism

Fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team who flew on El Al rescue flight from Amsterdam arrive to the arrivals hall of the Ben-Gurion International Airport in Israel on Nov. 8, 2024. Photo by Jonathan Shaul/Flash90.

Much like the reaction to the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, it didn’t take long for some in the media and on the anti-Israel left to try to flip the narrative about what took place in Amsterdam on the night of Nov. 7. Even as both the prime minister and the king of the Netherlands apologized for the failure of the Dutch police to protect Israelis from a planned and coordinated attack on visiting Israeli soccer fans, many in the international media were suggesting that the incident was provoked by the Israelis.

According to The New York Times and the Associated Press, some Israelis in the country, who were there to attend a game between the Dutch Ajax team and Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv, allegedly chanted anti-Palestinian slogans and tore down a Palestinian flag. Rather than innocent victims of a mob reportedly composed of Arab and Muslim immigrants determined to hunt down and harm Jews, the leader of one left-wing Dutch political party referred to the visiting tourists as “thugs” who uttered “genocidal” and “racist” slogans.

Not to be outdone by the journalistic establishment and its anti-Israel bias, the left-wing Forward also claimed that the victims were “violent hooligans.” It claimed that Dutch Jews who feared antisemitism but didn’t wish to be associated with Israel and its post-Oct. 7 war on Islamist terrorists felt trapped in a conflict they wished to avoid. According to the paper, they are worried that the attacks in Amsterdam would be “weaponized” by Zionists or by non-Jewish right-wing politicians like Geert Wilders, leader of the largest party in the Dutch parliament. Wilders speaks for many in Holland and in Europe who are deeply critical of the way a massive influx of Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa is changing the character of their nations for the worse and that is also responsible for a surge in antisemitism. Yet for many on the left to even raise these issues is, by definition, racist.

In this way, even the spectacle of an anti-Jewish pogrom in Western Europe is being used as yet another excuse to bash Israelis and to portray its perpetrators as victims of racists and xenophobes. The fact that the outrageous attacks on Israelis were documented by videos widely circulated on social-media platforms and were committed on the eve of the 86th anniversary of the Nazi’s Kristallnacht pogrom against German Jews has not deterred those who believe that the Jews must always be in the wrong.

The point here is even if some of the visiting Israelis didn’t behave as exemplary tourists, the notion that violence against them is a justified reaction to the presence of Jews in the city where Anne Frank hid from the Nazis epitomizes how a global surge in antisemitism has been normalized.

The Amsterdam pogrom—and due to the way the mob-driven attacks to physically harm the Israelis were clearly planned and coordinated in advance on WhatsApp and Telegram, the specific term does apply to the violence—matters not so much because of the Kristallnacht anniversary or that it happened in a country that profits from tourists who flock to the museum on the site of the secret annex where the Frank family sought to survive the Holocaust. Its significance lies in the fact that though the imagery of Jews being “hunted” is particularly frightening, it is merely one more in a growing list of outrageous attacks on Jews not just in supposedly enlightened Western Europe but throughout the globe. Rather than being exceptional, it is part of a pattern of behavior that is the natural outcome of a combination of factors that have emboldened those who hate Jews to act on their vile beliefs.

Antisemitic mobs in the United States

Though the current European variant of this plague of prejudice is distinct from what has been happening in the United States since Oct. 7, it is nevertheless closely linked to the mobs on college campuses and in the streets of America’s cities who have been chanting the same slogans the Amsterdam pogromists acted on. The terror in the Dutch city is an illustration of what happens when mobs seek to “globalize the intifada.”

In Holland and many other places in Western Europe, Muslim immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, especially the torrent of refugees from the Syrian civil war in the last decade, were welcomed with open arms. Governments who thought they were acting on the lessons that needed to be learned from Europe’s troubled past believed that they were obligated to take in those seeking a better life than could be had in their home countries.

Nevertheless, the desire to help those in need quickly morphed into a willingness to turn a blind eye to the way their own national identities and cultures were being transformed by the migrants. Rather than seeking to assimilate, the newcomers conducted what might be described as a reverse colonization from what had occurred during Europe’s imperialist past. The increasingly aggressive Muslim communities didn’t merely bring a culture of misogyny and antisemitism with them; their presence and numbers essentially normalized behavior and hatred that were supposedly banished from the continent after the Holocaust.

The red-green alliance

Just as troubling was the way advocates for Islamist politics were able to ally themselves with European leftists. Though their cultural attitudes were the opposite of what secular Europeans believed in, they did have something very important in common: hatred for Israel and prejudice against Jews.

In this way, a bizarre red-green alliance of disparate groups that shared an anti-Zionist agenda became a staple of Western European politics. And, as we’ve seen in countries like France, Sweden and now Holland, this creates an atmosphere where “criticism” of Israel quickly morphed into support for the destruction of the Jewish state, as well as tolerance for antisemitic agitation aimed at intimidating and silencing Jews. As Douglas Murray noted in his prescient 2017 book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, the introduction of a large Muslim population into the continent whose values were incompatible with those of secular Europe led to a dynamic in which liberals found themselves unable to muster the will to defend their beliefs, lest they be labeled as racists.

While Western European leaders are always willing to denounce violence like the “Jew-hunting” in Amsterdam when it becomes too egregious to ignore or downplay, they are largely responsible for setting these events in motion. They did this, in part, by unthinkingly opening up their nations to a flood of people who had no desire to give up attitudes that Europe had supposedly left behind during the Enlightenment. It was also a function of their willingness to normalize the presence of intolerant Islamists who shared their resentment of Zionism, Israel and the Jews with many in mainstream European political parties.

In essence, every college with an anti-Israel encampment or a campus culture where pro-Israel Jews find themselves ostracized and targeted by faculty and students is an example of how pogroms like that in Amsterdam become a possibility.

The takeover of American education by those advocating for toxic Marxist myths like critical race theory and intersectionality, which falsely label Jews and Israel as “white” oppressors who are always in the wrong and deserve whatever violence is directed at them, has led to the indoctrination of a generation that sees the barbaric atrocities of Oct. 7 as justified “resistance.”

In this way, the chattering classes in the United States have, like their European counterparts, essentially normalized antisemitic discourse about Jews and Israel under the guise of anti-Zionism and critiques of Israel. It was no surprise that three elite university presidents were willing to tell Congress last December that it depended on “the context” as to whether advocacy for the genocide of Jews broke the rules of their institutions. If they feared the campus mobs of Israel-haters more than being labeled as soft on antisemitism, it was because current intellectual fashion has normalized hatred for Israel and the Jews.

It is a short leap from that position to one in which violence against Jews becomes not merely imaginable but inevitable.

There is a difference between America and Western Europe. The sort of official government-backed antisemitism that was once commonplace in Europe has not taken root in the United States. What’s more, the large majority of Americans support Israel and oppose antisemitism. As the recently concluded presidential election shows, voters also rejected woke ideology and elected a man who was pledged to fight its spread.

A warning to Americans

Still, the Amsterdam pogrom is a warning to Americans that should instruct them as to what happens when tolerance of antisemitism goes mainstream. That is true whether the result of the influx of antisemites from abroad or the spread of toxic, leftist “anti-racist” myths that seek to divide the country and fuel Jew-hatred. The war against Israel may be only a sidebar to a general leftist war on Western civilization. But the peril of Jews in Europe and elsewhere signals that what is happening in Amsterdam could easily be repeated elsewhere.

Israel’s decision to rush planes to Holland to evacuate Israelis hiding in Amsterdam hotels from the mob in what can only be described as a 21st-century update of the Anne Frank story is another important reminder. In the era before the founding of the modern-day Jewish state in 1948, there was no Jewish army or air force to protect or evacuate Jews in need. Those who today disparage the existence of a Jewish state as an example of the dangers of nationalism are oblivious to the way the Amsterdam pogrom illustrated anew the need for a strong Israel.

While some on the left, including a sector of the Jewish population, may think that the problem is Israel and its refusal to let itself be destroyed by genocidal Islamist terrorists, recent events show that a Jewish state is imperative in a world where pogroms are still an unfortunate reality. Those bent on eliminating it “by any means necessary” aren’t—contrary to many in the Democratic Party—articulating a moral critique of Israel. Instead, they are legitimizing Jewish genocide in the Middle East and everywhere else. When such dangerous ideas are tolerated, excused and rationalized, the world is merely a short step away from a time when pogroms like Kristallnacht or Amsterdam become the rule rather than the exception.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.

Day Before Biden Admin Announced It Would Withhold Weapons From Israel, It Issued Sanctions Waiver To Allow Arms Sales to Qatar and Lebanon

Less than a day before the Biden administration announced its intent to cut off U.S. arms sales to Israel, it issued a sanctions waiver to bypass congressional prohibitions on arms sales to a host of Arab nations that boycott the Jewish state, including Hamas ally Qatar and Iran-controlled Lebanon, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

On Tuesday—just a day before President Joe Biden threatened to withhold key weapons deliveries from Israel if the country moves forward with an incursion in the Gaza Strip’s Rafah neighborhood—the State Department informed Congress that it intends to bypass laws that bar the United States from selling weapons to nations that boycott Israel, according to a copy of the notification obtained by the Free Beacon.

The Biden administration, which has waived these sanctions in the past, said in the notification that it intends to extend the waiver through April 30, 2025, allowing weapons to be sent to a host of nations that work closely with the Hamas terror group and other Iran-backed terror proxies.

While the administration determined that these countries engage in Israel boycotts, a condition that triggers American anti-boycott laws, bypassing these restrictions remains “in the U.S. national interest” to maintain regional stability, according to the waiver. But this justification is drawing scrutiny on Capitol Hill as the Biden administration threatens key arms shipments to Israel in a bid to force it into abandoning its campaign to eradicate Hamas.

“The Biden administration’s policy toward Israel and around the world is to punish our allies and boost our enemies,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Free Beacon after reviewing the sanctions waiver. “They have sanctioned Israel and imposed an arms embargo. Meanwhile they’ve spent hundreds of millions pouring aid into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, dismantled sanctions on Iran, and now are suspending congressional restrictions to send weapons to Israel’s enemies such as Qatar and Lebanon.”

A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon that the department “remains committed to Israel’s security and defense.” While current law “prohibits leases and sales of defense articles to certain countries that maintain a boycott of Israel,” the president reserves the right to waive these restrictions if it is “in the national security interest,” the spokesman said.

“The United States has routinely exercised that waiver for years to permit continued security cooperation between the United States and regional partners and to enable U.S. officials to continue to work closely with those partners to eliminate further instances of boycott requests,” the spokesman said.

In the section related to Lebanon, where the Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group continues to attack Israel, the Biden administration admits the nation remains committed to a full-scale boycott of Israel.

But the administration justified waiving sanctions on arms sales because “it facilitates U.S. support for Lebanese stability, sovereignty, and efforts to undermine violent extremist influences,” according to the May 7 notification letter.

The administration provided a similar rationale for Qatar—which provides shelter to Hamas’s top leadership—saying an extension of the sanctions waiver “is in the U.S. national interest as it underscores the strength of our bilateral relationship, which is crucial to maintaining security in the region.”

Qatar’s central role in hostage talks between Israel and Hamas has recently become a subject of GOP consternation given the country’s status as Hamas’s top patron. Some lawmakers have called on the Biden administration to end its reliance on Qatar and increase pressure on the country to expel Hamas.

Biden threatened on Wednesday, meanwhile, to freeze American shipments of bombs and artillery shells to Israel if the country moves forward with an operation in Rafah, against which the United States has been lobbying for weeks.

“I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven’t gone in Rafah yet—if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities,” Biden told CNN on Wednesday.

The United States has reportedly already paused shipments of “high-payload munitions,” and Biden said he would not “supply the weapons and artillery shells” that Israel would need for an operation in Rafah.

 

On Election Day, Biden-Harris Admin Quietly Waived Terrorism Sanctions on Palestinian Government, Docs Show

Just before Tuesday’s presidential election, the Biden-Harris administration quietly waived mandatory terrorism sanctions on the embattled Palestinian government—even as it determined that the government’s leaders are paying imprisoned terrorists and fomenting violence in breach of U.S. law.

The State Department, in a non-public notice to Congress, determined that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are not complying with agreements to curb terrorism against Israel and end the “pay-to-slay” program, which rewards imprisoned terrorists for committing acts of violence.

Those violations should trigger American sanctions, barring members of the Palestinian government from obtaining U.S. visas. The Biden-Harris administration nonetheless used its executive power to waive the sanctions.

“A blanket denial of visas to PLO members and PA officials, to include those whose travel to the United States to advance U.S. goals and objectives, is not consistent with the U.S. government’s expressed willingness to partner with the PLO and PA leadership,” the State Department told Congress in the private notification obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The agency issued the waiver just as Americans headed to the polls Tuesday to hand Donald Trump a decisive victory driven in part by the former president’s clear-cut commitment to Israel’s security amid a broadening regional war. The waiver enables the Palestinian government to duck American sanctions for another 180 days, at which point it will come up for renewal once Trump is in the White House.

Most notably, the State Department determined the Palestinian government “continued to make payments to the families of prisoners convicted of committing acts of terrorism and the families of individuals who were wounded or died while committing acts of terrorism, whom they dubbed ‘martyrs.’”

The terrorist payment program has long been a flashpoint in U.S. relations with the Palestinians. Congress passed a law in 2018 prohibiting economic aid unless those payments are ended, but the Biden-Harris administration has skirted the law while in office, enabling millions of dollars to flow into projects bolstering the Palestinian government. The administration simultaneously pumped millions of dollars into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip—even as officials privately warned of “a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza.”

During the reporting period, which covers April 1, 2023, to September 30, 2023, the Palestinian government “continued to utilize post office branches in the West Bank and Gaza to facilitate payments to prisoners and families of ‘martyrs,’” also in violation of Israeli laws.

“Senior PA/PLO officials publicly defended the payments and criticized Israel’s withholding of clearance and tax revenues, which Israel claimed were withheld in an amount equivalent to prisoner/’martyr’ payments made by the PA,” according to the State Department.

The Palestinian government prioritized payments to terrorists in the face of a massive budget shortfall driven by lagging investments from Western nations. The PA owes more than $6 billion for past loans, putting it in a “deep and substantial financial crisis,” but continues to pump millions into its “pay-to-slay” program.

An earlier State Department report showed the Palestinian government allocated more than $150 million to imprisoned terrorists in 2019, with another $191 million given to the families of terrorists who were “martyred” while attacking Israel.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was also found to have incited violence against Israel during the reporting period, violating U.S. agreements that should trigger sanctions.

Abbas, the State Department said, “stoked outrage after news broke that he had delivered a speech featuring antisemitic tropes in late August. The comments included claims that Ashkenazi Jews were not descended from ancient Israelites and that Hitler murdered Jews in the Holocaust because of their ‘role in society, which had to do with money.’”

Still, the Biden-Harris administration determined that Abbas remains committed to “nonviolence, a two-state solution, and previous PLO commitments, including recognition of the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace.”

Shlomo Carlebach on his 30th yaarzeit

I met Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach when  I was 10 years old.

Our  Hebrew school teacher in Philadelphia brought him to sing for our fifth grade class.

It was more than singing that concerned our teacher.

Our teacher had become a devotee of Chabad-Lubavich and was concerned while we were Jewish in our fifth grade class in Philadelphia, he was concerned that we really know too much about Judaism.

He wanted to excite us and we had a special request.

The special request was that Christmas was coming  and we were always forced to sing Christmas carols in public school and we wanted to learn some Jewish songs.

All we knew was Hava Nagila and Zoom Gali Gali.

So he brought us Shlomo Carlebach to teach to teach us a couple sessions He taught us Borchi Nafshi, Vechulom Mekablim, Essa Einai,  were very nice songs.

But more than that he got a spirit into us, which was very important.

To sing with our soul. Over the years I got to know him and all kinds of different contexts.

When I worked with youth, I would bring Shlomo to work with me.

A month before he died, Shlomo  spent Shabbat near us in Efrat where we live. I brought my then 12 year old son, Noam, to meet Shlomo to ask him if he would be the cantor when Noam would soon become Bar Mitzvah. Shlomo ready agreed. And then it occurred to me In my 34 years of knowing Shlomo, I had never asked him a  question. How do you get started?

I got the answer. Perhaps this was the last interview with Shlomo

Shlomo  told got involved with all this outreach.

He mentioned that his father brought him to a DP camp after World War II, where they organized an improvised Succah for  people from the DP camps who had survived the concentration camps. It  was a very exciting week  of Succot. During that stse holiday, a distressed man  stood outside , screaming at the succah, even throwing rocks, very upset about what was going on.

At the end of Sukkot, Shlomo approached the   distressed follow   in the DP camp who had disrupted the sukkah and asked him:  Why didn’t you come in? He said that he  stood outside the sukkah because at no one  asked him  to come in.

Shlomo said that he  realized that he made a mistake that would carry him  for his entire  life.

Shlomo  said that he must  not be  like  Job, who was very hospitable and known for his hospitality, and wait for people to come and see you.

Shlomo said that it was then that he understood then that you must be  like Abraham and sit outside of the tent event and bring people in. And that is the how Shlomo learned his first lesson of outreach.

Unless you invite people to come in, they will stay away.

That distressed man in the DP camp helped Shlomo start  h**is career which became a legacy.

Shlomo would not make it to Noam’s Bar Mitzvah. I once asked Noam what e remembered from that encounter. “He kissed me on my forehead. I never forgot that”

Excerpted from DAVID BEDEIN’s forthcoming book, FIFTY ENCOUNTERS IN FIFTY YEARS

 

Blame games

Demonstrators at the annual al-Quds day march in Berlin. (Photo: Montecruz Foto)

It can be claimed with nearly 100% certainty that no People/Nation has been blamed more often for more baseless reasons than the Jews.

From the dawn of Jewish history, which we started to read about in our weekly Torah portions this week, right up until the latest news headlines circulating in the media, the blame game continues unabated.

Mutating in every generation, this compulsive urge to blame Jews for each and every evil in society has survived all attempts to combat and eradicate it. Rational logic would have predicted that following the Shoah and genocides associated with that period any vestige of irrational hate might have been purged from the infected masses.

Unfortunately, this virus cannot be suppressed, and that is why, despite years of attempted educational enlightenment and millions spent on memorials and museums, “blame the Jews” has made a spectacular comeback.

At first, those accusing Jews of modern-day blood libels tried to hide their hate behind a façade of anti-Zionism. This only fooled those who wanted to avoid the obvious for a short time. Now we are faced with full-blown Jew hate of the original lethal kind. It has emerged from the sewers worldwide precisely because those engaged in the Israel, Zionist, Jew blame game know that there will be no serious consequences for their actions.

The axis of evil nations support, fund and spread this tsunami. They are aided and abetted in this campaign by corrupted international organizations which have been subverted and neutered. In the face of a moral collapse and blatant falsehoods by most of the diminishing democracies, Jews and the Jewish State are branded guilty of almost every sin known to humanity.

In the not-so-distant past, outbreaks of diseases that decimated swathes of European countries were blamed on Jewish communities.

These libels were swiftly followed by devastating pogroms and massacres. Even well before the advent of social media and modern forms of communication, somehow, the notion that Jews were responsible for plagues and similar disasters spread tsunami-like throughout the continent and even beyond it.

Nowadays, updated versions of these slanders spread in an instant are facilitated by willing representatives of so-called legitimate international bodies. Thus, you have officials of UNRWA making wild claims of evil Israel causing mass starvation in Gaza, which will result in the alleged genocide of the local population. Intentionally ignored and indeed deliberately distorted is the plain fact that the vast majority of aid, whether food or materials, is hijacked by Hamas terrorists. The obvious facts are covered up In a frenzy to brand Israel and, by extension Jews, as complicit in deliberate starvation tactics.

Having been tarred with heinous accusations the mud sticks and no amount of facts and realties will expose the truth to those who think they know everything there is to learn about the perfidious IsraelisThe default position of international funders is to ignore the fact that UNRWA has perpetuated the Arab refugee scandal for more than seven decades. During this time it has inculcated generations of Arabs in their schools with hatred of Jews and Israel. The normal reaction from the international community is to turn a blind eye to UNRWA schools and clinics hosting Hamas terror tunnels and being complicit in giving sanctuary to those storing and firing rockets from their premises.

Instead of dealing seriously with this situation western countries which fund UNRWA prefer to look the other way. When UNRWA graduates join the terrorists and hostage-takers, denial of responsibility kicks in automatically. Rather than demanding accountability the Governments of New Zealand, Australia, Canada, USA, UK and the EU pour more money into a bottomless bucket and blame Israel for the situation. Listen to the howls of hypocritical rage as Israel finally and belatedly refuses to go along with this charade.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, Jews were accused of deicide. Witnessing the convulsions revolving around Israel declaring UNRWA persona non grata one could believe that once again Jews are guilty of some sort of theological crime. This time, it is over a sacred holy cow that is protected by some sort of saintly status and divinely anointed by the UN.

The same sort of selective blame is also being hurled against Israel over the scandalous failures of an ironically misnamed UN “peace keeping” force stationed in south Lebanon. Created in 1978 to “restore international peace and security and assist the Lebanese Government in restoring its effective authority in the area” this force has failed spectacularly in enforcing its UN mandated objectives. One of its most vital tasks was the withdrawal of terror groups from the area and ensuring that they did not create any threat to Israeli civilians living across the border.

More than forty years later, UNIFIL has not only failed miserably to achieve any of its objectives but has also now been exposed as complicit with Hezbollah in facilitating the establishment of a terror infrastructure intended to murder Israelis. Far from restoring Lebanese Government authority in the area the opposite has actually occurred. Lebanon has been subverted by Iran and its proxy terror representatives while the UN force has been relegated to a compliant group which sees nothing, hears nothing and pretends that they are keeping a fake peace.

During their watch, Hezbollah has built an extensive network of terror tunnels, established storage facilities in homes, hospitals, mosques and schools for rockets, missiles, drones and ammunition. Over a period of four decades under the very noses of UNIFIL which claimed that nothing was amiss, the terrorists prepared the infrastructure for an October 7 type invasion of northern Israel and subsequent massacres. This has been clearly and unambiguously revealed as the IDF discovers and demolishes these sites and continues to clear out the terror network embedded in south Lebanon.

Not to be overlooked is the stark reality that also, over this period, Hezbollah has amassed, with the help of Iran, hundreds of thousands of lethal rockets, missiles and drones. Thousands have been fired at Israeli civilians on a daily basis since 7 October 2023.

For more than 40 years, the UN ignored what was occurring, and UNIFIL continued to be passive bystanders as the terrorist groups openly boasted about their intentions. Israel, no doubt hoping that eventually the UN might act also did nothing to sort out this disgraceful situation. As usual when hard decisions are kicked down the road the inevitable fallout has proven worse than ever.

Has the international reaction to all these realties been supportive of Israel’s delayed actions to eliminate the terror threats against it?

Of course, it has been not. The automatic blame game immediately kicks in with a vengeance. One does not expect those countries supporting Tehran such as China, Russia, North Korea and cheer leaders for jihadist terror such as Spain and Ireland to issue messages of solidarity with Israel. One certainly does not expect the UN and its associated bodies to admit their abject failures and so it has proven.

The least we could expect from our democratic friends is some sort of wholehearted support and understanding especially now that the sordid details of Hezbollah’s tactics have been revealed.  Unfortunately this has proven to be a forlorn hope. Expressions of tepid acknowledgment have been hedged with the usual barrage of moral equivalence and double standards. The reaction of New Zealand’s Foreign Minister is typical of how moral cowardice and unwillingness to condemn UN failures combine. His statement that “Israeli action against UN peacekeepers is unacceptable” encapsulates the sordid collapse of a will to stand against jihadist terror which is now a feature of international blame policies against the Jewish State.

On 9 November, Jewish communities worldwide will once again commemorate the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass when Synagogues, Jewish businesses and homes in Germany & Austria were attacked and burnt down. It also marks the rounding up of Jews (my grandfather among them) and their deportation to Dachau.

As a prelude to the implementation of the “final solution” it stands out as a stark reminder of the catastrophic failure by the League of Nations and democratic countries to counter and prevent the genocidal campaign against the Jews which had already started in 1933. Five years of inaction and appeasement convinced the Nazis that they could get away with mass murder and the refusal of nations to grant sanctuary to fleeing Jewish refugees merely confirmed that nobody cared about the fate of Jews and other “undesirables.”

As speakers this year intone the usual platitudes it should be made plain that history is once again repeating itself. Just as the League of Nations failed, so is the United Nations. The same refusal that saw Nazi Germany and its willing band of helpers facilitating the destruction of Jews now manifests itself in a refusal by democratic countries today in taking down Iranian plans to destroy Israel. Hitler and his gangsters made no secret of their ultimate intentions. The mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran likewise are open about their ambition to wipe the Jewish State off the world map.

Instead of helping to thwart Nazi goals the Chamberlain UK Government and the Roosevelt Administration cautioned Jews to stay quiet and lie low. Today’s successors blame Israel for fighting back and refusing to be sacrificial lambs.

Politicians love to eulogize dead Jews without accepting any responsibility for their predecessors’ failed actions.

It is time to put the blame where it rightfully should be placed and defeat terror before it is once again too late.

New UNRWA laws enacted by the Israel Knesset Parliament: lethal and dangerous.

The Plenary Hall during the swearing-in ceremony of the 24th Knesset, at the Israeli parliament in Jerusalem, April 6, 2021. Photo by Alex Kolomoisky/POOL ***POOL PICTURE, EDITORIAL USE ONLY/NO SALES, PLEASE CREDIT THE PHOTOGRAPHER AS WRITTEN - ALEX KOLOMOISKY/POOL*** *** Local Caption ***
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While  new  UNRWA laws enacted by Israel will close the Unrwa offices in Jerusalem and curtail the one unrwa refugee facility in Jerusalem , the new Israel UNRWA laws mandate  that the 58 unrwa refugee facilities outside of Jerusalem will   now now function without any Israel involvement , which means that the Unrwa curriculum of war continues unabated.

Groups such as  J ST which support UNRWA in its current pro-terror policies can  be arrested and imprisoned under current US law which mandates severe criminal action against any US citizen who aids and abet those who function  as an FTO. a foreign terrorist organization.

A constructive role for Unrwa to play would be to adopt five principles of the UNRWA Peace initiative at

https://israelbehindthenews.com/2023/05/16/unrwa-donors-can-adopt-a-new-unrwa-peace-initiative  , Located on our home page: Israelbehindthenews.com

This week, our agency will press charges of incitement to murder against those  who run UNRWA .

 UNRWA HAS IMMUNITY.  UNRWA WORKERS FACE  NO  IMMUNITY FROM CRIMINAL  CHARGES

Hezbollah targets Tel Aviv in volley to central Israel

Rocket sirens sounded across central and northern Israeli communities in cities including Tel Aviv, Netanya, Ramat Gan, Herzliya and others. Alarms also sounded in cities located in the Upper Galilee region and Nahariya. According to initial reports, one rocket fell inside Ben Gurion Airport’s parking lot without injuries.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit reported shortly after the volley that 10 rockets were seen crossing from Lebanon to Israel with some being intercepted by the Israeli Air Force.
The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit reported shortly after the volley that 10 rockets were seen crossing from Lebanon to Israel with some being intercepted by the Israeli Air Force.

The Unknown Role of the German Government in Nurturing a Mein Kampf Curriculum

Thanks to the quiet freeze on American funds to UNRWA*, Germany, which presents itself as a democratic power, is now the leading donor state of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which services descendants of Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war
* https://israelbehindthenews.com/2023/04/21/financial-crisis-in-unrwa-why/of

58% of the current UNRWA budget is allocated to schools which indoctrinate Arab children to make war on Jews.

Please see our new movie UNRWA at War * https://israelbehindthenews.com/2023/04/21/financial-crisis-in-unrwa-why/ and our new study of the active role of UNRWA in the current war https://israelbehindthenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/p14-17.pdf

A recent tabulation of donations from UNRWA donor nations can be found here:

https://www.unrwa.org/how-you-can-help/government-partners/funding-trends

As such, Germany shoulders a responsibility to assure the people of Germany and the Jewish people that their money is not channeled in a non-peaceful direction. Yet, leading German government-funded foundations aid UNRWA with no conditions. https://israelbehindthenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/German-Legacy-Under-Chancellor-Merkel.pdf

A straightforward way to accomplish the above is to check what the textbooks issued by the Palestinian Authority and used in UNRWA schools, say about the Israeli/Jewish “other” and about the issue of peace with that “other”.

More than 1,000 UNRWA texts have now been examined by three journalists with PhDs in Islamic Studies.

https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2024/05/E_114_24.pdf

It is imperative that an effort be made to provide this information in the German language.

Schoolbooks are the most revealing source of information regarding the values and aspirations a society seeks to instill in its youth.

Following a protracted state of war, these texts serve as a reliable indicator of the existence, or non-existence, of peace education.

The Oslo Accord signed by the State of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993 opened a new phase in the Middle East in which both parties were supposed to advance towards a peaceful solution of that war.

In 1994, the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established by the PLO to rule the West Bank and the Gaza Strip which, until then, were fully administered by Israel.

The PA assumed most governmental powers in those areas, including education. In 2000, it started issuing its own schoolbooks in a process that lasted until 2006. A newer set of PA schoolbooks was published between the years 2016-2018.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for the 1948 Palestinian refugees and their descendants, which has been operating in Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza (as well as in Jordan, Syria and Lebanon) since 1950, use the PA books in its schools. UNRWA, as a UN agency, is bound by the UN-endorsed principle of resolving all conflicts peacefully, as well as by UNESCO principles of peace education As a UN agency, all UN agencies should treat all member states equally, including the State of Israel.

It is imperative for decision-makers in Germany to know whether the PA textbooks used in UNRWA schools (as well as in all other schools in Jerusalem, judea, Samaraa and Gaza) advocate peace — or, instead, call for an armed struggle –, recognize the existence of Israel as a sovereign state in the region and the presence of its seven million Jews in the country as well as their holy places there, treat Jewish/Israeli individuals as they would other human beings, renounce terrorist activity against civilians, employ self-criticism in this regard, and so on.

It is incumbent upon Germany, more than any other nation, to exercise extreme care while dealing with issues closely connected to the wellbeing of the citizens of the Jewish State.

NOW PREPARING A PROPOSAL TO UNCOVER THE UNKNOWN ROLE OF THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT IN NURTURING AN UNPRECEDENTED PALESTINIAN MEIN KAMPF CURRICULUM.

The fate of the two state solution following the US elections

The idea of a  two state solution  will no doubt be high on the agenda of the new US administration, following Saudi demands for a Palestinian state as a condition for an  upgrade in Saudi relations with Israel.

Here are ten dilemmas posed by a Palestinian  State which are  too often swept under the rug, followed by 10 questions which  Middle East policy makers too often forget to ask.

  1. Encirclement: Would a proposed state of Palestine not swallow up Jordan, most of whose population is Palestinian, leaving Israel with a hostile state from the Iraqi border to the Mediterranean Sea, with a corridor across the Negev between Gaza to Hebron? 
  2. Israeli Arabs: Would the Arabs of the Galilee and the Negev not sue to join the Palestinian Arab state and then demand the fulfillment of U.N. Resolution 181 – an Israeli withdrawal to the 1947 borders (evacuation of Nahariya, Acre, Nazareth, Jaffa, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Kiryat Gat and Beer Sheva)? 
  3. .Terror: Would a new Palestinian Arab entity disband terrorist organizations? We asked this question before the Oslo process imported the PLO in 1993, which has never renounced terrorism or violence as a ans to liberate all of Palestine. 
  4. Armament: Why would there be any expectation that a sovereign Palestine be demilitarized, since all nation states maintain an armed force as an integral aspect of their new nation? 
  5. Refugees: How would Israel deal with expectations of the Arab countries and UNRWA residents who continue to demand that Israel must absorb descendants of Arab refugees and thereby displace thousands of Israelis from places like Haifa, Tfzat and Jaffa and 80 kibbutzim which rest on the property of Arab villages where Arabs left in 1948? 
  6. Air space: Would the Israeli Air Force be forbidden from flying over a new Palestinian Arabstate? 
  7. Alliances: What would prevent a Palestinian state from concluding military agreements with countries still at war with Israel?
  8. Water: Would a sovereign Palestine not carry out pirate drilling, and threaten the mountain aquifer of Judea and Samaria?
  9. Jewish sovereignty: Would the momentum for a Palestinian Arab state not erase the momentum of the right of the Jews to the Land of Israel in international consciousness?
  10. Loss of independence: Would Israel not become a subject to the sponsors of a Palestinian Arab state – today, known as the Quartet – the U.S., the EU, the U.N. and Russia?

All this leads to questions which  Middle East policy makers should therefore  ask about a  Palestinian state

  1. Will you ask the Palestinians to recognize the Jewish state of Israel? 
  2. Will you demand that  the Palestinians finally ratify the “Declaration of Principles for Peace” signed at the White House in 1993? 
  3. Will you demand that the Palestinians cancel the PLO charter from 1964  that calls  for the extermination of the Jewish State? 
  4. Will you demand that the Palestinians cancel their unprecedented law from 2015 which assures a salary for life for anyone who murders a Jew?
  5. Will you demand cancellation of the new PA and UNRWA school curriculum, based on Jihad, martyrdom and “right of return by force of arms”?
  6. Will you demand the removal of weapons from PA and UNRWA schools?
  7. Will you insist that UNRWA dismiss employees affiliated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad or Fatah terror organizations?
  8. Will  you introduce UNHCR standards to advance resettlement of fourth- and fifth-generation refugees from the 1948 war who have spent seven decades relegated to refugee status? Current UNRWA policy is that any Arab refugee resettlement would interfere with a purported “right of return” to pre-1948 Arab localities.
  9. Will you demand an audit of donor funds that emanate from 68 nations for the PA and UNRWA, with little transparency?
  10. Given the active participation of the Palestine Security Force (PSF) in the current war, will you demand that the US cease its support of the PSF?

Partisan organisations such as United Nations Relief and Works Agency are an obstacle to peace

Would you find it conceivable that an entire UN agency was created to perpetuate a conflict rather than solve it? Would it sound reasonable to you that a UN agency would knowingly pay salaries to terrorists? Would you agree to donate money to an organisation whose teachers educate to kill and abduct people and whose employees are recorded abducting innocent people? Does it sound reasonable that the intelligence branch of a terrorist organisation is embedded under a UN facility that feeds it with electricity and communications? That terrorists use UN institutions like schools and hospitals? That terrorists steal humanitarian assistance and use it to extort and control the population?

The answer to these questions is pretty clear to any reasonable person. However, believe it or not, this is the reality in West Asia with an organisation called the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). While Israel successfully absorbed 800 thousand Jewish refugees from the Arab world who were never compensated by anyone for the property left behind nor the loss of their livelihoods, 700 thousand Arabs who had to flee following the attempt of seven Arab armies to destroy the newly established Israel in 1948 received a completely different treatment. UNRWA was formed to perpetuate their status as “refugees” and never allow them to normalise their lives unless they manage to reverse the results of 1948.

That’s exactly what UNRWA is doing. With tens of billions of dollars so far in financing, it educates millions of Palestinian descendants that they shouldn’t rebuild their lives in the places they reside. Many of them were denied citizenship in the places they live in and where their children were born, like in Lebanon, for example, where they are denied not only citizenship but also banned from owning land or from practising certain professions. And even in those places where citizenship was granted to them, like in Jordan, they are still illegally entitled to refugee status which contradicts UNHCR rules. Instead of helping people to settle in, it educates them to go back to the places their ancestors had to leave four generations ago.

Unfortunately, UNRWA has been “successful” in fulfilling its mandate to the extent that millions of graduates from its schools have been taught to object to Israel’s existence for the last 76 years. Many of them became active members of terrorist organisations. No institution has been doing that “better” than the UNRWA schools in Gaza, where Hamas took over in 2007, where the teachers’ union is controlled by Hamas and many of its teachers are leaders in the Hamas terrorist organisation. Or, in Lebanon, where the leader of Hamas was in charge of educating 39,000 children, and the UN refused to fire him. Israel has presented multiple evidence to the UN on many occasions. Most of it was completely ignored.

Yesterday the overwhelming majority of the Israeli parliament said: Enough is enough. Israel will no longer cooperate with UNRWA. The legislation gives the government 90 days to make necessary arrangements to ensure humanitarian assistance to needy Palestinians — cynically used as pawns to advance political goals — are extended through other UN agencies and NGOs. Israel will continue to facilitate international assistance to this Palestinian population. We will continue to abide by international law. But we will not agree to continue to cooperate with UNRWA, a corrupt organisation that is completely compromised by terrorist organisations like Hamas. Their sole reason for existence is to eradicate the State of Israel. Israel calls all parties interested in de-escalating the conflict in the West Asian region to dissociate themselves from UNRWA in order to advance and secure peace and stability in our region.

The writer is Israel’s Ambassador to India