Saturday, April 12, 2025
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New Investigation Exposes UN Agency’s Shocking Ties to Terror Groups

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

A bombshell new investigation from international human rights group UN Watch exposes the disturbing links between the UNRWA and Palestinian terror organizations. According to the report, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad have not only infiltrated the $1.5 billion UN-funded agency but are actively influencing its operations and fueling violence against Israelis.

The explosive findings reveal that UNRWA has employed Hamas militants, allowing the terror group to interfere with key agency policies and operations in Gaza and Lebanon.

UN Watch is calling for the immediate dismantling of UNRWA, saying the organization has become a conduit for terrorism and a facilitator of violence in the Middle East.

“UNRWA isn’t just a bystander in the Arab-Israeli conflict – it’s a primary enabler,” observes Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch.  “By allowing terrorists to infiltrate its ranks and incite violence, UNRWA isn’t promoting peace, they’re perpetuating hatred and war.”

The report includes images of terror leaders with UNRWA officials, and details years of instances where leadership of the UN agency closely cooperated with terror groups in secret.  The report implicates many members of UNRWA leadership, including current-UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini.

“People need to understand that UNRWA isn’t the firefighter, it’s the arsonist.  The U.S. and other Western nations who have given billions to UNRWA need to wake up.  Your money is being used to employ terrorists, indoctrinate children, and build the infrastructure of hate and violence.  The U.S. alone has given more than $1 billion to UNRWA over the past four years.  This is a betrayal of your taxpayers and your values.”

“The time has finally come to dismantle UNRWA, an agency that glorifies terrorism,” said Neuer.

______________

Read Full Report: The Unholy Alliance: UNRWA, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad 

An investigation into the secret ties between terrorist organizations and the UN’s largest aid agency

Executive Summary

This report reveals how UNRWA, despite its claims to be a humanitarian agency, has forged an unholy alliance with Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist organizations. This secret relationship allows the terrorist organizations to significantly influence the policies and practices of a UN agency with 30,000 employees, and a $1.5 billion annual budget that is funded primarily by Western states.

The report shows how UNRWA’s international officials, and its senior local managers, routinely meet with terrorist groups in Lebanon and Gaza, mutually praise each other for “cooperation,” and describe each other as “partners.”

The terrorist groups frequently make demands of UNRWA and influence its decisions. Moreover, when the terrorists oppose specific actions by UNRWA— such as the introduction of biometric IDs for beneficiaries of UNRWA financial assistance, an ethics code affirming LGBT rights, or suspension of employees for promoting terrorism—the terrorist groups are often able to foil implementation, including by issuing threats.

Examples of the UNRWA-Terrorist Alliance

Examples of the UNRWA-terrorist alliance, documented in the report below with 68 photos obtained from open sources, include:

  • UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini made a deal with Jihadi terrorist groups, at a Beirut meeting in May 2024, by which UNRWA allowed Hamas leader Fathi Al-Sharif to remain as principal of a major UNRWA school, and as the head of the UNRWA Teachers Union. For years, Al-Sharif had openly glorified Hamas terrorist attacks, including on his Facebook page, and published photos of his fraternization with heads of terrorist organizations. Contrary to its claims of robust neutrality mechanisms, UNRWA for years allowed Al-Sharif to occupy a senior position overseeing thousands of UNRWA teachers and students. Only when a formal complaint was made to UNRWA by a government, in early 2024, did the agency give Al-Sharif a slap on the wrist by suspending him. Immediately, Hamas and other terrorist groups responded by effectively shutting down UNRWA in Lebanon, mobilizing massive protests by UNRWA teachers and students. Three months into the shutdown, Lazzarini flew to Beirut and met with the alliance of terrorist organizations who were behind the strike. Local media reported on June 1, 2024 that Lazzarini and the terrorist groups reached “understandings” that would lead to a “positive” result for Al-Sharif, and the strike was called off. On September 30, 2024, Al-Sharif was eliminated by an IDF missile. Hamas announced that indeed he had been their leader in Lebanon, and eulogized the senior UNRWA figure for his “Jihadi education.”
  • Former UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krahenbuhl met with terrorist leaders from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, in February 2017, where he emphasized the “spirit of partnership” between them and UNRWA. He invited the terrorist leaders to privately challenge any UNRWA decision which he could then change or “tear up.” The head of UNRWA urged the Jihadi terrorist groups to ensure that their “discussions not be made public” so as to avoid harm to UNRWA’s “credibility.” Mr. Krahenbuhl, who was forced to leave UNRWA in 2019 due to a corruption and sexual abuse scandal, was this year absurdly appointed to head the International Red Cross, prompting a sharp protest by 17 members of the United States Senate.
  • Likewise, in June 2022, current UNRWA chief Lazzarini stressedthe importance of “partnership” with Gaza terrorist groups. He met regularly with Gaza terrorist groups under the umbrella of the “Joint Refugee Committee,” which is headed by Mahmoud Khalaf, a member of the central committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), designated as a terorrist organization by the United States and the European Union.
  • Matthias Schmale, the former UNRWA director in Lebanon, addressed a Hamas rally in August 2018 alongside Ali Baraka, one of six Hamas terrorist leaders indicted in September by the US Department of Justice, as the latter told the crowd that donor states must support UNRWA “until we return to Palestine.” Schmale thanked the terrorist groups “for their understanding” and reassured them that UNRWA is on their side. In October 2020, now serving as UNRWA Director in Gaza, Schmale met with the Joint Refugee Committee headed by DFLP official Mahmoud Khalaf, to discuss “the problem of forcibly dismissed employees.” In numerous such cases, local UNRWA staff suspended for links to terrorism were reinstated under pressure by the terrorist groups.
  • Former Deputy Commissioner-General Leni Stenseth personally went to Gaza, in June 2021, to kowtow before Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas terror chief who masterminded the October 7th massacre. Hamas had been angry with UNRWA after its then Gaza Director Matthias Schmale, an ardent supporter of the Palestinian narrative, unwittingly admitted in a TV interview that Israeli strikes on Hamas, during the May 2021 war, were “very precise.” The interview was widely shared by supporters of Israel. Outraged, Hamas declared Schmale a persona non grata, and orchestrated mob protests to threaten him. Stenseth obediently removed Schmale from his post, throwing him under the bus to appease Sinwar, and called Schmale’s interview “indefensible.” She went to visit Sinwar in Gaza to personally thank him “for his positivity and desire to continue cooperation in facilitating the agency’s work in the Gaza Strip.” Stenseth is now Director-General of the foreign ministry of Norway, UNRWA’s most ardent state supporter. Stenseth uses her current position to fund groups that lobby for UNRWA, such as the Chr. Michelsen Institute, which was unethically chosen to conduct the “independent review” of UNRWA led by Catherine Colonna.
  • UNRWA Lebanon Director Dorothee Klaus shared a stage with the leader of Hamas in Lebanon, Fathi Al-Sharif, was as noted above was also an UNRWA school principal and head of the UNRWA Teachers Union. At the event, before a cheering crowd, Al-Sharif proclaimed his support for “the resistance.” Ms. Klaus did not object.
  • UNRWA managers have participated at an annual Hamas conference which discusses internal UNRWA affairs such as employee vacancies and UNRWA Teachers Union elections. At the 2021 conference, Hamas offiical Ahmad Abd Al-Hadi announced the launching of a joint committee to “supervise the relationship with UNRWA and ensure it implements its obligations.”
  • In February 2018, UNRWA Program Director in Lebanon Gwyn Lewis met with Hamas official Ahmad Fadl, and they agreed on “ongoing cooperation and coordination.”
  • UNRWA regional directors routinely meet with local terrorist leaders for “cooperation and coordination.” At a November 2017 meeting, they told UNRWA’s Sidon Director Fawzi Kassab that UNRWA must exist until Palestinian refugees “return to their homes” and threatened that if donors do not continue funding UNRWA, the Palestinians will start a “popular revolution.”
  • In February 2022, UNRWA Lebanon Director Claudio Cordone, the former acting chief of Amnesty International, visited Ain Al-Hilweh camp to meet with a coalition of terrorist groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Ansar Allah. The terrorists told Cordone that the Palestinian issue in Lebanon is “a political issue and cannot be reduced to a humanitarian or security issue.” Likewise, in January 2018, Cordone met with Hamas official Ahmad Abd al-Hadi who affirmed that the terrorists support UNRWA because it “remains a living witness to the 1948 Nakba.” Contrary to what the world is told, UNRWA’s main purpose is not humanitarian aid, but rather to promote the narrative that Israel’s creation was an “injustice” and that the Palestinians will one day dismantle Israel.
  • In February 2017, UNRWA Lebanon Director Hakam Shahwan told terrorist leaders that UNRWA was “fully prepared” to have “a strong partnership mechanism” with them, so long as the partnership should not reach a stage “where some believe that we are partners in decision-making.”

Conclusion

This report reveals how UNRWA’s senior management not only knowingly employ individuals tied to Hamas terrorism, but also allow the terrorist groups to influence critical agency decisions and policies.

Through uncovered photographic evidence, the report exposes the close relationship top UNRWA officials have with designated terrorist organizations.

Current and former UNRWA officials with terrorist ties included in the report are:

  • UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini (2019-present)
  • UNRWA Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl (2014-2019)
  • UNRWA Director-General in Lebanon Dorothee Klaus (2023-present)
  • UNRWA Director-General in Lebanon Claudio Cordone (2017-2022)
  • UNRWA Deputy Director of Programs in Lebanon Gwyn Lewis (2015-2018)
  • UNRWA Director-General in Lebanon and Director of Operations in Gaza Matthias Schmale (2015-2021)
  • UNRWA Director-General in Lebanon Hakam Shahwan (2016-2017)
  • UNRWA Gaza Director Thomas White (2021-2024)
  • Acting UNRWA Director-General in Lebanon Munir Manna (2023)
  • UNRWA Director-General in Lebanon Ann Dismorr (2012–2015)
  • UNRWA Deputy Commissioner-General Leni Stenseth (2020–2023)
  • Numerous UNRWA Regional Directors in Lebanon

Israel’s Second War of Independence

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

During the summer of 2024—because I could no longer bear the thought of not taking an active part in our ongoing war, and thanks also to my stubborn refusal to acknowledge my advancing years—I volunteered for the IDF reserves. For the first time in decades, I put on a uniform, donned a helmet, and picked up a gun; the uniform still fit me, more or less, while the latter two items were far heavier than I’d remembered.

My assignment was to help guard a kibbutz in the Upper Galilee near the source of the Jordan River: an area that was then under constant rocket fire from Hizballah terrorists based in neighboring Lebanon. Among my fellow reservists were women and men who’d been on duty, without a break, since the attacks of October 7, 2023. On that day they had faced the very real possibility of a Hizballah assault many times larger and deadlier than Hamas’s in Gaza—and yet their kibbutz’s emergency squad was armed with but a single automatic rifle. By the time I joined them in the following August, they still lacked the heavy weapons needed to repel any serious Hizballah infiltration.

In off-duty hours during my ensuing weeks of service, I interacted with the members of the kibbutz: extraordinary people who, despite the daily shelling, refused to leave their homes. Many were veterans, or the descendants of veterans, who’d defended the kibbutz through successive wars in the past.

On one such occasion, I attended a meeting of the community’s emergency committee, gathered to determine procedures in case Hizballah were to attack us directly. One participant reported that there were not enough sandbags on hand to barricade all the kibbutz’s windows. Another registered the lack of sufficient gravel to fill the industrial-sized sacks behind which the soldiers would defend the crossroads. Still others asked how the children could be evacuated in the event of an emergency. And what about the elderly? The bedridden?

Sitting there, witnessing this conversation, I couldn’t believe I was in modern-day Israel. If I closed my eyes and just listened, I could swear instead that we were not in 2024 but in 1948, three-quarters of a century earlier, at the height of Israel’s War of Independence.

That same sensation of déjà vu also hovered over a question that, ever since October 7, I was being frequently asked: which if any of Israel’s previous wars did today’s war most closely resemble?

To such a question, the obvious answer would have been the Yom Kippur War, which had erupted on October 6, 1973, exactly 50-years-and-a-day before this latest outbreak. Indeed, Hamas deliberately chose this date to start the war in a sadistic effort to reignite Israel’s Yom Kippur trauma.

As did the new war, the earlier one had begun in a massive surprise attack—led then by the Egyptian and Syrian armies—that had caught Israel and its armed forces completely off guard. And, as in 1973, Israel in 2023 and 2024 has turned that initial rout into a military victory not only in Gaza but now also in Lebanon. Cadets at West Point and other military academies around the world study Israel’s astonishing success in 1973. They will study our success in this war no less.

What is more, in addition to the similarities between our current conflict and the Yom Kippur War, we might also consider other parallels that range still farther back in time.

Take, for instance, the Six-Day War of 1967. That earlier conflict had broken out when the nationalist Arab forces of Egypt and its partners—Jordan, Syria, and Iraq—surrounded Israel and pledged to throw it into the sea. Similarly, 56 years later, on October 6, 2023, Israel would again find itself surrounded, this time not by nationalist Egypt and its proxies but by jihadist Iran and its proxies—Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis—all correspondingly bent on Israel’s destruction. And once again Israel would succeed in turning imminent existential disaster into a battlefield success every bit as impressive as that of the Six-Day War.

Nor is that all. Other clashes bearing parallels to this most recent one have included the First (1982) and Second (2006) Lebanon Wars, as well as the brief Gaza operations of 2008, 2012, and 2014. Each of these, to one degree or another, can realistically be seen as foreshadowing the current conflict—so that now, with Israel continuing to fight, we can discern sharp echoes not only of 1973 and 1967 but also of our more recent series of border clashes.

But for me the larger truth remains that in the roster of Israel’s conflicts over the decades since achieving statehood, none today continues to echo so resonantly—or so instructively—as does the one I named at the start: the 1948–49 War of Independence.

Let me explain.

 

First, as in our War of Independence,the current war has been fought not deep in enemy territory but nearby and indeed within the state itself: in our farms, towns, settlements, and municipalities.

Next, like its predecessor at Israel’s birth, this latest war has been waged not only or even principally against our armed forces but rather against our civilian population—with similarly horrifying results in the toll of Israelis killed and grievously injured or seized, tortured, and hauled into captivity. This war, again like the War of Independence, has seen civilian Israeli volunteers picking up guns to protect and secure their homes and their families huddling in bomb shelters.

Finally, this war—for which we do not yet have a nationally accepted name—not only resembles the War of Independence but also rivals it in terms of its duration. As of the January 19th cease-fire, the current conflict has outlasted our independence struggle by four days.

Like Israel’s other wars, this latest one, too, has been fought for our security, if not for our very survival. But the current war is also being fought for something even more fateful. That something is Israel’s soul.

That is what was at stake from the very moment this war began, at 6:29 on the morning of October 7, 2023, when our soul was already torn by political schisms. The catalyst was the launch by the newly elected government, under the leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, of a far-reaching reform of the judicial system. With the subsequent hardening of positions on either side came the dangerous refusal of IDF reservists to report to duty and the government’s refusal to heed warnings of the threats of such internal divisions to Israeli security.

The scene, only days before October 7, of Israelis clashing in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Plaza over the nature of public Yom Kippur prayers revealed how deep and dangerous those schisms had grown. Whether for or against the judicial reforms, Israelis appeared united in believing that they could continue to indulge in this open drama of severe civil strife and not, as a society, be required to pay a price for it. Bound by the belief that the “Startup Nation”—that world-renowned destination for culinary tours, that champion winner of Eurovision musical contests, that recipient of the highest awards in the fields of literature and film—was somehow located geographically in Paris, or San Francisco, we forgot that we were, in fact, in the Middle East.

Hamas did not forget. We now know from documents found in Gaza that Israel’s internal struggle helped Hamas determine both the timing and the ferocity of its October 7 attack.

That onslaught ripped Israel’s soul apart even more widely. It threatened to tear asunder our twin duties to guard the land and people of Israel and to redeem those captured in its defense. We remain torn by two interwoven fears: first, that if we were to fail to secure the freedom of the hostages, Israeli parents would no longer be able with a clear conscience to send their children to serve in the army; and second, that if we fail to defeat and crush Hamas, Israelis will no longer have an army to send their children to.

Meanwhile, in the world at large, Israel was finding itself increasingly isolated, accused of committing genocide even as Hamas and its supporters were celebrating the genocide that its terrorists had attempted to commit. Despite the supreme efforts of the IDF to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza, despite registering the lowest ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in modern military history, we were widely condemned, even by our American ally, of responding “disproportionately” and “over the top” to the slaughter of October 7, of killing “entirely too many Palestinians,” and of dehumanizing and deliberately starving non-combatants. Across the United States and Western Europe, the university campuses where many Israelis had studied or taught turned into arenas for anti-Semitic spectacles. Classic anti-Semitic tropes, stipulating the Jewish people’s penchant for vengeance or its thirst for children’s blood, proliferated in Western media.

As if all these nightmares proved insufficient, Hizballah soon physically joined Hamas’s assault, and so did the Houthis of Yemen and the Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq. Iran would fire some 700 ballistic missiles and drones at Israel. As millions of Israelis sheltered from the incessant barrages, 200,000 became internal refugees, fleeing their residences in both the north and the south. What certainty did we have—did any of us have—that the Jewish state could nevertheless prevail?

This, in short,was a true 1948 moment, evoking nothing so threatening as the evening of May 14, 1948, only hours after David Ben-Gurion had proclaimed Israel’s independence, when five Arab armies joined by barbarous terrorist bands invaded the nascent Jewish state in order todestroy it. That, too, was a genocidal campaign, smashing through our borders in the Negev and the Galilee, triggering desperate fighting in Jerusalem, Safed, and Jaffa, and claiming the lives of thousands.

And then too, Israel had been alone. We had no major allies. Although President Truman had seen to it that the U.S. would be the first nation to recognize the re-created Jewish state, he just as swiftly slapped on that state a total arms embargo.

The late Israeli prime minister Shimon Peres, with whom I had the honor to work, once told me that, on May 14, 1948, Israeli forces possessed barely enough bullets to fight for a single week. Just so, visiting an artillery base last summer in the north, I was told that, as a result of the cutoff of American supplies, our cannons were down to firing a mere five shells per day.

In the current war, Israel has had to make such excruciating decisions as whether to continue destroying Hamas no matter what or, in return for the hostages’ release, to risk the state’s long-term security. In 1948–49, Ben-Gurion had to decide which part of the embattled Jewish state to preserve first: Jerusalem? Tel Aviv? Beersheva? The entire country could not be defended at once. Like today, Israeli forces in 1948 were stretched thin, traumatized by battle, exhausted.

Israel also entered its first war with its soul already divided between competing Zionist visions and ideologies: politically, between liberal-socialist Zionism and revisionist Zionism; militarily, between the Irgun and Leḥi on one side and the Haganah and Palmaḥ on the other. It was an internal schism every bit as bitter, if not more so, than that of prewar 2023.

Was it in light of those similarities between 1948 and today that Prime Minister Netanyahu has called this latest struggle a war of revival (milḥemet t’kumah)—a Hebrew phrase that has also become a longstanding popular term for the 1948 War of Independence? Be that as it may, and setting aside strategic and logistical parallels, this war, as I see it, also recalls the War of Independence in a more fateful, morally direct, and in the end transformative way. As I see it, this must be the war to correct, and to get right, the things we got wrong in 1948.

For example: this must be the war in which the Israeli public will no longer be required to abide the refusal of Haredim to serve in the IDF. That exemption, first conferred by Ben-Gurion in 1949 to no more than 400 yeshiva students, has expanded to include 70,000 eligible conscripts. Such gross imbalance cannot continue.

This, then, is the war in which the citizens’ army of Israel must and will become an army of all its citizens—an army in which Haredim serve just as they served without protest, proudly, in 1948. And serving too will be not only Haredim but also the Israeli Arabs whom Hamas and Hizballah refused to distinguish from Israeli Jews, slaughtering us all indifferently.

There is more. In 1948, the state of Israel secured its territorial sovereignty at an excruciating cost: a sovereignty that over the decades it has largely forfeited in such crucial geographical areas as the Negev—62 percent of the country’s territory—where the state’s laws against polygamy, drug trafficking, and gun trafficking are rarely if ever enforced, and where, especially among the Bedouin community, illegal construction continues apace.

In this war, we Israelis will remind ourselves of other lessons from 1948 that we’ve steadily forgotten. We will recall that we live not in Sweden or California but in the homicidal, fratricidal, and genocidal Middle East. We will recall that, while we can form crucial alliances, at the end of the day we alone are responsible for our defense. We will also recall that, rather than remaining dependent on foreign sources of arms, to the greatest degree possible we must be munitions-independent. As in 1948, we must manufacture not only our own bullets, grenades, and “Davidkas” (homemade mortars) but ordinance for tanks, artillery, and combat aircraft.

As in 1948, a war fought a mere three years after the Holocaust, we today and tomorrow must grapple with the reality of anti-Semitism. We must come to grips with the reality of a world that cares little for Jewish life while, and despite the superhuman efforts of the IDF to minimize Palestinian and Lebanese casualties, condemning us for non-existent war crimes and issuing warrants for our leaders’ arrest.

Most crucially, this is the war in which we must once again learn the meaning of Zionism. That meaning can itself be defined, and encompassed, in a single word: responsibility. While the disaster of October 7 was the product of many Israeli failures, the most egregious of all was the failure to have assumed responsibility for the defense of our border and the population living alongside it.

We must fulfill that responsibility, along with the responsibility to pursue an effective public diplomacy and protect our image in the world. We must also adequately and responsibly arm and equip our soldiers, while contributing as well to the defense of Jewish communities abroad. Above all, we must be responsible in demonstrating to our people, beyond all conceivable doubt, that the state has done the utmost to secure the release of any who have been taken hostage.

In this, our second war of independence, we have the opportunity—and beyond that, the duty—to ensure Israeli and Jewish unity. Our leaders have the opportunity to exhibit and personify the kind of behavior urged by Ben-Gurion in his most exalted (if untranslatable) coinage: mamlakhtiyut: i.e., acting in a respectable, responsible, and statesmanlike manner. Perhaps that would even be a more fitting name than the war of revival, or Iron Swords (the IDF’s formal name for its current military operations): milhemet ha- mamlakhtiyut, the war for attaining true sovereignty.

Thus, along with winning the war on the battlefield, we must triumph also in the war for Israel’s soul. Even though the extraordinary solidarity we experienced at the beginning of the war is today once again in danger of unraveling, there is reason to believe we will avoid the bloody internecine hatred of the kind once openly unleashed when, at the height of the Arab invasion of 1948, one Israeli armed force deliberately sank a ship (the Altalena) bearing the fighters of another.

Above all, we have every reason to be optimistic about the generation that has fought and continues to fight this war: the 360,000 reservists who, proportionally speaking, made up the equivalent of 20 million Americans—four million more than served in all of World War II.

They, the members of this generation, are tempered, steeled, anything but fragile, and intensely patriotic. They are the greatest such generation we have known since 1948. They are the Levi Eshkols and Golda Meirs, the Yitzhak Rabins and the Moshe Dayans of the future. They have been, and they remain, united, transcending all of the usual Israeli divisions—politics, religion, ethnicity—to live and to fight as a single force and with singular purpose. They are unparalleled in their resilience, their camaraderie, their quiet moral confidence, and their courage.

This generation will lead our country in rebuilding, reviving, and breathing new life into the Zionist project. This is the war for restoring our dignity, our identity, our independence, and for reaffirming and embracing our responsibility. This is the war after which, each time we rise to sing our national anthem anywhere and everywhere in the strong, sovereign, responsible Jewish state of Israel, we can stress, without modification, elision, or irony, the final phrases that say exactly who we are: “a free people, in our own land, in the land of Zion, in Jerusalem.”

NJA Zoom Speaker Event: Monday 31st March @ 7pm BST

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Comprehensive Indictment of UNRWA

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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Download PDF: Comprehensive Indictment of UNRWA Please refer to p.100

Mike Huckabee’s appointment as Israel ambassador could be in jeopardy

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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The Senate confirmation hearing for Gov. Mike Huckabee to become the U.S. ambassador to Israel was delayed once again—this time from March 13 to March 25.

According to sources close to the Trump administration, the postponement was driven by Democratic opposition and pressure from the liberal Jewish community, adding another layer of controversy to his appointment.
“The Democrats will do everything possible to delay the hearing,” said Friends of Zion founder Mike Evans. After learning of the delay, Evans wrote a letter to all members of the Senate in support of Huckabee’s nomination. That letter was disseminated on Tuesday.
Republicans hold a slim 53-49 majority in the Senate, putting Huckabee’s appointment at risk if even a few GOP members break ranks.
Huckabee was one of the first appointments announced by President Donald Trump after his election and, if confirmed, would be the first Evangelical Christian to serve as U.S. ambassador to Israel. His nomination holds significant importance for the Evangelical community, a key voting bloc that helped secure Trump’s return to the White House.
The Senate officially received his nomination on February 11, 2025.
In his letter, Evans wrote that Huckabee has “been criticized for being a Christian Zionist. In fact, he is a Christian Zionist, and I am also, as are more than 50 million Bible-believing Americans.”
He added that “Israel has been weakened by Jew haters who have used the Palestinians as proxies. To weaken Israel is to destabilize the Middle East and risk the peace of the world, for the road to world peace runs through the Middle East.” Evans praised Huckabee as a man of “moral clarity” and emphasized that “if there was ever a time Israel needed a U.S. ambassador whose foundation is a support of Zionism and moral clarity, it is now.”
Evans’ letter follows a contrasting message sent to Congress nearly three weeks earlier by the Union for Reform Judaism and the Central Conference of American Rabbis. In their letter, these groups expressed deep concerns over Huckabee’s nomination, citing his opposition to a Palestinian state and his Christian theology.
The rabbis reminded senators that in 2008, as a presidential candidate, Huckabee stated: “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.” They also pointed out that, in 2017, “Huckabee denied the reality of Israel’s decades-long occupation of the West Bank.” More recently, in an interview with Israel Radio following his nomination, the former governor welcomed the possibility of Israeli annexation of Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank.
“Gov. Huckabee’s views may be shaped in significant part by his deeply held evangelical faith, including what is known as ‘Christian Zionism,’” the letter reads. “This ideology professes a love of Israel rooted in the belief that Jewish sovereignty over the biblical land of Israel will hasten the return of Jesus Christ. Gov. Huckabee can hold whatever faith views he believes. At the same time, as Jews and Zionists, we are gravely concerned by a teaching in which the well-being of Jews, of Israel, and of America are not ends in themselves but means to the fulfillment of Christian eschatology.”
Ynetnews reached out to several Democratic senators for comment, but none responded. The outlet also contacted the director of strategic communications for the Union for Reform Judaism, who did not respond.
J Street’s founder and president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, told ILTV and Ynet News that the U.S. ambassador should be about representing American interests—not personal radical beliefs or ideology, as he believes is the case with Huckabee.
“Having Mike Huckabee as Ambassador from the U.S. would undermine the president’s goal of ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and facilitating regional normalization,” Ben-Ami said. “The biggest obstacles to that goal are extremists who deny the existence of the other side and seek all the land for only one party. Mike Huckabee’s views undermine President Trump’s goals and are a recipe for annexation, isolation, democratic decline and endless conflict.”

Proposed Investigation Into COGAT and Israel Corporate Sector Complicit Operations in the PA, especially in Gaza.

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
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Peloni:  The relevance of this 2023 proposed study stands today as being arguably more relevant than ever.  Note that UNRWA now operates on a $1.6 billion budget and not as stated in this proposal which was written two years ago.

David Bedein | Center For Near East Policy Research Ltd | Original Proposal Dated 2023

Israeli corporations have a de facto monopoly on the provision of supplies to Gaza  and other PA areas. The ability of these corporations to sustain their exclusive  control of this multi-billion dollar market is wholly dependent on COGAT  (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) decision making. Over the past several weeks, COGAT has raised an alarm that humanitarian aid from  UNRWA is not reaching the Palestinian population. Noting that this alarm is  inconsistent with 1000 trucks a day carrying Israeli products into Gaza, the Center for  Near East Policy Research (CFNEPR) contacted 44 donor nations. With the exception  of a nominal reduction in U.S. aid, every donor nation responded emphatically that  UNRWA and hence Gaza, is receiving 100% of its customary donations, an amount  that CFNEPR calculates to be $1.2 billion dollars per year.

This on-going funding includes $13.5 million transferred on behalf of the Bank of  Israel each month in cash by COGAT officials at the Erez border crossing that is put  into the hands of the UNRWA workers union which is under the control of Hamas.  Once the Israeli goods have been offloaded from the Israeli trucks, witnesses have  observed cash payments being made to COGAT officials.

Why Is COGAT Raising an Alarm?

One possibility is that the current storm puts the Israeli monopoly at risk. Another is  the opportunistic view that this is a good time to expand the lucrative export trade.  Our best estimate is that about 150 former COGAT officials are senior executives at  companies that export goods to Gaza and PA areas.

The tradition of former COGAT officials joining commercial enterprises for the sole  purpose of profiting from exports to Gaza and the PA began in 2005. With the  expulsion of the Gush Katif communities and the hand over of their assets to Hamas  via the World Bank, Gaza became a cash cow for Israeli entrepreneurs. At the time,  Gen. Eival Giladi, the COGAT official in charge of the expulsions was placed in charge  of Palestinian business development through the Portland Trust. It was at this  juncture that former COGAT officials responsible for vetting Israeli products paid for  in cash by Gazans began abandoning service to COGAT in order to assume profitable  roles as exporters to Gaza.

At the time, an investigation we carried out exposed arrangements by which the IDF,  the PA, the U.S. and UNRWA cooperated to hand the Gaza economy over to Hamas.  Today, for Israel’s financial stakeholders, preservation of a status quo in which  Israeli corporations maintain a de facto monopoly on the provision of supplies to PA areas is a top priority. The advantages of preserving this monopoly also give those  corporations good reason to try to influence military decision making.

The idea that the IDF would consider commercial interests in its military planning at  first seems preposterous. However, mounting practical and circumstantial evidence  is telling precisely that story. It begins with what we already know with certainty:  UNRWA has historically promoted Israeli commercial interests by maintaining a huge  labor force willing to work below minimum wage while living in housing, enjoying  educations, and using water and electricity paid for by UNRWA. To this day, the PA  areas remain a captive consumer economy dependent on Israeli products.

The synergy created by Israel’s official hands-off policy and the clear interest that  UNRWA, the PLO, and donor nations have in perpetuating the status quo create a  perfect economic storm in which Israeli conglomerates operate. Through their  complicity in perpetuating this status quo, UNRWA, the PLO, and donor nations have  provided Israeli commercial interests with a smokescreen behind which they obscure  their exploitation of a captive consumer market.

It is understandable why Israeli businesses would want to sustain the status quo. By  1987, there were 300,000 Palestinian UNRWA workers in Israel — equaling nearly 7%  of the entire population of the country. The intifada led to a withdrawal of that  workforce, but by then the attitude of the Israeli business community was fixed. The  captive UNRWA market was a golden goose for Israeli products delivered to a  suffering population by ostensibly helping hands.

Our initial finding is that financial windfalls, greed, and the appeal of monopoly has  brought about a situation where former IDF officers may be using their influence to  sustain a status quo that not only harms Israel’s national interest, but which may  impact on IDF tactical and strategic decisions in Gaza. It is not a remote possibility  that this situation has both resulted in the loss of Israeli soldiers and exposes civilians  to increased danger.

The ensuing situation has been one in which massive amounts of pilfered cash from UNRWA and other humanitarian agencies has wound up in the hands of Hamas for the  sole purpose of supporting terrorist activities. Huge sums of this cash are earmarked  by Hamas for purchasing Israeli products. We have subsequently been able to  confirm that in the case of each of the three IDF incursions into Gaza between 2007  to 2014 that were on the verge of decisively crushing Hamas were eased as a result  of demands by the Israeli business community that their products be allowed to get  through.

Our published findings to date have included the disturbing revelation that a high  ranking COGAT official set up a company in charge of cement distribution in Gaza. In this arrangement UNRWA in Gaza was given responsibility for ensuring this cement  would not reach Hamas terrorists. If the unsavory absurdity of this arrangement requires further verification, one need only look at the number of terrorist tunnels  that continue to be discovered and destroyed, and the amount of cement that is  being imported to replace them. This is a supplier’s dream scenario.

That this scenario is something other than building materials that simply slipped  through the cracks is borne out by the fact that there are NO RESTRICTIONS on Israeli  exports to Gaza:

According to COGAT, there is no restriction on those wishing to bring goods into Israel,  and that it is entirely possible that Gazan terrorist organizations are carrying out  trade with Israeli citizens.

“There is no list of authorized merchants, since, generally speaking, there is no restriction on those wishing to trade [with Gaza].” – COGAT (see The Jewish Press,  July 2, 2018)

Our sampling has confirmed that these exports are dominated by firms owned by  former senior IDF officers. In the face of both compelling circumstantial evidence and the preliminary data we have uncovered, there is an urgent need to answer one  remaining question with certainty:

DOES THE ISRAELI ARMY REGULATE ITS ACTIONS to benefit COMMERCIAL INTERESTS OF ITS FORMER OFFICERS?

Over ninety days we will tie circumstantial evidence to an exhaustive investigation in order to answer this question conclusively and make recommendations by:

  • Examining Israeli profit-making corporations that engage in “humanitarian  aid” to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Gaza
  • Auditing revenue and profits of these businesses
  • Identifying end-users of products exported from Israel to the Palestinian Authority and Gaza

Our team will include tri-lingual investigators (Hebrew, English, Arabic) with  backgrounds in economics and security analysis.

 

Investigation 

With the exception of high-tech, the businesses being examined operate with the  oversight of the Israeli Army and COGAT. The rules are such that high-tech  bypasses governmental approvals and employs hundreds of computer engineers to  work via the internet with Israeli companies, allowing PA/Hamas engineers access out transactions.

UN-affiliated organizations such as UNRWA place requests for tenders via a UN  procurement organization, which, in turn, contacts every vendor in order to carry out transactions.

This study will examine: 

  • Transparency. Goods and services currently provided to the PA and GAZA  will be catalogued and cross-referenced by nature of the goods, recipient,  supplier, and associated financial transfers, including goods supplied by  Israeli vendors to the UN.
  • Cyber industries. Israeli internet companies that employ Gaza-based  engineers using the internet, virtual desktops, and cloud technology will be  examined separately.
  • Protocols. COGAT and other security arrangements that currently govern  financial transactions between Israel, the PA and Gaza will be audited.
  • Security. The study will assess the actual and potential security impact of  the work of Gaza based computer engineers employed by Israeli companies.

APPENDIX 

This study will focus primarily on the following companies.
1. Ready-Mix Industries Israel: Ytzhak Bejerano, CEO. 155 Bialik Street, Ramat-Gan.

2. Hanson Israel: This company maintains 26 technologically advanced concrete and mortar production plants, with an annual capacity of approximately 3 million cubic meters; 3 quarries with an annual yield exceeding 8 million tons of aggregates; 2 asphalt plants capable of supplying about one million tons of different types of asphalt annually; and a fleet of 130 trucks to transport concrete and building materials. 5 Jabotinski St. Ramat Gan, 5252006Israel 972-3-5764242: Eliezer Priel, CEO.

Hanson Israel LTD. (Heidelberg Cement Group), Dubi Halaban, CFO.

3. A.S.T Clean Water Technologies, LTD. 26 Dayan Moshe Rd., Haifa, 2629824.

4. Delek – Israel Fuel Corporation LTD.

British Gas Group discovered a natural gas reservoir over 15 years ago off the coast of Gaza that is similar in capacity to that of the Yam Tethys project, and this reservoir may be developed in the future and marketed both locally and to the Mari-B, which has already been largely depleted by Noble and its partner, the Israeli company Delek Group, might have fallen squarely within Palestinian claims by as much as 6,600 square kilometers of maritime territory within the eastern Mediterranean’s gas-rich Levantine Basin. The PA, however, has been reticent in asserting Palestinian claims to much of these resources.

Palestinians are almost totally dependent on the state-backed Israeli Electric Corporation (IEC), which supplies around 85 percent of their electricity. However, gas from Noa, Mari-B and, according to SOMO, the Border Field, is sold to the IEC by the Noble and Delek Group.

The regional supply also includes Gaza-Marine, with estimated reserves of 32 BCM. The field was discovered by Israel and transferred to the Palestinian Authority. Gaza-Marine is jointly owned by Shell, the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) and the Consolidated Contractors Limited (CCC). However, the field’s location, off the Mediterranean coast of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, makes its probable development in the near-term unlikely. In the long-term, we expect that, pending appropriate political conditions, the reservoir will be developed and will serve as a source of supply to the Palestinian market to complement future gas imports from Israel.

Delek Group LTD is the ultimate owner of Delek Israel through its fully owned
subsidiary Delek Petroleum.

Delek Group LTD is a public Israeli company traded on the Tel Aviv stock exchange
under the ticker symbol DELEKG. Its controlling shareholder is Itshak Sharon
(60.51%).

Delek Israel CEO, Esther Eldan

Subsidiaries / Partners:
Wholly owned subsidiaries: Delek Natural Gas LTD., Delek P-Galilot Limited Partnership LTD., Delek Industries LTD., Delek Transportation LTD., Delek Menta Roads Retails LTD, Delek Retail Stores LTD., Shot Delek Kliot.

The company also holds 51% of Joe Gourmet Coffee, 75% of United Company for the extraction of Oil LTD.,60% of Delek-Ygal M.P.G LTD., and 15% of Kmor Shipping Services LTD. Head office: 7 Gibory Israel St. 4250407, Netanya.

5. Isa Khoury Metal Industry LTD. 3 Ha-Nekhoshet St. Beer Sheva, IL 8487503
Well known in metal and mechanical construction works in the region and expanding worldwide, with subsidiary offices in Nazareth, Bethlehem in the PA and in Aqaba, Jordan. ISA KHOURY writes in its company description that it has an “outstanding relationship with Israeli Borders authority and articulate communication skill in handling political matters between Israeli and PA entities”.
Constructed the first Gaza Power Plant in situated in Gaza with 140MW under Alstom Sweden Contract.

6. G. Willi-Food International. The Company has developed trade relationships locally, as well as in areas administered by the Palestinian Authority. 4 Nahal Harif St., Northern Industrial Zone, Yavne, 81106, Israel. Amir Kaplan, Chief Financial Officer.

7. PAZ Oil Company. The company is publicly traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol PZOL.Top institutional shareholders: Clal Insurance Enterprises Holdings LTD. (6.56%), Harel Insurance Investments & Financial Services LTD (6.13%), Meitav DS Investments LTD (6.0%), The Phoenix Holdings LTD (5.18%), Menora Mivtahim Pensions and Gemel LTD (5.06%).

Subsidiaries / Partners:
Main subsidiaries: Paz Industries and Services (Oil) LTD. (100%), Pazgas (100%), Paz Lubricants and Chemicals (100%), Pazkar (100%), Paz Aviation Services (100%), Paz Aviation Assets (100%), Azomat of the Paz Group (100%), Nituv Filling Stations (100%), Paz Movil (100%), Paz Ashdod Oil Refineries (100%) and Pi-Glilot Oil and Pipe Terminals (21.5%).

Joint ventures include: Pazniv Yerid Hamizrach (50%), Gai Iron (50%), On Fuel Lubricants and Wash (50%), Kenyon Shoket (50%) and Solpaz.

The company enjoys access to the Palestinian market.

The Palestinian Authority is Paz’s largest customer, accounting for about 10% of its total revenues. In 2016, it supplied about 50% of the oil product and about 85% of the LPG (liquid petroleum gas) to the West Bank and to the Gaza Strip.

As collateral, the company holds the right to collect its payment from Palestinian tax revenues held by the Israeli government. Israel has repeatedly used its power to withhold Palestinian tax revenues as a punitive measure against the PA, in violation of both the Oslo Accords and international law.

The company has filling stations in East Jerusalem.

8. Nesher Cement. Ownership: Clal Industries (100%). Clal Industries is a subsidiary of Access Industries, a US-based holding company, owned by Len Blavatnik. Subsidiaries / Partners: Company subsidiaries include Nesher Sachar cement marketing, Taman (PPM), MP Mineral, Taavura Holdings and AvShal Investment and Trade, which owns Israel Shipyards and Nesher Environment.
Location: 2 Hahazon Street, Industrial Zone A – Ramla 72369 Israel

9. Israeli High-Tech industries that work with Gaza companies: This is something new, which does not fall under COGAT oversight and operates without a physical presence in Gaza. Essentially, this is trade in non-humanitarian products.

a. Innitel (Changed name to Deskforce, uses Gaza engineers) CEO Elie Rubin,
CTO Dan Leubitz.

b. Mellanox: Eyal Waldman, President, and CEO of Mellanox Technologies LTD.

 

UN VENDOR LIST: 

The study will examine transparency procedures concerning the goods and  services that Israeli corporations provide to the UN. The study will ask the Israeli  government to name the “end users” for these products.

Israeli companies currently on the UN Vendor List: 

Gevaram Quality Envelopes LTD

Gilat Satcom LTD

Gizra Internet Solutions LTD

Glosec Solutions LTD

Goren-Kidon International trade LTD  Hafatsa and Harkavot

Hatzor Safes LTD

HP PPS Israel LTD

I.D.E. Technologies LTD.

I.Y.Genesis Advanced Engineering LTD Iconic LTD.

IO Solutions LTD.

Isa Khoury Metal Industry LTD.

ISRAEL AEROSPACE INDUSTRIES LTD.  ISRAEL CARGO LOGISTICS (ICL) LTD.  JACKY BITTON LINE LTD

John Bryce Training LTD.

Karil International Marketing LTD

Karmi Interlab L.T.D

KNOLTECH LTD

L.A.D.M. Agencies (1998) LTD.

L.D.D. ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES (2005) LTD LADM Agencies (1998) LTD

Lan-Lee International LTD.

LAN-TECH Systems & Communications LTD.  Layam LTD

Link-com Telecom LTD

Lotan Group International LTD

Magal Security Systems LTD

Matrix I.T. LTD.

Meprolight (1990) LTD.

MER SECURITY & COMMUNICATIONSYSTEMS  LTD.

MGS Language services

Mifram LTD

Mosah Zamir Bakal LTD

Mottech Water Management LTD.  N.A. Rosenfeld Projects LTD

NESS A.T. LTD

Netalizer LTD.

Nextcom LTD

Nibor Enterprises Israel LTD.

NICE Systems LTD.

A.S.T CLEAN WATER TECHNOLOGIES LTD  Adi Tours LTD

Aeroflame – Fire Fighting Systems LTD AGAN ENGINEERING ENTERPRISES (1988) LTD.  Aleppo International

Amos Gazit LTD.

ATID TECHNOLOGICCOLLEGESNETWORKLTD  Avner Gilad Preservation & Restoration of  Buildings LTD

B.Rimon Agencies LTD

Barlev Associates, Accountants

Bezeq International LTD

Biometrix LTD

BIRD Aerosystems

BlueBird Aero Systems LTD.

Bney Meir LTD

Brand Industries LTD.

Bynet Data Communications LTD

C&G Logistics Solutions LTD.

C.A.L. CARGO AIRLINE LTD

Carmor Integrated Vehicle Solutions LTD.  Ceragon Networks LTD.

CHROMAGENAGRICULTURECOOPERATIONSOCIE  TY LTD

Classica International LTD.

Computer C Data LTD

CueBid Inc,

Danir Systems LTD.

DELEK -ISRAEL FUEL CORPORATION LTD.  Diesel Garage Tiberias LTD

DIUK ARCHES LTD

E Geller Consulting

E.D.T. E-Drive Technology LTD

EASY LINE LTD

EITHAR INSURANCE AGENCY CO. LTD.  Elbit Systems LTD

Elco – Contracting and Services (1973) Limited Eltel Technologistics LTD

Eshet Engineering LTD.

EZPack Water LTD

Firefly LTD.

Galillee College

Gaya Automotive Industries LTD.

 

Sdema Group, LTD. (Israel)

Shladot LTD.

Somet Integration LTD

Sonol israel LTD.

SPACE-BAND

Starcom G.P.S Systems LTD.

Sunshield Safety Coating Solutions LTD  SysDo LTD

T.D. GROUP LTD

Tahal Consulting Engineers LTD. Tal Jerusalem Stonemasons L.T.D.  Tamooz Marketing Communications  Tenders System LTD.

Tractors & Equipment LTD (I.T.E) Upgrade Solutions LTD

Water-Gen LTD

Zim Integrated Shipping Services LTD.  ZIV-AV Engineering LTD

Nir Zaidfunden Consulting Engineers LTD  ODIS Filtering LTD

Ofek Aerial Photography (1987) LTD  Onset Systems Engineering LTD

Opgal Optronic Industries LTD

Ophir- Mizrachi Yosef

OrliteIndustries(Millenium2000)LTD  PALRAM INDUSTRIES (1990) LTD

PAZ OIL COMPANY LTD.

Plasan Sasa LTD

Rabintex Industries LTD

RAD Data Communications LTD.

Robogroup T.E.K. LTD.

S.B. HANDLING SOLUTIONS LTD

S.D. ADVANCED SOLUTIONS LTD

Sami Awadallah for Construction Works LTD  Scope Metals Group LTD.

Zachor – Remembrance

By
Michael Kuttner
-

Without remembering past events, we are doomed to repeat the same fatal mistakes.

This has been proven endlessly over the millennia of Jewish history and is as relevant today as it was in past years.

This past week, Jews commemorated Shabbat Zachor and read the passage from Exodus, commanding a remembrance of how Amalek attacked the vulnerable Israelites as they trekked to the Promised Land. That singular Biblical event and its annual recitation set the scene for what is a communal determination to remember and act against those who plot our demise.

As we celebrate Purim and the deliverance of Persian Jews from genocidal machinations the lessons of the past should be foremost in our minds. At no time since the end of the Shoah have those plotting evil against Jews been more vocal and active.

It is unfortunate but not surprising that, once again, we face a largely indifferent world. Expressions of solidarity are swamped by cynical votes against Israel at international gatherings. Today’s successors of Haman plan their latest version of Jew cleansing and the world prefers to pretend that it’s all a bluff.

A brief survey of the latest developments should be a wake-up call for sceptics who see nothing amiss, optimists who prefer to pretend that peace beckons at the end of the rainbow and realists who fear that time is running out.

Purim this year is still being celebrated in the shadow of post-7 October 2023 traumas with Israeli hostages, dead and alive, being held by Hamas for ransom. The deadly consequences of Islamic terror are a potent reminder of the carnage that results from underestimating the nefarious designs of our detractors.

In a unique twist of irony the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is also being observed at this time. Based on past experiences, this is likely to unleash increased violence and terror. For devout Muslims, it is a time of fasting, reflection and communal gatherings. Unfortunately for an increasing number of jihadist militants it has also become a month when Islam is hijacked and used as a weapon against those they perceive as “infidels.” An upsurge in terror-related activity in Israel is usually the norm. As expected, the usual groups have issued clarion calls for violence with the Temple Mount being a convenient excuse.

Missing in action are denunciations of this kidnapping of Islam by increasing numbers of fanatics. The almost total silence of Islamic clerics and political leaders in the face of this wave of hate is very noticeable. Are they silent because of a fear of retaliation by their own followers or does their silence signify passive approval?

Just as bad is the silence of Christians and many Jewish religious and lay leaders in countries outside of Israel. In many places interfaith gatherings are organized which purport to demonstrate that we are all mates together and nothing is amiss. Unfortunately, celebrants fail to remember underlying worrying narratives. The results can be soul-destroying, especially when illusory mirages are cruelly shattered.

This is exactly what has recently occurred in the United Kingdom.

An attempt at a Jewish – Muslim reconciliation was attempted whereby a much-touted pact was signed by several UK Islamic notables and Jewish leaders, including the Chief Rabbi. This declaration of fraternal friendship was presented to King Charles amidst much fanfare and media hoopla. I wondered how long it would take before a counter-reaction would be forthcoming from Islamic representatives who saw this as some sort of a betrayal.

Sure enough this week, just in time for Ramadan, the expected denunciations were forthcoming.

A coalition of UK Muslim organizations rejected this pact aimed at improving relations between the two communities because of the “involvement of British Chief Rabbi Mirvis” who they denounced as a “staunch Zionist. He has supported Israel’s war on the Palestinians in Gaza. We cannot in good faith acknowledge these accords when the Chief Rabbi has made public statements supporting Israel despite the horrific actions of the Israel occupation forces.”  They went on to state that they would only accept and support the accords if the UK Chief Rabbi condemns the “genocide and apartheid being enacted against the Palestinian people.” We reject these accords “made purportedly on behalf of the Muslim community.” In conclusion they said that “a central facet of Islam is the complete rejection of oppression. As a community we do not shy away from rejecting oppression in all its forms against anyone.”

Remembering past and current experiences of Jews and others one can only marvel at the breathtaking claims. The number of Christian and Jewish infidels put to the sword since the advent of Islam is most probably only surpassed by the number of Muslims murdered in the name of Allah by other Islamists.

The irrational and poisonous strain of anti-Jewish hate combined with an obsessive objection to any Jewish historical sovereign rights is the “elephant in the room” that needs addressing. A cowardly silence and a fake friendship in the face of stark realities is not a recipe for any sort of genuine reconciliation or tolerance.

Next up is a classic example of how remembrance can be classified as non-diplomatic.

The New Zealand High Commissioner to the UK was sacked this past week for the “crime” of articulating plain truths instead of utilizing diplomatic double-speak.

It seems that the hapless diplomat was asked his opinion about Ukraine and President Trump’s policies. Instead of repeating the politically correct and banal responses of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, High Commissioner Phil Goff mused that he had just read the comments of Winston Churchill spoken in 1938. After British PM Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich with “the deal of peace with honour and for our time” he was hailed as a latter day messiah and saviour of humanity.

Churchill’s famous retort to this outbreak of collective euphoria about selling Czechoslovakia down the river and making dubious deals with international terror patrons remains relevant.

“You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”

No doubt, New Zealand’s diplomatic representative to the UK found this a most appropriate observation, taking into account that Russia has territorial ambitions in the Ukraine. His further observation that he doubted Trump’s grasp of history was no doubt the final straw as far as Wellington was concerned.

His dismissal for articulating inconvenient truths is yet another example of how hypocrisy flourishes in the corridors of international diplomacy.

It has been revealed that “negotiations” have been taking place between a US negotiator and Hamas about releasing a dual US hostage and extending a ceasefire.

This has thrust the whole question of whether one should deal with terrorist organizations into the debate. Is it better to talk to these murderers or should we deal with them in the only real way that they understand?

Israel has, at times in the past, tried indirect negotiations with terror facilitators, and the end results have always been a complete fiasco. The most prominent example of this failed policy was the rescue of Arafat and his terror cronies from a sure end in Lebanon in 1982. Allowed to go into exile in Tunisia with his supporters this deal with the PLO laid the groundwork for subsequent legitimization of everything to do with “liberating Palestine.”

This disastrous gesture was then subsequently made even worse when the infamous Oslo Accords granted them an internationally blessed certificate of approval. A deal bringing a terror entity to our border sanctified the PLO as a “true” partner when in actual fact it really guaranteed the death of Israelis and perpetual murderous deeds.

Hamas has obviously taken on board the lessons of Oslo because after the latest futile attempt to involve it in meaningless talks it issued a triumphant statement claiming that “it sees these talks with the USA as the beginning of gaining international legitimacy.”

It is, therefore, appropriate at this time for Israeli decision-makers to remember the painful lessons that Purim teaches us.

Our response to Amalek was not one of the deals but the uncompromising determination to defeat terror and ensure that the murder of Jews would never go unpunished.

Likewise, the lessons of the Purim episode are not to hide but instead thwart nefarious schemes against Jews.

We must constantly remember in order to avoid the lethal pitfalls of the past.

The memory-holing of a pogrom

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

SONY DSC

They called their rampage a ‘Jew hunt’. They incited each other to violence, saying ‘[we] may never get this chance [again] to beat up some fucking Jews’. They called for a city-wide ‘rage’ against ‘cancer Jews’ and ‘cancer Zionists’. They damned the Jews as a ‘cowardly’ people. They shared information about the arrival of a ‘train full of Jews’ and said everyone should be there to greet it, because ‘we have to make those cancer Jews feel what they did to our brothers’. The train could be late, one of them joked, because it might be a ‘special train’ laid on by Hitler, ‘with gas for [the Jews]’.

Where were these racist obscenities uttered? Where was this violent hunt for Jews carried out? Germany in 1938, perhaps? No, it was in Amsterdam, last year. This was the jodenjacht of November 2024 when visiting Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were ‘hunted’ by mobs of mostly Arab men in the streets of Amsterdam. More details about this pogrom emerged during the latest court cases last week, and they heap yet further shame on the pogrom deniers of the Western left who insisted these were just street clashes, not a Jew hunt.

Five more of Amsterdam’s alleged Jew hunters found themselves in the dock last week. One – Mounir M, aged 32 – is charged with being an administrator of the WhatsApp group in which the violence was incited and organised. Originally called ‘Free Palstine’ (sic), the group later changed its name to ‘Buurthuis 2’ (Dutch for ‘Community Centre 2’). Racial animus and open calls for violence swirled through this ominous chat. Drive your car ‘into those people’, one participant said. ‘Hit them hard’, said another. There must be ‘at least one death’, dreamed one messenger. There were also tips for how to incite the Maccabi fans. Shout ‘Free Palestine’ at them, the mob was advised.

Mounir M is said to have helped oversee this group that seethed with Jew hate. As the Dutch daily paper Het Parool reported, last week’s court proceedings ‘left little to the imagination: participants in the group… incited each other to hunt down Jews’. The court heard that the group was full of ‘insulting words about Jews’, alongside calls for action. There were ‘quips’ too, like the one about Hitler’s special train, with gas in it. Mounir M is accused of responding in the most chilling way to a message about the hotel in which Maccabi fans had taken refuge from the blows of the Jew hunters. ‘Get rid of it’, he allegedly wrote.

Another suspect in the current trial – Mahmoud A, a Palestinian asylum seeker – faces a more serious charge: attempted manslaughter. A video clip allegedly shows him kicking a Maccabi supporter in the head four times as he was lying on the ground. The three other suspects face charges of ‘providing information to commit violence’, trivialising and condoning the Holocaust, and using a belt to whip an elderly visiting Israeli. The Dutch paper De Telegraaf said at the end of last week that this latest ‘Trial of the Jew hunters’ has ‘severely shocked’ the people of the Netherlands. It is horrifying, it said, that an event of such a ‘clearly anti-Semitic character’ could take place in modern-day Amsterdam.

They called their rampage a ‘Jew hunt’. They incited each other to violence, saying ‘[we] may never get this chance [again] to beat up some fucking Jews’. They called for a city-wide ‘rage’ against ‘cancer Jews’ and ‘cancer Zionists’. They damned the Jews as a ‘cowardly’ people. They shared information about the arrival of a ‘train full of Jews’ and said everyone should be there to greet it, because ‘we have to make those cancer Jews feel what they did to our brothers’. The train could be late, one of them joked, because it might be a ‘special train’ laid on by Hitler, ‘with gas for [the Jews]’.

Where were these racist obscenities uttered? Where was this violent hunt for Jews carried out? Germany in 1938, perhaps? No, it was in Amsterdam, last year. This was the jodenjacht of November 2024 when visiting Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv were ‘hunted’ by mobs of mostly Arab men in the streets of Amsterdam. More details about this pogrom emerged during the latest court cases last week, and they heap yet further shame on the pogrom deniers of the Western left who insisted these were just street clashes, not a Jew hunt.

Five more of Amsterdam’s alleged Jew hunters found themselves in the dock last week. One – Mounir M, aged 32 – is charged with being an administrator of the WhatsApp group in which the violence was incited and organised. Originally called ‘Free Palstine’ (sic), the group later changed its name to ‘Buurthuis 2’ (Dutch for ‘Community Centre 2’). Racial animus and open calls for violence swirled through this ominous chat. Drive your car ‘into those people’, one participant said. ‘Hit them hard’, said another. There must be ‘at least one death’, dreamed one messenger. There were also tips for how to incite the Maccabi fans. Shout ‘Free Palestine’ at them, the mob was advised.

Mounir M is said to have helped oversee this group that seethed with Jew hate. As the Dutch daily paper Het Parool reported, last week’s court proceedings ‘left little to the imagination: participants in the group… incited each other to hunt down Jews’. The court heard that the group was full of ‘insulting words about Jews’, alongside calls for action. There were ‘quips’ too, like the one about Hitler’s special train, with gas in it. Mounir M is accused of responding in the most chilling way to a message about the hotel in which Maccabi fans had taken refuge from the blows of the Jew hunters. ‘Get rid of it’, he allegedly wrote.

Another suspect in the current trial – Mahmoud A, a Palestinian asylum seeker – faces a more serious charge: attempted manslaughter. A video clip allegedly shows him kicking a Maccabi supporter in the head four times as he was lying on the ground. The three other suspects face charges of ‘providing information to commit violence’, trivialising and condoning the Holocaust, and using a belt to whip an elderly visiting Israeli. The Dutch paper De Telegraaf said at the end of last week that this latest ‘Trial of the Jew hunters’ has ‘severely shocked’ the people of the Netherlands. It is horrifying, it said, that an event of such a ‘clearly anti-Semitic character’ could take place in modern-day Amsterdam.

Is there also ‘shock’ outside of the Netherlands over this trial of suspected Jew hunters? Over this chilling spectacle of a pogrom being pored over in a court of law in 2025? Remarkably, no. There’s mostly silence. You will search in vain for coverage in the non-Dutch press of this latest development in the Amsterdam pogrom. Is Europe’s press bored with this story of Jews being hunted on the streets of a European capital? Yes, what a drag that we might have to grapple with the fact that there was an organised and violent hounding of ‘cancer Jews’ on our continent in the 21st century. After all, Europe is meant to be a paragon of liberalism and diversity, and so much more morally superior than those populist oafs who’ve taken over in America. We can’t let a pesky little thing like a Jew hunt interfere with that narrative.

There’s an even more sinister reason for Europe’s silence on this ‘trial of the Jew hunters’ in one of our most enlightened cities. Many have clearly bought into the pogrom denialism that spread like a pox in opinion-forming circles in the immediate aftermath of this street hunt for Jews. Western leftists devoted the same amount of moral energy to denying the truth of the Amsterdam pogrom as they normally devote to uncovering racism absolutely everywhere. The same people who for years decried everything from white women wearing their hair in cornrows to the scuffing of a page in the Koran as ‘racism’ were now shrugging their shoulders over a literal Jew hunt. ‘Maybe the Maccabi fans brought it on themselves’, they essentially said.

To the rational observer, it was clear from the start that what happened in Amsterdam was a pogrom. The first ‘trial of the Jew hunters’ took place in December. Five men were convicted of violence. One had boasted in the WhatsApp group about joining the ‘Jew hunt’ – his words. He later kicked Maccabi fans and grabbed one by the throat. Another described his victims as ‘cowardly [Jews]’. The men, along with around 900 others, were part of the virtual chat which, the court heard, had shared information for the purposes of ‘violence against people of Jewish descent and / or supporters of Maccabi Tel Aviv’. Four of the five men were jailed, one was given a community order.

So we have known since the end of last year that the mob in Amsterdam called its evil endeavour a ‘Jew hunt’. We know they incited each other to ‘beat up some fucking Jews’. We know they gabbed about cleansing Amsterdam of this ‘cancer’ of Jews. We know from last week’s trials that they joked about the Holocaust too, and invoked Hitler, and chuckled about gas, and allegedly beat an Israeli with a belt, and allegedly carried out an attempted manslaughter. All of it done with a ‘clearly anti-Semitic character’, as De Telegraaf said.

And yet still leftists said it wasn’t a pogrom. Still we saw headlines like ‘The pogrom in Amsterdam that wasn’t’. Still we were told that the Maccabi fans had it coming because they yelled offensive slogans and tore down a Palestine flag. These fans brought the ‘spirit of Israeli fascism’ to the Netherlands, one observer said, and folk in Amsterdam just fought back. It was victim-blaming on steroids, as grotesque as when anti-Semites said the Jews of Germany brought Kristallnacht on themselves by being such economic disruptors. Nothing better sums up the turbo-smug racial paternalism of the modern left than the fact that gangs of men said ‘We carried out a Jew hunt!’ and these people essentially replied: ‘No you didn’t. You were just protesting. Bless.’ They don’t only know better than Jews, you see – they know better than Arabs, too.

The pitiless cynicism of so many observers following the Amsterdam pogrom exposed the neo-racist cruelty of identity politics. Their denials of the Jew hunt were fuelled by a warped belief that Jews can never be victims. After all, Jews are part of ‘the privileged’ and Arab migrants are part of ‘the oppressed’. And how can ‘the privileged’ suffer a pogrom at the hands of ‘the oppressed’? They sacrificed the truth of Amsterdam’s Jew hunt at the altar of ideology. They threw Jews under the bus in the service of their own self-aggrandising worldview. They memory-holed a pogrom to preserve their virtue. Other people did the same in Europe 80 years ago. They were not the good guys.

Brendan O’Neill is spiked’s chief political writer and host of the spiked podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show. Subscribe to the podcast here. His new book – After the Pogrom: 7 October, Israel and the Crisis of Civilisation – is available to order on Amazon UK and Amazon US now. And find Brendan on Instagram: @burntoakboy

Netanyahu: UN report a ‘blood libel,’ ignores Hamas atrocities

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opens the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office on February 10, 2019. - Nudged by rightwing political rivals after a deadly Palestinian attack on a young Israeli woman, Netanyahu who seeks re-election pledged today to freeze money transfers to the Palestinian Authority. (Photo by GALI TIBBON / POOL / AFP) (Photo credit should read GALI TIBBON/AFP/Getty Images)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday strongly rejected the United Nations Human Rights Council’s report accusing Israel of committing “genocidal acts” in Gaza.

He dismissed the council as an “anti-Israel circus” that has been “exposed as an antisemitic, corrupt, terrorist-supporting and irrelevant body.”

Netanyahu emphasized that Israel withdrew from the council a month ago due to its bias and accused the U.N. of ignoring Hamas’s war crimes, including the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, which he described as the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust.

Instead of addressing Hamas’s crimes against humanity, he argued, the U.N. has “once again [chosen] to attack the State of Israel with false accusations, including baseless charges of sexual violence.”

He concluded with a direct condemnation of the council:
“This is not the Human Rights Council, this is the Council of Blood Rights,” the prime minister said.

Gideon Sa’ar, the Jewish state’s foreign minister, called the report “one of the worst blood libels the world has ever seen,” speaking during a joint press conference with his Greek and Cypriote counterparts on Thursday.

“It accuses the victims of the crimes committed against them. Hamas is the organization that has committed horrific sexual crimes against Israelis on October 7. It is indeed a sick publication that only an antisemitic organization could produce,” he said in Athens.

The report was submitted to the Human Rights Council on Thursday.

Anne Herzberg, legal adviser and U.N. representative for NGO Monitor commented on the report from the U.N.’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which accused Israel of systematically destroying women’s healthcare facilities in Gaza and using sexual violence as a war strategy since Oct. 7, 2023.

“This latest report yet again reveals the U.N. Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry against Israel as a main vector of atrocity denial and inversion,” Herzberg said.

“Since October 7, the COI [Commission of Inquiry] has outrageously accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in Gaza while refusing to say the same about Hamas. It also downplayed the mass sexual violence committed on October 7 against Israeli women and girls, while now issuing an entire report dedicated to defaming the IDF with the false claim of perpetrating systematic gender-based violence against Palestinians.

“Moreover, the COI has done zero advocacy to free the hostages, while just this week held another two days of anti-Israel propaganda hearings. We hope the new U.S. administration will cut all funding to the U.N. bodies responsible for providing millions of dollars to this egregious panel and that all countries of conscience will swiftly follow suit,” Herzberg said.

JNS report (video from 2024) on “Conference on the Jewish Left” at Boston U on 2/28/25

By
​Center for Near East Policy Research
-
Many of these blatantly political and terror supportering groups have 501c3 status.
According to this article “Local pro Israel and Jewish groups didn’t comment on the event”.
I sent the information to the relevant orgs and Jewish and national media outlets and Conservative journalists.
Video of the 2024 conference below.
CURA – Institute On Culture Religion And World Affairs wrote they would be posting a video of the 2025 Jews4Jihad Hatefest on their YouTube channel  but gave no date.

Anti-Israel event at Boston University ‘betrayal of the ideals of a fine university’

Local pro-Israel and Jewish groups didn’t comment on the event, which Rabbi David Wolpe told JNS was “a twisted perversion of the historical record and Israel’s actions.” Photo: Aerial view of Boston, with a focus on Boston Universityís Agganis Arena (foreground), home of the universityís famed hockey team (and other sports), on the shore of the Charles River, below Cambridge, April 28, 2019. Photo by Carol M. Highsmith/Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress.

By Dave Gordon
Source: Jewish News Syndicate

Major U.S. Jewish groups lie to their constituents and believe that Jewish lives are more valuable than those of Palestinians, Israeli soldiers terrorize Palestinian students and the Jewish state is guilty of genocide and of killing children intentionally. Those were some of the claims that were made at the Conference on the Jewish Left, the second iteration of the event, which was held at Boston University on Feb. 28.

The Boston University Center for the Humanities, the Jewish Cultural Endowment at Boston University—which is part of the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies at the private university—and the Krupp Family Foundation, which supports “social and racial justice,” were listed as the main sponsors.

Other sponsors included the Religion, Conflict and Peace Initiative at Harvard Divinity School, BU Diversity and Inclusion and Wellesley College’s Jewish Studies Program. JNS sought comments from all of the sponsors and from the Israeli consulate general in Boston and the American Jewish Committee’s New England office.

David Wolpe, rabbi emeritus of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles, told JNS that Boston University’s Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine invited him last year “to address blatant and persistent antisemitism there in particular and on campus in general.”

“You can mention that, and say what is happening in the BU campus is a betrayal of the ideals of a fine university, a threat—implicit or blatant—to Jewish students and a twisted perversion of the historical record and Israel’s actions,” Wolpe told JNS. (JNS sought comment from Boston University.)

The only sponsor of the event who responded to JNS was Warren S. Goldstein, executive director of the Center for Critical Research on Religion, which he said was “proud” to support the event.

The conference “brought progressive Jews together at a time when freedom of speech has been under attack by some on the right,” Goldstein told JNS. “As a conference, it brings those with various viewpoints together to encourage debate and discussion.”

Goldstein said that “J Street is hardly ‘hard left,’” since the group supports “a two-state solution, which is quite mainstream.”

“Regarding the question of genocide, it depends on how one defines it,” Goldstein said, referring JNS to a definition on the website of the United Nations.

“On the intentionality of killing women and children in Gaza, intention is hard to establish especially in a large organization like the IDF,” he said. “But no one denies that tens of thousands of Palestinian women and children were killed by the IDF. The question is whether this could have been avoided.”

‘Raised us on a lie’

At the event at Boston University, Simone Zimmerman, a co-founder of the anti-Israel group IfNotNow, told attendees that the Jewish community “raised us on a lie.”

Mainstream Jewish groups “believe that Jewish lives are inherently more worthy than Palestinian lives, that Jews deserve an ethno-state that comes at a direct cost to Palestinians,” she added. “In order to defend the indefensible, they’ve built an entire industry of denial, diversion and diffusion, with the cost of Zionism on its Palestinian victims.”

Jeremy Menchik, associate professor of international relations and political science at Boston University and director of its Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, directed the conference. He said that the event, which organizers said drew 800 people in person and online, took place when “foundational principles of justice and democracy are under attack.”

In his opening remarks, Menchik said that 65 schools were represented at the event, including Tel Aviv University and University of Haifa. He also said Columbia University, where it is “not an easy place to be a progressive,” was represented.

The anti-Israel groups Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, and J Street, which describes itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy,” also participated in the event.

Zimmerman, the IfNotNow co-founder, delivered a keynote titled “Nakba denial and the future of American Judaism.” (“Nakba” is an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe,” which some anti-Israel people use to describe the founding of the Jewish state.)

Growing up in what she called a “tight knit” Los Angeles Jewish community, Zimmerman, a board member of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice Action, said that Zionism “was a fact of my existence, a core pillar of my identity.” But as a student at University of California, Berkeley, she interacted with Palestinian students and heard of the “terror” they experienced.

Her experiences “shattered something in me irreparably, something that can never and should never be repaired by Zionism,” she told attendees. “This has propelled me on a journey of witnessing the Palestinian reality.”

She referred to Israel’s war against Hamas as a genocide and said the Jewish state aimed “to erase the past, present and future of Palestinian life on that land.”

Omer Bartov, dean’s professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, gave a keynote address on “Israel’s war in Gaza and the question of genocide.”

“There are obviously some armed Hamas and other Palestinian fighters in Gaza who can, every once in a while, come out from the debris or from tunnels and fire a rocket at a group of soldiers or at a tank,” he told attendees.

“If they’re lucky, they may kill or wound a few of them, but there is no real organized resistance,” he added. “Hamas is operating in Gaza, but it no longer has the ability for organized resistance, and therefore it isn’t actually a war.” He told attendees that the Jewish state aims to carry out “ethnic cleansing.”

Video of 2024 Conference.

An important conversation about the Jewish Left amidst the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with speakers Shaul Magid, Andy Izenson, Daniel May, Atalia Omer, and Irena Klepfisz.

00:00 Jeremy Menchik: ”Welcome to the Jewish Left”

11:52 Shaul Magid: “Does the Left Have to Fail to Succeed? Today’s Progressivism through the lens of 1960s Radicalism”

1:04:12 Andy Izenson: “The World That is Coming: Do’ikayt and Mystical Anarchsim” 1:46:24 Daniel May: “The Jewish Left at a Moment of Crises: What can and Should be the Role of Journalism”

2:28:30 Atalia Omer: “The Israeli Jewish Left”

3:07:50 Irena Klepfisz: “Giving up on Sainthood, Allowing for Change: A few Thoughts and Poems”

Music by penguinmusic – “Better Day” from Pixabay

The Jewish Left
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