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The HaKol HaYehudi news outlet on Wednesday requested that the Tel Aviv District Court reveal the name of a “foreign entity” that has been implicated in the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.
Attorney Nati Rom, of the Honenu legal aid group that is representing the Israeli website, said the Nov. 21 indictment against Eli Feldstein, a former spokesman in the Prime Minister’s Office and chief suspect in a leaked files case, accuses him of possessing “confidential information about the possible involvement of [censored] in the 7/10/23 incident.”
The State Attorney’s Office previously said in a statement that “these are not names of people or an organization but of a foreign entity.”
Col. (res.) Ronen Cohen, the former director of the Terrorism Desk in the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate, told i24News this week that “when they say that this is not the name of a person or a terrorist group, I believe it is the Palestinian Authority.”
“If this assessment is indeed correct, there was a betrayal there on the part of the internal systems of the Shin Bet and the IDF,” he charged.
“If I am indeed right that it is the P.A., I want to use the word ‘betrayal’ for the first time,” continued Cohen. “Because they did not want to convey to the Prime Minister’s Office and the prime minister that there may be possible involvement of the Palestinian Authority in the massacre.”
Wrote Rom to the Tel Aviv District Court on Wednesday, “The applicant believes that, given the significant public interest in the affair that is the subject of the proceedings, and the concealment of the foreign entity from the eyes of the Israeli public in particular, the court would do well to order the lifting of the censorship so that the public can see who the factor is regarding whom there is information about his possible involvement.”
Alternatively, Rom suggested that the court allow it to be confirmed or denied that the Palestinian Authority was mentioned in the leaked intelligence files that were discovered in Feldstein’s possession.
Jibril Rajoub, a senior official in the P.A.’s ruling Fatah party and a former head of the P.A.’s Preventive Security Force, said last year that Hamas’s massacre of some 1,200 people, mostly Israelis, was carried out “in the context of the defensive war our people are waging.”
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction has praised and celebrated the cross-border terrorist assault, in which also 251 people were taken as hostages and thousands more were wounded.
The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization closely affiliated with Fatah, has claimed that its members joined Hamas on Oct. 7 and attacked “behind enemy lines” inside the Jewish state.
Dies sind die Punkte für eine sachliche Grundsatzdiskussion der Ziele der Organisation, die dafür sorgen will, dass palästinensische Kinder und Jugendliche in der Westbank und in Gaza gut erzogen werden und eine vernünftige Ausbildung und dann auch einen guten Beruf erzielen:
Die momentane UNWRA Politik ist es, dass jegliche feste Ansiedlung der arabischen Flüchtlinge, mit dem “Recht auf Widerkehr” zu den vor 1948 Arabischen Gemeinden in Israel in Widerspruchh gerät.
Indem UNWRA so die Position der arabischen “Maximalisten” annimmt – handelt es gegen seinen eigentlichen Auftrag, nämlich den Flüchtlicngen von 1948 und ihren Nachfahren zu helfen.
Übersetzung von Frau Hannah Porat-Dahlem, Jerusalem
The Insitute for the Study of War (ISW) called the ceasefire in Lebanon that went into effect yesterday (Wednesday) a “defeat” for the Hezbollah terrorist organization, as it did not achieve its goals of forcing Israel to end its military campaign in Gaza or secure an agreement that Israel would no longer carry out military attacks in Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s attempts to rebuild and rearm.
“This ceasefire and its terms are tantamount to a Hezbollah defeat,” the ISW wrote in a report on the ceasefire. “Hezbollah has abandoned several previously-held ceasefire negotiation positions, reflecting the degree to which IDF military operations have forced Hezbollah to abandon its war aims. Hezbollah initiated its attack campaign targeting Israel in October 2023 to support Hamas, and Hezbollah’s leaders have said repeatedly that it would not end its attacks without a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. This ceasefire does not include an end to Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip. Current Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem has also previously expressed opposition to any stipulations giving Israel freedom of action inside Lebanon.”
“Israel has accomplished its war aim through two months of military operations in Lebanon and this ceasefire. Hezbollah claimed incorrectly that it defeated Israel,” the report said.
It explained that “Israel began its ground campaign in Lebanon to create safe conditions to return Israelis to their homes in northern Israel. IDF operations in Lebanese border towns have eliminated the threat of an October 7-style offensive attack by Hezbollah into northern Israel, and the Israeli air campaign has killed many commanders and destroyed much of Hezbollah’s munition stockpiles. Destroying Hezbollah’s military organization—which is the only military objective that would prevent all attacks into Israel permanently—was never the stated objective of Israeli military operations. A ceasefire deal, however, will prevent attacks into Israel through diplomatic means.”
However, it noted that the ceasefire agreement “contains several elements that will prove difficult to implement,” such as the reliance on the Lebanese army and the UN to prevent Hezbollah from rearming and restoring its military capabilities in southern Lebanon, a task both failed at performing in the 18 years since the 2nd Lebanon War.
“The difficulties in implementing this deal mean that Hezbollah and Iran can recover from this setback if the United States and Israel fail to prevent Hezbollah and Iran from doing so,” it said.
“Netanyahu noted that Israeli operations in Lebanon had ‘pushed [Hezbollah back] decades.’ The group retains fighters, weapons, and political control throughout Lebanon, however. Hezbollah will almost certainly attempt to reoccupy southern Lebanon because Hezbollah’s stated raison d’etre is to end Israel’s control over the Shebaa Farms, which it sees as Israeli-occupied Lebanese territory. The group also supports Iran’s efforts to destroy the Israeli state. Hezbollah will be unable to accomplish this task if it is forced to disarm in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah refused to abide by the last disarmament and withdrawal agreement, and it is unlikely that this war has changed Hezbollah leadership’s willingness to abandon its aspirations for southern Lebanon.” the report stated.
UNRWA policy discussions often waste precious activist energy on the unachievable goal of getting rid of UNRWA – which would require the agreement of a majority of UN members. However, the UN will never vote for a measure that openly favors Israel. Instead, UNRWA policy change must be articulated in terms of universal United Nations values, which stress peace and reconciliation. It cannot be presented as a pro-Israel resolution. The working assumption is that UN members and relief agencies* funding the $1.6 billion UNRWA budget, 58% of which is earmarked for education**, ascribe to UN values of peace and reconciliation. UNRWA policy change must therefore be couched as an UNRWA Peace initiative, for UNRWA to conform to UN values.
Contours of the Updated UNRWA Peace Initiative
*HTTPS://WWW.UNRWA.ORG/HOW-YOU-CAN-HELP/GOVERNMENT-PARTNERS/FUNDING-TRENDS
**https://www.unrwa.org/how-you-can-help/how-we-spend-funds
***https://www.terrorism-info.org.il/app/uploads/2024/05/E_114_24.pdf
****https://israelbehindthenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/p14-17.pdf
Since October 7th, 2023, the world has come to see the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in a new light. The evidence of its direct collaboration with terror groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad raises the question: if UNRWA were to be dismantled entirely, who would do the work?
The site at a bomb shelter on the Gaza perimeter has been called a massacre within a massacre. That day, on October 7th, Hamas terrorists murdered 16 Israelis hiding in the bomb shelter after fleeing the Nova Music Festival. They also kidnaped several others, including Israeli American Hirsh Goldberg-Polin. In addition to being with Hamas, the man leading that part of the massacre had another job – working for UNRWA.
IDF Chief Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari explained, “Mohammed Abu Itiwi was a Nukhba commander in the El Bureij Battalion of Hamas’s central camp’s brigade. He has also been employed by UNRWA since July 2022.”
Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Immigration Amichai Chikili told CBN News, “You have employees of UNRWA who were leading the massacre.”
A report from Chikili documents those employees who took part in the October 7th massacre. He told us Hamas’ infiltration of the agency has been widespread.
“The entire system – because Hamas is in power – so, if you want to be an UNRWA employee with a very nice salary, you must be related to Hamas,” Chikili explained.
He added, “So UNRWA employees in Gaza were mainly all Hamas militants or Hamas civil organizations’ personnel, or the families of Hamas militants and members. If you’re not connected to Hamas directly or indirectly, you cannot work in UNRWA in Gaza.”
Evidence of this relationship is why the Knesset recently overwhelmingly passed a law that Israel divorce itself from UNRWA.
Boaz Bismuth, a Likud member of the Knesset, declared, “Just understand again the spirit of the bill. We have nothing against the international community, against foreigners, against the idea of humanitarian aid. This is what Israel is providing. It’s about the fact that UNRWA participated in the massacre on the 7th of October.”
After the vote, UNRWA claimed the law would be disastrous.
UNRWA director Philippe Lazzarini complained, “Today, millions of Palestinian refugees fear that the public services on which their lives depend will soon disappear. They fear that the children will be deprived of education, that illnesses will go untreated, and that social support will stop. 17,000 UNRWA personnel in the occupied Palestinian territory fear that they will lose their employment. The entire population of Gaza fears that their only remaining lifeline will be cut.”
Bismuth, who co-authored the Knesset legislation, disputes those claims.
“There will not be a vacuum because, just because they (UNRWA) were helping yesterday, doesn’t mean someone else cannot do the job tomorrow,” Bismuth countered. “The job will be done, because I will ask you the same thing in Gaza. You can tell me, you know, Hamas is reigning in Gaza. I mean, you kick them away so who will control? Someone else. It’s as easy as that, and it will be found. Other people can do it and will do it – and will do it beautifully – without being (a) terrorist.”
Chikili’s report cites how UNRWA has perpetuated the Palestinian refugee problem for generations.
“The fact that we have an entity solely for Palestinian refugees that can inherit (this) status to their kids, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, creating more and more refugees every year. And then you have the rest of the world, UNHCR (U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees) entity, that is for any other refugees in Africa or Asia, or Haiti – it doesn’t matter,” Chikili explained.
His report contrasts UNRWA and the UNHCR overseeing 5.9 million refugees. UNRWA employed 30,000 workers in 2023. That same year UNHCR employed 18,000 while overseeing 59 million refugees worldwide. Chikili says the difference goes even deeper.
“The UNHCR is not an ideological entity related with the war against the State of Israel, and UNRWA is part of a war. It’s a war machine; (It) was designated to train the Palestinian younger generation for jihad. That is the reality. And also, when you go physically, and you go and you see in schools of UNRWA, in so many cases beneath the schools you have tunnels, within the schools you have ammunitions and missiles and weapons,” Bismuth said.
It’s why many in Israel want UNRWA abolished and support UNHCR to take its place. But, in a statement, UNHCR told CBN news:
“As we, with other U.N. agencies have previously warned, UNRWA is the only entity with the capacity to deliver the scale and breadth of assistance that 2.2 million people in Gaza, and millions of other Palestinians in the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan need. As the U.N. secretary-general has stated, there is no alternative to UMWRA.”
Yet, critics cite that UNRWA’s most lasting and infamous legacy is its education system. Many principals of UNRWA schools in Gaza were also Hamas members. ChIkilI says it takes a village to raise a terrorist, and that UNRWA helped teach a genocidal ideology.
“This is the Palestinian ideology. It is UNRWA’s ideology,” Chikili insisted. “And, by the way, is also very, very important to understand the jihadist ideology to train the kids to hate – anti-Semitism – to teach them that the war against the Jews and killing the Jews, that is the most important thing on earth. And this is also a part of what we saw on October 7th.”
Under the Biden administration in 2023, the U.S. became UNRWA’s largest donor. In Donald Trump’s first administration, he ended the agency’s funding. Most here hope, that when he takes office in January, he will act quickly to do so again.
Former United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Commissioner-General Pierre Krähenbühl repeatedly met with senior members of Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups, expressing the U.N. agency’s willingness to work together in the “spirit of partnership,” Geneva-based watchdog group U.N. Watch revealed over the weekend.
Krähenbühl, who led the controversial U.N. agency until his resignation over misconduct allegations in 2019, attended a gathering of Palestinian terrorist leaders in Beirut on Feb. 12, 2017, according to the watchdog.
The former UNRWA boss, as well as the agency’s former Lebanon chief of staff, Hakam Shahwan, who similarly resigned following allegations of corruption, posed for a picture with senior terrorist members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
The gathering included Ali Baraka, who heads Hamas’s relations abroad and was recently indicted by the U.S. government for “heinous crimes” related to the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, including conspiracy to murder Americans and to use weapons of mass destruction resulting in death.
Another participant in the Beirut meeting was Abu Imad al-Rifai, the representative of Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Lebanon. U.N. Watch noted that Al-Rifai boasted about sending a wave of suicide bombers to Baghdad in 2003 to murder American and British troops.
Krähenbühl was said to have told the gathering of terrorists, “Regarding the principle of partnership you mentioned, and the necessity of being proactive so that we remain cooperative and not caught off guard, I completely agree with you and strongly support this perspective. I also have a request: that the spirit of partnership be mutual.”
He continued, “If you have any criticisms, observations, concerns, or issues you are dissatisfied with regarding UNRWA, let us come back and meet in similar gatherings—even if we meet a thousand times.
“Challenge our decisions, tell us, ‘We do not agree with this decision, and we criticize it.’ We might change it or even entirely tear it up. But we want the spirit of partnership to prevail in our meetings,” he stated.
According to the former UNRWA chief, “We prefer these discussions not to be public, as that could challenge our credibility. More importantly, it could lead to a loss of trust between donor countries and UNRWA, which might result in reduced or even halted funding.”
Krähenbühl reportedly concluded his remarks by reiterating that “if we can achieve this, it means we are united, and no one can separate us.”
U.N. Watch said that UNRWA has continued to meet covertly with terror operatives after Philippe Lazzarini took over when Krähenbühl left the agency to lead the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2019.
The Israeli government has long criticized UNRWA’s operations in the Gaza Strip as controlled by Hamas. That criticism sharpened after Oct. 7 and revelations that UNRWA employees took part in the mass slaughter.
Israel terminated relations with UNRWA on Nov. 3, a week after the Israeli parliament, by a vote of 92 to 10, passed legislation on Oct. 28 banning the organization’s operations in the Jewish state’s territory.
In July, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office slammed UNRWA after Jerusalem’s Foreign Ministry published more evidence that the aid agency is employing hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists.
“Israel has told donor countries that hundreds more of UNRWA’s 13,000 local staff are active Hamas terrorists,” PMO Public Diplomacy Directorate spokesman David Mencer told reporters.
“We have provided much evidence that UNRWA works hand-in-hand with Hamas,” Mencer added, referring to the Hamas server farm found under UNRWA’s Gaza headquarters, the UNRWA staffers who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre and the tunnels underneath UNRWA schools.
“UNRWA is useless at aid distribution. UNRWA is useless at education, except glorifying suicide bombers and encouraging Jew-killing, and Israel sees no role whatsoever for UNRWA in Gaza after this war ends,” he concluded.