Tuesday, November 26, 2024
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What They Are Actually Teaching Kids in UNRWA Schools and Summer Camps

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The precursors for the October 7th massacres began 75 years ago. Beginning with approximately 700,000 Palestinian refugees from the original War of Independence of the state of Israel, refugee status has been passed down from generation to generation. Not only has this status been bequeathed, along with the “right of return” to cities and towns that are inside of Israel, but so has a steady and constant indoctrination in profound hatred of the Jew, and even instruction in military tactics to teach children to be able to overcome and conquer the Jewish state within UNRWA schools and summer camps.

This webinar will show real-time footage of how these children are being indoctrinated to hate and kill, which constitutes the worst sort of child abuse imaginable. About the Speaker: David Bedein is the Director of The Center for Near East Policy Research. For the last 25 years, he and his center have been focusing exclusively on the sort of education that Palestinian children are being exposed to in their UNRWA schools and summer camps. He has reported for the Jerusalem Post, CNN Radio, Makor Rishon,  The New  York Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Jewish World Review. For four years, Bedein was the Middle East correspondent for The Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010.[4] Bedein has covered attempts at Middle East negotiations centered around Israel—in many major cities of the world. Bedein lives in Efrat with his family.

 

WATCH: Biden Admin Repeatedly Praised UNRWA’s ‘Essential’ Work

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The Biden administration repeatedly praised the United Nations’ Palestinian aid organization as “essential” in the weeks and months after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, going so far as to defend the agency against allegations it works alongside the Iran-backed terror group. Then allegations emerged late last month that at least 12 of the organization’s employees participated in the attack that left 1,200 dead.

The State Department spent nearly three months defending U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) against allegations that the group promoted anti-Semitic educational materials and calling its humanitarian work “valuable” and “essential.”

“I would reject that interpretation of UNRWA,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said in a Nov. 1 press briefing, when reporters raised questions about the aid group’s longstanding ties to Hamas and promotion of educational materials that advocate Israel’s destruction. “It is a United Nations agency that provides humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians in Gaza.”

Since 2021, the Biden administration has sent more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds to UNRWA, making the United States its largest contributor. Funding for the agency was frozen during the Trump administration due to UNRWA’s ties to Hamas and promotion of anti-Israel propaganda.

Miller continued to defend UNRWA through mid-January, even after evidence emerged indicating the aid group’s employees helped Hamas hide Israeli hostages.

“UNRWA has done and continues to do valuable work to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” Miller said at a Jan. 17 briefing.

The Biden administration ultimately paused American funding for UNRWA late last month, after overwhelming evidence emerged showing the aid group’s employees worked alongside Hamas to kill Jews.

The temporary pause has led GOP lawmakers in Congress to propose cutting all U.S. aid to UNRWA permanently.

Rep. Brian Mast (R., Fla.) said during a congressional hearing last month that it is likely the Biden administration pushed out “tens of millions” of dollars to UNRWA before announcing a halt in funding.

“It does appear as though they may have waited to make this announcement until after they allowed for a disbursement of tens of millions of dollars to go out to UNRWA on or before Jan. 24, and if that’s the case it should be considered outrageous,” said Mast, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Researcher has sounded alarm for decades about hate in UNRWA camps

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Palestinian children in U.N. Relief and Works Agency camps, mere yards from the border with Israel, talk in a video about killing Jews and returning to their land. “The actions of Hamas match the ideology of UNRWA,” the narrator says.

“In the camps, we learned to defend our land and our country,” one boy says. “We learned how to fight, to attack.” Another says of Jews, “with God’s help, very soon, we’ll smash their heads, and we’ll return to our lands.”

The three-minute video “The Terror of Return” was filmed at the same location where Palestinian terrorists breached the southern border and invaded Israel on Oct. 7. But the Center for Near East Policy Research released the prescient footage in 2018, some five years before countries, including the United States, suspended funding to UNRWA  following allegations that the agency’s employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

The CNEPR, which has since been renamed the Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research, has tried for decades to raise the alarm about hatred and incitement festering in the 59 UNRWA refugee camps scattered throughout Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. Those warnings, its director told JNS, have fallen on deaf Israeli governmental ears.

More than 20 years ago, the center issued a 37-page scholarly report about UNRWA. Despite its findings about UNRWA that could have directed policy, Israeli policymakers and leaders in other Western countries that fund UNRWA largely ignored those and subsequent materials that the Jerusalem-based center issued.

Multiple spokespeople for the Israeli government did not respond to a JNS query about whether Israeli policymakers were aware of the findings in the center’s report.

The 2003 report described how UNRWA is predicated upon the belief that Palestinians have a “right of return,” so the agency keeps them in “temporary” limbo until, it says, they can return to the homes and villages in Israel that their great-grandparents left more than 75 years ago. In fact, most of those homes no longer exist.

The report added that UNRWA perpetuates Palestinian dependency without seeking realistic solutions to the plight of refugees, including resettlement. In language that could describe present-day conditions in Gaza, the report warned: “Refugees, encouraged by UNRWA to see themselves as entitled to a return that will never happen, believe they are being cheated. As a result, they are filled with frustration and rage, and turn to radicalism.”

“They’re told that it was Israel who inflicted those indignities,” David Bedein, director of the present-day center, told JNS. “They didn’t know that it was the United Nations keeping them in refugee camps.”

All of the center’s research shows that Palestinians are “indoctrinated with the idea that Israel stuck them in those camps,” Bedein added.

Last month, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that 12 UNRWA employees were involved directly in the Oct. 7 attacks, and some 10% of the agency’s staff has ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (The center report noted in 2003 that “most” of the 23,000 UNRWA employees are refugees and “they too are often associated with terrorist groups such as Hamas” and that refugee camps are sites for bomb manufacture, recruitment and dispatching suicide bombers.)

When the violence of the First Intifada emanated from refugee camps, Israelis didn’t know what was happening, according to Bedein. He thinks the indignities that the refugees suffered motivated their violent outbursts—then and now.

“Everything we said then is true now,” he said. “Everything we warned about—all the incitement, the keeping people in the refugee situation, it’s all a formula for war.”

David Bedein and Shimon Peres in 1992. Credit: Courtesy of David Bedein

‘It’s just children’

Children and adolescents learned in UNRWA summer camps—in full view of the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli intelligence cameras—to launch incendiary balloons and kites with explosive material that burned large swathes of Israeli agricultural land just across the fence.

Bedein told JNS that the Israeli army didn’t take the summer camps seriously and told him, when he sounded the alarm, “It’s just children.” (An IDF spokesman referred JNS to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which did not respond by press time.)

Bedein claims that Israel overlooked the threat from Gaza due to the 400 Israeli corporations, including major food conglomerates and cement companies that had monopolies on supplying the Strip, that do business with the Palestinian Authority and with UNRWA.

“In the Western mind, if you’re doing business with someone you can’t possibly be at war with them,” he told JNS.

Bedein told JNS that millions of people have visited the center’s website since Oct. 7 and that an eight-minute video, “Askar-UNRWA: Cradle of Killers,” which was released a few months before Oct. 7, has drawn 15,000 views.

The Arab interviewers who film the center’s videos within UNRWA camps are glad for the work, Bedein said.

‘For their children and our grandchildren’

Bedein was first drawn to the work that would define his career as a high school student in Philadelphia at the Akiba Hebrew Academy. An Israeli sociologist who spoke at the school in 1968 told Bedein and his fellow students that Israel had a chance after the Six-Day War to reverse the indoctrination that Palestinians internalized. It could also convince them that Jews need not be the enemy.

Inspired, Bedein went on to study and then qualified as a social worker. He made aliyah.

Later, a neighbor who owned a construction business told Bedein that he fired his Israeli workers and replaced them with Palestinians from the UNRWA Dheisheh refugee camp, near Bethlehem, to save money.

Bedein tagged along to a construction site, where he heard workers singing, “We’re building homes for the Jews; for their children; and our grandchildren.” It became clear to him that UNRWA was planting unrealistic expectations in the minds of the refugees.

Before turning his focus full-time to UNRWA, Bedein worked as a fixer for foreign news crews.

On a trip to Gush Katif with a BBC crew, Bedein met an Arab fixer who was taking the journalists to one of the UNRWA camps.

Bedein and the Arab agreed that nothing should be covered up and began to collaborate. Bedein also hired a Moroccan TV crew, and UNRWA cooperated fully with the Moroccan reporters, so the center was able to produce first-hand information that was published in Israel. The team has also provided footage from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

After more than two decades investigating UNRWA practices and its influence on the descendants of generations of refugees, Bedein is not surprised by IDF soldiers who report finding weapons in every building they enter in Gaza, nor by revelations about the involvement of UNRWA employees in Hamas.

He thinks it is unrealistic to call for UNRWA to be dismantled and have the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees take over its portfolio, since the U.N General Assembly will never allow one U.N. agency to replace another.

Donor countries should press the General Assembly to incorporate humanitarian principles from the UNHCR to encourage descendants of refugees to voluntarily resettle, he told JNS.

He is also fundraising presently to press criminal charges against UNRWA for arming children and training them to use weapons; for using textbooks in its schools that glorify those who murder Jews; and for letting Hamas control its teachers association and workers union.

Einat Wilf: Without UNRWA there would be no Hamas — it must be dismantled

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Canada’s temporary suspension of its financing of UNRWA over charges that some of UNRWA’s members participated in the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel should be made permanent. That UNRWA has created the ideal conditions for murderous terrorist groups to emerge, from Black September, which carried out the gruesome slaughter of Israeli Athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics, to Hamas, is not a bug in the operating system, but a feature. Anyone who truly cares about charting a path to true peace in the Middle East should have every interest in ensuring UNRWA is dismantled.

There was nothing particularly unique more than seven decades ago in the establishment of a temporary agency to settle refugees from war. With empires collapsing across the world — Habsburg, Ottoman or British — and new states emerging to replace the former imperial lands, tens of millions of people became refugees as they were fleeing across newly delineated borders. Whether in the Indian subcontinent, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, there was nothing unique in the brutal wars of post-imperial independence leading to tens of millions of refugees. Those refugees were all settled in the places to which they fled (typically new countries with similar ethnic makeup to that of the refugees) or in new places. This was done through local and independent efforts or through dedicated agencies.

The general agency established to handle refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, was mostly focused on Europe in its first years of operation. Therefore, in other conflicts of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, such as the one in Korea or in the Middle East, temporary specialized agencies were established with the goal of settling the refugees in a few short years. Unlike the UNHCR these agencies were temporary because they were designed to carry out a specific purpose and close down upon achieving it. That was the case in Korea. UNKRA settled 3.1 million refugees from the war, at least three times the number of the Arab refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-1949, with a third of the budget allocated to UNRWA. It completed its job within a few short years and closed down, as planned. Look at South Korea today. It could have been the Arabs.

But the Arab refugees themselves, today known as Palestinians, refused any form of settlement in place because they knew that would mean that the war is over and that the Jewish state would thereby be legitimized as a fait accompli. Given that the explicit Arab goal in the war of 1947-1949 was to ensure that no Jewish state of any size emerged anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the Arab refugees were determined, even when a ceasefire with the Arab states ended the war, to keep fighting to ensure that the Jewish state is undone. Keeping themselves as perpetual refugees, rejecting any form of permanent personal settlement that would allow Israel to exist, became one of the main weapons in this total Arab war against the Jewish state.

UNRWA was established with the best of intentions to help settle the Arab refugees from the war (the much larger number of Jewish refugees, including those from the war and those ethnically cleansed from across the Arab world in retaliation for Israel’s birth, as well as the Jewish refugee survivors from the Holocaust were all absorbed by Israel without any international support). But the Arab refugees and the Arab countries fought against UNRWA resettlement. The agency therefore failed to settle even one Arab refugee. UNRWA’s funders at the time, the U.S. and U.K., wanted to close down the failed agency. There was no question that UNRWA was failing to settle refugees.

But the Arab countries would not hear of closing UNRWA. They had already secured the letter UN in its name in order to send the message that Israel’s existence was essentially the fault of the UN. They also secured a legal loophole exception for UNRWA from the UNHCR, knowing that if the Arab refugees would be treated like all other refugees in the world, no refugees would remain within a few short years. The next step then was to ensure that UNRWA remains open and funded by the West. Given the importance of oil and the Arab position in the Cold War the Arab countries successfully threatened the U.S. and U.K. to keep UNRWA open. UNRWA remains open to this day as a still temporary agency, now funded by numerous western countries to a tune of more than one billion dollars a year.

 

Once it became clear that UNRWA would neither settle a single Arab refugee nor close down, it became necessary for UNRWA to keep busy, especially since immediate relief was no longer necessary. What started as initiatives for vocational training turned within a few short years into a sprawling education system run by the Arab refugees themselves. In the UNRWA compounds (misnamed “refugee camps״) and the schools a new nationalism was born, the Palestinian one, that united Arabs living in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip around the goals of revenge and “return.” The idea that Palestinians were “refugees” generation after generation, possessing a “right of return” that supersedes Israeli sovereignty to settle in Israel’s sovereign territory, became the most deeply held markers of the Palestinian identity and its national ethos.

But Palestinians are not refugees by any international standard. UNRWA registers 5.9 Million refugees in its five areas of operation: Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Forty per cent of them live in the West Bank and Gaza. Certainly by their telling they live in Palestine. They have been born there and lived there. This is where they need to build their future. They are not refugees and have no need of resettlement. Another forty per cent are citizens of Jordan. Jordan naturalized the Arab refugees after the war. By now the vast majority of those registered as refugees in Jordan have been born in Jordan. Nowhere else in the world is a citizen of a country, born in that country, somehow a refugee of another sovereign country.

The remaining 20 per cent are registered in Syria and Lebanon. Both countries have denied citizenship to these Arab born residents in their midst. Lebanon also has a web of laws preventing these Arabs from partaking in the Lebanese economy and society (an actual apartheid system). Yet recent data shows that most of those registered in Syria and Lebanon have long left these countries. Many of them attained citizenship in other countries, and yet UNRWA continues to register them as “refugees.”

In practice the Palestinian “refugee” issue is quite small. Only around two to three hundred thousand people living in Lebanon and Syria are either the real original refugees (the ones who escaped the war from 1947-1949) or their status deprived descendants who are in need of settlement in place or resettlement in third countries. These are small numbers that the actual UN agency for refugees is quite capable of managing. But the issue was never practical, it was always symbolic, the purpose being to keep the Palestinian “refugee” issue as the living symbol that Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is temporary.

Not only are those registered as “Palestine Refugees” not refugees by any international standards, but they also do not possess a “right of return”, meaning a right that supersedes Israeli sovereignty to settle within the sovereign territory of Israel. Such right for a people who were never citizens of a country, that supersedes the right of sovereign countries to control their borders and decide who become their citizens, simply does not exist. Even the various UNGA resolutions that Palestinians cite, do not support such a right. But Palestinians believe they have such a “right” and have forged themselves into a nation based on the singular commitment to “return” and revenge.

It should therefore come as no surprise that UNRWA has given rise to generations of trained murderers who took pride in the slaughter of Jews, whether the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics of 1972, or the peace supporting Kibbutzniks on Oct. 7. Even if UNRWA employees were not directly involved in murdering Jews, and we know that several of them were, given that their entire ideology is about undoing the Jewish state, their continued existence all but ensures that such organizations, whether Black September or Hamas, will always rise to fulfill that goal.

I have spent 14 years by now researching UNRWA, writing and speaking about it and advocating for its dismantlement. The only reason I devoted my time and capabilities to doing so is that, contrary to the reigning impression, UNRWA and the Palestinian “refugee” issue are not marginal aspects of the conflict. They are at the core of the conflict and the reason for its perpetuation. The conflict has always been about one thing and one thing only, the Arab rejection of the Jewish right to self determination in any part of the Jewish historical homeland. Everything else has been the outcome of that single rejection. UNRWA has been one of the most substantial forces in ensuring that this rejection not only never ends, but is indulged, supported and magnified to become the core element of an entire people.

I have always supported the idea that the Jews and Arabs of the land would be best served governing themselves by themselves in states of their own — known as the two-state solution. I continue to support that idea, but I now consider myself a long-term peace activist. Precisely because I continue to be committed to peace, I understand there can be no peace as long as the fundamental reason for the century long war waged by the Arabs against a Jewish state remains. For there to be peace, the war must first end, and the war cannot end if there is an organization, supported by Canada and other Western powers, that does everything possible to ensure it continues.

 

Einat Wilf is a former member of Knesset and coauthor, with Adi Schwartz, of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, published in 2020 by All Points Books.

UN Missions Spokesperson Directory

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​Center for Near East Policy Research
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Who will protect Palestinian children from Hamas?

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It is no secret that well before the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) and Fatah began recruiting, radicalizing and training children to serve as soldiers in the war against the Jewish state.

Given its professed concern for human rights and international law, we must ask: Why has the U.N. given a free pass to these terrorist organizations, which serially abuse Palestinian children and publicly declare a total lack of concern for all Palestinian civilians?

A senior Hamas official recently made it clear that the terror group does not care about civilian casualties, declaring that it’s up to the U.N. to build shelters in Gaza. Apparently, Hamas was too busy building a 500-mile underground superhighway of terrorism underneath hospitals, mosques and civilian neighborhoods, using children’s bedrooms and kindergartens to store explosives and arms.

Tragically, Arab children and teenagers have been active participants in violence against Jews since before the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, dating as far back as the Ottoman and British occupations of Palestine. Youths were at the forefront of the opposition to Jewish immigration and an attitude developed that children had a “duty to sacrifice themselves.”

The practice of training child soldiers picked up with the establishment of the PLO in 1964. During the Second Intifada from 2000-2005, children were used to carry out suicide bombings. Palestinian Authority curriculum used in schools run by the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA became increasingly antismetic and pro-terrorist, encouraging children to follow in the footsteps of “martyrs” in the genocidal struggle to “free Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Hamas gained control of Gaza in 2007 and established its own military training program for children. The monitoring group MEMRI has reported on Hamas’s military “summer camps,” named “Shield of Jerusalem,” which are attended by some 100,000 children and teens. Recruited from UNRWA elementary and high schools throughout Gaza, children in these camps are indoctrinated with a deadly jihadist ideology. Hamas taught these children how to use various weapons, including AK-47s, sniper rifles, RPGs, mortars and machine guns, as well as how to engage in urban and tunnel warfare. The summer camp director in Rafah said that these camps are part of “Hamas’ activities that focus on the younger generation due to its importance” as “the generation of liberation and victory.”

Hamas knows they’re putting civilians, especially children, in mortal danger, but as far as its concerned, the more dead Palestinian children the better, because it will increase global outrage against the IDF.

Since Oct. 7, the world has seen what these terrorists have done to their own people, but still refuses to condemn them, let alone take action to save the bodies and souls of Palestinian children.

This is utter hypocrisy and a violation of international law. The U.N.’s own website states: “Recruiting and using children under the age of 15 as soldiers is prohibited under international humanitarian law—treaty and custom—and is defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court.”

The spokesperson for the U.N.’s Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba, declared of the Israel-Hamas war, “As per the implementation of the children and armed conflict, we condemn the recruitment and use, killing and maiming of children by all parties and call for parties to end and prevent these violations.”

However, even before Oct. 7, Ms. Gamba chose to blame Israel for any harm that befalls Palestinian child soldiers, rather than the terrorist organizations who recruited, indoctrinated and trained them. By blaming Israel for this, the U.N. is encouraging terrorist organizations to continue to abuse their children and teens with impunity.

Who will stop these horrific crimes? Not UNRWA teachers, thousands of whom have been exposed as Hamas functionaries and adherents. Not the P.A., which pays terrorists—including Oct. 7 war criminals—to kill Jews. Not Qatar, which has provided financial support for Hamas and a safe haven for Hamas leaders. And certainly not the U.N., which has contributed mightily to the perfect storm of anti-Israel animus through its silence in the face of terrorist crimes against Israelis.

To change this paradigm, it falls to the U.N.’s primary donor—the United States—to think outside the box, put an end to UNRWA, defang Hamas’s sponsor Iran, and identify and empower those among the Palestinians who want peace.

If this action is not taken, the world will see more child soldiers, who will die on the battlefield in service of war criminals and terrorists who consider children’s lives worthless.

Why Israel’s foreign and defence establishments lobby for continuity of UNRWA with no constraints?

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Why would Israel  corporations tied to the IDF lead the call for unlimited  access to the PA and UNRWA with no restrictions?
 
The answer :  400 corporations in Israel invested in the PA and Unrwa.
 
Such a  conflict of interest  caused a generation of Jews  to lobby for cash input to the PA and UNRWA without restrictions.  
 
Our three decades of warnings that Unrwa  hosts an arsenal of weapons, ammunition and missiles were dismissed out of hand
 
 Jews in active combat have now witnessed armed UNRWA facilities. Some  of our Jewish heroes were murdered by UNRWA.
 
The time has come for a full fledged investigation, privately run. 
 

False expectations

By
Michael Kuttner
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Justice when it applies to Israel and Jews has a completely different connotation to that applicable for the rest of the world.

This has been dramatically demonstrated in The Hague in recent days.

The indictment against Israel had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with a pre-ordained political agenda. As previously noted, the judges of the International Court of Justice are political appointments and therefore based on normal United Nations scenarios, Israel is deemed guilty even before the trial commenced.

Following the two days of advocacy and awaiting an interim decision many “experts” and commentators expressed an expectation that South Africa’s spurious allegations would be tossed out.

This was always a hopelessly naïve thinking adopted by individuals who thought that the lies and slanders recycled by Hamas’s surrogates in Pretoria would be kicked out of court. Anyone cognizant of the UN’s track record and the international community’s double standards could see what a sham was about to be enacted. Unfortunately, those infected with HHS otherwise known as “hyper hallucinatory syndrome” refused to see that “the Lord High Executioner” was waiting in the wings.

Some gullible commentators have waxed ecstatically that because the Court did not demand an immediate cessation of hostilities, Israel has scored a significant victory. In actual fact the Court’s decisions have given a green light to all those who promote the worst slanders against Israel.

In other words the copious amount of mud which South Africa and Hamas have thrown at Israel will, thanks to the ICJ ruling, now stick and be used to bludgeon it in every way possible. Today’s versions will be endlessly recycled just like the well poisoning and blood libel accusations of the Middle Ages.

As a result of the ICJ saying that “South Africa’s accusation of genocide has plausibility” the scene is set for casting Israel as a pariah nation with all the ramifications that this entails. By ruling that the lie of genocide may have some sort of validity, Hamas and its South African cheer leaders have achieved their major aim. Compelling Israel to submit a monthly report of “good behaviour” and proof of non genocidal activity immediately proves in the eyes of the haters that in fact something sinister is being covered up.

Despite the conclusive proof Israel’s representatives provided at The Hague that the real genocidal perpetrators are Hamas and their willing helpers, the Court minimized its significance. South Africa in its frenzy to stigmatize the Jewish State ignored the kidnapped hostages and the rockets launched at Israeli civilians over the years. It glossed over the music festival pogrom as though this was just a minor occurrence.

In one of its outlandish claims, South Africa asserted that by mentioning Amalek the Israeli Prime Minister was supporting genocidal intent towards Palestinians. Incredibly, the ICJ quoted this absurdity in the course of its interim judgment about genocide plausibility by Israel. Ironically, on the following Shabbat the Torah portion included the episode of the Amalekite unprovoked attack against the Israelites as they traversed the desert on the way to the Promised Land.

Yes, we are commanded to remember what the Amalekites did to our People and how the descendants of these Hebrew/Jew haters rise up in every generation to do the same. Defending ourselves against such types and ensuring that they cannot complete their genocidal ambitions is something that Israelis take seriously. Obviously the ICJ justices believe we should turn the other cheek and roll over.

The Court as constituted is a political creature of the UN. Its judges are appointed by the UN General Assembly and the Security Council. Proof that judicial independence is not a requirement for the job is provided in this week’s statement issued by the Ugandan Government. The Ugandan judge was the only one on the 17 member panel to vote against all six measures ordering Israel to take action to prevent acts of genocide in Gaza. She was also only one of two judges to oppose the Court’s assertion that some Israeli actions may violate the Genocide Convention. (The other was Justice Barak of Israel).

The Ugandan Government has now denounced its country’s representative and said that her dissent does not represent the Government’s stance. It added that Uganda supported the position of the Non Aligned Movement on the conflict.

This reaction and response encapsulates exactly where this court is coming from. It also explains why it did not throw out South Africa’s spurious allegations and why the court will continue to threaten punitive sanctions in the future. Now that the genocide “plausibility” suggestion has been planted, the media frenzy targeting Israel’s supposed guilt is in full swing. It takes the heat off North Korea, Russia, China and Iran where real crimes against human rights are occurring.

It also sets the scene for protest groups in vacillating democracies to apply pressure against Israel. That is the poisonous outcome of this whole sordid exercise.

Meanwhile UNRWA finally finds itself in the hot seat.

Despite many years of warnings from NGO’s which have investigated the corruption of this UN appointed Arab Palestinian refugee agency, false expectations and denial of the truth have allowed it to literally get away with murder. Examples of hate inciting textbooks used in UNRWA schools and children’s summer camps where youngsters have been taught how to murder Jews have all been ignored and dismissed. Perpetuation of permanent refugee status and promises of returning to “occupied Palestine” together with kowtowing to terrorist groups were all ignored by the international community which continued to pour millions of dollars into bottomless pockets.

The 7 October massacre finally exposed UNRWA’s culpability in being a silent partner to the terror groups controlling Gaza.

The revelation that Gaza’s terror tunnels are larger than the whole London underground raises the inevitable question as to why UNRWA and other UN agencies working in Gaza did not blow the whistle at any stage. The tunnel networks obviously took years to construct and their development was enabled by the millions of international aid filched and diverted by Hamas and its allies. Answers will need to be provided from Israeli officials who must have known about this but who preferred instead to facilitate Qatari cash infusions which supposedly were going to buy peace.

Revelations that these terror tunnels exist beneath UNRWA schools, hospitals, mosques and private homes makes one wonder as to what UN employees heard, saw and approved. UNRWA, when asked this question they replied that they “had seen nothing.” This response of course is as inane as that of those people living near extermination camps, who after the war also “saw and knew nothing.”  It is this blatant aura of denial which has characterized UNRWA and UN activities in Gaza for decades.

The 7 October massacre finally exposed the cynical cover ups. Israel has now provided donor nations with irrefutable proof of UNRWA employees’ participation in the murder, rape and kidnapping of Israeli civilians. Faced with this evidence donor nations have now suspended aid. Note the use of the word “suspension” because herein lies a convenient loop hole. What is needed is an independent investigation of UNRWA’a activities with a view to closing it down.

Instead, the UN and UNRWA itself intend to look into the matter which is as useful as getting a burglar to investigate his own misdemeanors. The predictable outcome will be offending bodies giving themselves a clean bill of health which in turn will give a green light for donor nations to resume the flow of dollars. All will be forgiven and whitewashed and it will be business as usual. Already the US Administration has announced that UNRWA’s “important work must continue.” Having restored funding after it was stopped by President Trump, the Biden Administration facilitated, directly and indirectly, the building of the Gaza terror infrastructure. Now, having temporarily suspended aid the US is in effect preparing the ground for its resumption again.

The farce of international double speak continues.

False expectations will no doubt once again prevail and the ground prepared for the next disaster unless Israel and the rapidly diminishing number of democracies finally take a determined moral stand.

Weekly Commentary: President Biden Deputizes State Department To Engage In Lawfare Against Israel Without Needing A Court

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Thursday, February 1, 2024

Weekly Commentary: President Biden Deputizes State Department To Engage In Lawfare Against Israel Without Needing A CourtWeekly Commentary: President Biden Deputizes State Department To Engage In
Lawfare Against Israel Without Needing A Court
Dr. Aaron Lerner 1 February 2023

Just two days after CIA Director Burns, acting as America’s “honest broker”
in negotiations to free the hostages, made clear in his Foreign Affairs
article that America’s goal is for Israel to stop its operations in the Gaza
Strip while accepting Hezbollah’s continued strategic threat in the north we
now have President Biden issuing an Executive Order which appoints the State
Department as judge, jury, and executioner to act against Israelis.

The full text of the Executive Order follows below this commentary.

This order can be extended to apply to:

Knesset members as well as Israelis who run for the Knesset who advocate
policies which the Secretary of State believes to ” threaten the peace,
security, or stability of the West Bank”.

Soldiers, cops and judges engaged in directing, enacting, implementing,
enforcing, or failing to enforce policies that, according to the Secretary
of State, threaten the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank

Building contractors, residents, visitors, suppliers, etc. who in any way
act in a manner which constitutes implementing policies that, according to
the Secretary of State, threaten the peace, security, or stability of the
West Bank.

Any Israeli involved in implementing the court ordered demolition of a
terrorist’s home? [The term “civilian” is not defined in the order.]

Anyone who provides goods or services to or engages in commerce with to any
of the above.

A technical note: The Executive Order defines “terrorism” to be “an
activity that involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life,
property, or infrastructure and appears to be intended to intimidate or
coerce a civilian population. An honest Secretary of State would find
himself taking action against a hundred times as many Palestinians as
Israeli as this is the ratio between Palestinian and Israeli “terror”.

==================
FEBRUARY 01, 2024

Executive Order on Imposing Certain Sanctions on Persons Undermining Peace,
Security, and Stability in the West Bank

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the
laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.) (IEEPA), the National
Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) (NEA), section 212(f) and section
215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and
8 U.S.C. 1185(a)), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, find
that the situation in the West Bank – in particular high levels of extremist
settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property
destruction – has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious
threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza,
Israel, and the broader Middle East region. These actions undermine the
foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a
two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal
measures of security, prosperity, and freedom. They also undermine the
security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional
destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel
and interests. For these reasons, these actions constitute an unusual and
extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the
United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that
threat. Accordingly, I hereby order:

Section 1. All property and interests in property that are in the
United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or
hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person,
including any foreign branch, of the following persons are blocked and may
not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in:

(a) any foreign person determined by the Secretary of State, in
consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury, or the Secretary of the
Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State:

(i) to be responsible for or complicit in, or to have directly
or indirectly engaged or attempted to engage in, any of the following:

(A) actions – including directing, enacting, implementing,
enforcing, or failing to enforce policies – that threaten the peace,
security, or stability of the West Bank; or

(B) planning, ordering, otherwise directing, or
participating in any of the following actions affecting the West Bank:

(1) an act of violence or threat of violence targeting
civilians;

(2) efforts to place civilians in reasonable fear of
violence with the purpose or effect of necessitating a change of residence
to avoid such violence;

(3) property destruction; or

(4) seizure or dispossession of property by private
actors;

(ii) to be or have been a leader or official of:

(A) an entity, including any government entity, that has
engaged in, or whose members have engaged in, any of the activities
described in subsections (a) or (b) of this section related to the leader’s
or official’s tenure; or

(B) an entity whose property and interests in property are
blocked pursuant to this order as a result of activities relating to the
leader’s or official’s tenure;

(iii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided
financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to
or in support of, any person blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iv) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported
to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person blocked
pursuant to this order; or

(b) any foreign person determined by the Secretary of State, in
consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury:

(i) to have committed or have attempted to commit, to pose a
significant risk of committing, or to have participated in training to
commit acts of terrorism affecting the West Bank; or

(ii) to be a leader or official of an entity sanctioned pursuant
to subsection (b)(i) of this section.

Sec. 2. The prohibitions in section 1 of this order apply except to
the extent provided by statutes, or in regulations, orders, directives, or
licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any
contract entered into or any license or permit granted before the date of
this order.

Sec. 3. The prohibitions in section 1 of this order include:

(a) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or
services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and
interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; and

(b) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or
services from any such person.

Sec. 4. (a) The unrestricted immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into
the United States of noncitizens determined to meet one or more of the
criteria in section 1 of this order would be detrimental to the interests of
the United States, and the entry of such persons into the United States, as
immigrants or nonimmigrants, is hereby suspended, except when the Secretary
of State or the Secretary of Homeland Security, as appropriate, determines
that the person’s entry would not be contrary to the interests of the United
States, including when the Secretary of State or the Secretary of Homeland
Security, as appropriate, so determines, based on a recommendation of the
Attorney General, that the person’s entry would further important United
States law enforcement objectives.

(b) The Secretary of State shall implement this order as it applies to
visas pursuant to such procedures as the Secretary of State, in consultation
with the Secretary of Homeland Security, may establish.

(c) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall implement this order as
it applies to the entry of noncitizens pursuant to such procedures as the
Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State,
may establish.

(d) Such persons shall be treated by this section in the same manner
as persons covered by section 1 of Proclamation 8693 of July 24, 2011
(Suspension of Entry of Aliens Subject to United Nations Security Council
Travel Bans and International Emergency Economic Powers Act Sanctions).

Sec. 5. (a) Any transaction that evades or avoids, has the purpose of
evading or avoiding, causes a violation of, or attempts to violate any of
the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.

(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth
in this order is prohibited.

Sec. 6. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the types
of articles specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)) by,
to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in
property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my
ability to deal with the national emergency declared in this order, and I
hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.

Sec. 7. For the purposes of this order:

(a) the term “entity” means a partnership, association, trust, joint
venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization;

(b) the term “noncitizen” means any person who is not a citizen or
noncitizen national of the United States;

(c) the term “person” means an individual or entity;

(d) the term “United States person” means any United States citizen,
lawful permanent resident, entity organized under the laws of the United
States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign
branches), or any person in the United States; and

(e) the term “terrorism” means an activity that:

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life,
property, or infrastructure; and

(ii) appears to be intended:

(A) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(B) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation
or coercion; or

(C) to affect the conduct of a government by mass
destruction, assassination, kidnapping, or hostage-taking.

Sec. 8. For those persons whose property and interests in property are
blocked or affected by this order who might have a constitutional presence
in the United States, I find that because of the ability to transfer funds
and other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures
to be taken pursuant to this order would render those measures ineffectual.
I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing
the national emergency declared in this order, there need be no prior notice
of a listing or determination made pursuant to this order.

Sec. 9. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the
Secretary of State, is authorized to take such actions, including the
promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to
the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this
order. The Secretary of the Treasury may, consistent with applicable law,
redelegate any of these functions within the Department of the Treasury.
All executive departments and agencies of the United States shall take all
appropriate measures within their authority to implement this order.

Sec. 10. Nothing in this order shall prohibit transactions for the
conduct of the official business of the Federal Government or the United
Nations (including its specialized agencies, programs, funds, and related
organizations) by employees, grantees, and contractors thereof.

Sec. 11. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the
Secretary of State, is authorized to submit recurring and final reports to
the Congress on the national emergency declared in this order, consistent
with section 401(c) of the NEA (50 U.S.C. 1641(c)) and section 204(c) of
IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1703(c)).

Sec. 12. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or
otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or
agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management
and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and
subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or
benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any
party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its
officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.

THE WHITE HOUSE,
February 1, 2024.
________________________________________
IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il

UNWRA has been teaching Palestinian kids to hate and fight Israel for decades

By
David Bedein
-

How did seemingly innocuous United Nations summer camps for thousands of Palestinian children jump to the forefront of the horrific war in the Middle East?

The UN Relief and Works Agency provides summer camps for children of more than 5 million descendants of Arab evacuees of the 1948 war who live in 59 temporary refugee camps established in the wake of Israel’s War of Independence, which dislodged half a million Arabs, intentionally or unintentionally.

UNRWA established an elaborate school system that enables any journalist worth his salt to understand what the agency is teaching the next generation of Palestinian youth — who are instructed that they must adhere to the right of return, even by force of arms, to homes and villages their grandparents or great-grandparents left after 1948, though their villages are now Jewish communities in Israel.

UNRWA policy stands in contrast to the UN High Commission for Refugees policy for the rest of the world, which assures the next generation it won’t suffer the indignities of refugee-camp life.

Kids at UNRWA summer camps pointing fake guns at child with Israeli flag on helmet
The UN Relief and Works Agency provides summer camps for children of more than 5 million descendants of Arab evacuees of the 1948 war.

As an independent journalist who wanted to communicate the Palestinian passion for war, I engaged Arab TV reporters to film summer camps in and around UNRWA schools in Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem for the last 15 years.

You can see the footage at www.cfnepr.com/205640/Movies.

What the UNRWA summer camps preach is hardly a message of peace and reconciliation.

Instead, Palestinian children learn the art of guerrilla warfare.

These summer camps, financed by 67 nations, including America, through UNRWA donations, show fully armed children learning the art of kidnapping, throwing explosives, hijacking vehicles and invading Jewish collective farms.

They demonstrate a shocking prelude to the Oct. 7 incursion into 24 Jewish communities, when young Arab attackers gleefully applied the violent exercises they learned in UNRWA summer camps.

The youths’ UNRWA summer-camp experiences reinforced the violence taught in the Palestinian Authority school curriculum.

Young boys in camouflage gear holding guns at UNRWA summer camp.
At the camps, Palestinian children learn the art of guerilla warfare.

At the camps, Palestinian children learn the art of guerilla warfare.
How did I get access to the textbooks?

To get the curriculum, I met with Yasser Arafat, founding chairman of the PA.

It’s hard for the Western mind to grasp how the PA leadership expresses pride for its lethal curriculum.

He readily authorized our news and research agency to review the PA school texts UNRWA uses.

We were granted access to more than 1,000 textbooks.

Girl in video saying "I want to fight against them [the Jews] and defeat them in war."
The camps demonstrate a shocking prelude to the Oct. 7 incursion into 24 Jewish communities.
For 25 years, our office has evaluated PA textbooks, engaging professional translators Israeli and American intelligence could not access, unless, of course, they chose to stop by for a cup of coffee at our office in Jerusalem.

Palestinian Authority-issued school books used in PA schools, including UNRWA schools, feature scores of maps labeling all of Israel “Palestine.”

They praise terrorists, such as Dalal Mughrabi, who took part in a 1978 attack that killed 38 Israeli civilians, including 13 children.

Boy holding gun
The camps train children in the art of kidnapping, throwing explosives, hijacking vehicles and invading Jewish collective farms.

Thanks to online technology, you can peruse our translations of Palestinian Authority textbooks UNRWA uses via the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center’s online site.

Before Oct. 7, few people showed interest.

But by December, we had 7.2 million hits on our site: IsraelBehindtheNews.com.

Children at UNRWA summer camp holding fake weapons
Palestinian Authority-issued school books used in PA schools, including UNRWA schools, feature scores of maps labeling all of Israel “Palestine.”

Denial of reality, which defined Israel before Oct. 7, no longer exists.

The public, thanks to modern technology, can instantly view videos or read about the chilling truth being played out daily.

David Bedein is the director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.

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