Columbia University has long felt insecure among the Ivy League schools, particularly relative to Harvard. Whether in the undergraduate or graduate programs, Harvard was considered the gold standard. For decades, Boston has been known as the elite university city while New York City was an elite city that happened to have a bunch of decent schools.
Building on its historic reputation as a haven for “revolutionaries” in the 1960s, the administration opted to use the Palestinian Arab enormous massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023 as a launching point for its new branding campaign. It allowed student protestors to harass Jewish students, break into school buildings and intimidate anyone who did not show solidarity with the anti-Israel movement. It gave permission for radicals to cut off access to the school and incite violence. It laughed off the dwindling Jewish population’s petition to remove Professor Joseph Massad who celebrated the October 7 Palestinian slaughter of Jews. The dean of the university celebrated the “peaceful protests” of the students as part of the “long and proud tradition [at Columbia] of protest and activism on many important issues.” She allowed deans who mocked antisemitism to resign with all their benefits rather than fire them for cause.
Columbia’s “Israel apartheid wall” bisects the campusPro-Hamas marchers calling for violence
As college enrollment has been on a steady decline since 2010, Columbia’s administration decided to tap into the populist anti-Israel movement and rename its School of International and Public Affairs, as the Yahya Sinwar School Of Government, after the leader of the Palestinian pogrom on Israeli Jews. It is bringing back the Intifada banners hung by students and etching its call into the stone walls of the buildings’ entrances to embrace antisemitism as the new anti-racism.
Columbia “Intifada” banner to be preserved in the new Yahya Sinwar School of Government lobby as historic inspiration
Columbia hopes that its new jihadi branding will entice the antisemitic generation to look past the flailing institution’s educational content and embrace the thriving Jew hatred culture metastasizing among the socialist-jihadi youth.
Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Columbia has eyes on you.
The National Review posted a cartoon in the aftermath of the political-terrorist group Hezbollah’s pagers blowing up around Lebanon and Syria, of U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) sitting at her desk and pondering why her pager had just exploded. In response, many of her alt-left comrades rallied to her and accused the right-leaning media company of racism.
If Tlaib was targeted solely because she is an Arab Muslim, that would certainly be offensive and racist.
Tlaib has a history of falsely attacking Israel as engaging in “ethnic cleansing”, “apartheid” and “genocide.” She has also refused to call for Hamas to be held accountable for actual premediated genocide and ethnic cleansing. She seemingly believes that the best defense for Palestinian Arab terrorism is to go on the attack to make their evil actions appear warranted.
Does someone’s antisemitism and hatred of Israel warrant being labeled terrorist-adjacent, at least in jest?
The recent exploding pager attack was narrowly targeted to members of Hezbollah, and hit those in its orbit including the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon. It clearly demonstrates the ties between politicians and the terrorist group, hence the cartoon.
Hamas and Hezbollah are both radical jihadi groups with manifestos calling for the destruction of Israel (“It’s destination is manifested in our motto, ‘Death to Israel'”- Hezbollah; “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” – Hamas). Tlaib has not stated anything that extreme, even though she defends the groups’ crimes against humanity.
Had the cartoon been made using Rep. Jamaal Bowman, would people have made a charge of racism about the cartoon? Is the alt-left’s aggressive defense of Tlaib acknowledgment that 75% of Palestinian Arabs support the heinous Hamas massacre of Jewish women, children and the elderly?
While other alt-left members of Congress have a few reasons for possibly being portrayed as anti-Israel, Tlaib is the unquestioned champion of vile antisemitism, promoting libels about Israel, defending anti-Israel terrorist groups and taking funds from their supporters.
The charge of “anti-Arab bigotry and Islamophobia” does not hold.
There are two competing narratives of the war between Lebanon and Israel, one being promoted by the liberal media, the United Nations and Muslim-majority countries (the “Anti-Israel Camp”), and the other by Israel and its supporters. How each side sees the framework of the war will continue to direct the commentary as the war unfolds.
Anti-Israel Narrative
According to one telling of the story, Hezbollah is a “Lebanese militant group” which is “supported by Iran.” The group attacked Israel on October 7, just after the Hamas massacre, “to show support for its Palestinian ally,” and will stop fighting Israel as soon as there is a “ceasefire agreed to by Hamas.”
In this telling of the events, Israel has opened up a new front against Hezbollah for virtually no reason, as the key to stopping the Hezbollah attacks is to end the fighting in Gaza. Israel’s “ferocious assault on Hezbollah” is not only unwarranted but infuriating the United States President Biden who has sought to confine the fighting to Gaza.
NY Times article bemoaning Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, creating a rift between the U.S. and Israel
Hezbollah is portrayed as only a Lebanese ally of the Palestinian group Hamas, whose mission and intentions are unstated. Israel’s mission is seemingly a folly, destined to repeat the “mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”
Pro-Israel Narrative
The same events are seen very differently by Israel supporters and those who appreciate a truthful account of current events.
Hamas has majority support of Palestinians, with 58% of parliament. It’s goal to destroy Israel is to enable 6 million Palestinians to overtake the Jewish State. Hezbollah is slightly less popular than Hamas, with 48% of parliament and seeks to expel the 490,000 Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) who reside in Lebanon to a new state of Palestine.
Israel was attacked by both Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah on October 7, 2023 and is fighting a defensive war it does not want against each. The threat of Hezbollah is much greater than Hamas, which has an estimated 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Over 80,000 Israelis in the north have been internally displaced to the south because of the Hezbollah attacks and ongoing threats.
These narratives are very different. The anti-Israel camp thinks that the United States waged wrongful revenge attacks after 9/11 and Israel is going down the same ill-advised path. But the pro-Israel view is that the American response wasn’t the problem: it waged the war terribly, first by attacking Iraq which was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, and then spending twenty years in Afghanistan fighting a terrorist group that could not pose an existential threat to the US, for the action al Qaeda took on a single day. That dynamic is not remotely similar for Israel fighting two clear and obvious enemies on its borders that are constantly attacking its citizens.
If the reports you consume tell you that Hezbollah is simply helping its beleaguered Gazan allies who are being crushed by the powerful Israeli army against the wishes of the United States, know that you are absorbing a toxic anti-Israel fake account of the just defensive war Israel is waging against genocidal foes next door.
The Pro-Palestinian camp has attempted to separate anti-Zionism and antisemitism, even when the overlap is almost exact. The pro-Israel camp typically points to that fact without acknowledging that some comments which are anti-Israel are indeed not antisemitic.
So let’s make the breakdown a little clearer by separating four components of anti-Israel rhetoric, those against the:
Government of Israel
State of Israel
Israelis
Land of Israel
Government of Israel
Criticizing the policy of a government, as a general matter, does not mean that someone hates the leaders as individuals or the country itself. It applies to Israel as much as the United Kingdom, Ecuador or India. In fact, many people who criticize a government’s policies are often big fans of that country, and want to see it be the best version of itself that it can be.
In the case of Israel, criticism of the government and policies veers into antisemitism based on the language and intent. Saying that the Israeli government is like Nazis is antisemitic as the intent is to specifically call them out in the manner of the worst antisemites. Declaring that the Jewish State is a puppet master of global powers is to promote antisemitic tropes.
Cartoon posted in The New York Times showing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a dog, leading a blind U.S. President Donald Trump
Criticizing the Israeli government’s policies is not generally antisemitic, except when the attacks specifically incite and use antisemitic language.
State of Israel
Contrary to popular belief, NO COUNTRY has an inherent right to exist. Neither Montenegro nor South Sudan needed to be created. Cyprus need not be divided. PEOPLE have an inherent right to self determination but no country inherently deserves to exist.
That said, the world is much better off with good sovereign entities, with governments that care and protect their populace. The United States and Japan care for hundreds of millions of people who consent to be governed. The governments try to maintain peaceful relations inside and outside their borders.
So it is with Israel, a country which remarkably has added millions of people since it was founded, absorbing immigrants from around the world. It built a thriving economy and liberal democracy in the heart of an illiberal region.
Yet there are many countries that still refuse to recognize the Jewish State, including thirty Muslim-majority countries. They object to Jewish control of what they perceive of as “Muslim Arab land” in what they hope will be a Muslim-majority (only) State of Palestine. Those countries’ leaders call Israel a “cancer” which should be destroyed.
Iranian leader called Israel an “unclean rabid dog” and a “cancerous tumor”
The Jewish people are the most persecuted people in the world and have been for thousands of years. Calling for the destruction of a thriving country of the most persecuted people in their historic homeland, and only that country of the nearly 200 countries in the world, stinks of antisemitism.
Israeli People
Many western countries are diverse, while many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are homogenous. Israel is unique in being very diverse while being in the middle of MENA.
Israel consists of Black Jews, Brown Jews, White Jews, Muslims, Christians and Druze. Yet the hate targeting Israelis narrowly targets just Jewish Israelis, making the attacks inherently antisemitic.
The United Nations declared that Jews cannot live in the Old City of Jerusalem and cannot pray at their holiest location on the Temple Mount
Almost every type of anti-Israel comment – including those from the United Nations – are deeply antisemitic. Those that relate to debating policy as happens in every country, are the only ones that typically do not veer into Jew hatred.
They are scared when praying in their synagogues, visiting Jewish community centers and when they go out to dine. They are scared when they walk on the street or attend classes at school.
In April 2024, the rabbi at Columbia University told the Jewish students to leave campus and return home in an email stating that the school’s policies “have made it clear that Columbia University’s Public Safety and the NYPD cannot guarantee Jewish students’ safety.” It has continued into the Fall 2024 semester, when another New York City school, CUNY’s Baruch College told Jewish students that they could not hold a Rosh Hashana celebration because the school could not “guarantee their security.”
New York Post article blasting the City University of New York being unable to protect basic Jewish human rights
The intimidation, harassment, denial of Jewish human rights and antisemitic attacks since the October 7 attack on the Jewish State of Israel have skyrocketed, especially at universities.
The U.S. House of Representatives held several hearings about the horrific rise in antisemitic attacks at universities. Rep. Foxx (R-NC), Chairwoman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, was tireless in her efforts to expose the systemic Jew-hatred prevalent in the institutions – or antisemitic ambivalence, should one choose to be charitable – which receive billions of dollars of government handouts. The Senate’s Republicans wanted a similar panel but are the minority party so could not force a discussion on the topic.
Despite the Democratic chair calling for a generic hearing on hate crimes, he pulled a narrow panel which consisted of a Muslim Arab, a Jewish rabbi, and a liberal apologist for antisemitism. There was no one there to talk about the most prevalent hate crime – attacks on Black people – revealing the thin veneer of the title meant to obfuscate the obvious problem of antisemitism.
But Democratic politicians were loathe to simply discuss rampant antisemitism without ALSO discussing the much less prevalent anti-Muslim hate crimes. Every Democratic senator on the panel made a point of discussing a wide range of hate crimes to appear balanced, even though the scale of Jew-hatred dwarves hate crime against every other group, and has for years, while Republican senators were laser-focused on antisemitic attacks.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) was apoplectic about the refusal to hold hearings specifically on antisemitism (start 1:55:50). He showed the steady rise of antisemitic hate crimes in the U.S. since 2014, with a terrible escalation starting at the beginning of the Biden Administration in 2021 and then again in 2022, before skyrocketing in 2023.
Cruz demanded that more attention be paid to Jew-hatred, a vile form of hatred that has led to genocide. He called college campuses vile “incubators of hatred of Jews,” and went on to list comments by students and student organizations that threatened Jews, including a Jewish student being told to “go back to the gas chambers.”
Cruz also called out the administrations such as M.I.T., which refused to prosecute some of the antisemitic agitators because if the school did, “the students risked losing their visas and being deported.” As he went on to criticize the Democratic administration and local Democratic politicians for refusing to enforce the law because they feared the “pro-Hamas wing of the party,” anti-Israel people in the audience began to protest (2:01:00). The senator concluded his remarks by noting that no university has yet lost federal funding despite being clearly in non-compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) was similarly angered by the unchecked Jew hatred at universities. He showcased a poster of a student holding a Palestinian flag and a sign which read “THERE IS ONLY ONE SOLUTION,” a reference to the Nazi’s “Final Solution” to exterminate Jews. He showed another with a banner “LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA.”
Maya Berry of the Arab American Institute (AAI) testified that she objected to automatically inferring that the term “intifada” meant the violent slaughter of infidels, such as the brutal “Second Intifada” in Israel where Muslim Palestinian Arabs blew up buses and ice cream parlors full of kids, killing over 1,000 people. Berry said (2:10:15) that intifada “literally just means ‘to shake off’ or ‘get rid of’.” She would not agree that intifada necessarily means the violent destruction of Israel, while it could mean that. She essentially educated the committee that ‘intifada’ is an umbrella Arabic word that could mean a silent protest or the raping and beheading of infidels. Lots of in between.
Unmentioned in the hearing were the perpetrators of the antisemitic attacks. Sen. Durbin mentioned “white supremacists” repeatedly in his comments but no one directly pointed to the pro-Hamas extremists in the fringes of the Muslim and socialist communities who are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of Jew-hatred crimes today.
The president of Rutgers University, Jonathan Holloway who is not Jewish, told a House committee in May 2024 that he did not believe that Israel is a genocidal state and that “intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are calls for violence. He and his family were subsequently threatened and he announced his resignation last week due to fear for his and his family’s safety.
Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway announcing his resignation due to fear for his family’s safety
The Intifadas in Israel are genocidal jihadist attacks to slaughter Jews and destroy Israel. The Diaspora Intifada is more “nuanced” as AAI’s Berry said, and may mean violence and rape or it may simply be taunting and harassment.
This four stage battle plan was used by Arab nations leading up to the 1967 Six Day War. It is being used again now on a broader scale, as jihadi extremists brought in the whole world to the third stage on September 18, 2024.
Stage 1: Attack Jews As Foreigners, 1960s-
Shortly after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 become codified in the San Remo Agreement of 1920, the Arabs in Palestine began to attack local Palestinian Jews. They objected to the global powers putting forth what would become the Palestine Mandate of 1922, calling for Jews to return to their homeland. While the Arabs never much objected to Jews living in Palestine, the idea that they would reestablish their homeland was appalling.
After a decade of on-and-off again pogroms killing Palestinian Jews in the 1920s to mid-1930s, Palestinian Arabs began a multi-year riot from 1936 to 1939 which effectively got the British to stop allowing Jews into Palestine, even as the Holocaust was unfolding in Europe. While at first they simply claimed that the land was Arab, over time they developed a narrative coined “decolonization” which swept through Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, and misapplied it to the Jewish State.
Stage 2: Gather the Masses to the Cause, 1973-
The humiliating defeat of the Arab armies in the 1967 war to destroy Israel set the stage for the Arabs to go broader and enlist the world in their genocidal quest. The Yom Kippur War was accompanied by an oil embargo to force the world to bend the knee to the Arab oil kings and blacklist Israel.
The Arabs pushed through a United Nations Resolution to declare “Zionism is racism” in 1975 and slowly dripped the idea that Israel was a European invention and part-and-parcel of colonial imperialism. The notion gathered more steam at the 2001 Durban Conference and fully captured the United States’ attention in the 2014-2016 advancement of Black-Palestinian intersectionality in the wake of several Black men being killed by police. Socialists took up the banner in the cause of a broad redistribution of wealth and power from the first world Jewish State in the midst of the impoverished Arab world that surrounded it, much as people of color were aiming to tear down perceived structures of “white privilege.”
The masses somehow absorbed the lie that Jews are not native to the Jewish homeland, and the Obama Administration turned that falsification of history into antisemitic international law in December 2016 with the passing of UN Security Council Resolution 2334, making it illegal for Jews to even live in their holiest city in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Stage 3: Remove the Enemy’s Defenses, 2024-
On September 18, 2024, the UN General Assembly voted 124-14 to strip Israel of its right to self defense in Gaza, the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. A large block of 43 countries were too chicken to vote against the absurd notion that a country cannot defend itself from barbarous murderers who killed thousands and threatened to commit the atrocities “again and again.”
UN General Assembly vote to deny Israel the ability to use self defense, September 18, 2024
The short list of Israeli friends were: Argentina; Czechia; Fiji; Hungary; Malawi; Micronesia; Nauru; Palau; Papua New Guinea; Paraguay; Tonga; Tuvalu and the United States.
BBC cited the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) which stated that the major arms suppliers to Israel were the USA (66%/ voted against the resolution), Germany (30%/ abstained), Italy (5%/ abstained) and some from the United Kingdom (abstained; figures don’t add to 100% due to rounding). It means that while some countries like Canada (abstained) may announce a halt of selling arms to Israel as it did in March 2024, the impact is limited. It is the USA and Germany that are the main suppliers to Israel.
And the anti-Israel radical left-wing in the United States is targeting those very arms.
Radical socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders was quick to advance a resolution “to stop the sale of U.S. arms to Israel.” Alt-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez retweeted her approval.
The situation may become more dire.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) of the Foreign Relations Committee, might be the next Secretary of State should Vice President Kamala Harris win the election in November. He has made clear that he supports conditioning aid to Israel, which would leave the Jewish State vulnerable to the many jihadist armies which surround it.
Stage 4: Assemble the Armies, ?
The Jewish State is becoming more and more isolated. Should the United States and Germany withhold arms to the country, just as the Islamic Republic of Iran obtains full nuclear weapons capability, the Jewish State will be critically vulnerable.
For the last fifty years, the Arab world convinced the world to embrace the idea that Jews have no rights or legitimacy in their holy land, capped by Obama’s blessing of UNSC 2334. That has metastasized over the past decade to bring the world to the point of trying to strangle Israel of its inherent right to self defense in the face of genocidal jihadists.
We are at a very dangerous point in history. It is now up to the United States and Germany, two foes who fought each other 75 years ago over the fate of Jews, to declare that they stand by Jews in regards to their history, heritage and human rights to live in peace and security, including having the capability to appropriately defend themselves from genocidal jihadists next door.
Imagine that your neighbor had a big party celebrating the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when 2,400 military personnel were killed in a surprise attack by Japan. What would that say about that person’s view of the United States?
How would you feel if your town celebrated the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks as a moment of “joy” when the Global South rose up to take the mighty United States down a few pegs, launching a surprise attack on the country’s financial and military centers, killing nearly 3,000 people? Would you consider that person not only despises the country but Americans as well?
Consider how you would react to your school – teachers and fellow classmates – marking the anniversary of the slaughter of 1,200 people in Israel on October 7 – mostly civilians – with a vigil for the people who committed and supported the barbarous attack.
It is not theoretical. Jihadists and their supporters are pushing such events on American campuses.
The University of Maryland decided to cancel the celebration on October 7 by the Students for Justice in Palestine as an affront to human decency. The president of the university wrote a letter that the “day opens emotional wounds and evokes deeply rooted pain. The language has been charged and the rhetoric intense… out of an abundance of caution, we concluded to host only university-sponsored events that promote reflection on this day [October 7]. All other expressive events will be held prior to October 7, and then resume on October 8 in accordance with time, place and manner considerations of the First Amendment.”
CAIR, the Council for American Islamic Relations, stepped in to sue the school. It wanted to be able to taunt and mock Jewish pain specifically on October 7.
CAIR argued – perhaps legally correct but most definitely morally bankrupt – that free speech doesn’t take one day holidays. If people want to taunt Jews on the first anniversary of the worst mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, they have every right to do so.
The jihadi defending group made its point clear and cited the University of Maryland’s own Free Speech guide, “to think the unthinkable, to discuss the uncomfortable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” CAIR notes that Students for Justice in Palestine specifically chose October 7th because they know that Jews, Zionists and other people of conscience will be supporting Jews and noting the terrible evil of Palestinian Arab terrorists.
CAIR is attempting to not only have free speech but do it SPECIFICALLY WHEN AND WHERE they can aggravate the most Jews. They are suing to have protests at the doors of synagogues and Jewish community centers, at kosher restaurants when Jews are dining, and at school when young Jews are mourning their dead friends and family.
CAIR may win their legal argument, much like the Westboro Baptist Church was able to protest at funerals of marines. CAIR may hold placards of “Globalize the Intifada” much like radical church members held signs that “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”
Being morally depraved is not a crime.
CAIR and SJP may win the right to taunt Jews and mock their pain but society must take note: just as the Westboro church is not included in broad interfaith gatherings nor invited to give an opening blessing in Congress or sing the national anthem before sporting events, CAIR and its members should be disinvited and excluded from decent society.
Around 2,800 members of the Hezbollah terrorist group were injured in an exploding pager incident on September 17, 2024. The tally was almost exclusively Hezbollah militants, as it would appear that the pagers had been purchased by the group some time prior and distributed to its team as a measure to avoid eavesdropping.
Scene from video of Hezbollah terrorist shopping in grocery falling to ground after pager explodes
The world has long known that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the major sponsor of Hezbollah, as well as other jihadi terrorist groups like Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. To see that the involvement of Iran goes beyond sending money and protecting it at the United Nations, but is an integral part of the terrorist militancy is alarming.
But not surprising.
The world saw that many members of the United Nations agency for Palestinian wards, UNRWA, are members of Hamas. It makes one ask how many UNRWA employees would have been injured had similar pagers been distributed by Hamas?
The line between “legitimate” state actors and countries to murderous jihadi groups is blurred. The question is what to do with those “legitimate” agents of death.
Jews have always been the most persecuted group in the United States on a relative basis, with an average Jew multiple times more likely to suffer a hate crime than an Arab or Muslim. The situation has only grown much worse since the genocidal jihadists of Gaza attacked Israel on October 7, 2023.
In addition to the antisemitic violence, Jews have been subject to threats, intimidation and harassment. Whether at schools, synagogues or Jewish community centers, Jews have been confronted by mobs threatening them with genocide and mocking their trauma after the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust.
On July 15, 2023 these pages suggested new laws be instituted to protect the most beleaguered minority-minority, “Protecting Synagogues Like Abortion Clinics.” The most prominent idea was to enforce FACE which protects religious institutions in the same manner as abortion clinics, banning any protests within 100 feet of the entrance.
Fortunately, the idea was approved in Los Angeles in August. Unfortunately, the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) found the idea of protecting synagogues outrageous.
In a letter to the city on September 16, 2024, CAIR-LA called the “bubble zone” around synagogues an affront to the right to protest, even though the right exists everywhere outside of the 100 foot perimeter. It said the protection of Jews “wastes taxpayer money,” and is meant to “serve a political agenda” of Jews.
CAIR not only wants to destroy the Jewish State, but it wants to block Jews from entering their synagogues and enjoying the free exercise of their protected rights.
The radical Islamist group, whose “leaders often traffic in openly antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric” is smearing Jews as taking unnecessary money from the public because they seek protection from jihadists calling for an Intifada pogrom while they try to enter Jewish houses of worship and Jewish community centers. The Islamic hate group is further attempting to libel Jews as controlling American politicians.
Leaders of CAIR have been publicly calling Jews “enemies” and blessing “mapping projects” highlighting the location of Jewish institutions for a few years. They have now begun taking their vitriol to the entrance of synagogues and the halls of government in a Diaspora Intifada, designed to threaten Jews outside of the Jewish holy land.
Muslims got the world to bless banning Jews from living in their holiest city of Jerusalem, and praying at their holiest location on the Jewish Temple Mount. Blocking Jews’ basic human rights in the diaspora should be relatively easy.
In a frightening spectacle of rewarding terror, a majority of countries at the United Nations voted to recognize the State of Palestine and give it a seat at the United Nations General Assembly. In so doing, there are two logical next steps for these 143 countries who claim to be supporting a two state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict: move their embassies to Israel to Jerusalem, and vote to dismantle UNRWA in the West Bank and Gaza.
Embassies to Israel in Jerusalem
For decades, many countries kept their embassies in Tel Aviv despite Israel’s capital being in Jerusalem. They did so, because the status of Jerusalem was always viewed as subject to negotiation. As originally envisioned in the November 1947 Partition Plan, all of Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem were to be held in a “corpus separatum,” neither part of an Arab state nor a Jewish State. Now, in officially recognizing Palestine as a state and deciding that eastern Jerusalem is “illegally occupied” by Israel, those countries are essentially also recognizing that the western part of the city is part of Israel.
“Corpus Separatum” in orange line of Greater Bethlehem and Greater Jerusalem as marked in November 1949 UN Partition Plan, compared to 1949 Armistice Lines between Israel and Jordan marking West Jerusalem in blue and East Jerusalem in white, a situation that existed for 18 years 1949-1967.
Norway, Spain and Ireland recognized a Palestinian State in 2024 but failed to announce that they were moving their embassies to Israel to western Jerusalem. Mexico recognized Palestine in 2023 but has not moved its embassy. Sweden recognized Palestine in 2014 but has still not moved its Israeli embassy.
If countries simply recognize Palestine in theory – without borders – than it should demand that the phrase “Occupied East Jerusalem” should be stricken from any U.N. resolution. Alternatively, if they really believe that the matter of Jerusalem and borders are already settled as indicated in their votes, than to hold back moving the embassies to western Jerusalem is a slap in the face to Israel.
End UNRWA in Gaza and West Bank
For countries that recognize Palestine as a country controlling land in the West Bank and Gaza, it is absurd to have “Palestine refugees” in “Palestine.” The U.N. special “Palestine refugee” agency’s operations should handed over to the Palestinian Authority. Almost every UNRWA employee in the West Bank and Gaza are local Palestinians, so the hand off would be simple.
Failing to close UNRWA inside their recognized “Palestine” would be an affront to the sovereignty of Israel, essentially demanding that Israel accept millions of UNRWA’s wards despite Palestinians having a state of their own.
UNRWA in eastern Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
The recognition of Palestine has one of two flavors: it is merely symbolic and the countries still want the Palestinian Authority to negotiate borders, Jerusalem and refugees, OR these countries are actively attacking Israel in denying its sovereign right to declare its own capital and admit citizens of its own choosing.
If it is the former, than Israel should ask those countries to make clear that they do not consider “East Jerusalem” to be “occupied.” If it is the latter, Israel must consider taking strong political moves against them – together with allies which have not recognized Palestine like the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
First One Through 