In light of the recent reports that many UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 pogroms, that over one thousand aided and abetted the atrocities and several thousand employees cheered the massacre, many western countries have suspended funding of that deeply problematic UN agency.
The evidence that UNRWA is complicit in aiding the Hamas antisemitic war has been publicly known for many years. Tunnels and armaments are found throughout UNRWA schools and a teacher was a famed bomb maker for Hamas. UNRWA textbooks have long called for jihad and killing Jews.
This reality is baked into the very nature of UNRWA staffing. While the United Nations typically appoints a White European to oversee the organization to make it appear as a European entity, almost every single employee is a local Palestinian Arab.
Using UNRWA’s own information from 2019-2020, when the agency broke information into finer detail, there is barely any international staff working in Gaza or the West Bank. Between the two regions, only 44 out of 15,850 staff, or 0.3% were from outside of the region. Further, UNRWA mostly hires the descendants of Palestinian refugees as seen in the graphic above. Roughly 96% of UNRWA’s Gaza staff claims to be a “refugee.”
According to a 2017 UNRWA report, “With the exception of 155 international staff posts funded by the General Assembly through the UN regular budget, UNRWA operations are supported through voluntary contributions.” The Swiss, Norwegian and other global staff of UNRWA are paid by the United Nations and the rest of the world contributes whatever it wants whenever it wants to the over $1 billion UNRWA budget.
And the western donors are finally done.
UNRWA is a front for the world to funnel money to descendants of internally displaced Arabs, who speak the same language near the same neighborhoods with the same people as grandparents did. The UN ignores facts and calls them “refugees,” and promises that they’re going to get to move into towns where grandparents lived 75 years ago in Israel, going from a third-world economy to a first world society, in yet another form of misplaced expiation.
In its most benevolent form, it’s ransom via guilt. In reality, it is in funding terrorism and destroying any possibility for coexistence.
The United Nations has long been a terrible actor in the Israeli-Arab conflict, perpetuating the conflict through terrible policies and procedures. One of the worst offenses which contributed to the October 7 massacre and the current Gaza War was backing the “right of return” for millions of Arabs into Israel.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, services roughly 7.5 million people of which 6.7 million are registered as refugees, with another 763,000 on the global dole. The vast majority of the 7.5 million are descendants of people who used to live in Israel in 1947. Amongst these so-called “refugees,” approximately 1.8 million live in Gaza and 1.1 million in the West Bank, a total of 2.9 million, or 43 per cent of UNRWA “refugees” live inside of 1947 Palestine.
These 2.9 million have been told by the United Nations that they will get to move into Israel for the last 75 years, based on a single line in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948, that has long passed its expiration date. With that false promise, Gazans spend their time and money building a war infrastructure rather than an economy as they don’t imagine a future in their current neighborhood of historic Palestine, but in the Jewish State.
On January 23, 2024, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres may have laid the groundwork to finally end the dream of these 2.9 million Palestinians that their future homes will be in Israel.
In his remarks to the UN Security Council he said “The right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent State must be recognized by all. And any refusal to accept the two-State solution by any party must be firmly rejected. What is the alternative? How would a one-State solution look with such a large number of Palestinians inside without any real sense of freedom, rights and dignity? This would be inconceivable.”
The first part of Guterres’s comments is simply wrong. No state has a right to exist. None. Not Portugal, not China, not South Sudan, not Kurdistan. Individuals have a right to self-determination and there are many ways for that to be realized which do not create another Arab and Muslim country.
The second segment of his remarks, marked in bold above, is an important milestone for the UN. It is the first time Guterres essentially rejected the notion of Arabs swarming Israel – either in a one state solution or as part of a two-state solution in which 6.7 million Arab “refugees” enter the Jewish State.
Finally acknowledging that this will not happen, Guterres should make an unambiguous statement that there is no “right of return” for Arabs into Israel, a stale idea floated over 75 years ago in the midst of the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. In addition to such proclamation, he must follow up with actions to dismantle the “refugee” camps which dot Gaza and the West Bank, where UNRWA schools teach young Arabs that they will move into Israel and where UN facilities have keys above the portal to emphasize that the doorway for Palestinians to move into Israel is via the United Nations.
Entrance to Aida Refugee Camp (مخيم عايده) in Bethlehem with keyhole gateway and key on top to symbolize that UNRWA is the pathway for Palestinians to return to ancestors’ homes.
The United Nations finally said the obvious, that millions of Palestinian Arabs moving to Israel is “inconceivable.” It is time to explicitly state that there is no “right of return” and to dismantle the “temporary” refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank which have long served as incubators for extremism and terrorism.
The disgusting defenses of Hamas and its sadistic brutality committed on October 7, 2023 come in a number of varieties. Some people openly support the killing of Jews and desire to see the destruction of the Jewish State. Others excuse Hamas’s atrocities by stating that the actions require “context,” meaning Israeli activities limiting movement and denying Palestinian Arabs a nation. This is a discussion on the second group, as the first are obviously vile and dangerous antisemites who should be driven from the public square.
Denying Versus Not Declaring A Palestinian State
Apologists for Palestinian terrorists include Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York’s 16th District, who argue that Palestinians have been denied their rights for 75 years, as Bowman recently said at a Yonkers event with notorious anti-Zionist Norman Finkelstein, who had described the October 7 massacre as “heroic resistance.” Bowman’s statement is a complete lie.
It was Palestinian and regional Arabs who rejected forming an Arab state during the November 1947 United Nations partition plan. It was Palestinian and regional Arab countries that waged a war to destroy Israel in 1948-9 and not form a State of Palestine in the aftermath. It was those same groups that again tried to destroy Israel in 1967 rather than declare a Palestinian State.
Again and again, Palestinians themselves did not declare a state as they wanted the entirety of the land “from the river to the sea” to be the State of Palestine, so focused their efforts on destroying Israel. When they made moves to accept a state on part of the land in the Oslo Accords, they once again opted for war in 2000 rather than forge a final settlement.
The Independent Gaza Strip
After Israel put down the multi-year Two-Percent Palestinian war waged from 2000 to 2004, Israeli leaders decided to give Palestinians more independence and self-determination. With assurance from President George W. Bush in an April 4, 2004 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel disengaged from Gaza, knowing that the U.S. was committed to backing Israel on key points that deadlocked the Oslo agreements: that final borders of Israel would not be along the 1949 Armistice Lines / “1967 borders” and would prioritize Israeli security and facts on the ground; and that Palestinian “refugees” (mostly descendants of Arabs who once lived in Israel) would settle in a new Palestinian State and not have a “right of return” to towns grandparents once lived in in Israel.
Israel withdrew all civilians and military from the Gaza Strip in September 2005. Palestinians were elated. According to a poll Palestinians conducted of themselves on the eve of Israeli withdrawal, “84% see it [Gaza withdrawal] as victory for armed resistance,” meaning that they saw the terrorism waged from 2000 to 2004 as forcing Israel to leave the region unilaterally. As opposed to the Oslo Agreement in which they would have needed to recognize the Jewish State but gotten most of the West Bank too, they got independence and self-determination just in Gaza without acknowledging Jewish rights to anything.
With their newfound freedom, Palestinians went to the voting booths in January 2006 to vote in a Palestinian parliament. Hamas, with its violent and antisemitic jihadi charter which calls for killing Jews and destruction of Israel, trampled the more secular Fatah, winning 58% of the parliamentary seats. (The last time the US Congress was so dominated by a single party was 2009 when Democrats had 59%).
The sentiment and quest for Jewish blood similarly rose.
When Israel pulled out of Gaza in September 2005, 46% of Gazans said that they supported killing Jews inside of Israel. By March 2006, that percentage rose to 64% and continued to rise.
In June 2007, Hamas violently threw out the Palestinian Authority and took over full control of Gaza. At that point, 74% of Gazans supported terrorism against Jews in Israel, even before Israel imposed a blockade on the strip. During the roughly two years that Palestinian Arabs had independence and self-determination – the only time in history when they had such freedom – their thirst for violent jihad INCREASED.
Palestinians have shown repeatedly that the desire to eliminate Israel dwarves their goal of self-determination and a state. Discussions of handing Palestinians more territory to rule after their sadistic savagery is not just blind to history and Arab sentiment, but dismisses the humanity of over 7 million Jews in Israel living in their ancestral homeland.
And those who argue that Hamas’s massacre has “context” are correct but facts and history prove the exact opposite point they claim: Palestinians are determined to wage war against Jews regardless of the cost of lives and irrespective of the level of their freedom.
ACTION ITEM
Email Rep. Jamaal Bowman “Palestinians commit and support terrorism because they have prioritized the destruction of Israel over statehood. A new Palestinian state will only come with recognizing the Jewish State and accepting that there is no “right of return” of millions of Arabs into Israel.”
South Africa put forward the charge of ‘genocidal conduct‘ against Israel for its actions in Gaza since October 8, 2023. The reported figure of over 23,000 deaths, over one percent of the population of Gaza, is claimed to show a deliberate intent to wipe out all Arabs in the region. The use of heavy 2,000-pound bombs in civilians neighborhoods is alleged to show a complete disregard for non-combatants as well as a disproportionate and indiscriminate use of force.
Lawyers prosecuting Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) quoted members of the Israeli parliament after the October 7 attack in which they said they wanted to flatten Gaza, encourage a ‘voluntary emigration’ of Arabs from the region, and treat them like the biblical ‘Amalek’, a people for which Jews are commanded to wipe out completely. Counsel argued that comments from leaders shows the government’s official policy for the annihilation of the region’s Arabs.
The United Nations’ International Criminal Court has disallowed Israel from bringing any evidence of the Gazans’ October 7 massacre and brutalization of Israelis, mostly civilians. It contends that even if Hamas committed crimes against humanity, Israel must still adhere to basic rules of war.
The Case Against ‘Genocide’
Genocide involves the deliberate mass killing of an ethnic group or particular nation with the goal of annihilation or ethnically cleansing them.
It is bizarre to bring the charge against Israel based on the situation before even considering the prosecution of the war.
Israel’s attack on Gaza was both reactive and defensive. It had a ceasefire agreement with Hamas which rules Gaza, which Hamas broke with its invasion and sadistic slaughter.
Hamas leaders have pledged to commit the October 7 massacre “again and again.” Israel is compelled to not only bring the estimated 3,000 Gazan perpetrators of the October 7 massacre to justice, as well as the leaders who commanded and supported the operation, but to prevent the atrocities from happening again.
Hamas continues to fire at Israel. Hamas and various factions of this Gaza army continue to fire rockets and wage war against Israel. This is not a situation of a military aggressively hunting civilians but an active battlefield.
Hamas fires from civilian neighborhoods. The battlefield is the neighborhoods of Gaza from which Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other factions of the Gazan army shoot rockets and attack Israel.
Civilian infrastructure is part of the Gazan war effort. The Gazan army and infrastructure is embedded in civilian homes, hospitals, mosques and schools. Arms are stored and tunnel-openings begin in these locations, and are therefore part-and-parcel of the Gazan war effort.
The core Gazan army infrastructure is beneath civilian neighborhoods. The Gazan army runs the majority of its operations below ground, underneath civilian neighborhoods.
The Gazan army doesn’t wear uniforms. Many Palestinian fighters do not wear uniforms to clearly distinguish themselves from civilians, blurring the battlefield between military and civilians.
Israel unilaterally left Gaza completely in 2005. Israel does not covet the land and wanted the region to be a peaceful neighbor where Arabs would have complete self-determination. Instead, Gaza became a terrorist-ruled strip which has waged repeated wars against Israel targeting civilians.
Israel is attempting to save hundreds of hostages. Hamas and other Gazans took 240 hostages, mostly civilians into Gaza, many of whom are children, elderly and infirm. Saving them requires quick action.
Those are just the basic facts which set the scene for which Israel has to prosecute a difficult war. Even with such impossible backdrop, Israel has attempted to avoid the loss of civilian lives.
Millions of text messages sent to Palestinian Arab civilians to get out of harm’s way
Leaflets dropped over neighborhoods to make sure civilians got the message to leave active battlefields.
‘Safe zones’ and escape corridors created for civilians to flee hot spots.
Israel telegraphed its intentions of where it was prosecuting the battle – starting in northern Gaza – to allow civilians to leave, putting its own Israeli soldiers at risk.
The world begged Israel to not launch a ground invasion of Gaza and so relied on air power to start the retaliation against known military targets. It is those aerial assaults that the world now criticizes.
While the world may appreciate the need to dismantle Hamas and the impossible task facing Israel of fighting an enemy which is deeply embedded with civilians, it doesn’t really care. It has no proposals or gameplans to prosecute the war any better, other than demand Israel do so.
A view of the rubble of buildings hit by an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, October 10, 2023. (Fatima Shbair/AP)
In regard to Israeli leaders’ commentary that Gazans are like Amalek, a metaphor is not a call to action. Amalek was called out because they attacked the weakest Jews as they left Egypt, just as Hamas and its horde brutally butchered women, children and elderly in 2023. Other Israeli comments that all Gazans are culpable have been made by Palestinian advocates, such as James Zogby, head of the Arab American Institute who told the United Nations on June 27, 2023 that there is “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture,” as the majority of the people prefer violence.
Most importantly, Israel has said it will end the campaign immediately if Hamas surrenders and returns all of the hostages.
Israel is now going house-to-house to rescue its captives and destroy Hamas’s army and infrastructure amid a population which supports Hamas and terrorism. Hamas has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian Authority parliament from democratic elections held in 2006. The majority of Gazans support killing Jewish civilians in Israel and supported the October 7 massacre. They are family and friends of Hamas fighters, their teachers and students, donors and recipients of Hamas aid. When Israelis go through the Gazan neighborhoods in this tight battlefield, the civilians which surround them are the soft layer of the Hamas military which Hamas exploits, not uninvolved spectators.
It is likely that any other army would have killed five times as many Gazans as Israel at this point of the war. It is impossible to know because this war is like no other.
As to the charge of genocide, Palestinian Arabs are not confined to Gaza. Over half the population lives in the West Bank and Israel has not launched a massive campaign there, as Hamas doesn’t have a strong presence and there are no Israeli hostages in that region. On a macro level, 23,000 Gazans out of 1.8 billion Muslims is a 0.001% figure. By way of comparison, 63% of Europe’s Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and about 39% of global Jewry, an actual premeditated deliberate genocide of unarmed civilians.
There are therefore only two considerations to possibly judge Israel: the terrible loss of children’s lives, and the massive destruction of Gazan infrastructure.
Children are innocent by definition. They have no say in the war and not responsible for the terrible actions of adults. Close to 50% of Gazans are under the age of 18, so one would imagine indiscriminate bombing would cause close to 50% of the 23,000 dead to be children, or around 11,500 people. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the number of children killed is about 8,000, or 30% less than expected. While a tragic figure, it defends Israel’s prosecution of the war as being targeted against military targets.
There is no question there is widespread destruction of Gazan infrastructure. Neighborhoods have been leveled all around the Strip. That is a function that those neighborhoods are, and are above, the battlefield. It is actually surprising that a relatively low number of deaths have occurred with so many bombs dropped on the small territory, suggesting a targeted military campaign.
Hamas is sworn to the destruction of Israel and has ruled Gaza unilaterally since 2007 enabling it to embed itself throughout the region. Despite the hostile neighbor next door, Israel has limited its activities against the strip to a blockade to limit the flow of weapons, and to respond when attacked. It has never targeted the region or its residents for annihilation.
It is a tragedy for Palestinian Arabs, for Israel, and the world that so many children in Gaza have died. But the fault remains with the Arab rulers who teach their children death and martyrdom, while they attack Israel from those children’s homes. Israel is trying to minimize those casualties in an impossible battle, and the figures show that it is doing so.
The smoldering rubble of the Gazan battlefield is shocking but there is no genocide of buildings. However, the overall architecture of Gaza’s war mentality and machinery has been enabled by the United Nations, the entity which now sits as judge of Israel’s actions. It is a morbid farce, and must be confronted and rooted out for there to be a prayer of coexistence.
The world remained silent as Gaza slid into an abysmal humanitarian crisis, with people unable to understand the basic difference between good and evil.
Since 2000, the vast majority of Arabs in the coastal enclave have supported killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. The majority supported the October 7 attacks that sadistically butchered 1,200 people in Israel. The majority support Hamas, an antisemitic terrorist group that seeks to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State.
Palestinian schools in Gaza teach young children to kill Jews. Public squares, schools and tournaments are named after terrorists who slaughter Jews. The media extolls killers and the Palestinian Authority pays the families of terrorists both in Gaza and the West Bank, monthly stipends for life for attacking Jews.
UN agencies quote various statistics about the scarcity of food and medicine in Gaza but avoid mentioning the moral depravity of Gazans, so let’s be clear: 70% of Gazans are in favor of killing Jewish civilians inside of Israel. The fact that such a question can even be asked on surveys says so much about the horrific state of Palestinian values.
The majority of Gazans support a full war with Israel in a new “armed Intifada” with 63% support in a September 2023 poll.
This violent and antisemitic worldview is under the watch and blessing of the United Nations. And the European Union. And the Arab world. And the United States. Each continues to send money to Gaza without demanding major structural changes to the society. Instead, each Gaza backer supports Palestinians’ antisemitic demands denying Jews basic human rights like praying at their holiest location on the Temple Mount, and even living in their holy Old City of Jerusalem.
Now, many are attempting to blame Israel for the terrible physical situation in Gaza, despite long abetting the sickening moral and mental “deformity” of Palestinian society, to quote James Zogby.
It is appalling. Allowing the genocidal group Hamas to run Gaza and its schools for sixteen years has been a crime against humanity, leading directly to the humanitarian values crisis that plagues the region.
Gaza’s humanitarian crisis runs much deeper than the terror tunnels beneath the rubble. It is embedded in the minds and hearts of millions of Palestinian Arabs.
Gaza is a crowded mess and there are two proposals for “voluntary emigration” which are getting vastly different reactions.
Situation In Gaza
The population of Gaza is roughly 2.1 million people, all Arabs, almost 99% of whom are Muslim. Roughly 39.8% of the population is under 14 years old, making it one of the youngest geographies in the world, with less than 3% of the Strip over 65 years old. The median age of 19.2 years old ranks it at #209 out of 227 areas scored by the World Fact Book. By way of comparison, the median age in Israel is 30.1, in USA 38.5, and 40.6 in the United Kingdom.
The US-designated foreign terrorist group Hamas exclusively governs Gaza since 2007. That means that roughly half of the Gaza Strip has only known the rule of a fanatical Islamist group committed to killing Jews and the destruction of the Jewish State next door. Fighters, typically aged 18-24, have known almost nothing other than Hamas and its mission.
As of 2022, UNRWA provided services to nearly 1.8 million people in Gaza, or about 83% of the population. It manages most of the schools in the Strip, many of which openly call for killing Jews and destroying Israel according to reports from IMPACT-SE. The report also covers that “13 UNRWA staff members have publicly praised, celebrated or expressed their support for the unprecedented deadly assaults on civilians [in Israel] on 7 October.”
Israeli Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s Proposal Condemned
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said “a small country like ours cannot afford a reality where four minutes away from our communities there is a hotbed of hatred and terrorism, where two million people wake up every morning with aspiration for the destruction of the State of Israel and with a desire to slaughter and rape and murder Jews wherever they are.” As such, he expressed his support for encouraging “voluntary emigration” of the Strip’s population to other countries as part of his postwar vision.
The reaction to Smotrich’s proposal was quick. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller labeled the suggestion as “inflammatory and irresponsible.” The New York Times reported that France and Germany had similar reactions.
United Nations’ Proposal Embraced
The United Nations also has a plan for Gaza. It involves the voluntary emigration of roughly 1.8 million Gazans for whom UNRWA provides services to relocate to Israel. It makes this proposal – still to this very day – as part of UN Resolution 194 which was passed in December 1948, over 75 years ago while the Israeli War of Independence was still being waged.
The proposal has long since passed its expiry date but dozens of Islamic and Arab countries, as well as the United Nations itself, keep on trying to breathe life into an idea to massively move over 80% of the population of Gaza – the majority of whom want to kill Jews – into Israel to extinguish the Jewish State.
Several Western countries and members of the progressive media were appalled that two members of the Israeli parliament suggested a “voluntary emigration” of Gazans to various countries but simultaneously embrace such emigration to Israel. It’s a peculiar mix of anti-Zionism and hypocrisy which seems very prevalent in these dark days.
Most countries were founded by professionals including lawyers and businessmen. Sometimes they included pharmacists, doctors and inventors. Often they included generals and military leaders.
Consider that Hamas has ruled Gaza outright since 2007, so every child under 16 years old has only known a land governed by the U.S.-designated terrorist group. On October 7, it assembled well over one thousand people of its army and related groups and invaded Israel, slaughtering children and the elderly. Hamas led the horde to rape, mutilate and butcher Jewish women. They grabbed 240 people and took them into Gaza as hostages.
Members of Hamas clearly meet the definition of evil psychopaths.
The leaders of Gaza were not done with their cruelty.
Knowing that Israel would respond to get their people back, pursue justice for the fallen and make sure that Gazans did not repeat the attack, the leaders of Gaza hid in tunnels developed for their exclusive use and of their army. Readied with power and food, the leaders of Hamas sat tight in the underground bunkers and let women and children suffer from Israel’s bombing campaign above. The leaders of Hamas dined as they let their people starve.
Cowards, everyone of them.
It’s bizarre for people to use the expression “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter,” when discussing Hamas. This action isn’t similar to Israeli leader Menahem Begin blowing up the King David Hotel in 1946 when it served as the British administrative headquarters, phoning in warnings in advance for people to leave the building. The Hamas henchmen entered people’s homes, bound families together and burned them alive.
Palestinian leadership is horribly twisted and evil.
Despite the deep depravity, a majority of “54% [of Palestinian Arabs] believe that Hamas is the most deserving of representing and leading the Palestinian people today,” according to a December PCPSR poll.
Palestinians have not disowned their leaders as yellow-bellied maniacs, even as they are being pummeled.
So what will future generations of Palestinian Arabs think about their founding fathers if October 7 turns out to a “war of liberation” the way celebrated by American university professors? Will Palestinian history books discuss how the founders of Palestine raped and sadistically tortured Jewish women? How they shot elderly people waiting at bus stops? How they hid underground comfortably while civilians took the brunt of Israeli reprisals?
Or will they lie to themselves and cleanse history that none of those things happened, even though the Palestinian Arab attackers filmed themselves in the act?
While psychopaths are mostly thought of as people who cannot discern between good and evil, a main feature is pathological lying and portrayal of victimhood. Psychology Today shares that “when caught in the act with their unscrupulous behavior, most sociopaths and psychopaths will not show signs of contrition or remorse (unless it is strategically advantageous for them to do so). On the contrary, they are more likely to double or triple down on their aggressive tendencies, increase hostility, deny responsibility, accuse and blame others, and maintain a facade of arrogance and conceit.”
Yahya Sinwar and the rest of Hamas are already being cleansed of any wrong-doing, with 75% of Palestinians supporting the October 7 massacre. Hamas leadership said that the October 7 massacre “is just the first time and there will be a second, a third, a fourth because we have the determination, the resolve and the capabilities to fight…. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force. We must teach Israel a lesson and we will do this again and again.”
Palestinian supporters argue that Israel’s attacks on Gaza are creating the next generation of terrorists. Jordan’s Queen Rania said Israel’s response in Gaza will “create a new generation of resistance that is fiercer and more violent.”
But it is not so. The repeated “aggressive tendencies, increased hostility” and blaming others are hallmark features of being psychopaths. People led by psychopaths for decades are becoming psychopaths themselves.
James Zogby, President of the Arab American Institute was invited to speak to the United Nations Security Council on June 27, 2023, months before the October 7 Massacre. While vigorously defending Palestinians he shared that there is a “tragic deformity in Palestinian political culture” with people preferring violence over peace. After sixteen years of Hamas rule, the “deformity” has metastasized into a deep rot.
A country founded by psychopaths will in all likelihood be a failed state, prominently featuring cruelty, and a populace blind to empathy and reason.
On June 24, 2023, I wrote an article called “The Terrorism of Emasculated Palestinians” that highlighted the work of Sanam Naraghi Anderlini of the International Civil Society Action Network. Anderlini essentially posited that terrorism often attracts men because leaders take advantage of male egos. She asked “what does it mean to be a man? Whether in Liberia, Nigeria, Palestine, Jamaica, Yemen, Syria, Iraq.”
Anderlini contended that four themes emerge as critical elements for male self-definition and worth, the 4 “Ps”: Provide, Protect, Prestige and Procreation. She argued that men living in societies where they failed in their “manly” roles to provide for the family monetarily, to protect them, to have a position of prestige or power, or to procreate and have progeny, were easy prey for radical actors.
Just over one hundred days after writing the article, Palestinian Arabs did not only commit the largest single day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, they committed the most violent and brutal attacks against Jewish women on a single day ever. It is therefore worth reviewing October 7 beyond a battle for land or about religion but regarding gender.
Hamas takes Jewish women hostages and rape and mutilate others
Provide. Hamas rules Gaza and has made little effort to build an economy. They are wards of the world taking charity endlessly from the United Nations and donor countries. They spend money and time on tunnels to invade Israel rather than invest in their society.
Palestinians completely failed to provide and would rather steal the fruits of Israeli labor than sweat to provide for their families and communities. Should they fail to take over Israel, they know that donor countries will pay to rebuild the Strip and funnel monies into the society which will come to their families as “martyr payments” for killing Jews.
Palestinian society has built a terrorist-payment infrastructure, with global approval, in which they can provide for their families by engaging in terrorism.
Protect. Members of Hamas protect their own soldiers but not their families. They leave women and children above ground as cannon fodder while they stay protected in underground tunnels. The Palestinian men do not even pretend to try to protect, and focus solely on attacking Israelis, young and old, male and female alike.
Prestige. Shockingly, despite intentionally failing to provide and protect their families and communities, Palestinian’s toxic culture gives these terrorists prestige. Scores of schools, squares and sporting tournaments are named after mass murderers. Imams bless the killers as the holiest members of society.
There is little to no prestige to attain in Palestinian society outside the depravity-prestige of slaughtering Jews.
Procreation. Israeli Jews now have a higher fertility rate than Palestinian Arabs. Some of the reason is because Arab women are becoming more educated and fertility rates decline everywhere as women have greater educational attainment, as well as crowded conditions in Gaza.
Consider the 4″P”s and deep “deformity in Palestinian culture” as noted by leading Arab American James Zogby. Palestinians make no attempts to provide for or to protect Arab women in their households. They sacrifice Gaza and Gazans for the land they covet across the fence.
Regarding women, Palestinian men internalized that once they committed to abandoning their own women and children for their cause, those frolicking, relatively rich Jewish women must be hunted. The existence of free, dancing Jewish women on land that Arabs believe is rightfully their own, mocks emasculated Palestinians.
Anderlini said that generally, many men who try and fail the 4 “P”s to provide/ protect/ prestige and procreate, may turn towards terrorism out of desperation. But alas, tens of thousands of Palestinian men – perhaps millions – deliberately abandon their homes and families to reap the rewards of the terrorist-payment infrastructure and depravity-prestige built into Palestinian society.
On October 7, Palestinian men turned their backs and sacrificed their own Arab women, and descended to rape, torture, mutilate and slaughter Jewish girls and women by design.
ACTION ITEM
Destroy the terrorist-payment infrastructure. Demand elected officials not give any money to Palestinians unless and until the pay-to-slay program is terminated and no terrorist group sits in power.
End the depravity-prestige philosophy. No monies or support from any country until Palestinians remove the names of terrorists from schools, squares and public places.
There is a fantastic idea that has been floated around the Middle East for many decades: two states for two peoples, one Jewish and the other Arab. Even though the notion continues to be bantered in political circles, few details are understood about what that plan means.
The pro-Palestinian camp talks about “THE” two state solution, meaning the Arab Peace Initiative proposed in 2002. The United States and other governments talk about “A” two state solution, which could mean a wide variety of negotiated outcomes. The United Nations has a third alternative, which is the most toxic and has directly led to permanent hostilities between Israel and its neighbors.
“THE” 2 State Solution: Arab Peace Initiative
There are three primary matters which stand between Israel and the Palestinian Authority: land/borders; capital city; and the future of Palestinian refugees.
Land: The API calls for Israel to withdraw from ALL territories taken in its defensive war of June 1967. This would include Gaza, the West Bank, the Sinai, Golan Heights, and areas of southern Lebanon still under dispute. Israel has already withdrawn from some of those lands including Sinai, Gaza and many areas of the West Bank. The API seeks the remainder.
Capital: The API calls for East Jerusalem to be the capital of a new Palestine. An early draft of the API called for “al-Quds al-Sharif as its capital,” seemingly softening the stance to something Israel could accept.
Refugees: The API states that Palestinian Arabs outside of Israel will seemingly not move to the Jewish State. The final language of “Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries,” may only be in reference to UNRWA Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan whom the API thinks should not have to settle them. The API language was in sharp contrast to an earlier version which stated “To accept to find an agreed, just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in conformity with Resolution 194,” which would have given Palestinians wishing to live in peace with Israel the option of either moving there or getting compensation.
“A” Two State Solution
The United States and Israel see the end of the conflict differently. Through the Madrid Conference and Oslo Accords, as well as other efforts made by the Obama Administration in 2014 and the Trump Administration’s “Deal of the Century,” the three major matters had different contours.
Land: Israel believes that it has already given back some of the territory it took in June 1967. It returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and handed Gaza and major population centers in the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority. UN Resolution 242 (1967) called for “withdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” which does not call for ALL territory to be abandoned.
The United States agrees. The Obama Administration tried to broker a series of land swaps which would have essentially given Palestinians a state on the same amount of land but in different locations than came about from the 1949 Armistice Lines (49AL). The Trump Administration started with the same concept that the 49AL were arbitrary and not conducive to long-term peace and that Israel has already complied with the land provision of Res. 242. Team Trump did not try to match a certain number of square kilometers with history, and instead sought to create borders which accounted for current reality on the ground and a dynamic to forge an enduring peace.
Capital: Israel annexed the section of Jerusalem that was divided for nineteen years between 1949 and 1967, and further extended the municipal boundaries. It considers the city its eternal capital, but has offered sections of the city to be part of a Palestinian State as part of the peace efforts, with American prodding.
Refugees: Israel has offered some limited number of Palestinian Arabs to move to Israel. The figures have ranged from 10,000 to 100,000 over time under different plans. The US position has long been that Palestinian Arabs should move to the new Arab State, as the basic principle of two states for two people.
The United Nations’ Two State Solution
The UN’s plan is the most aggressively pro-Palestinian of the three.
The UN agrees with the API regarding a new Palestinian State on all of the land in Gaza and the West Bank being part of Palestine, as well as East Jerusalem being the capital of the country. However, it continues to insist on the full “right of return” for six million “Palestine Refugees” who are registered with UNRWA in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
The UN’s promise to Palestine Refugees has caused them to be frustrated by the failure to move to neighborhoods where grandparents used to live. It has led them to build terrorist tunnels to penetrate the land which the UN promises to them, rather than build an economy. It has kept them in a restive state for generations, not accepting the existence of the “Zionist entity” which they believe will soon cease to exist according to recent polls.
The United Nations’ adoption of Palestinians as their perennial wards has harmed peace in the region. It has a position on refugees which it knows Israel cannot accept, deliberately putting the Jewish State as the obstacle to peace rather than a counterparty with whom to find a solution. Permanently putting Israel on the defensive with one-sided resolutions makes Israel unwilling to seriously consider the UN on any matter.
It is destructive to any peace process for the United Nations to call for a “two-state solution” without clearly articulating that there is no “right of return” to Israel. The death toll in the region will certainly rise while Palestinian Arabs believe their future is in Israeli homes.
The quarterly Palestinian poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR) came out in December 2023 and primarily focused on the October 7 Hamas attack and Israeli response. The findings echoed the poll results of the Arab World For Research and Development which found that West Bank Arabs were even more supportive of the Hamas attacks than Gazans (82% to 57%) with three-quarters overall approving the attack. Hamas’s popularity similarly rises in the hearts and minds of Palestinian Arabs.
The PCPSR poll also asked about terrorism as it relates to Jewish “settlers.” The October 7 Hamas attack was referred to as “armed struggle” six times in the poll, while “terrorism” was mentioned eight times, each connected to Jewish “settlers.”
That is the essence of Palestinian Arabs and their supporters today. They believe that ending the “occupation” and presence of “settlers” is a just cause, and the most effective way to achieve that goal is through armed combat. In the West Bank, 68% of Arabs now believe that “armed struggle” is the best means of “ending the occupation and building an independent state.” That figure is 56% in Gaza, where Palestinian Arabs already have self-determination.
This is a continuation of a trend that gained momentum one year ago, as West Bankers have “a greater confidence in the efficacy of armed struggle,” as described in a December 2022 PCPSR poll, and believe that Israel will soon cease to exist.
Curiously, few believe that ending “occupation” was the goal of the October 7 massacre. Most believe it was in response to “settler attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and West Bank residents, and for the release of Palestinian prisoners.” Perhaps they marked the aims with more modest goals to prove the attack to ultimately be a success.
#FakeNews #JihadiFakeNews of Jews “storming” the Temple Mount
Hamas named the sadistic October 7 massacre the “al Aqsa Flood” as they attempt to purge Jews from the Temple Mount and Israel. They view the basic presence of Jews as a violation of the “sanctity” of Islamic holy places, both in Jerusalem and the entirety of the land.
For Palestinian Arabs, all Israeli Jews are “settlers,” both inside and outside the 1948 lines. The presence of Jews is “terrorism,” whether committing acts of violence or not. To address the matter, Muslims are engaged in jihad, an “armed struggle” to purge the land of the infidels.
According to PCPSR, “The overwhelming majority of [Palestinian Arab] respondents say that they have not seen videos from international or social media showing atrocities committed by Hamas members against Israeli civilians that day, such as the killing of women and children in their homes. Indeed, more than 90% believe that Hamas fighters did not commit the atrocities contained in these videos.“
If they did, would it matter? Would they imagine that it was Israeli and western propaganda made with artificial intelligence? Would they ascribe the actions to a handful of individuals and say that they do not speak for Islam? They believe their cause is just and will support (or ignore) any actions to achieve those aims.
There are two important take-aways from this: 1) some causes are manufactured (Jews storming al Aqsa) and the propaganda around it produces violence; and 2) the danger in believing that violence pays rewards is real.
Some quick thoughts on addressing these.
Combatting Jihadist Propaganda Around Al Aqsa
United Nations confirms that people of all faiths – including Jews – have a right to peacefully visit the Temple Mount / al Aqsa Compound in the Old City of Jerusalem
Israel’s Muslim allies, including Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and UAE, should visit the Temple Mount together with Israeli leaders in a show of solidarity and openness for each other
Ending Notion In The Efficacy of Violence
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres must clearly state and demand that Hamas perpetrators be brought to justice, something he has repeatedly failed to do, including after the October 7 massacre
Global support for Israel eliminating Hamas, a genocidal group with the most antisemitic foundational charter ever written, which has widespread Palestinian support. Palestinians must be redirected towards coexistence, not war
UNSG Guterres, Saudi Arabia and Israel’s Arab allies should state clearly that there is no “right of return” for Palestinian Arabs to Israel. Any future settlement will be in a new Palestinian State, hopefully finally ending the Arab quest to destroy the Jewish State
Palestinians refuse to acknowledge their own terrorism, regardless of its barbarity, and manufacture violence by Jews even when none exists. Ending the current fighting is a near-term goal which must include the foundation for ending future violence, or the current events will certainly be repeated.
First One Through 