The United Nations has 193 countries in the General Assembly, and 134, roughly 70%, are located in what is generally called the “Global South”, a term that has emerged to replace “third world” and “developing economies.” The region accounts for about 80% of the global population, with the difference in figures mostly due to the two largest populations – India and China – being located in the region.
The UN has many committees and agencies. Of all of them, the UN Security Council is the most significant, being the sole entity that can pass international laws. It has five permanent members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the USA – and ten non-permanent members which serve two year terms. More than 50 members of the UN have never served on the UNSC, including Israel.
The current UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, thinks that the current UNSC needs to be refashioned for the modern world. He bemoans the fact that no African country has a permanent seat on the council, and the ability for the five permanent members to veto resolutions has allowed some wars – like in Ukraine and Gaza – to continue for too long. He also believes that capitalism as dictated by the Global North has kept the Global South in poverty by charging higher rates of interest and not forgiving debt.
US President Joe Biden favored allowing two African countries to become permanent members of the UNSC but objected to their obtaining veto powers. He thought that the current system of veto rights already made the committee unproductive and adding more members with such rights would impede it further. Others countered that it was time to remove all veto rights. Still others like India, the world’s most populous country, demanded a seat on the committee as well. Arab countries took the opportunity to demand the same.
Negotiations will play out over 2025, with a new US administration under Donald Trump who is much more weary of multilateralism and the United Nations generally. The discussions will mainly focus on Africa, where most of the global growth in population is occurring.
China has invested heavily in Africa, accounting for roughly one-third of the infrastructure projects, and now has global trade of $282 billion with the continent. Its actions helped it surpass the United States in terms of popularity (58% to 56%). The US must consider how it interacts with the African continent directly and what steps it takes at the UN as it fights its shadow war with China.
Those who spend their lives focused on the UN and global politics have been debating which two countries should join the UNSC. If the seats go to the countries with the largest economies, it would favor South Africa ($373 billion) and Egypt ($347 billion). If it is awarded based on population, it would go to Nigeria (232 million) and Ethiopia (132 million). Others consider the Democratic Republic of Congo (109 million and one of the fastest growing population at +3.3% in 2024) which has been decimated by ongoing violence. Including a country which has longed for peace might make sense at the Security Council.
For people who focus on another country which has dreamed of calm – the Jewish State of Israel – the changes to the UNSC are extremely important.
Overall, the Global South is much more anti-Israel than the Global North. All 28 countries that refuse to recognize the State of Israel are located there. Almost every country in the Global South recognizes Palestine while a minority of the Global North recognizes such entity.
Since the Iranian Proxies War on Israel, South Africa has led the charge against Israel at the International Court of Justice, claiming Israel’s defensive war was a “genocide.” Those joining South Africa were almost all from the Global South, with the exceptions of Belgium, Ireland and Spain from Europe.
The dynamic of a change at the UNSC will not only impact Israel but possibly Jews around the world as witnessed by the spike of global antisemitic attacks since the October 7 massacre. In the United States, the majority of international students at universities come from the Global South, and an empowerment of their voices at the Security Council may exacerbate Jew hatred everywhere.
While people are focused on the genocidal jihad that brought violence against Jews in Israel and the United States watching movies like October 8, attention must include the impending harm that may come to Jews everywhere with changes at the United Nations Security Council.
ACTION ITEM
Write the White House to share your concerns of changes to the United Nations Security Council
Fewer people are going to college and graduate schools. Some of the drop-off relates to people having fewer children so the absolute number of people going to school has been declining. But the percentage of students going from high school to advanced degrees has also fallen considerably. Even in the years before the pandemic, the decline in high schoolers going to college dropped from 70% in 2016 to 63% in 2020. The figure dropped to 61.4% in 2023, with men being the most likely to skip college with only 57.6% opting for that education. The rates for Whites and Blacks were roughly the same at 59.9% and 59.6%, respectively, with Hispanics being lower at 51.8% and Asians surpassing every group at 84.7%. The overall impact can be seen in 2010 college enrollment of 10.2 million women and 7.8 million men, dropping to 8.9 million (-12.7%) and 6.5 million (-16.7%), respectively in 2021.
The reasons that most Americans are skipping college include a strong job market paying good wages, the desire to avoid college debt, people pursuing jobs that don’t require advanced degrees, and the ability to learn many skills online.
To address the declining enrollment, universities are taking many more international students. In the 2023/24 academic year, U.S. universities had over 1.1 million foreign students, a record. These students mostly came from the “Global South,” the emerging, principally non-White economies. The majority of students came from southeast Asia including India (331k), China (277k), Nepal, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Taiwan. No European country was in the top ten. The only countries in the top ten which are part of the Global North were South Korea and Canada. The countries with the largest spike in students over the past year were all from the Global South including Ghana (+45%), Bangladesh (+26%), India (+23%), Iran (+15%) and Nigeria (+13%).
Global North in blue and Global South in red
The student exchange is not reciprocal. Only 280,000 Americans studied abroad and the majority (64%) went to Europe, with Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, and France dominating the destinations. Two-thirds of those students identified as White.
The Americans abroad tended to go during their undergraduate years, spending just a few months away (only 2.4% went for a year). They tended to be women (67%), and studied business and management (20%) and social sciences (18%). This is in sharp contrast to international students coming to the United States who were typically graduate students pursuing a degree in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) at 56%.
The international students are older and come for longer periods of time. They often marry and have kids while pursuing their degrees, establishing a foothold in America, while Americans-in-Europe simply have a quick experience away from home.
The universities are very happy to have these paying students fill their classrooms which are being abandoned by Americans. In 2019 and 2020, 49% of all STEM master’s degrees and 57% of all STEM doctorate degrees were conferred to international students. The economics of running courses and an institution without half the students would have required eliminating courses and teachers, and perhaps shutting whole departments.
Technology companies want and need these skilled students as future employees. Google, Apple and Microsoft count on new STEM graduates to fill their ranks each year and lobby the government accordingly. Open Doors estimates that these international students contribute roughly $50 billion to the U.S. economy, or about $5,000 per student.
The U.S. government plays a heavy hand in all of this, not only seeking to salvage American university programs and building feeders to the American technology landscape, but on a political level as well.
Two situations highlight U.S. politics driving international students to these shores: Saudi Arabia and Israel.
As the United States ramped up pressure on the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding its nuclear program from 2007 to 2015, the U.S. sought to reassure its ally, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which is a foe of Iran. During those years, the number of Saudi students in American universities climbed from just a few thousand to over 61,000. The Saudi students learned courses like petroleum engineering to better extract and process oil, as well as nuclear physics to be able to build nuclear power on their own. Just after the nuclear agreement was signed, the number of Saudi students dropped significantly, down to under 15,000 in the 2023/24 academic year.
American politics playing out for international students from Israel is more explicit, and targets high school students, as long as they are Arabs.
On September 12, 2023, the U.S. embassy in Israel posted an advertisement that the U.S. State Department “is seeking a group of Arab citizens of Israel secondary school students to participate in a Study- in-the-USA initiative for high school students during the 2024-2025 school year.” (bold in original) It is backed by the YES Program Scholarship which gives “many countries with significant Muslim population an opportunity to study at American high schools and live with American host families for one academic year,” funding “all expenses in connection with the study tour including airfare, room and board, pocket money and most other costs.” It is part of the broad U.S. policy to make amends for the “War on Terror,” and selected only non-Jews from the Jewish State to learn in America.
The cherry-picking of certain types of international students demands a deeper exploration of the segments of the Global South that are in American schools.
The Global South has two principal regions as it relates to American immigrants: Latin America and everywhere else.
The United States was primarily populated by European migration from 1840 to 1920. World War I, the Great Depression and World War II stemmed immigration for several decades before it picked up with the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act. Since that time, 49% of immigrants have come from Latin America and 27% from Asia. These groups are very different. The typical immigrant from Latin America had little formalized education (only 9% of Mexicans in the US in 2022 had a college degree). That compared to those from South Asia where 72% had a college degree, 55% from Central Asia and 49% from East and Southeast Asia.
Those coming from Latin America typically came for jobs not requiring a college degree while those coming from Asia came with degrees or obtained them at American universities.
The demographics between Latin America and Asia are also very different regarding religion.
About 50 million Muslims live in the Global North which has a population of roughly 1.6 billion, or about 3% of the population. It is even lower in Latin America which has roughly 4 million Muslims out of a population of 665 million, or about 0.6%. That is is sharp contrast to roughly 1.8 billion Muslims living in the Global South with a population of 6.4 billion, or roughly 28%, or 31% x-Latin America. If one were to exclude China as well which has around 25 million Muslims, the Global South is over 41% Muslim (x-China and x-Latin America).
While China does not resemble much of the Global South in both religious demographics and not having a history of European countries on its soil, it is now in an aggressive competitive battle against the Global North for power. As such, China is leveraging its regional position alongside the Global South to wage a cultural and economic war against the West.
China and the Global South have advanced efforts to promote anarchy in the United States alongside far-left non-White movements like Justice Democrats. The calls to Defund the Police and Abolish ICE were designed to tear down walls of protection and flood the United States with people from the Global South. The chants to “Globalize the Intifada” on American campuses and streets are calls to dismantle Western civilization’s capitalism and support for the Jewish State, with a broad redistribution of wealth and power to the preferred people in the Global South.
“Intifada” protest at Columbia University streets
When people in the Global North hear the chants of “Intifada,” they recognize the vile terrorism of Palestinian Arabs blowing up buses and pizza stores in the Second Intifada. However, the Global South considers it an Arabic term meaning “shaking off” the colonialism and imperialism of the West. The South’s overriding desire of taking on western civilization overwhelms the facts that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel and that the Intifada is a premeditated violent attack on civilians. The Islamist Global South rallies to its coreligionists.
Banner with “Intifada” hung outside Columbia University
The population on America’s campuses does not resemble the rest of America. The disproportionate number of Asians and Muslims enrolled at America’s universities come from regions which are in active competition with the West, and embrace the Stateless Arabs from Palestine’s (SAPs) jihadi war against the Jews. The universities which enroll the international students of the Global South, attempt to tie them with American minority groups whose ancestors originated from those regions. Remarkably, a cause like Black Lives Matter which has nothing to do with the Global South, becomes hitched to the Israeli Defense Forces.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) on hearing about antisemitism at universities showcasing “Intifada”
The declining enrollment at American universities has led to them being taken over by international students from Asia and Africa. This has led directly to antisemitism on campuses and in the streets. It was true before the October 7 massacre and has only accelerated since then.
New York City march to “Globalize the Intifada” in September 2021, two years before the October 7 massacre by Gazans
Americans and the Global North are watching the initial battles of the Global South on the beachheads of American universities and are dumbstruck. The West would be well served to reevaluate those international students admitted to study here, and use this time to prepare for the battles to come.
ACTION ITEM
Contact the White House to vet international students coming to study at American universities, trimming the numbers coming from the Global South and making their visas conditional to peaceful behavior.
The Global South in downtown New York City taunting Jews and Israelis attending an exhibition about music lovers slaughtered by Gazans on October 7, 2023
International humanitarian law (IHL) has been established for decades, and many are principally designed to protect civilians during armed conflict. In the case of the Gaza war against Israel, it is questionable whether the laws can be applied to Israel’s actions in the war, not whether Israel is abusing such laws.
Principle of Distinction
The driving themes of IHL surrounds mitigating the harm to non-combatants during hostilities. The first driver is, therefore, to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. In most battles, this is easy to accomplish: during a clash on a battlefield, the only participants are soldiers. In urban warfare, this is much more difficult.
In the dense Gaza strip, this is virtually impossible.
The various military groups in Gaza are embedded and underneath almost every building and road. Hamas, the popular political-terrorist group that rules Gaza, built an entire infrastructure underneath the city with a maze of 500 kilometers of tunnels and storerooms. The hundreds of exit shafts for much of this infrastructure is located in houses and schools.
Hamas soldiers in Gaza tunnels
Additionally, Gazan combatants dress in civilian clothing and are members of groups which are touted to be neutral including the United Nations, the press and hospital staff.
UNRWA employees and Hamas militants
If civilians and related infrastructure are enmeshed by premeditated design with an active military, then the civilians have become integrated into the war effort and renounced protections of distinction.
Principles of Proportionality and Precaution
IHL’s Principle of Proportionality is designed to minimize collateral damage to civilians when attacking legitimate military targets. It calls for a review of the situation and reducing armaments to make any incidental civilian harm be aligned to the relative military gain achieved. The related Precaution principle is one step further, to try to prevent any military action, if possible.
Israel has taken many actions to limit the harm to civilians – which have been harshly criticized, nevertheless.
Withholding electricity and other aid. Israel has attempted to pressure Hamas and other militant groups – which seize all goods into Gaza – by withholding basic items like electricity so Israel would not have to use military force in the region. For those efforts, Israel is accused of causing a humanitarian catastrophe, rather than adhering to the Principles of Precaution
Move civilians out of the field of battle. Israel has moved and continues to urge civilians to leave “hot” areas, only to be accused of “ethnic cleansing”
Using ground forces. Israel could minimize its own casualties by only using air power against the terrorist enclave. Instead, it seeks a more targeted effort to eliminate combatants and protect civilians, for which it is criticized.
While Gazan authorities threaten to commit the October 7 barbarity over and again, Israel attempts to adhere to international law yet is criticized for it. Even though Israel left Gaza in 2005, and put in place a blockade only when Hamas took full control of the strip in 2007 to follow the Principle of Precaution, it is laughingly accused by international “human rights” groups of a “belligerent occupation.”
The terrorist enclave of Gaza has removed distinctions between civilians and militants, aid workers and terrorists, state and non-state actors, locals and international operators, and civilian infrastructure and military bases in a toxic brew. It defecates on all humanitarian norms while pointing both armaments and accusing fingers at Israel.
As the United Nations and Gazans have themselves destroyed all distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, and declared that Israel can never meet the standards of international humanitarian law, there is no basis to criticize Israel’s handling of its defensive war on such basis.
The New York Times is accelerating its attempt to redefine facts and U.S. policy, especially in regards to the State of Israel.
Nowhere is this more pronounced than attempts to educate its readers that “East Jerusalem,” is an actual city, even though it existed for only 18 years in its 4,000 year history from 1949-1967 because of war.
The Times wrote “East Jerusalem” no less than SIX times in an article on March 7 about a Hamas leader’s release from prison. Using the phrase repeatedly was meant to grant another victory to Hamas, in its “Al Aqsa Flood” war.
At the fifth mention of “East Jerusalem,” the Times wrote that “Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war in a move not recognized by most of the international community.” So what? Most of the “international community” considers homosexuality a disgusting offense and crime, yet the Times doesn’t append such comments when discussing the gay community.
The United States recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and only Israel. When President Donald Trump issued his statement of official recognition, he specifically referred to holy sites in the Old City of eastern Jerusalem saying “Jerusalem is not just the heart of three great religions, but it is now also the heart of one of the most successful democracies in the world. Over the past seven decades, the Israeli people have built a country where Jews, Muslims, and Christians, and people of all faiths are free to live and worship according to their conscience and according to their beliefs. Jerusalem is today, and must remain, a place where Jews pray at the Western Wall, where Christians walk the Stations of the Cross, and where Muslims worship at Al-Aqsa Mosque.”
Jerusalem has been reunited under Israel for decades and the U.S. embassy in Israel straddles the area that was considered “no man’s land” during those horrible years of 1949 to 1967. It is time to be explicit that the United States recognizes the unified city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and does not recognize any place called “East Jerusalem.”
Location of new U.S. embassy to Israel
The Trump administration can cement such understanding with blessing Israel’s expansion of Jerusalem eastward in an area known as “E1.”
ACTION ITEM
Write the White House comments@whitehouse.gov to clearly state that the U.S. recognizes all of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and endorse construction of homes in E1.
Write The New York Times CORRECTION editors corrections@nytimes.com to stop calling a place “East Jerusalem” or to similarly change policy for all historically divided capitals referencing East and West Berlin as well as East and West Beirut and in its articles.
The two major wars grabbing world attention for the past couple of years has been Russia-Ukraine and Iranian Proxies led by Gaza-Israel. While Russia invaded Ukraine and the two have largely faced off with Russia maintaining about 20% of Ukraine, Gazans invaded Israel and got decimated.
President Trump’s recent interaction with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy this week has made some in the pro-Israel community nervous. If Trump will side with the aggressor (Russia), will he also back Gazans and Iran against Israel?
Devolution of exchange starts at 40:00, when Zelenskyy challenges ability to have diplomacy with Russia which does not abide by agreements
I believe that it is a misreading of Trump’s policy of America First.
Trump likes winners. Winners have the strength and position to negotiate deals, whereas losers ask for handouts. If Russia is declared the winner in the midst of the war and able to annex large chunks of Ukraine, the United States will negotiate important mineral deals with Russia rather than with Ukraine.
Gaza has nothing to offer America other than real estate. The region is in shambles and will require billions of dollars to redevelop. The political-terrorist group Hamas still rules the strip and Gazans have proven themselves morally bankrupt in supporting the massacre of innocent people in Israel. Why would Trump want to engage with the initiators of a war which they completely lost? His inclination would be to side with the Israeli victors who have a thriving liberal society and economy with leading technology to trade with the United States.
President Trump just approved nearly $3 billion in arms sales to Israel to help replenish its arsenal over the multi-front war with Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Gaza and the West Bank. Those arms should help neuter various terrorist groups and position the United States to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Kibbutz Be’eri burned by Gazan invaders during massacre on October 7, 2023
People think such action is based on short-term thinking but it is about long-term planning. If the parties in conflict have assets and relationships which the U.S. covets, it will engage with those in charge who can deliver. If they are the more moral and ethical as is the case for Israel, so much the better.
Jason Greenblatt, who worked for Donald Trump for decades in his real estate office before working in the first Trump administration developing a new roadmap to peace between Israel and its neighbors made clear that Zelenskyy butchered a chance to help Ukrainians by not understanding how Trump operates, tweeting “Whoever prepared President @ZelenskyyUa for the Oval Office meeting with @POTUS & @VP did an absolutely terrible job! Zelenskyy did not pay attention to the messaging that was coming out of @WhiteHouse for a while now. President Trump is interested in protectinginterests 1st & foremost. That’s his job, no matter how people feel about Ukraine. He also wants to end the death & destruction in Ukraine if a logical deal can be made. Hard to believe how Zelenskyy let this devolve instead of taking the cues. What a shame for Ukraine.”
In 2017, during Trump’s first term, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas failed to understand and capitalize on Trump’s efforts for Palestinian Arabs and let the relationship completely devolve. Abbas is trying to play catch up now by trying to arrest terrorists east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL / “West Bank”). It is unclear if that will be enough to impress the administration that has watched Israel be a strong partner.
Trump’s “America First” policy may sometimes run against the wronged party, as in Ukraine. In the Middle East, Americans will have comfort that Trump has an ally which is strong, moral, has much intellectual property to benefit Americans and deeply appreciates the relationship with the U.S.
The story of the Bibas children from October 7, 2023 until now has been horrific on every level, at every turn.
First, the four year-old and nine month old were ripped from their homes by the military of the ruling political-terrorist group Hamas in Gaza, along with the children’s terrified mother. They were abducted to the terrorist enclave of Gaza, murdered by Palestinian Arabs weeks later.
Their bodies were then held by the Palestinian Arabs without burial for over a year. They were not returned to Israel for proper, respectful burial.
Instead, they were held for ransom. The small Jewish corpses were ultimately paraded on stage before a crowd of hundreds of cheering Gazans – alongside their children – with a Gazan woman who was not their mother despite Hamas assurances, to be shipped to Israel.
The tiny innocent children were exchanged for dozens of Palestinian Arab terrorists convicted of murder, per Hamas demands. These released terrorists are alive and ready, willing and capable of slaughtering Jews once more.
The media falsely portrays this as a “prisoner exchange,” as though the two sides were swapping living adult prisoners of war. A blasphemy.
Every level of the story is a horror. Yet, there is only so much that Israel can do on its own to change the deep “deformity” in Gazan culture.
But it must try to dissuade at least some of the depraved actions.
Israel should commit to never holding onto any corpses of any Palestinian, whether soldiers, terrorists or anyone else UNLESS Palestinian Arabs are holding dead Israelis. As soon as Palestinians take a dead Israeli, every Palestinian killed should be retained by Israel. A future exchange will only have a single swap: all corpses for all corpses. It removes any bargaining power of killing people and holding the dead.
The Bibas story is pure torture. The Bibas Rule of only corpses for corpses might alleviate some death and pain in the years to come.
The media is going crazy about President Donald Trump’s social media post of an AI-generated video of what a “Trump Gaza” might resemble. The imaginary future isn’t the problem: it’s the United Nations policies which have produced the current reality of Gaza.
Gaza is led by Hamas, a deeply antisemitic jihadi group which is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Israel and many other countries. The UN thinks it’s a legitimate government, as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
The UN’s stated mission is to move at least 73% of Gazans into Israel (the UNRWA wards), making Gazans indifferent to the local situation as they think they are just waiting to move into towns where grandparents used to live in Israel
The entrance to Aida Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem with a key on top to let Arabs know that the ticket to enter Israel is via the UN
The UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said on February 24, 2025 that his concern is for Gaza’s suffering in this war; not Israel. He said he was concerned about “Israeli settlers” but not Hamas.
The United Nations has long legitimized an antisemitic genocidal jihadist group next door to Israel and has protected it from facing justice. It has reared generations of Gazans to only know hatred for Jews and deny their history and rights in their homeland. It has systematically inverted victim and perpetrator by using an approach that the best defense is a good offense, to vilify Israel and its supporters, rather than put pressure on Palestinian Arabs to disarm and accept the Jewish State.
Gaza under Hamas and UNHamas under Hamas and UN leadership
The AI-generated fiction of a Trump Gaza is producing wild attacks, while the real tragedy of Gaza’s bankrupt morality and devastation under the banner of the United Nations is never considered.
The United Nations has a Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (SCMEPP), a role so seeped in lofty goals and ineptitude, it sums up the farce and tragedy of the UN’s biased and pathetic involvement in the Muslim Arab- Israel conflict.
The “peace process” has long been hampered by a UN that teaches the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) that they will all move into Israel, that Jews cannot live in their holiest city of Jerusalem nor pray at their holiest site on the Temple Mount. The UN schools teach only Arab students, vile propaganda that Jews are invaders with no history in the land, interlopers to be despised.
It is, therefore, not a surprise that the new UN Coordinator is not an impartial party but one long dedicated to the SAPs’ narrative and goals.
Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands took over for Tor Wennesland in January 2025. Her European appearance masks her affiliation with the Palestinian cause.
Sigrid Kaag, new UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process
Kaag was a Dutch politician and involved in foreign affairs which soon brought her to get involved with UNRWA, the long-standing temporary UN agency tasked with tending to the descendants of Arabs who left Israel at its founding, as well as UNICEF. Soon after she took on UN roles in Syria and Lebanon. This background seemingly made her an ideal choice in January 2024 to become UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza.
With such pro-Arab bona fides (and a Palestinian husband), UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed her his Personal Representative of the Secretary-General to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in January 2025 when Wennesland’s term expired.
Guterres also appointed Kaag to be UN’s SCMEPP, even though such role is meant to be – theoretically – an unbiased party to bring peace to all parties in the Middle East conflict. How can the SCMEPP be a party who is deeply enmeshed with only one side?
Kaag addressed the UN Security Council on February 25, 2025 and her comments repeated the same inanity spoken at the global chambers: no Palestinian Arabs are terrorists, cannot be condemned nor brought to justice, even if they commit the most barbaric atrocities.
Kaag began her comments in her new capacity as UN’s point person for Middle East Peace with “It cannot be repeated enough; nothing justifies the appalling October 7 terror attacks executed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. I welcome the implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire including the release of 34 hostages. I echo the Secretary-General’s condemnation of the public parading of hostages released by Hamas, including statements made under duress, and the appalling display of the coffins of deceased hostages.” Nowhere in her comments was there a condemnation of the October 7 massacre nor calling for all those SAPs to be held accountable.
Not surprisingly, Kaag would go on to tell the Security Council that Gazans need relief, Israeli actions are bad and the Palestinian Authority is good. She concluded her remarks declaring that the UN has already determined the correct borders of two states and that they are not a matter of negotiations between Israel and the PA, and that Israel must leave Gaza even though nothing is mentioned about Hamas.
Kaag comments before UN Security Council on February 25, 2025
The United Nations has been one of the primary causes of the Middle East conflict, masquerading as the champion for human rights and peace. Its new point person to address the conflict is once again a tool of the global body to defend local Arabs at all costs, regardless of their actions and intentions.
J.D. Vance’s 2016 book Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, began with a short story of how everyone in his small town would come to the street and stand when a funeral hearse passed by. When he asked his grandmother the reason for the tradition she replied “because honey, we’re hill people. And we respect our dead.”
It was an interesting device to educate readers that they were about to be introduced to a subset of society. They may know Americans and people from Kentucky, but the “hill people” in Vance’s life had a special bond. Whether living or dead, old or young, they stood together and apart from others, even while a casual eye might miss the divide.
Rabbi Scott Kahn, a Jewish American-Israeli podcaster of a show called Orthodox Conundrum, posed a similar story as a question while he was on a tour in the U.S. from his home in Israel, in the fall of 2024. He provocatively asked a gathering of Orthodox Jews whether a cleft had opened between the American and Israeli Orthodox communities over the current war from Gaza. He observed that while U.S. Orthodox Jews remained the most committed to Israel in terms of visiting, moving and supporting Israel, he felt that support waning as the latest war extended past one year.
When some from the audience protested that many of the people present had children who volunteered for the Israeli army, Kahn paused to admit that while true, American Jews simply no longer understood the pain of Israeli Jews who get up and go to funerals and shiva houses week after week, for so long.
The global modern Orthodox community in which Kahn felt completely at home for so long seemingly was fracturing before him into distinct Israeli and diaspora communities.
Some weeks later, Kahn shared the story on his podcast with three panelists – Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, Dr. Logan Levkoff, and Shira Katz Shaulov – the first two from the U.S. and last from Israel. Halfway into the talk (38:30) he shared the conversation above to get reactions from the panel. Shaulov observed that the gap was more of a distinction between expecting sympathy and empathy. While the American Orthodox community may continue to have sympathy with their brothers and sisters in Israel, the local toll of the war made empathy virtually impossible.
The panel noted that Israelis often go to a wedding and a funeral on the same day in the same community for people the same ages. It has been brutal and exhausting, and they have been doing so for over a year. Every day they fear a knock at the door or observe their neighbors getting terrible news and gather together as a shaken community for mutual support.
That huddle is physical, local, tangible. And creates lasting and specialized bonds.
And many Israeli Jews feel that Jews in the diaspora are not present in the circle, and cannot comprehend the anguish.
The fatigue and emotional strain of this war has adjusted the contours of the Orthodox community in ways Kahn may well understand and appreciate but is despondent over as well. While the values and ritual practices may remain very similar, Diaspora Jews remain thousands of miles away from Israel during this massive pivot in history.
Respecting the dead alongside the living reinforces community. It remains true after shiva.
When Hostages Square in Tel Aviv gets dismantled – hopefully sometime soon when everyone returns home – Israel cannot only be left with the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and Har Herzl national cemetery. The country must consider how the Jewish diaspora can properly engage with the fallen and injured, as well as their families and communities in the years ahead.
The New York Times seemingly operates in fantasy land and a time warp when it writes about Israel.
The Times uses a phrase “Palestinian citizens of Israel” as if the U.S. recognizes a state of Palestine, and these Arabs are dual citizens with Israel. It uses “East Jerusalem”, an area that existed only from 1949 to 1967 as an artifice of war.
New York Times article echoing anti-Israel narrative of United Nations, as if the United States has no policies about the region
Does the Times think that it’s 1915 when the region of Palestine existed as part of the Ottoman Empire? Maybe it should call Recep Erdogan, the “leader of the Ottoman Empire”, instead of Turkey.
The United States does not recognize “Palestine” or “East Jerusalem.” But the NY Times has become part of the United Nations press corps as it distances itself from the Trump administration, echoing anti-Israel narratives in support of its Victims of Preference, which can never be Jews.
First One Through 