The United Nations has long come together to fight only two terrorist groups, ISIS (Da-esh) and Al Qaeda. The UN tracked and sanctioned individuals and groups associated with the terrorist groups for decades.
ISIS continues to be very active, with 153 attacks in the first six months of 2024 between Syria and Iraq. It is projected that the group may have double the number of attacks in 2024 as 2023.
So it is no surprise that Israel is worried about the Islamist militant group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), taking over Syria, to Israel’s immediate northeast. According to the BBC, “HTS was set up under a different name, Jabhat al-Nusra, in 2011 as a direct affiliate of al-Qaeda. The leader of the self-styled Islamic State (IS) group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was also involved in its formation.”
The United States is playing close attention.
On December 9, shortly after HTS took over Syria, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a release that “Centcom, together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS capabilities, even during this dynamic period in Syria.” U.S. Air Force fighter and bomber aircraft struck more than 75 targets on December 7 as part of the effort to denigrate ISIS.
The United Nations Secretary General suddenly was worried about foreign involvement in Syria. Despite the UN stating clearly that ISIS and Al Qaeda are a global threat, UNSG Guterres tweeted that he was deeply concerned about the “recent and extensive violations of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The U.S. has been operating in Syria for years, so it would be strange for Guterres to suddenly admonish the U.S.’s efforts to destroy ISIS. Turkey has conducted many raids inside Syria since 2016 and controls large swaths of northern Syria directly and through proxies.
Turkey-controlled areas in northern Syria
One must therefore assume that Guterres sudden interest was in regards to Israel’s attack on Syria’s air force, navy and chemical weapons stockpiles, as the Jewish State does not want the new Al Qaeda-linked regime to have such destructive capabilities next door.
Even though the UN labeled ISIS and Al Qaeda dangerous terrorist groups for years and said nothing about the United States and Turkey fighting in Syria for a long time, the head of the UN suddenly became concerned about Israel removing weapons from Al Qaeda-linked jihadi groups.
It is another sign of the depravity at the United Nations, and why it should be neutered in terms of funding and voice in international law.
The media has begun paying more attention to Syria as the country’s 54-year old regime has fallen to insurgents tied to ISIS and Turkey. As part of its coverage, it has marked the Golan Heights on its maps. It makes this an opportune time to review the very different coverage of two contested areas – Golan Heights and West Bank – between Israel and its neighbors.
In the Media
The Guardian’s map of the Golan Heights in December 2024
The Guardian presented a map of the Golan Heights calling the separation between Israel and Syria as the “1949 Armistice line.” It also noted that the Heights were “captured by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Six-day war.” Both of these statements are factually correct.
And completely divorced from how the media describes the “West Bank.”
Rather than use the term “1949 Armistice line”, the press calls it the “1967 border” even though it was never a border nor meant to be a border. As described in the 1949 Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement in Article VI, “The Armistice Demarcation Lines defined in articles V and VI of this Agreement are agreed upon by the Parties without prejudice to future territorial settlements or boundary lines or to claims of either Party relating thereto.” In other words, the lines were simply set to separate the warring parties but political negotiations would craft the contours of the land in the future.
In regards to the phrase “from Syria,” the media never notes that Israel didn’t capture the “West Bank” land from Palestine but from Jordan, as Palestine did not exist.
The media – and the United Nations – mislead people that Israel took the West Bank from Palestine in an aggressive war. That is completely untrue, and obfuscated by terminology.
Geography
The Golan Heights are an actual topographical piece of earth. The large hills and mountains shoot up from the Sea of Galilee and beyond from volcanic activity.
Not so for the “West Bank.” It has no geographical or historical significance, other than being east of the 1949 Armistice line. It wasn’t even called the “West Bank” until after the 1967 Six-day war, as Jordan had illegally annexed it in 1950 and the UN just called it part of Jordan.
Arab States Breaking the Armistice Agreements
The Israel-Syria and Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreements specifically called on all parties to not take military action against the other. Both Arab states violated those agreements.
Syria shelled the farmlands of Israel’s Galilee for years, forcing Israel to defend itself and take the Golan Heights to keep Syria from repeating the attacks. Similarly, Jordan attacked Israel in June 1967 and Israel captured the region in a defensive action during the Six-day war.
Internationally Defined Borders
International powers created the various lines for Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Palestine after World War I. Each region slowly declared independence but not without difficulties. Each has gone through several wars, including civil wars. A populace more comfortable with tribes and clans operating under the umbrella of the Ottoman Empire for centuries were thrust into statehood. While modern academics blame the regional powers for “colonialization” and “imperialism” which left the locals bereft of natural resources, it was actually the imposition of statehood that has confounded much of the Middle East. Syria, Iraq and Lebanon are perfect examples of the internal strife which has killed millions over the decades.
“Palestine” was similarly crafted by world powers, and then quickly divided further by chopping off the region east of the Jordan River for the Hashemite Kingdom to rule. The balance of the land (which most people think of as pre-1948 Palestine) was designed to be “a national home for the Jewish people,” in the Palestine Mandate as adopted by the League of Nations. While the Golan Heights was marked by the powers to be part of Syria, those same powers marked the “West Bank” to be part of the Jewish homeland.
On one hand, Israel captured the Golan Heights after Syria broke the Armistice Agreement, and on the other, Israel RECAPTURED the West Bank/ area east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, in 1967 after Jordan broke its Armistice Agreement.
Names
Republicans in the United States are putting forward resolutions to stop calling the land “West Bank” and instead refer to it as “Judea and Samaria.” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) said in introducing the resolution that “The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria goes back thousands of years. The U.S. should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel.” That is partially true.
Judea and Samaria have historical context and are much bigger contours than the “West Bank.” The West Bank is an artifice of war; it is just the land the the Jordanians took in the 1948-9 war in which they attempted to destroy the nascent Jewish State. The more accurate term for political purposes would be to call it E49JAL, for the area east of the 1949 Jordanian Armistice Lines.
Conclusion
The media is correctly referring to the Golan Heights, an actual region with topographical significance, as having an Israeli side captured FROM SYRIA, across the “1949 Armistice line.” It should similarly stop using the terms “borders,” “West Bank” and “from Palestine” which are all factually incorrect and attempt to frame the conflict with the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) in a duplicitous manner that portrays Israel as the aggressor.
In May 2021, Israeli courts ruled that Arab squatters would be evicted from homes owned by Israeli Jews in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood north of the Old City of Jerusalem. This action set off a mini war with Hamas in Gaza, and law enforcement never proceeded with the eviction.
There was another property dispute going on at that time in Silwan, just southeast of the Old City, a neighborhood founded by Yemenite Jews in the 1880s. The eviction of the Arabs, the Ghaith family, was similarly postponed and the family appealed the decision in Israeli courts and lost. For the past few weeks they have been advised to vacate the two-story building but refused. December 10 was set as the eviction date, and it happened this morning according to the Palestinian Authority-run media site, Wafa.
Wafa reporting on eviction from Silwan
Wafa reported the story from Gaza, a strange dynamic as the PA has no presence there. Presumably it was done to make the action look like a military takeover by “Israeli colonists, under the protection of the Israeli Occupation Forces.”
The United Nations had weighed in against Israel about the evictions on July 30, 2024 when it said “These [eviction] cases are examples of an ongoing systematic settlers’ campaign and application of a range of laws discriminatorily, to uproot Palestinians from their homes, take over their property and implant Israeli settlers in the heart of Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.” Israel’s court disagreed and stated it was simply a real estate matter in returning the property to the rightful owners who had been ethnically cleansed from Silwan when Jordan invaded and illegally seized the land in the 1948/9 war.
The May 2021 mini war launched new terrorist groups east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL, “West Bank”) and set local Arabs on a genocidal path to kill Jewish civilians inside Israel. In March 2021, 18% of West Bank Arabs wanted to kill Jewish civilians; it rose to 57% by March 2023, close to the level of Gazan bloodlust.
The failed eviction of Arab squatters from Sheikh Jarrah in May 2021 initiated the soft launch of the massive war engulfing the region. Perhaps the December 2024 actual eviction of squatters from Silwan will mark the beginning of the end to the war.
Many pro-Israel people are outraged by Amnesty International calling Israel’s current actions in Gaza a “genocide,” by highlighting that Israel never wanted the war and would end it immediately if the hostages were released and Hamas surrenders. As there is no “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group,” as the term is defined in the Genocide Convention, the basic premise falls flat on its face before even getting to the physical nature of the battlefield and fatalities.
But that is exactly the point that anti-Israel people are making in their own narrative. Whether Israel’s current war is defensive or not is irrelevant. Whether the number of civilians-to-militants killed is the lowest ratio of any urban combat is dismissed.
Israeli police officers evacuate a woman and a child from a site hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in Ashkelon, southern Israel, Saturday, Oct. 7, 2023(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)
The anti-Israel crowd ties colonization to ethnic cleansing to apartheid to genocide. It is one big ball of “European White Supremacy” and “settler imperialism” that has been internalized as gospel by the anti-Israel mob.
Consider that in 2016, sixty different groups in the Black Lives Matter movement penned a manifesto labeling Israel as “an apartheid state with over 50 laws on the books that sanction discrimination against the Palestinian people,” and that America’s aid to Israel made it complicit “in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”
Even when there was no war, and the Israeli Arab AND West Bank Arab AND Gazan Arab all had populations which skyrocketed decade after decade – dwarfing the growth of Israeli Jews and of Arab populations of surrounding countries – the BLM movement ignored any physical requirement of a “genocide” and rallied around perceived intent.
Whether the Jewish State is the most liberal country for a thousand miles in any direction was considered misdirection. Pointing out basic pluralistic truths was considered PinkWashing or GreenWashing or a rainbow of other colors meant to serve as red herrings to the core issue.
The anti-Israel community considers the creation of Israel an original sin that can never be righted until it is destroyed. To give Palestinian Arabs dignity requires a genocide of Israeli Jews, and their supporters.
The “axis of resistance” of Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and its global supporters is against the Jewish State, which it considers a foreign “cancer” inside the purely Arab Middle East. Today’s war is the same as 1948, to annihilate the Jewish entity in their midst.
A growing number of pro-Palestinian activists are echoing the Hamas narrative, even as the military capabilities of the terrorist Palestinian party dwindle. They have internalized a lie which offers Israel no escape other than dissolution.
The “genocide” claims and cases against Israel now have a veneer of credibility as “human rights” groups accuse the country amidst a difficult defensive war. In truth, they are tools to arm the second wave – of judicial and economic attacks – to destroy the Jewish State, as the axis’ military offensives end in defeat.
Yet no one seems to give a lick about 40,000 women and children who are rotting in camps in Syria, because of their familial ties to ISIS.
Children gather at the al-Hol camp, which houses families of ISIS members, in Syria’s Hasakeh province in May 2021. (photo: Baderkhan Ahmad / AP file)
Over 40,000 people live in the al-Hol and Roj detention centers in northeast Syria, of which 62% are children. Almost all of the others are women in what is described as “one big prison.” They hail from 60 different countries (mostly Iraq and Syria) but their governments have been slow to repatriate them because of their ties to ISIS, and of how they might be perceived upon returning home.
While ISIS was defeated in Iraq on December 9, 2017, the group continues its attacks, with over 150 in the first half of 2024. As such, the women and children of ISIS fighters continue to find themselves in limbo FOR THE PAST SEVEN YEARS.
Al Hol Detention camp in northeastern Syria houses roughly 40,000 women and children for several years
The crux of the problem is that many of the women and children share the ideology of their ISIS relatives, as conveyed in the CNN report below. It has made the situation complicated for countries like France to repatriate these women and children for fear that they will foment terrorism back home.
In May 2022, France repatriated 51 women and children. In October 2022 the country brought back another 55 and in April 2023, another 35. It has been an extremely slow process. Upon arrival in France, minors were handed over to child care services while the adults were handed over to the relevant judicial authorities, as joining ISIS is considered a criminal act.
Some countries, like the United Kingdom and Denmark, have revoked the citizenship of people who went to fight with ISIS. Those countries have left people to rot in the detention camps for years.
Beyond the ISIS war, western countries have expelled hundreds of non-citizens for expressing extremist ideology, and stripped citizenship of women and children affiliated with terrorists. All in the name of ensuring the protection and security of their country.
While the UK, France, Denmark and other western countries took such actions, they voted for a UN resolution for Israel to “repatriate” and to “exert efforts toward the implementation of paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III)” which calls for moving millions of Arab descendants of the 1948/9 Arab-Israeli war INTO ISRAEL, even though those Arabs have never lived in nor have citizenship in Israel.
And the western countries did so in the middle of Hamas’s genocidal war to eradicate the Jewish State.
Western countries prioritize national security over the rights of women and children tied to radical jihadists, but simultaneously call for Israel to admit millions of radical jihadists while it is at war against those same people. It is worse than hypocrisy; it is an attempt to sacrifice Jews to the angry jihadi gods to save themselves.
The United Nations General Assembly passed one of the most anti-Israel resolutions in its history on December 3, 2024. Titled “Peaceful settlement of the Question of Palestine,” drafted on November 25, it demands that Israel surrender to every Palestinian Arab demand, including giving up every inch of land that Israel recaptured in its defensive June 1967 war, removing all Jews from those lands to recreate the ethnically-cleansed situation advanced by the Jordanian army in the 1948/9 war, and to settle millions of Palestinian Arabs who never lived in Israel, into Israel.
The resolution passed with 157 states in favor, eight against (Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea and the U.S.) and seven abstentions (Cameroon, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Georgia, Paraguay, Ukraine and Uruguay).
Where was Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom in rejecting this horribly biased resolution? Even though votes at the General Assembly hold no legal weight, the antisemitic vote amidst the global wave of antisemitism is both revolting and frightening.
And the resolution IS ANTI-JEWISH.
Section 7 demands that Israel “evacuate all settlers from the Occupied Palestinian territory” and stop “modifying the demographic composition of any parts of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.” That’s a direct call to remove Jews – and only Jews – from all lands east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL) including Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem.
“Settlers” means Jews – and only Jews – at the UN.
“Demographic composition” means the presence of Jews – and only Jews – at the UN.
The paltry number of Jews in the world are concentrated in a handful of countries today. Israel and the United States account for roughly 85% of global Jewry, but significant numbers live in France (453,000), Canada (391,000), UK (290,000), Germany (116,000) and Australia (113,000). These countries are seeing a toxic tsunami of Jew hatred run through the streets over the past year, and the governments are now blessing the idea that Jews should be banned from certain lands and stripped of basic human rights, even in their holy land.
The UN has moved passed the “Zionism is racism” resolution of the 1970s and sanctioned Jew hatred. If Jews can be confined to certain locations and banned from others in the Jewish holy land, it stands to reason that they can easily be placed into ghettoes and denied rights everywhere else.
Israel may be winning the regional war militarily, but global Jewry is losing basic human rights in the process.
The United Nations marks November 29 of each year as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, a strange choice of dates since it was on that day in 1947 that the UN General Assembly voted to divide the region of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states, which the regional Muslims adamantly rejected and launched a war to ethnically cleanse the land of Jews in the shadow of the Holocaust.
The Muslim Arabs lost the 1948/9 war but still sought to destroy the new Jewish State. The various armies assembled again in 1967 in a genocidal effort to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. Once again the jihadists failed in their quest and lost even more land to the Jews.
On October 7, 2023, local genocidal jihadists in Gaza came for the Jews again and killed 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages. Other regional actors immediately followed, including from the West Bank, Lebanon, Iran and Yemen. As of this writing, they too have failed, and the Israeli Defense Forces has leveled much of Gaza in seeking justice for the estimated 6,000 Gazans who took part in the October 7 massacre, and to rescue the Israeli hostages.
As member states gathered at the United Nations to mark the November 29 anniversary amidst the bloody backdrop in 2024, the Palestinian Authority made clear that it continues to reject a Jewish State in the region, calling all of Israel an “illegal occupation” and cemented this moment to the major wars of 1948/9 and 1967.
Riyad Mansour, Permanent Observer for the State of Palestine read a statement from PA President Mahmoud Abbas at the UN (39:35) where he said that “more than 150,000 casualties – the majority of them being children, women and the elderly – killed and maimed by the Israeli Occupying Forces who are deliberately and systematically targeting civilians in a repetition of what happened in the ‘Nakba’ of 1948 and the tragedy of 1967, aimed at displacing our people and seizing their lands and resources.”
Mansour made clear that Palestinians view all of Israel to be occupied for “76 years”, back to the founding of the modern State of Israel, and that their quest to seize the land will never stop.
This gross inversion of history attempts to make the genocidal jihadists victims rather than perpetrators of crimes against humanity. That noxious libel is being spouted by the more “moderate” Palestinian leadership in public at the United Nations.
At the conclusion of Mansour’s comments, the chair of the committee expressed (52:10) “the committee’s full support to your quest to recover your legitimate rights.”
The United Nations has been consistent in seeking an Arab state since 1947. Local jihadists have been consistent that they oppose a Jewish State on what they consider purely “Arab land.” And the UN has been consistent in not condemning the jihadists in their quest.
And now even blessing it.
Whether Israel will take additional territory in this defensive war just as they did in 1948 and 1967 remains to be seen. What is abundantly clear is that the local Arabs are ready, willing and able to launch more ‘Nakbas’ in a gross public display of sadism and masochism.
The New York Times, mouthpiece for progressive dreams rather than facts, once again made up news that the Islamic Republic of Iran is taking a “conciliatory tone” in the Middle East and “that it wants less confrontation,” even after the Islamic Republic’s leaders blast Israel.
Throughout the article, the Times claimed that Iran had a “shift in tone” and sought to “defuse tensions” in “recent diplomacy.” It concluded that “Without a doubt, among senior officials and ordinary people, there is a real desire to end the tensions with the West and get along…. Cooperation with the West is not viewed as a defeat.”
These comments stand in sharp contrast to those published by Hezbollah’s Al Manar which led its article with “Resistance Unbreakable: Imam Khamenei Declares Israel’s Doom, Al Aqsa Storm Unstoppable.”
The article quoted from the “Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei” who said that “regional resistance movements cannot be quelled” and that the “Zionist regime is destined for departure.” The article said that “Hezbolah hailed the operation’s [war against Israel] success” as did Hamas.
Al Manar concluded with a quote from the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei who said that “the result of the warmongering and crimes committed by the Zionist regime, fully supported by the United States… is the martyrdom of 60,000 innocent people,” inflaming the jihadi readers to seek retribution against the West.
The editors of the Times do not want the United States or Israel to go to war remove the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, so openly lie to its readership that Iran is a peaceful actor in the region and not the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is publishing boldface and dangerous lies.
It begs the questions of whether The New York Times is a tool of Iran.
Israel announced that it was not going to allow UNRWA, the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency, to continue to operate from its territory. The United Nations came down hard on Israel, including UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, as well as members of the UN Security Council.
Guterres has always stood by the “humanitarian” group which he has called an “indispensable” “lifeline” and force for “stability” and “hope for a better future.” He urged global support for the group as “an investment in peace.”
The media has chosen sides as to whether UNRWA has some terrorists among its staff and whether the humanitarian group can continue to operate in Gaza amidst the war.
Lost in the discussion was that the Palestinian Authority has curiously welcomed the attention, and has asked the United Nations to make clear that the entire mission of the UNRWA is to facilitate the “right of return” of millions of stateless Arabs into homes where grandparents lived in Israel.
The “humanitarian work” of the decades-old temporary agency is besides the point.
The staff is not the topic.
The MISSION of UNRWA is to move millions of Arabs into Israel against the Jewish State’s wishes. UNRWA schools teach their Muslim students that there is no path to coexistence but to wiping out the Jews and reclaiming all of “Palestine.”
Even those young UNRWA students who don’t talk about a genocide of Jews, still say that their future is in grandparents’ homes in Israel, even if they are compensated for ancestors’ lost property.
UNRWA student talks about killing all the Jews
Blind to reality, UNSG Guterres describes UNRWA schools as a place to “learn about democracy, human rights & tolerance, preparing them to be exemplary citizens,” in Israel? in Palestine? How does instilling vile antisemitism into Muslim children prepare them for peaceful coexistence with Jews?
UNSG Guterres posts about UNRWA schools in April 2019
Much of the discussion about UNRWA is whether ten or 100 or 1,000 employees are terrorists, and whether that is a disqualification for continued operations. The inherent problem with UNRWA is its mission as the UN’s operating tool to dismantle the Jewish State. The Palestinian Authority wants the UN to state it clearly for the entire world to hear.
On November 21, 2024 the House of Representatives approved H.R. 9495 by a vote of 219-184 with 30 people not voting. The bill was called the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act” and principally involved relaxing laws about tax collection if people are “detained” like hostages in Gaza, as well as to terminate “the tax-exempt status of terrorist supporting organizations.”
J Street, the left-wing pro-Palestinian group marketed as Jewish and pro-Israel was “dismayed” at its passage. It had joined with 50 other progressive groups in a letter to members of Congress to oppose the bill on the grounds that “the bill threatens to politicize decisions.”
On July 13, 2010, J Street called for a “Treasury investigation into settlement charities.” It claimed that “tax-exempt organizations are working to undermine a two-state solution by deepening the occupation.”
The head of J Street, Jeremy Ben Ami, would not relent on this Holy Grail quest and tried to push the willing ears of President Barack Obama in his fight. On September 9, 2016, Ben Ami posted an urgent plea: “J Street Calls on Treasury Department to Review Tax Deductibility of Donations to Groups Entrenching Settlements.” It stated that the best way to advance its preferred public policy goals was to terminate tax exempt status for those with different agendas.
J Street called on its supporters and all who support a just Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement to urge the US Treasury to review the tax-deductibility status of contributions to groups working to entrench or expand Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.
J Street September 9, 2016
The call to stifle free speech and expression was obvious to all. Eugene Kontorovich wrote in Tablet Magazine on October 6, 2016 that called J Street’s action “unprecedented and clearly unconstitutional” in attacking charities “pursuing goals at odds with the foreign policy of the President.”
Snapshot of article by Eugene Kontorovich in Tablet on October 6, 2016
Now that a Republican president is about to take office, progressive groups are suddenly worried about politicizing the tax-exempt status of charities, an effort they had inaugurated.
And that’s a red herring as it’s not what the bill states. It is not trying to rob charities of donations for having different opinions, the bill specifically is about supporting terrorism. As laid out, “the term ‘terrorist supporting organization’ means any organization which is designated by the Secretary [of Treasury] as having provided, during the 3-year period ending on the date of such designation, material support or resources (within the meaning of section 2339B of title 18, United States Code) to an organization described in paragraph (2) (determined after the application of this paragraph to such organization) in excess of a de minimis amount.”
J Street has long fought to strip the tax-exempt status of charities operating east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), such as a charity which provides wheelchairs for the elderly in the Old City of Jerusalem. It is now crying foul as Congress passed an act to fight terrorism, because of the long list of Palestinian terrorist groups and even longer list of its supporters.
First One Through 