Palestinian lawyer Raji Sourani is a celebrated figure in the international human rights community. His collection of honors spans more than three decades.
Before 2001:
1991: Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, United States
1996: French Republic Human Rights Prize
Since 2001:
2002: Bruno Kreisky Human Rights Prize, Austria, awarded to his organization
2003: International Service Human Rights Award, United Kingdom
2013: Right Livelihood Award, Sweden
2026: International Hrant Dink Award, Turkey
2026: Jesús Vicente Chamorro Human Rights Award, Spain
French Consul General in Jerusalem Rene Troccaz decorates Palestinian human rights lawyer Raji Sourani with his county’s National Order of Merit, at the French Institute in Gaza City, on July 7, 2021. (Photo by MOHAMMED ABED / AFP)
Sourani founded the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) in Gaza in 1995. His work challenging Israeli authorities and pursuing international legal action has made him an influential voice in human rights circles. In 2024, he joined the legal effort supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
But his organization’s embrace of the genocide accusation began more than two decades before the Gaza war.
In 1975, the United Nations declared Zionism a form of racism. The resolution was repealed in 1991, but the accusation resurfaced in a more sweeping form at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa.
The conference’s NGO Forum adopted a declaration accusing Israel of apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide. It portrayed genocide and ethnic cleansing not merely as military crimes, but as instruments for preserving an exclusively Jewish state with a Jewish majority.
The accusation was not that Israel was committing genocide but was committed to genocide – in September 2001 – just one week before jihadists attacked the United States.
Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and then United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, refused to endorse the declaration. She called its genocide language unacceptable and hurtful. PCHR demanded her resignation.
Its director was Raji Sourani.
Despite his invective that Israel is inherently an apartheid regime committed to genocide, the international recognition of Sourani and his organization continued. Austria and the United Kingdom were the first two honor this vilifier of Israel in 2002 and 2003.
Then there was a noticeable pause for a decade when Sweden awarded him the equivalent to a runner-up to the Nobel Peace Prize in 2013. Then this year, 2026, the Hrant Dink Foundation in Turkey recognized Sourani, followed by an award from Spain’s Progressive Union of Prosecutors.
Sourani’s effort to smear Israel as a genocidal operation has been 25 years in the making. What began as “Zionism is racism” at the UN has evolved into “Israel is genocide,” reaching beyond the Global South to progressive Jews in the Global North and helping inspire a new generation of anti-Israel activists.
Every November 2, the Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, condemns the 1917 Balfour Declaration as Britain’s “colonial promise” of a Jewish homeland in another people’s land.
Modern media offer another version of the Promised Land story, portraying Jews in Judea and Samaria as religious extremists seeking to fulfill a divine promise and establish a “Greater Israel.” In September, Al Jazeera described young Jewish women in the West Bank as pursuing the “so-called Promised Land” through territorial expansion. The Wall Street Journal similarly reported on violent Jews who regarded the territory as their divine birthright, so needn’t follow man-made laws.
Jews are cast both as messianic lunatics and colonial tools.
For the Palestinian Authority, Britain replaces God as the source of the promise. Contemporary reporting instead portrays Jews in Judea and Samaria as seeking to seize by themselves territory promised by God. One story invokes colonialism, the other religious zealotry. Both portray Jews as outsiders seeking land granted by someone other than local Arabs.
The word promised suggests a benefactor, a recipient and something yet to be delivered. That framing obscures the fundamental relationship between Jews, Judaism and the Land of Israel.
Britain could endorse a political homeland, but it could neither create nor define the Jewish people’s relationship with the land. When the League of Nations incorporated the Balfour commitment of a national home for Jews into the Palestine Mandate in 1922, it expressly recognized the Jewish people’s historical connection to Palestine and the grounds for reconstituting such national home there.
Reconstituting, not inventing.
Yet even the Mandate’s recognition of a historical connection falls short. Many peoples have ancestral homelands. The Land of Israel is not simply where Jews once lived.
As explored in our earlier article, Judaism Is an Ancient Folk Religion, Jews are not merely followers of a universal faith like Christianity or Islam. They are a people whose religion developed around a particular land. That land is embedded in Jewish law, language, calendar, prayers and identity. Exile dispersed the people without removing the land from their religion.
Jewish house from the Second Temple period in Old City of Jerusalem, Israel (photo: First One Through)
Nor does Judaism divide the land according to modern political borders. Hebron, Bethlehem and Shiloh in Judea and Samaria are as integral to Jewish sacred geography as Jerusalem, Safed and Tiberias.
The biblical promise remains central to Jewish religious tradition, but it is not the source of Jewish peoplehood. A secular Jew can reject belief in God while remaining part of a people whose civilization is inseparable from the Land of Israel.
Palestinian Arabs portray Jewish attachment to the land as a product of British colonialism, while contemporary media often portray it as a religious zealotry to acquire territory. Both falsely turn something embedded in Jewish identity into something Jews are seeking to obtain.
The Land of Israel is neither past nor future for Jews but integral, outside of time. It was never a gift of Britain nor the United Nations but an eternal promise from God to Jews. The lies promoted by the Arab world that Judaism is not connected to the Land of Israel and that Jews are interlopers is not just antisemitic but turns the Jewish God into a European Lord, a further desecration of Judaism.
In 1942, as Nazi Germany was systematically murdering Europe’s Jews, C. S. Lewis published The Screwtape Letters. Four years later, with the horrors of the Holocaust exposed, George Orwell published Politics and the English Language.
Both men had witnessed the rise of totalitarianism and the extraordinary power of evil. Years of propaganda, normalized antisemitism and progressively discriminatory laws had helped prepare the ground for the unthinkable.
Both recognized a powerful weapon in that transformation: language.
Lewis imagined a senior demon, Screwtape, instructing his nephew on how to corrupt an ordinary man. His advice was simple: “Jargon, not argument, is your best ally.”
Argument invited people to consider whether something was true. Jargon supplied conclusions without requiring evidence, allowing people to accept ideas without examining them.
Orwell understood the other side of the process. Political language, he wrote, could be used “to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” He took this further: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
Orwell understood how language could disguise evil. Lewis understood how jargon could stop people from looking beneath the disguise. Together, they described how people could gradually surrender independent judgment without realizing it.
Consider how the vocabulary surrounding Jews and Israel has evolved.
Jews, historically portrayed as secretly wealthy and powerful, are again described through their supposed influence and financial clout. Zionists become a sinister political force rather than supporters of Jewish national self-determination. Israelis become settler-colonists, their very presence treated as an offense. Violence against them becomes resistance, while intifada is presented as merely shaking off oppression, obscuring its history of suicide bombings and terrorist attacks.
Democratic Socialists of America group for Palestinian Arabs decides that no “settler” can be considered a “civilian” and can therefore not legally defend themselves from “resistance groups deploying violence to liberate themselves”
Each expression changes the moral framework. Jews become manipulators. Israelis become intruders. Their attackers become freedom fighters.
Universities gave these interpretations intellectual standing through theories of settler-colonialism, oppression and decolonization. The United Nations lent political authority to similar narratives, declaring Zionism a form of racism in 1975, a resolution it revoked in 1991. Academic discussions, international resolutions and media coverage reinforced one another, lending repeated characterizations the appearance of established truth.
The language appeared in ordinary journalism as well.
In 2021, The New York Times described a “powerful Orthodox Jewish community.” In 2022, its coverage of congressional redistricting again emphasized Jewish “power,” clout and influence. Both stories revived an old association between Jews, money and political control without explicitly arguing that Jews controlled anything.
The same technique could reshape perceptions of violence.
In May 2019, the Times described a Palestinian Arab sniper attack that wounded two Israelis as “a violent but localized expression of Palestinian impatience with Israel’s failure to alleviate dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza.” A terrorist attack was transformed into an expression of impatience, while Israel’s supposed failure to address humanitarian conditions became the explanation for violence directed against Israelis. Absolution via inversion.
As I wrote at the time: “So sublime, you swallowed it whole and didn’t choke on it.” The justification was embedded in the sentence without ever needing to be argued.
By October 7, 2023, the vocabulary was firmly established.
When Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdered civilians, committed sexual violence and took hostages into Gaza, some activists and commentators immediately reached for the familiar language of “resistance,” “liberation” and “decolonization.” This was the lexicon of the Ivy League: rape could be rationalized as resistance; murder could be understood as liberation; and the victims could be recast as colonizers.
April 2022October 2023
The atrocities should have challenged the assumptions. Instead, the lexicon already had declared the victim and oppressor.
What Lewis and Orwell understood was that the most powerful narrative is not the one that wins an argument. It is the one that makes the argument unnecessary.
A political ad backing Abdul El-Sayed tells Michigan families that America’s support for Israel is part of the reason they cannot afford groceries. It turns Israel into the culprit for economic pain and casts Americans who support Israel as politicians bought by a foreign power, choosing Israel over their own neighbors. That is the old dual-loyalty smear dressed up as a grocery-price argument.
“Even though the rage of the people sometimes flares high against the eternal blood-sucker [Jew], it does not in the least prevent him from reappearing in a few years in the place he had hardly left and beginning the old life all over again. No persecution can deter him from his type of human exploitation, none can drive him away; after every persecution he is back again in a short time, and just the same as before.” – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
The ad comes from Rebellion PAC, founded by Cenk Uygur. It links U.S. aid to Israel and the war in Gaza to the cost of food, while accusing Republican Mike Rogers of putting Israeli interests ahead of Michigan families. The Anti-Defamation League’s Jonathan Greenblatt condemned the ad as scapegoating Israel.
The figures expose the absurdity of the accusation. The United States spends an estimated $80 billion annually to maintain its military presence abroad. Japan, Germany, South Korea, Qatar, Italy and the United Kingdom together account for tens of billions of that cost. Israel receives $3.8 billion in regular annual military assistance – less than five percent of the $80 billion estimate. The ad singles out Israel while ignoring the vastly larger cost of America’s global military posture.
The Ukraine comparison is just as revealing. Since the wars began, the United States has provided roughly $127 billion in assistance to Ukraine, compared with $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel—about six times as much for Ukraine. The Russia-Ukraine war has caused an estimated 610,000 deaths, compared with roughly 77,000 in the Israel-Hamas war. That is about eight times as many deaths in Ukraine.
America’s own casualty record sharpens the contrast. More than 65,000 U.S. service members died in the recent direct wars: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf War and the U.S.-Iran war. In the wars Ukraine and Israel are fighting against America’s adversaries, three American soldiers were killed in Jordan by an Iran-backed militia.
The ad offers no evidence that aid to Israel drives grocery prices. Instead, it directs public anger at Israel and at Americans who support its right to defend itself. It turns pro-Israel sentiment into an accusation of disloyalty: if you support Israel, you are supposedly taking food from American families.
Dana Nessel, a fellow Michigan Democrat – who has endorsed El-Sayed – has already warned her party to stop making Israel and AIPAC the villains in every political story.
Cenk Uygur’s PAC turns grocery prices into an indictment of Israel. His nephew, Hasan Piker, supplies the online megaphone. Zohran Mamdani and El-Sayed give this politics electoral respectability. The message running through it is profound Jew hatred: Jews who support Israel are foreign agents, their loyalty is suspect, and their political participation is a threat to ordinary Americans.
Hasan Piker (right) campaigning with Abdul El-Sayed
“Trade and all money business he considers his very own privilege, which he exploits ruthlessly. Financial business and trade have become altogether his monopoly.” – Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf
If this was all about money to foreign countries, if it was all about military spending, if it was all about people being killed, the ad would have mentioned Japan and Germany and Qatar and Ukraine. But it only mentioned one conflict, one country, and featured one government: Israel, and targeted its supporters.
Nessel has told them to stop. Jewish groups have told them to stop. Instead, they are doubling-down as elections approach.
Every Democrat who stays silent while Zionists are cast as the cause of Americans’ financial hardship helps make antisemitism acceptable. Voting for these candidates and promoting their backers accelerates the demonization of Jews.
An agency created to provide temporary relief now needs $70 million to cover its employees’ salaries over just two months. How did UNRWA become so large, expensive and financially dependent?
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is appealing for another $70 million to cover a financial shortfall, with employee salaries for the final months of 2026 at risk.
It is a remarkable moment for an institution established in 1949 to address the immediate humanitarian needs of refugees from the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.
UNRWA began operations in 1950 with approximately 960,000 people on its registration rolls, distributing food, providing shelter and delivering basic medical assistance. Seventy-five years later, its register approaches six million people, its workforce numbers roughly 27,000, and its annual expenditure has exceeded $1 billion.
Along the way, it became an education system, a healthcare provider, a social-services agency and a major employer with retirement benefits serving people beyond its original refugee population.
The scale of this transformation deserves examination, particularly as UNRWA once again asks donors to finance obligations accumulated over decades.
What Changed in 75 Years?
Measure
Beginning
Later
Change
Registered population
960,021 (1950)
~5.9 million (2023)
6.1×
Employees
5,933 (1950)
27,756 (2022)
4.7×
Annual expenditure
$33.38 million (1950–51)
$1.31 billion (2022)
39.3× nominal
Schools
64 (1950)
706 (2023)
11.0×
Students
33,631 (1950)
543,075 (2023)
16.1×
Education share of regular spending
~1% (1950)
~60% (2002)
60-fold share
Relief share of regular spending
~97% (1950)
9.5% (2002)
Down 87.5 percentage points
Teachers
~800 (1950)
16,965 (2002)
~21×
Students per teacher
~51 (1950)
~29 (2002)
44% lower
Employer retirement contributions
—
$63.5 million (2024)
Recurring annual cost
Personnel expenditure
—
$735 million (2024)
57.7% of total spending
The comparisons use historical years for which measures are available. Expenditure growth is nominal; the initial expenditure figure covers 14 months, compared with 12 months for 2022.
UNRWA’s registered population grew approximately sixfold, while student enrollment expanded sixteenfold and its teaching workforce roughly 21-fold. The agency’s educational responsibilities grew far faster than its registered population, illustrating how profoundly its mission changed.
From Refugees to Generations of “Refugees”
UNRWA’s original registration population consisted primarily of people displaced by the 1948 war. Over subsequent decades, qualifying descendants became eligible for registration, creating a multigenerational population.
By 2023, nearly six million people were registered, including children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the original refugees and internally-displaced people. This increase reflects births, successive generations, migration and registration practices, rather than six million people personally displaced in 1948.
UNRWA also expanded eligibility beyond that original population. Following the 1967 war, the United Nations authorized the agency to assist additional displaced people, including individuals outside its registered refugee population.
By 1970, UNRWA was distributing approximately 217,000 monthly food rations to displaced people outside its refugee register, financed by the Jordanian government.
Registration also differs from actual service utilization. In 2023, approximately 2.02 million individuals used UNRWA healthcare services, compared with nearly six million registered “refugees.” Others used education, social services or emergency assistance, while some relied on alternative providers.
So even with the large budget, it doesn’t even cover all of the UNRWA registrants.
From Food Rations to Schools and Clinics
The greatest transformation occurred in what UNRWA actually did.
In 1950, approximately 97% of its regular programme spending went toward relief. Education accounted for roughly 1%.
By 1970, education had overtaken relief as the largest expenditure category. By 2002, education represented approximately 60% of regular programme expenditure, while relief had fallen to 9.5%.
UNRWA had become a substantial education system, with teachers, administrators, buildings, maintenance requirements and recurring operating expenses. Healthcare similarly evolved from emergency treatment into ongoing clinics, preventive medicine, maternal care and treatment of chronic illnesses.
Meanwhile, refugee camps themselves changed. The approximately 30,580 tents recorded in 1950 had largely disappeared by 1961, replaced by established residential communities and permanent structures.
UNRWA’s services increasingly resembled those normally provided by public institutions.
In 1983, UNRWA discontinued its general food-ration programme, shifting toward education, healthcare and targeted assistance. By its revised 1983 budget, education accounted for approximately 63% and relief for 10%. Emergency food distribution would return during subsequent conflicts, but the regular mission had fundamentally changed.
By 2022, however, relief and social services represented approximately 27.5% of total expenditures. This increase reflected a new generation of humanitarian crises, most having NOTHING to do with Israel.
The Syrian civil war beginning in 2011, Lebanon’s economic collapse beginning in 2019, and the COVID-19 pandemic beginning in 2020 created enormous additional demands for food assistance, emergency cash payments and support for displaced families. These crises, alongside continuing emergency assistance in Gaza and the West Bank, substantially expanded UNRWA’s relief operations.
The 2022 figures also include regular operations, emergency appeals and special projects, whereas the earlier historical budgets used different accounting categories. UNRWA spent approximately $387 million through emergency appeals in 2022. The larger relief share therefore reflects both newer crises and a broader accounting of expenditures, while education and healthcare remained its principal permanent services.
Graphic note: The 2022 “Other” category includes approximately 10% for administration and support, 5.7% for infrastructure and camp improvements, and roughly 1% for protection and microfinance. Earlier budget categories and reporting scopes differ from the 2022 total-expenditure presentation.
Emergency Spending That Became Permanent
The 1967 war illustrates how emergency responsibilities could become recurring expenses. For 1968, UNRWA proposed an ordinary budget of $40.2 million and an additional $5.7 million for expanded operations, representing 12.4% of the combined budget. Some emergency activities were incorporated into the ordinary program within a short period.
Subsequent conflicts, including the Gulf War, Second Intifada, Syrian civil war and successive Gaza wars, added further responsibilities. Temporary emergency responses developed into continuing facilities, services and employment obligations.
This institutional evolution creates a financial consequence: permanent services require permanent funding, even as UNRWA continues to operate under a refugee-relief 1949 mandate and depends heavily on voluntary donor contributions.
A Relief Agency Becomes a Major Employer
Education became UNRWA’s largest employer. By 2002, roughly three-quarters of its workforce worked in education.
Salaries and employee benefits consequently became central to its finances. In 2024, UNRWA reported approximately $735 million in personnel expenditure, representing 57.7% of its $1.27 billion total expenditure.
The agency also developed substantial retirement and employment obligations, financed through the contributions of governments and other international donors.
Most local employees participate in a Provident Fund, supported by employee and employer contributions. UNRWA’s employer contributions totaled approximately $63.5 million in 2024, money ultimately financed through its operating resources, principally donor contributions. Employees also contribute from their salaries. International employees generally participate in the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund, supported by employee and employer contributions.
Beyond retirement savings, UNRWA owes qualifying employees end-of-service and termination benefits. These obligations can require substantial payments when employees retire, leave or are laid off. Its audited accounts have recorded hundreds of millions of dollars in accrued employee-benefit liabilities, some of which lack dedicated funding reserves.
The United Nations’ 2025 strategic assessment estimated that mass termination of staff could generate approximately $278 million in indemnity payments, without available reserves to meet them. That figure is distinct from the broader accrued employee-benefit liabilities reported in UNRWA’s financial statements.
An organization created to provide emergency assistance has become a long-term employer whose workforce carries financial obligations extending well beyond any immediate humanitarian crisis.
What Should Happen After Another $70 Million?
UNRWA’s history raises questions that extend beyond the latest appeal.
How many of its nearly six million registered “refugees” actually depend on each service? What proportion of expenditure supports education, healthcare, emergency relief and administration? How much of its operating budget benefits people outside the original refugee registration system?
Could some established services be transferred to existing public institutions, and what would such a transition cost? How should employee retirement and termination obligations be financed? What would constitute a sustainable funding model for the services that remain?
These questions require answers grounded in audited expenditure, service usage, educational outcomes and the practical consequences of institutional change.
The United Nations itself has examined options ranging from predictable multiyear financing to changes in service delivery and transfers of responsibilities.
The $70 million appeal is a symptom of a much larger institutional problem. UNRWA has spent 75 years evolving from temporary relief into a billion-dollar-plus permanent education, healthcare and employment system, financed through international contributions. Another emergency payment may cover the next round of salaries. The harder question is whether the world intends to finance this structure indefinitely—or finally decide who should provide these services, under what mandate, and at what cost.
On October 23, 2026, gunmen opened fire on Christian mourners attending a funeral at St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church in Karak, Jordan. Nine people were killed and 40 wounded.
The interior of a Greek Orthodox church is seen through a shattered window hours after gunmen opened fire during a funeral, in Hamoud village, in Jordan’s Karak governorate, October 23, 2026. (AP Photo)
Jordanian authorities described the massacre as terrorism. Government spokesman Mohammad Momani attributed it to extremist takfiri ideology, associated with jihadist terrorist groups such as ISIS. The attackers’ identities and organizational affiliations remained unconfirmed.
Al Jazeera published three articles about the attack on October 23–24. It acknowledged that Jordanian authorities called the massacre terrorism, but did not explicitly describe the attackers as jihadists. Instead, its coverage repeatedly emphasized Jordan’s tradition of Muslim-Christian “coexistence,” including the possibility that the community would emerge even stronger.
And then Al Jazeera turned its attention to Israel. In its October 23 report, Al Jazeera introduced this claim:
“For years, King Abdullah has been a vocal critic of Israel’s systemic attacks against religious sites in occupied Palestinian territory.”
Israel had no reported connection to the massacre. Yet Al Jazeera found a way to bring Israel into the story.
Al Jazeera is funded by Qatar, which has hosted US-designated terrorist group Hamas leaders for years and provided billions of dollars in assistance to Hamas-governed Gaza. Qatar is also the largest reported foreign source of gifts and contracts to American universities, accounting for approximately $8.8 billion cumulatively, including more than $1.1 billion in 2025 alone.
Qatar pours billions into American universities, finances Al Jazeera and hosts Hamas leaders. Al Jazeera’s coverage whitewashes jihadi terrorism and redirects attention from Islamist extremism toward Israel. Another example of the insidious jihad killing Christians and Jews, being exported from the Middle East.
Four Latin American countries have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, all headed by conservative presidents. Argentina’s Javier Milei wants to be next, and Brazil’s conservative opposition has promised to follow. A new political map of Latin America is emerging, and Jerusalem sits at its center.
Colombia became the latest country to join this movement in October 2026, following Guatemala, Honduras and Paraguay. The pattern is unmistakable: conservative governments are embracing Israel and recognizing Jerusalem as its capital, while much of the Latin American left increasingly identifies with the Palestinian cause and opposition to the Jewish state.
Colombia offers the clearest illustration of this ideological divide. Left-wing President Gustavo Petro severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 2024, halted coal exports and embraced international efforts to isolate the Jewish state. His conservative successor, Abelardo de la Espriella, reversed course, restored relations and opened an embassy in Jerusalem.
The same country, the same Israel, the same Jerusalem. A different president and an entirely different worldview.
For Latin America’s conservatives, Israel represents national sovereignty, religious heritage, technological achievement, military strength and partnership with the United States. For much of the Latin American left, Israel is viewed through the language of colonialism, Palestinian dispossession and opposition to American influence.
Religion reinforces this divide. Guatemala and Honduras have substantial evangelical Christian populations whose attachment to Israel is rooted in biblical belief. Conservative movements throughout Latin America increasingly draw support from these communities, for whom Jerusalem is central to Jewish history and Christian faith.
Christian pilgrims enter the Old City of Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate during Easter, 2017 (photo: First One Through)
Argentina’s Javier Milei has become its most enthusiastic champion. In April 2026, Milei and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched the Isaac Accords, a framework intended to strengthen Israel’s political, economic and security relationships across Latin America.
The name carries deliberate biblical symbolism. The Abraham Accords brought Israel together with Arab nations through the shared heritage of Abraham. Isaac, Abraham’s son, represents the continuation of God’s covenant through Jacob, whose name became Israel. Where the Abraham Accords emphasize common ancestry between Jews and Arabs, the Isaac Accords invoke the particular biblical heritage of Israel and its connection to nations identifying with Judeo-Christian civilization.
Milei has committed more than speeches to this vision, directing his $1 million Genesis Prize award toward establishing an organization to advance the initiative. Legislators from across Latin America have already gathered to promote stronger relations with Israel, combat antisemitism and encourage additional embassy relocations.
The movement also has a powerful strategic adversary: Iran.
Iranian-backed terrorism has already devastated Jewish communities in Latin America. Argentina suffered the 1992 bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center, which killed 85 people. Argentine authorities have attributed both attacks to Hezbollah and Iran.
The Isaac Accords seek cooperation against Iranian terrorist networks, antisemitism, drug trafficking and transnational criminal organizations. Israel offers intelligence capabilities, cybersecurity expertise, military technology and experience confronting Iranian proxies. Latin American governments offer regional partnerships capable of disrupting hostile networks operating across the Western Hemisphere.
Jerusalem thus becomes both a declaration of political identity and the gateway to a broader security alliance.
The next major test comes in Brazil, Latin America’s largest country. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has been among Israel’s harshest regional critics, while his conservative challenger, Flávio Bolsonaro, has promised to relocate Brazil’s embassy to Jerusalem. Their October 25 presidential runoff could determine whether the region’s largest economy joins this emerging alignment.
Flávio Bolsonaro, candidate for President of Brazil
There are vulnerabilities. Paraguay moved its embassy to Jerusalem in 2018, reversed the decision months later under a new president, and restored it in 2024. Diplomatic commitments can change with elections. The Isaac Accords seek to build deeper economic, security and institutional relationships capable of surviving those political shifts.
The Abraham Accords brought Israel closer to the Arab world. The Isaac Accords seek to bring Latin America closer to Israel. Conservative presidents are leading that transformation, turning recognition of Jerusalem into a declaration of political identity, shared heritage and strategic allegiance.
Jerusalem has become a dividing line in Latin America’s ideological struggle, and its conservatives are choosing sides.
Imagine three American Jews participating in their cultural heritage: one American Jew buys an apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City, and hires an Israeli contractor to repair the roof and renovate the kitchen. Another American contributes to archaeological excavations uncovering ancient Jewish Jerusalem, say in Ir David. A third donates to rebuilding a synagogue destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948.
Rebuilding the Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Jordanian army when it illegally seized the city in 1949 (photo: First One Through 2023)
Under legislation sponsored by 54 congressional Democrats, each may face federal prosecution, a million-dollar fine or even 20 years in prison.
Congressman Joaquin Castro’s Stop the Settlements Act, H.R. 10642, reaches far beyond stopping new Israeli housing construction in disputed territories. It authorizes sanctions against foreign persons involved in the financing, planning, construction, expansion or maintenance of Israeli settlements or outposts, subject to certain determinations.
This is not legislation targeting building a new neighborhood in the middle of the West Bank. It targets even maintaining what already exists, even in cities with thousands of years of Jewish history and presence. Democrats in Congress have chosen language broad enough to raise questions about the ordinary upkeep of Jewish communities.
The bill repeatedly refers to “settlements” in the “West Bank and Gaza.” It never explicitly states whether eastern Jerusalem including the Old City is included.
Palestinians claim “East Jerusalem,” part of a divided city that existed as a result of the 1948-9 war, which lasted for 18 years until 1967, as part of their future state. Israel considers united Jerusalem its capital, including the Old City.
Congress knows these competing positions. Congress knows that the Jewish Quarter contains homes and synagogues predating Israel’s establishment in 1948. Yet 54 Democrats have attached their names to legislation without clarifying whether these historic Jewish neighborhoods fall within its reach. Deliberately.
Consider the consequences. A future Democratic president may decide to state that “East Jerusalem” actually exists and that it is part of the West Bank. The activities described above become a crime.
An American buys an apartment in the Jewish Quarter, where Jews lived for centuries before Jordan expelled its Jewish residents in 1948. He hires an Israeli company to restore the property. If an American administration classifies the Old City as a settlement (at least, any location where a Jew buys land) and sanctions that company for its broader construction or maintenance activities, paying the contractor could become a federal offense.
Now consider Ir David, the City of David, where archaeological excavations uncover the streets, structures and artifacts of ancient Jerusalem. An American donor might contribute money to uncover archaeological remains. But if the recipient organization were sanctioned, that donation could become prohibited.
Ir David excavations unearthing Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple. (photo: First One Through July 2024)
The ramification would be to halt Jews from connecting to their past and only enable Arabs to excavate or destroy Jewish history.
Then there is Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue. Built in 1877 in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, the synagogue was destroyed during Jordan’s conquest of the Old City in 1948. Its reconstruction restores a Jewish house of worship that existed generations before Israel recaptured the Old City in 1967.
Could the organization rebuilding it be sanctioned for construction or maintenance in territory an administration considers a settlement? In addition to being obtuse about Jerusalem, the bill contains no express exemption for historic synagogues, religious restoration or Jewish institutions predating 1948.
Domes of the Tiferet Yisrael (top center) and Hurva Synagogues (above right) return to the Old City skyline (photo: First One Through November 2025)
The legislation invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Willful violations of applicable prohibitions can carry criminal fines of up to $1 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years. Civil penalties may apply even without criminal intent.
If an administration designates locations in Jerusalem’s Old City, an American could potentially be barred from ordering a handmade menorah or other merchandise produced there for shipment to the United States.
Castro says his legislation is intended to stop settlement expansion and Palestinian dispossession. Yet its language raises questions about the Old City of Jerusalem, the maintenance of existing homes, archaeological preservation, religious reconstruction and ordinary commercial activity.
Despite the language, the self-declared “pro-Israel” group J Street has endorsed it.
Fifty-four Democrats have attached their names to legislation that could reach into the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. And the list of Democratic co-sponsors and anti-Israel alt-left Jewish groups supporting it continues to grow.
Before the October 7, 2023 Gazan massacre of Israelis and the subsequent war in Gaza, Palestinian Arabs enjoyed one of the most favorable combinations of high fertility and low childhood mortality in the surrounding Arab world.
Typically, wealthy countries like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have few children and lower infant mortality, defined as a child dying before five years old. Poorer countries and those in conflict have more children and higher infant mortality, like Yemen, Iraq and Syria.
Yet in 2022, Palestinian women had approximately 3.6 children each, while the under-five mortality rate in the West Bank and Gaza was roughly 14 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Compare that with Syria, where approximately 21 children per 1,000 died before their fifth birthday. In Iraq, the figure was 23. In Yemen, 41. The difference was enormous. West Bank and Gaza Arabs were much closer to the exceptional high fertility and low infant mortality rates of Israel.
If one were to expand the regional focus to Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti, one would see an even more dramatic gap – Sudan (4.38; 51.7), Ethiopia (4.2; 46.5), Eritrea (3.79; 36.6) and Djibouti (2.7; 51.9). On the other extreme for wealthy Gulf states are UAE (1.15; 5.3) and Qatar (1.74; 6.1).
Applying Syria’s childhood mortality rate to approximately 144,000 Palestinian births in 2022 would imply roughly 950 additional deaths before age five. Iraq’s rate would imply another 1,300 deaths compared with the Palestinian rate. Yemen’s would imply nearly 3,900 additional deaths.
Extend those differences illustratively across 20 annual birth cohorts, assuming similar numbers of births and mortality differences, and the results are striking: approximately 19,000 additional Palestinian childhood survivors compared with Syria’s rate, 26,500 compared with Iraq’s, and 78,000 compared with Yemen’s. Using the same methodology for Sudan or Djibouti would result in nearly 110,000 Palestinian Arabs childhood deaths.
The Palestinian territories benefited from robust vaccination programs, maternal healthcare, hospitals, and medical services developed over decades, including services provided through United Nations and Palestinian institutions, international organizations, and cooperation with Israel.
Despite the incremental 19,000 to 110,000 young Palestinian Arabs alive today because of healthcare investment and coordination with Israel, anti-Israel organizations have been accusing Israel of pursuing a “genocide” and the destruction of the Palestinian population. These figures illustrate the precise opposite. Israel is a Palestinian Arab child MAKER.
The demographic record deserves to be confronted: Palestinian Arabs were raising large families, with child survival outcomes that compared extremely favorably with much of the neighboring Arab world.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has once again postponed Palestinian elections, this time from November 2026 until September 2027. It is a familiar routine for the 90-year-old leader, who was elected in 2005 to a four-year term and has remained in power for 21 years. Palestinians last elected a legislature in 2006, when Hamas defeated Abbas’s Fatah party. Since then, Abbas has repeatedly promised elections, postponed them and continued governing by decree, knowing that he will be trounced in elections.
This latest postponement for the authoritarian leader has consequences far beyond Palestinian politics. In September 2025, Canada, France, Britain and Australia recognized a Palestinian state, citing commitments by Abbas to democratic elections and governance reform. Just over a year later, those promises have been broken.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly predicated recognition on Abbas’s commitment to fundamental governance reform, elections in 2026 excluding Hamas, and demilitarization. Australia’s Anthony Albanese similarly cited Palestinian commitments to elections, reform and demilitarization.
French President Emmanuel Macron secured written assurances from Abbas to hold presidential and legislative elections under international supervision. Britain’s Keir Starmer endorsed Abbas’s commitment to elections within a year of a ceasefire. Belgium tied further diplomatic implementation to elections and Hamas’s disarmament.
These Western governments knew Abbas’s record when they accepted his promises. He had already postponed national elections in 2021.
Meanwhile, only 32% of Palestinian Arabs are in favor of a two-state solution with a majority opposed according to an October 2026 Gallup poll. So what Palestinian state are western governments trying to recognize anyway?
The implications are straightforward. Western governments should announce that they are standing by their words and not going to recognize a Palestinian State headed by an authoritarian corrupt Holocaust denier, nor one with a genocidal jihadi legislature.
The Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) do not want a state to coexist next to a Jewish State; they want to control every inch of the holy land. Perhaps it is time for western governments to recognize what these regional Arabs have been saying consistently for a century.
