On October 7, 2023, thousands of Palestinian Arabs stormed the barrier separating Gaza from Israel, butchering and killing roughly 1,200 people and taking another 240 captive. It is estimated that eight Americans remain among the 136 hostages still held at this time by the Hamas political-terrorist party and possibly other groups. As many as 50 of the hostages may have already been killed.
The United States is working with regional players including Qatar and Egypt to negotiate a release of the 136 hostages, and proposals for the exchange have included hundreds of Palestinian terrorists held in Israeli jails alongside a pause in the fighting. Thus far, no one has publicly mentioned infamous Palestinian assassin Sirhan Sirhan as part of the exchange.
Sirhan Sirhan shot and killed Senator Robert F. Kennedy, brother of President John F. Kennedy, on June 5, 1967, the one year anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. He killed Kennedy because of the senator’s strong support for Israel and had written before the murder “RFK must die. RFK must be killed. Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated.”
Senator Robert Kennedy shot by Palestinian terrorist Sirhan Sirhan on June 5, 1968
Sirhan Sirhan was handed the death sentence in 1969 which was later commuted to a life sentence. He has repeatedly tried to get released but has been denied parole each time, the last one, his sixteenth attempt, in March 2023. California Governor Gavin Newsom said of Sirhan that “his release on parole would pose a threat to public safety…. He cannot be safely released from prison because he has not mitigated his risk of fomenting further political violence.”
Israel knows full well about the danger of releasing politically-driven murderers: the mastermind of the October 7 massacre, Yahya Sinwar, was released from Israeli jails in 2011 along with 1,000 other Palestinian prisoners for a single Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
The Biden Administration is actively attempting to coax a Hamas-Israeli deal which could release dangerous Palestinian Arab murderers of Israelis. It remains to be seen if America will similarly release a known Palestinian killer of an American senator to free American civilians taken hostage into Gaza.
Sirhan’s release would be a cause for huge celebration among Palestinians, and it’s likely that public squares would get named for him. He might even become the next president of the Palestinian Authority, just so Palestinian Arabs could shove a middle finger into the heart of American consciousness.
The United States House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved H.R. 6679 called the “No Immigration Benefits for Hamas Terrorists Act” on January 31, 2024. There were only two people who voted no, members of the alt-left Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
The resolution amended a law about “inadmissible aliens” to add members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the already sanctioned Palestinian Liberation Organization. It also specifically called out people surrounding the sadistic October 7 massacre in Israel:
“Any alien who carried out, participated in, planned, financed, afforded material support to, or otherwise facilitated any of the attacks against Israel initiated by Hamas beginning on October 7, 2023, is inadmissible.” There are six actions flagged related to the October 7 attacks:
carried out
participated in
planned
financed
afforded material support to
facilitated
The first two activities required people to have been at the scene of the savagery. It includes an estimated 3,000 Palestinian Arabs including members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, ordinary Palestinian Arabs, members of UNRWA and journalists.
The other four actions cited include people from around the world, including the United States. People who sent money to Hamas such as government officials in Turkey and Qatar would be banned from America. Those in the United Nations who facilitated Hamas’s storing of weapons and building tunnels underneath the schools and hospitals would be barred. Those “humanitarian” agencies from Norway and Sweden which worked in Gaza and looked the other way or simply winked as Hamas established its terrorist infrastructure would have entry to the USA forbidden.
And in the United States, it would likely include many people, including university professors and college activists who are not U.S. citizens.
The resolution is not only about the hours of the October 7 massacre, but “any of the attacks”… “beginning on October 7,” which include the ongoing psychological, political and physical war Hamas and its allies are waging against Zionists everywhere.
Groups like Students for Justice in Palestine on university campuses are providing “material support to” Hamas and its genocidal aims of ridding Zionists everywhere. Non-American social media influencers and protesters who call for the eradication of the Jewish State “by any means necessary” could be deported.
Members of the jihadi group Students for Justice in Palestine marching in New York City
Questions remain as to how the law, if passed by the Senate, would be enforced. Would a non-American citizen calling for an immediate ceasefire to protect Hamas be sufficient grounds for deportation? What about ripping down posters of Jewish hostages to help people remember the ongoing Hamas atrocities? Or those entering congressional hearings shouting support for Hamas and denouncing Israel?
Hamas’s war is definitely ongoing. The question as to what constitutes “material support” for the Palestinian war against Jews and the Jewish State will be determined by the courts as situations arise.
The physical war against Israel is being fought there by Hamas and PIJ, while around the world, many aliens are providing the terrorist groups material support and are attempting to deny Zionists basic freedoms. American politicians have taken notice and have put non-citizens on notice.
In 2022, UNRWA raised $1.175 billion, quite a haul. Of that money, $751 million came from designated programs while the balance was raised in emergency appeals.
The biggest donors by far were western countries, seemingly overcome with guilt that Palestinian Arabs haven’t been successful yet in destroying Israel.
Country
2022 Contribution
$ per Citizen
United States
$344 million
$1.01
Germany
$202 million
$2.43
European Union
$114 million
Sweden
$61 million
$5.87
Norway
$34 million
$6.30
Japan
$30 million
$0.24
France
$29 million
$0.43
Saudi Arabia
$27 million
$0.75
Switzerland
$26 million
$2.99
Turkey
$25 million
$0.29
Top 10 donors to UNRWA in 2022
The Scandinavian countries of Norway and Sweden were by far the most drawn to UNRWA. Not only were they among the top ten donor countries, they far exceeded all countries on a per capita contribution – 20 times as much at Turkey.
There were only two Muslim countries in the top 10 donors, one of which isn’t Arab. Despite the trillions of petrol dollars coming from the Gulf, most countries couldn’t be bothered with sending money to UNRWA.
Some of the largest Muslim countries in the world – Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Malaysia – gave a grand total of $459,000. The total population of those four countries is 708.2 million, meaning each person gave UNRWA an average of $0.0006. Egypt, abutting Gaza with about 85 million Muslims, didn’t send a single dollar.
Consider the countries hosting UNRWA facilities including Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and “Palestine” which is not recognized by most of UNRWA’s major donors. Each only contributed “in-kind,” essentially meaning giving office space to UNRWA for free.
It’s not as though Iran doesn’t give money to Palestinians, or Qatar limits its funding to the $10.5 million it contributed in 2022. It just sends the money directly to the political-terrorist group Hamas without the pitstop at the UN.
While the United Nations might sound global, it’s funded by western democracies while serving the “global South” and agendas of dictatorships and Islamic regimes (DIRs), including 50 Muslim-majority countries. Those DIRs channel western dupes’ monies to their causes via the UN, while simultaneously directly funding the more radical parts of their agendas.
The western world is complicit in funding the fungible farce. While it knows full well that Palestinians favor terrorism and want the destruction of Israel, it sends “humanitarian” money for education and health services through the United Nations, knowing that the military component is funded directly by DIRs.
In light of the recent reports that many UNRWA employees participated in the October 7 pogroms, that over one thousand aided and abetted the atrocities and several thousand employees cheered the massacre, many western countries have suspended funding of that deeply problematic UN agency.
The evidence that UNRWA is complicit in aiding the Hamas antisemitic war has been publicly known for many years. Tunnels and armaments are found throughout UNRWA schools and a teacher was a famed bomb maker for Hamas. UNRWA textbooks have long called for jihad and killing Jews.
This reality is baked into the very nature of UNRWA staffing. While the United Nations typically appoints a White European to oversee the organization to make it appear as a European entity, almost every single employee is a local Palestinian Arab.
Using UNRWA’s own information from 2019-2020, when the agency broke information into finer detail, there is barely any international staff working in Gaza or the West Bank. Between the two regions, only 44 out of 15,850 staff, or 0.3% were from outside of the region. Further, UNRWA mostly hires the descendants of Palestinian refugees as seen in the graphic above. Roughly 96% of UNRWA’s Gaza staff claims to be a “refugee.”
According to a 2017 UNRWA report, “With the exception of 155 international staff posts funded by the General Assembly through the UN regular budget, UNRWA operations are supported through voluntary contributions.” The Swiss, Norwegian and other global staff of UNRWA are paid by the United Nations and the rest of the world contributes whatever it wants whenever it wants to the over $1 billion UNRWA budget.
And the western donors are finally done.
UNRWA is a front for the world to funnel money to descendants of internally displaced Arabs, who speak the same language near the same neighborhoods with the same people as grandparents did. The UN ignores facts and calls them “refugees,” and promises that they’re going to get to move into towns where grandparents lived 75 years ago in Israel, going from a third-world economy to a first world society, in yet another form of misplaced expiation.
In its most benevolent form, it’s ransom via guilt. In reality, it is in funding terrorism and destroying any possibility for coexistence.
Israel accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of having many staff members involved in the October 7 Palestinian genocidal attack against Israel. In response, the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres asked UNRWA to investigate itself, and find out the veracity of the charges and to fire those who committed atrocities.
Several western countries, who make up the majority of the funding of the UN agency, suspended their contributions. They include the United States, U.K., Finland, Australia, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Iceland and Estonia. So far.
This is not a surprise. UNRWA is staffed almost exclusively by Palestinian Arabs; only the thin veneer of the executive management is European.
UNRWA has long been known and accused of teaching students to kill Jews and destroy Israel. Many staff members have been bomb makers for Hamas. Tunnel shafts at UNRWA schools lead down to Hamas’s terrorist tunnels.
In February 2023, the U.S. House of Representatives put forward H.R. 1102 “The UNRWA Accountability Act” which called for withholding funds to the UN Palestinian group if “UNRWA staff and partners nor its funding and facilities are affiliated with terrorism or disseminating certain rhetoric, such as calling for the destruction of Israel or describing Israelis as occupiers or settlers.” The U.S. Senate had a similar bill, S.431.
For much of 2023, Israel had been rooting out terrorists from UNRWA schools in the West Bank, Jenin in particular. UNRWA’s West Bank terrorists committed and planned to commit several attacks against Jews. Those terrorists were not only from Hamas which carried out the October 7 massacre, but the Jenin Brigades and Lion’s Den, other very popular terrorist groups.
UNRWA in Jerusalem (photo: First One Through)
Guterres has asked donor countries to renew payments to the agency, arguing that a few bad apples shouldn’t mean that millions of Palestinian Arabs should suffer.
But he completely misses the point.
UNRWA is the leading CAUSE of the October 7 attacks. Its mission of funneling billions of dollars into Gaza and the West Bank to employ Palestinian Arabs and miseducate them that Israel is an illegal European colonial state and that millions of descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948 have an “inalienable right” to move into the Jewish State is the main reason that the conflict has dragged on for decades. UNRWA in Gaza and the West Bank must be dismantled and the agency’s operations in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should be folded into the other agency to handle refugees, UNHDR.
The United States has taken the first steps in UNRWA Accountability. It must lead to the termination of the toxic agency to forge a pathway towards coexistence.
Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group has been called many things since its barbaric massacre on October 7. Due to the grotesque nature of the mass rape, slaughter and mutilation of people, people quickly thought of Nazis, as the killing of 1,200 Jews on a single day was the worst massacre since the Holocaust and committed with an intent to humiliate and torture Jews.
U.S. President Joe Biden said that “The brutality of Hamas — this bloodthirstiness — brings to mind the worst — the worst rampages of ISIS,” and many government officials agreed. The radical jihadi group burned its enemies alive and broadcast it for the world to see as a recruiting tool, similar to the torching of Jewish families alive by Hamas fighters which they similarly broadcast.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu compared Hamas to Amalek, the biblical foe that sought out the weakest members of the Children of the Exodus for attack and slaughter, much as Hamas raped women and butchered children. Lawyers from South Africa have incorrectly argued at the International Court of Justice that Netanyahu’s comparison showed that Israel has genocidal intent to kill every man, woman and child in Gaza. The biblical passage actually calls for eradicating the emotional scar that Amalek left in the Jewish people which can happen in different ways: for Amalek it was to destroy them; for Nazis it was to defeat them and then have them accept responsibility and repent for their actions.
Israel has good relations with Germany today.
Hamas resembles all three groups. It is a ruling government like the Nazis, democratically elected to 58% of parliament by Palestinians. It rules over territory, much like ISIS and has a radical jihadi philosophy about killing Jews. Like Amalek, Hamas specifically targeted the most vulnerable Jewish non-combatants.
The foundational charter of Hamas is a noxious screed of antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control with calls to slaughter Jews and destroy the Jewish State. A sample of the invective includes:
“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” (Opening)
“Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious.” (Preamble)
“Moslems fight the Jews(killing the Jews)… there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him” (Article 7)
“There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time” (Article 13)
“In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised…. the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis.” (Article 15)
“In their Nazi treatment, the Jews made no exception for women or children… [Jews] attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money” (Article 20)
“The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates…. Their plan is embodied in the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.… fight with the warmongering Jews.” (Article 32)
The evil philosophy of Hamas was laid out in its carefully constructed charter by dozens of people over months in the 1980s, Palestinians voted them to power in 2006 and widely support them post-October 7 according to many Palestinian polls.
The very word “Nazis” brings to mind the most evil and sadistic murderers. Over the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, it was used to mark the worst antisemitic and racist White people. “Hamas” has earned that loathsome dishonor, for the most heinous and vicious antisemitic jihadists of the 21st century.
White people preaching antisemitism today are called neo-Nazis and their actions against Jewish targets bring convictions in courts for hate crimes. So it must be with Hamas supporters (neo-Hamasites?) who attack Jews and Jewish targets with messages related to the annihilation of the Jewish State.
The United Nations has long been a terrible actor in the Israeli-Arab conflict, perpetuating the conflict through terrible policies and procedures. One of the worst offenses which contributed to the October 7 massacre and the current Gaza War was backing the “right of return” for millions of Arabs into Israel.
The United Nations agency, UNRWA, services roughly 7.5 million people of which 6.7 million are registered as refugees, with another 763,000 on the global dole. The vast majority of the 7.5 million are descendants of people who used to live in Israel in 1947. Amongst these so-called “refugees,” approximately 1.8 million live in Gaza and 1.1 million in the West Bank, a total of 2.9 million, or 43 per cent of UNRWA “refugees” live inside of 1947 Palestine.
These 2.9 million have been told by the United Nations that they will get to move into Israel for the last 75 years, based on a single line in UN General Assembly Resolution 194 of December 1948, that has long passed its expiration date. With that false promise, Gazans spend their time and money building a war infrastructure rather than an economy as they don’t imagine a future in their current neighborhood of historic Palestine, but in the Jewish State.
On January 23, 2024, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres may have laid the groundwork to finally end the dream of these 2.9 million Palestinians that their future homes will be in Israel.
In his remarks to the UN Security Council he said “The right of the Palestinian people to build their own fully independent State must be recognized by all. And any refusal to accept the two-State solution by any party must be firmly rejected. What is the alternative? How would a one-State solution look with such a large number of Palestinians inside without any real sense of freedom, rights and dignity? This would be inconceivable.”
The first part of Guterres’s comments is simply wrong. No state has a right to exist. None. Not Portugal, not China, not South Sudan, not Kurdistan. Individuals have a right to self-determination and there are many ways for that to be realized which do not create another Arab and Muslim country.
The second segment of his remarks, marked in bold above, is an important milestone for the UN. It is the first time Guterres essentially rejected the notion of Arabs swarming Israel – either in a one state solution or as part of a two-state solution in which 6.7 million Arab “refugees” enter the Jewish State.
Finally acknowledging that this will not happen, Guterres should make an unambiguous statement that there is no “right of return” for Arabs into Israel, a stale idea floated over 75 years ago in the midst of the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli War. In addition to such proclamation, he must follow up with actions to dismantle the “refugee” camps which dot Gaza and the West Bank, where UNRWA schools teach young Arabs that they will move into Israel and where UN facilities have keys above the portal to emphasize that the doorway for Palestinians to move into Israel is via the United Nations.
Entrance to Aida Refugee Camp (مخيم عايده) in Bethlehem with keyhole gateway and key on top to symbolize that UNRWA is the pathway for Palestinians to return to ancestors’ homes.
The United Nations finally said the obvious, that millions of Palestinian Arabs moving to Israel is “inconceivable.” It is time to explicitly state that there is no “right of return” and to dismantle the “temporary” refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank which have long served as incubators for extremism and terrorism.
Swag is commonly thought of as customized merchandise which people take from parties or conventions. The actual definition is illegally taken booty or loot.
Swag from Gaza comes in both varieties.
Israeli soldiers operating in Gaza are obviously confiscating weapons that they find throughout the territory. As Gaza is a densely-populated civilian area, these weapons of war are found in many homes, schools and mosques. Soldiers find many other items in those locations which they also bring back to Israel.
A favorite item are the Hamas headbands. These are found throughout Gazan homes, as the group which governs Gaza is very popular. Some Israelis bring these back as souvenirs. Israeli soldiers are reported to have taken Hamas patches and logos on other items as well.
Young Gazan child with Hamas headband, cool shades and a machine gun.
Hamas posters in UNRWA schools are also a favorite. Some are handed to the Israeli government along with school textbooks which call for the genocide of Jews to press the case for reform at the United Nations. Others are keepsakes to hang on the soldiers’ own walls when they come home, to remind them of the barbarity of Hamas.
Al-Qassam Brigades logo, the military wing of the Hamas movement
Many soldiers have reported seeing screensavers on computers of Adolf Hitler as well as his book “Mein Kampf” written in Arabic in people’s homes. Some of those things have found there way into Israel as well.
Palestinian Arabs also took swag from Israel: Jewish bodies.
Israeli soldier Cpl. Adir Tahar, 19, was decapitated by Palestinians on October 7 after he was killed in an explosion. His father found out from an interrogation of captured Hamas fighters that Arabs took his son’s severed head to Gaza and tried to sell if for $10,000.
Hamas also took many whole Jewish bodies to Gaza. The corpses were beaten and spat upon by dozens of Palestinians as the dead Jews were driven through the streets. It is unclear if the dead were marketed to the locals or held for ransom, as Hamas has said that they do not know the location of many hostages. Many were alive, some children to poke and prod. Grandparents and peace activists pulled from their homes. To shouts of “Allahu Akbar!“
Dead Israeli woman, killed by Hamas in a dance festival, being taken into Gaza
Israelis are bringing Hamas swag to Israel as evidence of the United Nations’ complicity in the war against Israel and reminder that the evil ideology extends well beyond 30,000 fighters. Meanwhile Hamas hauls Jews to Gaza – alive and dead, in whole or in parts – as a form of income and satisfaction.
There is a profound political deformity and moral depravity in Palestinian society today. When governments demand that Israel ignore both and discuss enabling a Palestinian state next door at this very moment in time while Jews are still trapped in captivity is a cruel form of psychological torture.
The disgusting defenses of Hamas and its sadistic brutality committed on October 7, 2023 come in a number of varieties. Some people openly support the killing of Jews and desire to see the destruction of the Jewish State. Others excuse Hamas’s atrocities by stating that the actions require “context,” meaning Israeli activities limiting movement and denying Palestinian Arabs a nation. This is a discussion on the second group, as the first are obviously vile and dangerous antisemites who should be driven from the public square.
Denying Versus Not Declaring A Palestinian State
Apologists for Palestinian terrorists include Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York’s 16th District, who argue that Palestinians have been denied their rights for 75 years, as Bowman recently said at a Yonkers event with notorious anti-Zionist Norman Finkelstein, who had described the October 7 massacre as “heroic resistance.” Bowman’s statement is a complete lie.
It was Palestinian and regional Arabs who rejected forming an Arab state during the November 1947 United Nations partition plan. It was Palestinian and regional Arab countries that waged a war to destroy Israel in 1948-9 and not form a State of Palestine in the aftermath. It was those same groups that again tried to destroy Israel in 1967 rather than declare a Palestinian State.
Again and again, Palestinians themselves did not declare a state as they wanted the entirety of the land “from the river to the sea” to be the State of Palestine, so focused their efforts on destroying Israel. When they made moves to accept a state on part of the land in the Oslo Accords, they once again opted for war in 2000 rather than forge a final settlement.
The Independent Gaza Strip
After Israel put down the multi-year Two-Percent Palestinian war waged from 2000 to 2004, Israeli leaders decided to give Palestinians more independence and self-determination. With assurance from President George W. Bush in an April 4, 2004 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel disengaged from Gaza, knowing that the U.S. was committed to backing Israel on key points that deadlocked the Oslo agreements: that final borders of Israel would not be along the 1949 Armistice Lines / “1967 borders” and would prioritize Israeli security and facts on the ground; and that Palestinian “refugees” (mostly descendants of Arabs who once lived in Israel) would settle in a new Palestinian State and not have a “right of return” to towns grandparents once lived in in Israel.
Israel withdrew all civilians and military from the Gaza Strip in September 2005. Palestinians were elated. According to a poll Palestinians conducted of themselves on the eve of Israeli withdrawal, “84% see it [Gaza withdrawal] as victory for armed resistance,” meaning that they saw the terrorism waged from 2000 to 2004 as forcing Israel to leave the region unilaterally. As opposed to the Oslo Agreement in which they would have needed to recognize the Jewish State but gotten most of the West Bank too, they got independence and self-determination just in Gaza without acknowledging Jewish rights to anything.
With their newfound freedom, Palestinians went to the voting booths in January 2006 to vote in a Palestinian parliament. Hamas, with its violent and antisemitic jihadi charter which calls for killing Jews and destruction of Israel, trampled the more secular Fatah, winning 58% of the parliamentary seats. (The last time the US Congress was so dominated by a single party was 2009 when Democrats had 59%).
The sentiment and quest for Jewish blood similarly rose.
When Israel pulled out of Gaza in September 2005, 46% of Gazans said that they supported killing Jews inside of Israel. By March 2006, that percentage rose to 64% and continued to rise.
In June 2007, Hamas violently threw out the Palestinian Authority and took over full control of Gaza. At that point, 74% of Gazans supported terrorism against Jews in Israel, even before Israel imposed a blockade on the strip. During the roughly two years that Palestinian Arabs had independence and self-determination – the only time in history when they had such freedom – their thirst for violent jihad INCREASED.
Palestinians have shown repeatedly that the desire to eliminate Israel dwarves their goal of self-determination and a state. Discussions of handing Palestinians more territory to rule after their sadistic savagery is not just blind to history and Arab sentiment, but dismisses the humanity of over 7 million Jews in Israel living in their ancestral homeland.
And those who argue that Hamas’s massacre has “context” are correct but facts and history prove the exact opposite point they claim: Palestinians are determined to wage war against Jews regardless of the cost of lives and irrespective of the level of their freedom.
ACTION ITEM
Email Rep. Jamaal Bowman “Palestinians commit and support terrorism because they have prioritized the destruction of Israel over statehood. A new Palestinian state will only come with recognizing the Jewish State and accepting that there is no “right of return” of millions of Arabs into Israel.”
When the congressional hearing about antisemitism at universities asked three university presidents whether they believed that Israel has a right to exist, they all answered in the affirmative, either believing so or feeling the pressure to state that they did. In fact, these educational leaders should have known that NO country has an inherent right to exist.
Not Turkey, not Colombia, not Japan and not Israel.
Countries have rights to secure borders and other matters, however there is nothing inherent that they must exist or that such existence cannot be dissolved.
For example, did Yugoslavia have a right to exist and does Macedonia have such right now? Did South Sudan have a right to a country before its creation? Do the Kurds have a right to a new Kurdistan in eastern Turkey together with sections of Iraq and Syria? Countries may opt to break apart into more regional tribal countries as was the case of Yugoslavia, or merge for particular political, demographic or ethnic reasons like Egypt and Syria in 1958.
But there is no inalienable right for any country to exist.
PEOPLE have a right to self-determination. Every person should be allowed to have citizenship in a country, participate in elections and have freedom of speech, religion and movement within such country as basic human rights.
It was a missed opportunity for the university presidents to educate the world on some fundamental realities but their failures were so profound, that this one was minor, especially in failing to clearly denounce repulsive calls for the genocide of Jews.
A more nuanced and interesting question is whether a country SHOULD exist. Does a country have a sound moral basis, a common sense of community and purpose? Does it have a functioning judicial system and ability and desire to govern and be governed? Is it willing to live at peace with its neighbors?
Israel meets every criteria. It has built a thriving economy and a liberal democracy in the heart of the illiberal Middle East. It has worked to forge peace agreements and engage in trade with its neighbors.
And even more, Israel built a safe haven for the most persecuted people in the world in their ancestral homeland. In their holy land. In their Promised Land.
Morning over Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan (photo: First One Through)
The answer is not clearcut regarding a Palestinian state.
The most compelling argument for a State of Palestine is that the Palestinians are stateless, Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). They should have self-determination and citizenship somewhere, whether in their own country or others like Jordan and Egypt. Many of the Palestinians have lived in the area for generations and share a language and culture, and can either unify in a single entity or be part of other Muslim Arab countries nearby.
There are many arguments against Palestinians having a country. They have consistently favored killing civilians in Israel next door and celebrate their sadistic slaughter. They have spent time and resources devoted to building a terrorist infrastructure rather than an economy. They focus their education on demonizing Jews and the destruction of Israel. On a basic political front, they have been unable to reconcile between the two dominant political factions and territories.
The United Nations continues to push for a new Palestinian State, perhaps to balance supporting Israel’s creation in 1948. In the November 1974 General Assembly Resolution 3236 (XXIX), the UN claimed that Palestinians had “The right to national independence and sovereignty;” which is a bold falsehood as described above. No nation has such right and it is highly questionable as to whether Palestinians should have a country.
While no country has an inherent right to exist, the only country which SHOULD definitely exist is the Jewish State of Israel.
First One Through 