Many commentators about the 2023-4 Hamas-Israeli War quote body counts to not simply frame and update the situation but to drive emotions and policy. While it is true that every civilian death is a tragedy, using statistics distracts from the core problem.
And it’s intentional.
Mainstream media and pro-Palestinian voices use Hamas-fed figures of Gaza’s dead and injured to make the claim that Israel is committing “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” of the enclave. Pro-Palestinian lawmakers compare the roughly 1,200 people in Israel killed to the much larger number of Gazans. They append the figures of the hundred-plus Israelis held in Gaza with finger-pointing to thousands of prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Yet there is no mention of the qualitative chasm between the perpetrators.
Gazans invaded Israeli homes in the early morning and pulled women in their pajamas outside to be raped and mutilated. Members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad burned families alive. They spent hours going house-to-house to butcher and slaughter children and the elderly. Fellow Palestinians celebrate and applaud those actions, and their leaders have promised to commit the atrocities again-and-again.
Meanwhile the Israelis simply want to bring their hostages home and the perpetrators to justice. The Jewish State wants the fighting to end quickly with as few casualties as possible to achieve their aims, while the goal of Palestinian terrorists is the death or expulsion of over 7 million Jews.
And people are deliberately silent about these critical facts when they discuss the war, all in an effort to shield Hamas and its aims to destroy the Jewish State.
Palestinians take back the dead body of an Israeli woman to parade through the cheering streets of Gaza
Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) just spoke about the evil ideology of Hamas at a UN Watch panel and opened (0:53) with a quote from the prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials saying “‘The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish are so calculated, so malignant, so devastating, that we cannot tolerate them being ignored, because we cannot survive them being repeated.‘ Those same words should be said about October 7th.”
The number of dead on each side of the conflict has nothing to do with the disproportionate intentions of each side. Knowing this full well, pro-Palestinian activists ignore or deny the barbarism of Gazans and only repeat figures as a way to shield Hamas.
All decent people want the violence to stop but it can only end when Palestinians are freed of their toxic ideology seeking the death of Jews and destruction of the Jewish State.
Sunday morning is a time for protests in Barcelona, Spain. Advocates for Peru took their customary spot on top of La Rambla. About ten people listened to a woman yelling into a megaphone.
Just ahead of the small gathering were thirty people protesting Russia’s war on Ukraine. They held placards and then marched together through Catalunya square of people feeding pigeons.
Further ahead were 2,000 people marching with Palestinian flags down the main street of Pg. de Gracia. Led by a ten people wearing kaffiyehs on a truck, they marched with signs calling to “Free Palestine” and “Boycott Israel.”
Thousands marched for Palestinians in Barcelona, Spain on February 25, 2024 (photo: First One Through)
Many of the marchers wore kaffiyehs and held signs “it did not start with Hamas.” They chanted in Spanish about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blamed the United States for “Genocide.”
There were no counter-protestors.
The Jews of Spain have long since been vanquished. Once the greatest center of Jewry in the 1400s, Spain is amongst the dozens of countries which now have fewer than 25,000 Jews. By way of comparison, there are 27 cities in the United States with over 25,000 Jews.
But Muslims have returned to Spain. After the Arab Spring and Syrian Civil War brought thousands of Muslim refugees and immigrants to Europe, many have once again settled in the Iberian peninsula.
Consequently, the street narrative – populated by many local Catholics – was neither nuanced nor balanced. There was no mention of the Israeli hostages or Hamas burning families alive. No demand for the Hamas rapists to face justice. Just for Israel to be replaced “from the River to the Sea.”
Pro Palestinian protestors in Barcelona
Catholic religious fanaticism routed Jews from Europe 500 years ago. Today, Muslim jihadi extremism is attempting to do the same in both Europe and the land of Israel.
There used to be jokes about how to handle one’s racist uncle during the holidays. Now the question is how to deal with a person’s antisemitic niece.
While many older cisgender White men continue to be challenged by the changing nature of America, a large percentage of women aged 18-34 (and under 24 in particular) have a hatred for Jews that would make Nazis blush.
The results from the December Harvard/Harris poll about views of Israel and Hamas segmented by age were shocking. While well over 90% of people over 55 viewed the October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion and slaughter in Israel as an act of terrorism, only slightly more than 70% of the 18-34 cohort believed the killing of 1,200 people to be terrorism. An estimated 90% of people over 55 thought there was no justification for the Hamas attack, but 60% of people 18-24 thought the massacre was justified.
Young people are evenly split on supporting Hamas and Israel, while almost every older person supports Israel. After the October 7 attack, 76% of 18-24 year-olds thought Hamas is a rational actor with whom Israel can negotiate while 87% of those over 65 believe Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. Consequently, 84% of seniors oppose a ceasefire now that would leave Hamas in place while 67% of the youth think a ceasefire should happen immediately and leave Hamas intact.
In the aftermath of the worst murder of Jews since the Holocaust, a majority of 51% of 18-24 year-olds think Israel should be dissolved and handed to Hamas and the Palestinians. Only 4% of those over 65 hold such views, with 71% preferring two states and 25% supporting Palestinians moving into neighboring Arab countries.
Lastly, the poll touched on gender-related violence. Two-thirds of seniors believe that human rights groups did not adequately condemn the rape of Israeli women, while 80% of those 18-24 thought that women’s rights organizations condemned Hamas sufficiently.
These findings confirm a January 2023 ADL poll which found “Young adults have more anti-Israel sentiment than older generations.”
The age divide is much the same regarding antisemitism in the United States.
An estimated 90% of people over 65 years old think that Jews face harassment on college campuses which drops to about two-thirds for 18-34 year-olds. Much of that disparity seems to do with whether words constitute harassment, as 92% of people over 65 think that calling for the genocide of Jews should be against university rules, while 53% of people 18-24 think students should be free to call for the genocide of Jews.
In addition to penalizing particular speech, one of the drivers seems to be driven by ideology. Roughly 81% of people over 65 oppose the notion that people should be viewed through the lens of White oppressors and non-White oppressed classes of people, while 79% of 18-24 year-olds support the ideology. Among those over 65, 91% believe that Jews should not fall into the White oppressor class while 67% of 18-24 year-olds believe Jews should be in the oppressor class.
What has driven the enormous disparity of opinions in which young people side with terrorists who slaughter Jews? What drives so many 18 to 24 year-olds to be so anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist?
A few ideas to review including a post-9/11 world, indoctrination in schools, race, social media and human rights groups.
Post-9/11 World
Americans who were adults in 2000 and 2001 can easily remember the terrorist attacks of 9/11 and the continued heinous killing of Israeli Jews by Palestinian Arabs from 2000 to 2004. The clarity about the jihadi extremists perpetrating the disgusting murders was apparent to all, so the support for the United States and Israel responding to the attacks was wide and deep.
For young people who do not remember the attacks but only the consequences – America’s 20-year long war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the Israeli Security Barrier which was put up to stop the flow of Palestinian Arab terrorists – the cause-and-effect is now inverted. Rather than see the Security Barrier as the effective reaction to jihadi terrorism, it is viewed as an obstacle to coexistence. Rather than appreciate the lack of mass casualty attacks in the U.S. over the past two decades, young people question why America fought wars abroad for so long.
Young people have come to believe that western powers are “imperialist” and wage wars to subjugate others. They have internalize the Iranian narrative of the US and Israel being “big Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively, aggressively fighting Muslims and people of color for no reason.
When the 2014 Gaza War concluded around the same time as the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, the SJP chapters started to align themselves with the Black community in an effort of allyship. It created narratives of “Gaza to Detroit” and “Ferguson to Palestine” as if the two have anything remotely in common.
Muslims claimed it did – and latched onto the oppressor/oppressed narrative which has now become university doctrine over the past decade. Teacher union bosses pushed the notion into lower schools as well, that Jews should be seen as part of the elite “ownership class” who try to keep others down.
Coupled with this incorrect portrayal of American Jews as powerful is the mischaracterization of Israel as a European colonial project. In university departments focused on decolonization, Israel is being cast as a racist state which must be dismantled. There is no subtle debate about Israel/Palestine for young people; they have been taught that Jews are not indigenous to Israel and “stole” Palestinian land.
As toxic ideologies like this inevitably metastasize, the calls to actively be “anti-racist” compelled students to become vocal anti-Zionists. Elective courses on “anti-racism” in California universities soon became mandatory in high schools, infecting the minds of tens of thousands.
While older Americans were spared this indoctrination, many Americans under 30 have been schooled in antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
UN and Human Rights Groups Slander
Universities celebrated when Amnesty International published a report in February 2022 calling Israel an “apartheid” state. It gave credibility to anti-Zionists who had long defamed Israel at will – like The New York Times – using a third party’s definition rather than state personal bias.
The Obama Administration’s last middle finger to Israel as it departed was allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass which made it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan, including in Judaism’s holiest location of the Old City of Jerusalem. While older people may recall that Jews have been a majority of Jerusalem since the 1860s, younger people have grown up where Jews living in Jerusalem is an act of evil colonization.
Racial Overview of Youth
Today’s youth is much more multi-ethnic than older generations.
America’s youth has many more non-White people while older Americans are mostly White. According to Pew Research, the most common age for Whites was 58 in 2019, and a much younger 29 for Asians, 27 for Blacks and 11 for Hispanics.
Among 70 year-olds, there are about 2.5 million White people but not even 1 million non-White people. However, among 20 year-olds, there are roughly 2.3 million White people and only slightly fewer, 2.1 million non-Whites, roughly an even split.
The multi-ethnic youth have come to see their White Jewish peers as part of the “White oppressor” class. They incorrectly assume that Israeli Jews are mostly White, like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In fact, White Ashkenazi Jews make up only one-third of the Israeli population.
Race In Colleges
The race of college students varies by the type of school. Overall, 42.3% of students are White, 17.4% Hispanic, 10.6% Black, 5.8% Asian according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The figures change dramatically when considering the type of school and degree.
At private, nonprofit four-year universities, 47% of students were white and 33% of students were Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC). A similar mix was found at public four-year schools where 46% of students were white, 38% were BIPOC. Shorter associate degrees attracted more minorities, with private two-year schools, 38% of students were white, 44% were BIPOC and public two-year schools, 29% of students were white, 42% were BIPOC.
More people are opting to not attend colleges, viewing them as expensive and not worth the time or investment. White enrollment declined the most from 2018 to 2022, dropping by 17.4%, while Black and Hispanic enrollment declined by 13.6% and 3.6%, respectively. Men are skipping universities in greater numbers than women, with women now accounting for 8.3 million students compared to 6.1 million men.
Despite women and minorities making up a greater share of college students, the professors are still mostly white, with White men making up 39% of all faculty and White women, 35%.
While White people make up a plurality of four-year degree programs, the schools have made very direct actions to change their faculty and curricula. They have implemented DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) programs, which are getting a lot of attention after the resignation of Harvard’s Black female president who failed to clearly condemn antisemitism at a congressional hearing.
Universities are not simply deploying indoctrinating students in a new socialist ideology compared to past generations; they are preaching to a more muti-ethnic population who are embracing the theology.
Social Media
The socialist antisemitic educational system deserves part of the blame but social media has fostered the toxicity as well.
While smartphones came to the world in 2008, the social media phenomenon on phones really took off from 2010 to 2015. Young people began to rely on news from influencers they followed (think sports stars, models, entertainers) rather than on professional news outlets. Young people fled to these idiots who offered opinions rather than facts, on platforms that pushed engagement via extremism rather than nuanced debate.
People like Kanye West, Kyrie Irving and Bella Hadid have many more people reading their drivel than CNN or the Wall Street Journal, especially young people. The youth get to enjoy the thrill of interacting with their stars rather than sit passively taking in boring news. Instagram became the simplest (fewest words) and most popular social media platform for young people while older Americans barely touched it.
And here also, race plays a part.
According to a May 2020 PRRI report, “young adults (ages 18-29) are notably more likely to use social media frequently than other age groups. Nearly half of young Americans (47%) report using social media sources frequently, compared to one in four (25%) Americans ages 30-49, about one in ten (11%) Americans ages 50-64, and only 3% of senior Americans (ages 65 and older).” It added that “Hispanic Americans (30%) are substantially more likely than white Americans (19%) and black Americans (19%) to be frequent social media user.”
According to Statista, Blacks are as likely as Hispanics to be active on social media, both much more than Whites. Daily use of social media is 46% for Blacks, 44% for Hispanics and only 34% for Whites. The gap in never-users shows the same contrast with only 18% of both Blacks and Hispanics never using social media and 30% of Whites never using it. So while 2.5 times as many Blacks and Hispanics use social media daily compared to never users, the numbers are almost the same for Whites.
So while over 70% of older Americans are White and not active on social media (and more inclined to use Facebook), the younger generation is almost 50/50 White/non-White and active on Instagram.
The Chinese company Tik Tok has a similar pattern. Roughly half of viewers are under 29 years old and 57% of all viewers are female. Almost no one over 55 uses the platform. Further, 80% of the content is made by people under 24 years old.
While the United States has the most viewers, it is followed immediately by Indonesia, Brazil and Russia. Almost all of the countries where the platform has the highest penetration are Muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, followed by Thailand, Qatar and Malaysia.
Antisemitism in Young People / Non-Whites
Aggregating this information leads to a real divide among older and younger Americans. Those 65 and over tend to be White, remember 9/11 and the Second Intifada, get their news from newspapers made in western countries and went to work believing in meritocracy. That’s in sharp contrast to Americans 18-24 who are are as likely to be non-White as White; have no recollection of 9/11, just the War on Terror; get their news from social media stars and very young people alongside the Muslim world and Russia; and receive an education that meritocracy is a myth and that they live under the thumb of a White patriarchy which imposes its imperialist whims on the Global South from where many of the youths’ ancestors originated.
Young people don’t comprehend that Jews were active in the 1960s Civil Rights movement and view Jews as part of the White elite. They don’t believe the FBI Hate Crime reports that Jews are the most targeted group of hate crimes, and they hold antisemitic views that Jews and Zionists are deeply racist who only care about money, power and themselves.
Older Americans are relatively homogenous and see a disappointing new generation which hates America and its ally Israel. They watch young people loudly cheering the mass slaughter of Jews in Israel, and call the young socialists and jihadists out as antisemites. For their part, the young see the older generation as impossibly out-of-touch White racists, unwilling to let the multi-ethnic future take the reigns of power.
Jews know math and their impossibly small numbers, and turn to the government and cling to law enforcement to protect them from the percolating tidal wave of hate.
For the last few hundred years, Jews inserted three lines after their penultimate prayer in their daily services. Right after Aleinu and before the final mourner’s Kaddish, a sentence from Proverbs and two from Isaiah are found:
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.
Al-Tirah
Roots Of Al Tira Prayer
Leaving synagogue was often a traumatic affair when Jews were scattered around the world. Inside of the synagogue, Jews were both together and felt connected to God; outside was a starkly different reality. Sometimes the local non-Jews would attack the Jews with pogroms and edicts, and at other times, Jews would be fortunate to find salvation.
Today, very few congregations actually recite the prayer despite its inclusion in prayer books.
I suggest that perhaps it is now time for all congregations to begin saying it.
Israel has responded to the Palestinian barbarity. It has killed and injured roughly one-third of the political-terrorist group Hamas in Gaza and has leveled much of the terrorist enclave. Hamas has claimed that nearly 30,000 Gazans have been killed at this point, with children accounting for over one-third.
On top of the frozen state of terror of Jews from the ongoing antisemitic attacks since October 7 is the sadness of watching the destruction of Gaza. Why did Hamas do this and why does the evil group insist that Israeli forces continue to pound Gaza rather than release the hostages and surrender the terrorists?
Hamas has an evil and twisted ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam that demands the destruction of the Jewish state, believing its presence is an embarrassment for Muslims. As it states in its foundational charter “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it…. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious… There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time… 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.”
For its part, Judaism has a different set of beliefs that stretches back thousands of years before the Islamic prophet Mohammed was born. It urges calm in the face of fear.
Be not afraid of sudden fear, neither of the desolation of the wicked, when it cometh. (Proverbs 3:25)
Jews are carrying both the shock of October 7 in Israel and the sickening reaction of Hamas’s fans around the world. They are simultaneously witnessing the destruction of that enemy. It’s a lot to process – the “sudden fear” and the “desolation of the wicked” – and has led many Jews and Zionists to huddle together in synagogue, and hide symbols of being Jewish when they go outside.
Jewish Calendar And Numbers
The Jewish year 5784 is a Jewish leap year which adds another month, and the year 2024 in the secular calendar is also a leap year which adds a single day. Both the Jewish calendar and the secular calendars add the time in the winter to “correct” the calendar for the upcoming spring.
We are now in the first of two months of Adar. Jewish tradition holds that Adar is a month of happiness and when Jews defeated their mortal enemies who attacked the weakest Jews. The double month of Adar is meant as a moment of double celebration.
This year of 5784 is the eighth year of the 19-year Metonic cycle which marks leap years on the third, sixth, eighth, eleventh, fourteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth year. Just as 2024 is the eighth year in the cycle, so was 1967, when Israel reunified Jerusalem, as was 1948, the year that the Jewish State was reborn. From 1948 to 1967 was one Metonic cycle and from 1967 to 2024 were three full cycles.
Numbers have significance in Judaism. One is connected to the singularity of God in the Jewish monotheistic faith. Three symbolizes Judaism’s founding fathers, the sections of the Shema prayer, three holidays of pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the three groups of Jews.
Eight is also meaningful. Beyond the day that Jewish males are circumcised to join the Jewish nation, tradition is that eight connects man in the natural to the supernatural world. While God made the world in seven days and had seven branches on the menorah in the holy Temple, eight is the step beyond. The seven branch menorah was for the Temple, while Jews light an eight branch menorah in their homes and synagogues today to connect to the miracle.
Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us. (Isaiah 8:10)
These months of Adar seem like important months to recite the oft-skipped prayer. A time to mark the third complete leap year cycle of Jewish control Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. It is a time to remember that God is with us and he is the sole source of fear.
Amalek And Arms Aloft Together
When the Jewish people left slavery in Egypt they were attacked by the nation of Amalek. During the battle, Jews looked up to Moses who held his arms pointing to the sky with the assistance of Aaron and Hur who held the elderly prophet’s arms. The Jews were empowered when they saw Moses praying to God to vanquish the enemy, and prevailed as God enabled their success.
And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4)
Today, there is no Jewish leader like Moses to pray on behalf of the jews, and every Jew takes their own prayer book to talk to God. They gather in minyanim around the world to pray for Jewish soldiers fighting with weapons, and Jewish lay leaders who fight against Hamas’s supporters in governments, college campuses and everywhere.
Let us all recite Al Tirah together, holding the hands of the people to our right and left, and pray for God to deliver success in defeating all of our foes.
The images of death and destruction in Gaza are terrible. The cruelty of Hamas’s leaders of letting the population suffer while refusing to surrender and instead hiding in tunnels underground, is a shocking display of cowardice that will be marked by generations of orphans.
Gaza ruins
Many countries are trying to figure out a way to bring humanitarian supplies to the civilians of Gaza without the food and medical supplies being rerouted to the Hamas political-terrorist group which has directed the atrocities. The arguments about whether UNRWA is best qualified to handle the situation as they have existing facilities and personnel in Gaza bypasses a critical and fundamental matter.
Why should descendants of Palestinian “refugees” from 75 years ago get better medical treatment and access to food during this war than regular Gazans?
There are a few hundred thousand regular Palestinian Arabs who have lived in Gaza for generations. They are just as injured and displaced as their “refugee” neighbors who have been living next to them for the past 75 years. Will the United Nations only supply food and medicine to those who call themselves “refugees” while letting other Gazans go hungry?
The crux of the situation in Gaza is a humanitarian crisis, not a refugee crisis. It should be handled by the Red Cross which is best equipped to enter war zones and remain neutral.
UNRWA is a toxic organization which has fomented hatred and discontent which led directly to the October 7 massacre. Its mission, budget and staff are vehicles designed to end the Jewish state. It causes emergencies, it doesn’t address them.
All emergency relief for Gaza should be handled by the International Red Cross as a matter of efficiency, neutrality and equity. Showing preferences for the grandchildren of refugees is a mockery of humanity and shows the ongoing perverted nature of the United Nations in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It surprised no one that attacks against Jews around the world spiked after the Hamas political-terrorist group invaded Israel and butchered and slaughtered around 1,200 people. The bold and not-so-out-of-the-closet antisemites had reason to cheer the death and mutilation of Jews and took to the streets to swear allegiance to the atrocities’ actors.
Slightly more moderate and less gleeful were those who adamantly declared they didn’t hate Jews, just the Jewish State. Francesca Albanese, whose title is “UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” rebuked French President Emmanuel Macron who had decried the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. She wrote “The ‘worst antisemitic massacre of our century? No, Mr. President. The victims of 7/10 were killed not because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.” Perhaps she thinks that Gazans would have raped and burned alive Ottoman Turks and British civilians too when they ruled in Palestine.
Many people are calling for Albanese’s resignation, not because she’s pro-Palestinian but because she’s sanitizing antisemitism to the world. People can read, and the virulently antisemitic Hamas Charter is online.
Antisemitism continues to inch beyond the borders of Israel and the confines of self-declared Jew-haters. Even those who have historically done outreach to Jews are turning away from them now, while Jews around the world pray for the dead, the injured, the hostages and their families.
There is a restaurant in Barcelona, Spain called Xerta. It is a Michelin-starred restaurant since 2016, and once a week it makes its kitchen kosher so it can accommodate the dietary restrictions of Orthodox Jews. Jews around the world have come to dine at the famous restaurant, the only kosher Michelin restaurant in the world.
Until recently.
due to the current situation in Middle East, the Management Team has decided to interrupt the service, so no Kosher service is scheduled, at least at the moment
Xerta Restaurant, February 2024
What does kosher food in Spain have to do with a war between Hamas and Israel? Why should Jews in Spain suddenly lose the opportunity of dining in a fine restaurant? The establishment clearly made an effort of outreach to the Jewish community in the past, so why the shift in stance?
Possible reasons include:
Penalizing Jews for the actions of the Jewish State
Demonstrating to fellow Spaniards that they are so against Israel, that they would deprive Jews service even though they have nothing to do with Israel
Out of fear that the restaurant would be attacked by antisemites who make no distinction between Jews and the Jewish State
The managers of the restaurant are clearly not antisemites or would not have historically offered kosher food. But they have taken action specifically against local Orthodox Jews at this time because of activities 2,200 miles away.
Xerta Restaurant in Barcelona, Spain. Emptied of Orthodox Jews
The restaurant managers know that Spain is not like other western countries and Barcelona has a radical streak. While almost every western country stopped making voluntary payments to UNRWA after it was shown that many of its employees participated in the October 7 pogrom against Israeli Jews, Spain decided to INCREASE its donations. Just last year, the mayor of Barcelona severed the ceremonial “sister city” relationship with Tel Aviv because she said Israel committed “apartheid.”
Perhaps Xerta’s management watched the news about the spike in antisemitism everywhere with chants to “gas the Jews” and attack Zionists everywhere. Maybe they feared that their neighbors’ hatred for the Jewish State would come for Jews dining in its establishment, so it kept the kosher patrons away.
Martin Niemoller (1892-1984) would be ashamed. He knew his silence was complicity for Nazi atrocities.
Cold-blooded antisemites are killing Jews, and friends of Jews are abandoning them in the cold.
It’s an old lesson for this generation. Jews are being schooled on the fragility of allies and the antisemitism of adjacencies.
‘Shield’ is an English word which is both a noun and a verb. As a verb, it means to protect something, and as a noun, it means an emblem that represents an organization.
UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees, acts and is Hamas’s shield.
In attempting to root out the Hamas political-terrorist group from Gaza which committed savage butchery of Israelis on October 7 in line with its antisemitic genocidal charter, Israeli troops entered and dug around UNRWA schools, hospitals and administrative buildings. It found incontrovertible proof that UNRWA is part of the Hamas war machine against Israel.
Hamas not only stores weapons in UNRWA locations, it deliberately locates its command centers under UNRWA facilities to keep the IDF from bombing it. While Israel developed an iron dome defense system which uses technology to shoot down Hamas rockets targeting Israeli civilians, Hamas uses UNRWA to protect its military infrastructure in Gaza.
In New York City, where the thin veneer of UNRWA’s 100 or so Europeans cover the fact that the rest of UNRWA’s 30,000-member staff are local Palestinian Arabs, the well-dressed leaders of the “humanitarian” agency defend Hamas to its voluntary donor countries. UNRWA talking heads appeal to countries assembled at the once-respected UN halls and attempt to deflect attention from UNRWA’s complicity and participation in the sickening and sadistic attacks on innocent Jewish civilians.
The dozen-plus member of Hamas that participated in the cruelty were dismissed as a few rogue employees. The 3,000 Hamas teachers that celebrated the massacre on Telegram were ignored. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on occupied Palestinian territories, said (5:35) in the immediate aftermath of October 7 that “you Palestinians are always questioned, second-guessed, misinterpreted and defamed.”
Finally, many countries are looking at the plain evidence and can no longer turn away from UNRWA’s ongoing flimsy protection of vicious murderers. The UNRWA misdirection campaign which attempted to tug heart-strings is unraveling, and moral countries have begun to halt their donations to the agency which is complicit in the ongoing genocidal actions against a member state.
Unbowed, UNRWA continues to appeal directly to individuals donors on social media, hoping that they don’t read the news or despise Jews and the Jewish State to fund the UNRWA-Hamas front.
UNRWA campaign on Facebook, February 2024
UNRWA is not simply trying to defend itself against the mounting evidence of working hand-in-glove with Hamas to keep the money flowing to 30,000 Palestinian employees of the organization as well as to keep the lights on in hospitals and schools. As the world sees that UNRWA is not a neutral party, the agency loses all aspects of immunity. Its locations can be raided and bombed and its officers charged alongside Hamas with crimes against humanity.
The entire United Nations knows its on a sinking ship and is throwing the heaviest burdens overboard (firing the dozen October 7 murderers) and is spinning wild and unbelievable narratives. UNRWA is in a fight for its survival and will not pause in lying boldly and repeatedly that it is a humanitarian group that at worst is woefully ignorant and inept.
UNRWA acts as a shield FOR Hamas in Gaza, and a shield OF Hamas at the United Nations. The end of Hamas in Gaza must be coupled with the end of UNRWA at the UN.
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.
Courts in the United States just convicted a mother of a mass murderer for not doing enough to prevent the attack which killed four people. A Michigan jury found that Jennifer Crumbley was guilt of involuntary manslaughter because she failed to act upon clear warning signs that her son Ethan was dangerous and did not lock up the weapon in the house.
It begs the question as to whether the United Nations should be held criminally liable for crimes against humanity for its complicity in the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel.
The United Nations building in New York City
The U.N. adopted Palestinian “refugees” as its perennial wards decades ago, setting up distinct agencies for them such as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Originally designed as a temporary agency in the middle of the Arab-Israeli War of 1948-9, the U.N. has continued to extend its mandate and mission, extending loans for businesses and folding in another 763,000 people over-and-above the descendants of refugees.
UNRWA schools teach young Palestinian Arabs to hate Jews, and that the Jews stole their land. They instill a belief that the UN will help them win back their homes that Jews stole. The “textbooks have remained openly antisemitic and continue to encourage violence, jihad and martyrdom while peace is not taught as preferable or even possible.”
UNRWA teachers have built bombs for Hamas. At least a dozen participated in the October 7 massacre and thousands more are members of the political-terrorist group Hamas. An estimated 3,000 UNRWA workers praised the massacre.
It is not surprising that they allow Hamas’s terror tunnels to be built under their schools and hospitals and permit Hamas to fire rockets from their campuses.
UNRWA works hand-in-glove with Hamas in Gaza and the United Nations did nothing to act upon the clear warning signs that Hamas had built an enormous terrorist infrastructure over sixteen years of rule.
And why should it? UNRWA is Palestinian. Almost every single employee is a Palestinian Arab other than the people in New York who serve as a front to funnel billions of dollars to Palestinians.
While the U.N. did not burn families alive, rape and mutilate women, nor shoot the elderly in the head, it was completely complicit in the atrocities. It is therefore not sufficient to simply shut down UNRWA; the world should defund the United Nations until it does so, and bring its leadership to court for its role in the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
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.
FirstOneThrough 