Tag Archives: United Nations

Does Gaza Fall Outside Humanitarian Laws?

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International humanitarian law (IHL) has been established for decades, and many are principally designed to protect civilians during armed conflict. In the case of the Gaza war against Israel, it is questionable whether the laws can be applied to Israel’s actions in the war, not whether Israel is abusing such laws.

Principle of Distinction

The driving themes of IHL surrounds mitigating the harm to non-combatants during hostilities. The first driver is, therefore, to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. In most battles, this is easy to accomplish: during a clash on a battlefield, the only participants are soldiers. In urban warfare, this is much more difficult.

In the dense Gaza strip, this is virtually impossible.

The various military groups in Gaza are embedded and underneath almost every building and road. Hamas, the popular political-terrorist group that rules Gaza, built an entire infrastructure underneath the city with a maze of 500 kilometers of tunnels and storerooms. The hundreds of exit shafts for much of this infrastructure is located in houses and schools.

Hamas soldiers in Gaza tunnels

Additionally, Gazan combatants dress in civilian clothing and are members of groups which are touted to be neutral including the United Nations, the press and hospital staff.

UNRWA employees and Hamas militants

If civilians and related infrastructure are enmeshed by premeditated design with an active military, then the civilians have become integrated into the war effort and renounced protections of distinction.

Principles of Proportionality and Precaution

IHL’s Principle of Proportionality is designed to minimize collateral damage to civilians when attacking legitimate military targets. It calls for a review of the situation and reducing armaments to make any incidental civilian harm be aligned to the relative military gain achieved. The related Precaution principle is one step further, to try to prevent any military action, if possible.

Israel has taken many actions to limit the harm to civilians – which have been harshly criticized, nevertheless.

  • Withholding electricity and other aid. Israel has attempted to pressure Hamas and other militant groups – which seize all goods into Gaza – by withholding basic items like electricity so Israel would not have to use military force in the region. For those efforts, Israel is accused of causing a humanitarian catastrophe, rather than adhering to the Principles of Precaution
  • Move civilians out of the field of battle. Israel has moved and continues to urge civilians to leave “hot” areas, only to be accused of “ethnic cleansing”
  • Using ground forces. Israel could minimize its own casualties by only using air power against the terrorist enclave. Instead, it seeks a more targeted effort to eliminate combatants and protect civilians, for which it is criticized.

The vast majority of Gazans are in favor of killing Israeli civilians, voted for Hamas with its antisemitic genocidal charter, and supported the October 7 massacre. Gazans are part of the Hamas machinery, and the United Nations defends Hamas and demands that Israel not seek justice for its murdered civilians.

While Gazan authorities threaten to commit the October 7 barbarity over and again, Israel attempts to adhere to international law yet is criticized for it. Even though Israel left Gaza in 2005, and put in place a blockade only when Hamas took full control of the strip in 2007 to follow the Principle of Precaution, it is laughingly accused by international “human rights” groups of a “belligerent occupation.”

The terrorist enclave of Gaza has removed distinctions between civilians and militants, aid workers and terrorists, state and non-state actors, locals and international operators, and civilian infrastructure and military bases in a toxic brew. It defecates on all humanitarian norms while pointing both armaments and accusing fingers at Israel.

As the United Nations and Gazans have themselves destroyed all distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, and declared that Israel can never meet the standards of international humanitarian law, there is no basis to criticize Israel’s handling of its defensive war on such basis.

Related articles:

First Time In History, People Under ‘Genocide’ Reject Ceasefire. Repeatedly. (December 2024)

Palestinians Publicly Go Full Genocidal Jihadi (August 2024)

Ban Ki Moon Defecates on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 2016)

UN’s Confusion on the Legality of Israel’s Blockade of Gaza (July 2015)

Palestinian Authority Whitewashes Hostage-Taking Torture

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The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Alice Jill Edwards, delivered her latest thematic report on torture which defined hostage-taking as a “cruel game” and definitely a form of torture. The lengthy report highlighted several examples of the practice, and specifically called out a number of countries – China, North Korea, Iran, Russia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela – as particularly notorious state offenders.

Edwards called out non-state actors as well, including those backed by Iran, such as the Houthis in Yemen “holding at least 30 humanitarians,” and “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups” which abducted 251 people in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Calling out the obvious evil was controversial in the morally-bankrupt institution.

In a press conference after the release of the report to the Human Rights Council, Edwards said (5:55) that several countries and NGOs asked her to remove certain countries from the report and criticized the timing of the release, presumably because it is coming amidst the horrific reports emerging from captives held by the Palestinian Arab political-terrorist group, Hamas. Edwards was accused for bias for her actions but refused to be silenced as she believes that hostage-taking should be viewed as a critical component in discussing human rights.

Edwards criticized the draft document of international crimes against humanity for not including hostage-taking. She argued for the families of hostages to have a point person in governments and at the UN with whom to liaise.

Most significantly, Edwards called on those taking hostages, “and those that aid and abet them,” to be held accountable and punished severely, as hostage-taking has become a “low-risk high-reward crime” (15:20) on the global stage. She argued for compensation for survivors.

This seemed a bit much for the socialist-jihadi alliance which roams the halls of the UN. Almost no one attended the briefing and only two reporters asked questions of Edwards. Both featured whataboutery, asking about Israel’s treatment of captives, and whether the Jewish State was just as guilty as Hamas And Friends.

Edwards responded (24:19) that Gazans took hostages as negotiating leverage, while Israel took prisoners of war in the middle of the ongoing war. Those taken from Israel were done so for leverage and ransom, while those taken by Israel were placed in detention and removed from the war effort, and therefore could not be considered hostages.

This was all way too much for the Palestinian Authority.

The PA’s official media arm, WAFA, produced its own reporting of the UN report on torture. It claimed that the special rapporteur “report focused on torture during captivity” which criticized the “Israeli attacks on Gaza” and “ill-treatment endures by Palestinians detained by Israel.” Nowhere does the PA’s account explain that Palestinian Arabs held by Israel are not hostages, the main theme of the report, nor does the “news” summary review the axis of evil which supports the Palestinian Arabs, as the worst offenders of hostage-taking.

The Palestinian Authority, propped up by the United Nations, tolerates the terrorist activities of local Arab terrorist groups – including the taking of civilian hostages and sexual violence -because the armed jihadi groups are much more popular amongst the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs). The puppet regime is either a worthless veneer or complicit, and should be held similarly accountable.

ACTION ITEM

Demand all officials condemn Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other terrorist groups which participated in the October 7 barbarity and demand that they face maximum justice.

Related articles:

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials (May 2021)

The United Nations’ Adoption of Palestinians, Enables It to Only Find Fault With Israel (March 2016)

The Issue Is The UN’s Gaza, Not Trump’s Gaza

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The media is going crazy about President Donald Trump’s social media post of an AI-generated video of what a “Trump Gaza” might resemble. The imaginary future isn’t the problem: it’s the United Nations policies which have produced the current reality of Gaza.

  • Gaza is led by Hamas, a deeply antisemitic jihadi group which is considered a terrorist group by the United States, Israel and many other countries. The UN thinks it’s a legitimate government, as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
  • The UN’s stated mission is to move at least 73% of Gazans into Israel (the UNRWA wards), making Gazans indifferent to the local situation as they think they are just waiting to move into towns where grandparents used to live in Israel
The entrance to Aida Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem with a key on top to let Arabs know that the ticket to enter Israel is via the UN
UNSG Guterres comments on February 24, 2025 about human rights

The United Nations has long legitimized an antisemitic genocidal jihadist group next door to Israel and has protected it from facing justice. It has reared generations of Gazans to only know hatred for Jews and deny their history and rights in their homeland. It has systematically inverted victim and perpetrator by using an approach that the best defense is a good offense, to vilify Israel and its supporters, rather than put pressure on Palestinian Arabs to disarm and accept the Jewish State.

Gaza under Hamas and UN
Hamas under Hamas and UN leadership

The AI-generated fiction of a Trump Gaza is producing wild attacks, while the real tragedy of Gaza’s bankrupt morality and devastation under the banner of the United Nations is never considered.

Related articles:

The United Nations Welcomes “Peace-Loving” Palestine (September 2024)

Sue The United Nations For Supporting Terrorism (February 2024)

The Grave Humanitarian Crisis In Gaza Is About Values (January 2024)

Excerpt of Hamas Charter to Share with Your Elected Officials (May 2021)

Meet The New [United Nations] Boss, Same As The Old Boss

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The United Nations has a Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (SCMEPP), a role so seeped in lofty goals and ineptitude, it sums up the farce and tragedy of the UN’s biased and pathetic involvement in the Muslim Arab- Israel conflict.

The “peace process” has long been hampered by a UN that teaches the Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) that they will all move into Israel, that Jews cannot live in their holiest city of Jerusalem nor pray at their holiest site on the Temple Mount. The UN schools teach only Arab students, vile propaganda that Jews are invaders with no history in the land, interlopers to be despised.

It is, therefore, not a surprise that the new UN Coordinator is not an impartial party but one long dedicated to the SAPs’ narrative and goals.

Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands took over for Tor Wennesland in January 2025. Her European appearance masks her affiliation with the Palestinian cause.

Sigrid Kaag, new UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process

Kaag was a Dutch politician and involved in foreign affairs which soon brought her to get involved with UNRWA, the long-standing temporary UN agency tasked with tending to the descendants of Arabs who left Israel at its founding, as well as UNICEF. Soon after she took on UN roles in Syria and Lebanon. This background seemingly made her an ideal choice in January 2024 to become UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza.

With such pro-Arab bona fides (and a Palestinian husband), UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed her his Personal Representative of the Secretary-General to the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority (PA) in January 2025 when Wennesland’s term expired.

Guterres also appointed Kaag to be UN’s SCMEPP, even though such role is meant to be – theoretically – an unbiased party to bring peace to all parties in the Middle East conflict. How can the SCMEPP be a party who is deeply enmeshed with only one side?

Kaag addressed the UN Security Council on February 25, 2025 and her comments repeated the same inanity spoken at the global chambers: no Palestinian Arabs are terrorists, cannot be condemned nor brought to justice, even if they commit the most barbaric atrocities.

Kaag began her comments in her new capacity as UN’s point person for Middle East Peace with “It cannot be repeated enough; nothing justifies the appalling October 7 terror attacks executed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups. I welcome the implementation of the first phase of the ceasefire including the release of 34 hostages. I echo the Secretary-General’s condemnation of the public parading of hostages released by Hamas, including statements made under duress, and the appalling display of the coffins of deceased hostages.” Nowhere in her comments was there a condemnation of the October 7 massacre nor calling for all those SAPs to be held accountable.

Not surprisingly, Kaag would go on to tell the Security Council that Gazans need relief, Israeli actions are bad and the Palestinian Authority is good. She concluded her remarks declaring that the UN has already determined the correct borders of two states and that they are not a matter of negotiations between Israel and the PA, and that Israel must leave Gaza even though nothing is mentioned about Hamas.

Kaag comments before UN Security Council on February 25, 2025

The United Nations has been one of the primary causes of the Middle East conflict, masquerading as the champion for human rights and peace. Its new point person to address the conflict is once again a tool of the global body to defend local Arabs at all costs, regardless of their actions and intentions.

Related articles:

UN Secretary General Prioritizes Hamas And PLO Over Israelis (October 2024)

The Deep Flaws In The UN’s “Peace” Coordinator (August 2024)

UN “Peace Coordinator” Before And During Hamas Massacre (October 2023)

UN Lies About Palestinians Favoring Two States (December 2022)

Mirroring “Illegal” Designations: UNSC 2334 And UNRWA

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The United Nations created a temporary agency in 1949 to care for Palestinian Arabs who left Israel during Israel’s founding. It’s called UNRWA, the United Nations Work and Relief Agency. The staff of over 30,000 people are almost all descendants of those Palestinian Arab “refugees” with a few White Europeans sprinkled on the leadership to make the organization appear as an international aid group, rather than an employment agency.

UNRWA has long abused its mandate, extending services to hundreds of thousands of people who are not descendants of “refugees”, essentially becoming a bank in distributing loans to local Arabs, and teaching millions of its Arab wards to hate Israeli Jews and that they will get to move into Israel with UNRWA’s help.

After years of perpetuating the conflict, Israel decided to ban UNRWA from operating in Israel as of January 30, 2025, as many of its members took part in the October 7 massacre and others worked for terrorist groups outside of Gaza, including in Lebanon. As UNRWA only operates in conjunction with the host country of operations, keeping operations in Jerusalem open after Israel declared it illegal would not just make it operating against Israeli law but its own principles.

Yet UNRWA is continuing to operate in Jerusalem.

Freed Israeli hostages said that they were held in UNRWA facilities while in captivity.

Yet UNRWA still contends that it is “essential” and “critical.“

So UNRWA acts defiantly, even though in knows full well that it is doing so illegally.

It is reminiscent of UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which made it illegal for Israeli Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan (E49AL), including the Old City of Jerusalem. It is a patently antisemitic law, enshrined after nearly three-quarters of a million Jews already live in the area, so Israel ignores it and allows Jews to continue to buy and build homes in the area.

The press often labels Jews who live in E49AL as “settlers,” whether they live in new settlements or large cities. The term “settlement” is a wandering noun which travels with antisemites who label Jews as illegal trespassers. Media compounds the narrative, often appending language “which most of the world considers illegal” whenever discussing a “settlement.”

Will that same media now label UNRWA’s operations in Gaza and the “West Bank” as illegal? Or will it prefer to mock Israeli law, quite the opposite of its christening antisemitic UNSC Res. 2334.

Will members of the UN Security Council consider trading Israel’s ban of UNRWA with rescinding the antisemitic UNSC Resolution 2334 to facilitate aid to Gaza and promote coexistence? It has never been the modus operandi of the United Nations, but the times, they are a changin’.

Related articles:

After UNRWA (February 2024)

The Only Way The Conflict Can End (November 2023)

“Land Belonging to Palestinians Before the 1967 War” (November 2021)

Trump Reverses the Carter and Obama Anti-Israel UN Resolutions (November 2019)

Time to Dissolve Key Principles of the “Inalienable Rights of Palestinians” (December 2017)

The Legal Israeli Settlements (December 2014)

Is Gaza Anyone’s Home?

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U.S. President Donald Trump asked the governments of Egypt and Jordan to take in Gazans so the repair of the region could be expedited. Trump acknowledged that Jordan already had many Arabs who had come from Palestine in the country – over half the country’s population, including the king of Jordan’s wife – but “I said to him that I’d love you to take on more, because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess…. I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”

Jordan has a large Palestinian Arab population because it invaded Israel in 1948 and ethnically cleansed Jews from the west bank of the Jordan River all the way through the Old City of Jerusalem. It then illegally annexed that region in 1950 and granted all Arabs – specifically excluding Jews – Jordanian citizenship in 1954.

Statements by Egypt and Jordan dismissed Trump’s suggestion. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said that “the deportation or displacement of the Palestinian people is an injustice in which we cannot participate.” The Jordanian monarch made similar comments.

Social media lit up as well. As hundreds of thousands of Gazans moved back to their towns in northern Gaza, The call of “return!” was echoed.

It’s a strange dynamic. The United Nations and its arm in the region, UNRWA, has insisted that 73% of Gazans do NOT belong in Gaza but in towns inside of Israel where grandparents left during their war to destroy the Jewish State in 1948. Yet now they insist that these same Arabs cannot be dislodged from Gaza, after they got decimated in a war initiated by their government.

With their support.

The victim mentality is such an ingrained deformity in Palestinian Arab culture (courtesy of the United Nations), that attempts to efficiently rebuild infrastructure is met with the same tired complaint of “ethnic cleansing” as a “displacement plan” rather than a rebuilding plan.

Now is the time for Gazans to internalize that Gaza is their home, not Israel, as a condition to taking billions of dollars in aid in global charity.

Van Hollen Is Grossly Ignorant About Zionism And The Indignity Of UNSC 2334

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) aged 66, questioned a young Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), aged 40, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vetting process for the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. It’s a short five-minute video and worth watching the entire exchange.

At 1:07, Van Hollen pointed his questions to adhering to UN Security Council resolutions and tied it to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Van Hollen said “long term peace must include security, self-determination and dignity for Israelis and Palestinian alike,” and added that “we should stand up and protect universal human rights and self-determination for all people, including both Israelis and Palestinians.”

He questioned Stefanik’s contention that Jews have a “Biblical right” to the land of Israel, and concluded his remarks at 4:59 by mansplaining that “when it comes to this very difficult issue [Jews living and praying in the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem], if the president is going to succeed at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, we’re going to have to look at the UN Security Council resolutions – not just the ones on Lebanon, which we should enforce – but other UN Security Council resolutions [implying UNSC 2334], and it’s going to be very difficult to achieve that if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed [that Jews have a right to live and pray in Jerusalem and the West Bank], which is a view that was not held by the founders of the State of Israel who were secular Zionists, not religious Zionists.”

Some education is in order for this senator who airs his ignorance and Palestinian Arabs’ false propaganda so publicly:

  • David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and secular Zionist said to the British authorities in January 1937 before the Peel Commission which discussed limiting Jews to certain areas of Palestine that “Our right to the Land of Israel does not stem from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It precedes those. The Bible is our mandate… I can state in the name of the Jewish People: The Bible is our mandate, the Bible that was written by us in our Hebrew language, and in this land itself, is our mandate. Our historical right has existed since our beginnings as the Jewish People, and the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate recognize and confirm that right.” The secular Zionist Ben Gurion explicitly tied the right of Jews in the land to the Bible.
  • Ben Gurion referenced the original Hebrew language of the Bible, which became and remains the official language of the Jewish State, the only country which speaks in the biblical tongue.
  • When Ben Gurion read Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948 which he helped draft, the first lines were “ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) – The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.” The “land of Israel” encompasses the entire Jewish Promised Land, not new borders concocted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947.
David Ben Gurion declaring the State of Israel on May 14, 1948

Further, Van Hollen fails to comprehend that his various statements do not complement each other but CONTRADICT each other. One cannot adhere to every UN Security Council resolution and simultaneously respect the dignity and human rights of Jews.

UNSC 2334, which passed in the waning days of the Obama administration, tramples on basic human rights and dignity of Jews by denying their right to live and pray in their holiest location in the Old City of Jerusalem.

There is NO “inalienable right” for Palestinians to have a state, only self determination, and there IS an “inalienable right” for Jews to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount. Yet the United Nations and Van Hollen pretend otherwise.

If the basic parameters of Palestinian dignity is to deny Jewish dignity, then there is no scenario in which there is “dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike” which Van Hollen ignores.

The United Nations is deeply broken and amoral, yet Senator Van Hollen seeks to prop it up as something holy, a pagan temple amongst the socialist-jihadi alliance. Rep. Elise Stefanik intends to act like the Jewish patriarch Abraham when she enters the United Nations, who shattered the false idols in his father’s store. She is poised to enter that dark chamber and shed light on its systemic depravity.

Representative Elise Stefanik at her Senate confirmation hearing. (Photo: Tom Brenner for The New York Times)

Abraham’s actions 3,700 years ago launched monotheism. Perhaps the end of the United Nations’ sacred cows will usher in a period when Jews and Judaism will be openly and widely recognized on the Temple Mount and throughout Jerusalem.

ACTION ITEM

Contact Sen. Van Hollen’s office and let him know what you think of his comments. Feel free to send this article. DC phone: (202) 224-4654. Contact your representatives as well.

Related articles:

NO Country Has A Right To Exist. Israel SHOULD Exist (January 2024)

The Green Line Through Jerusalem (May 2020)

Tolerance at the Temple Mount (November 2014)

Which Gazans Deserve Assistance?

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As the ceasefire between Palestinian terrorists and Israel begins today, the 2.2 million stateless Arabs (SAPs) in Gaza are clamoring for support. They seek to return to homes and rebuild neighborhoods. They seek food, clean water, and medications that were difficult to obtain when Arab gangs looted supplies during the war.

The United Nations has long maintained that its agency, UNRWA, is the sole group that can address the needs as a humanitarian organization with established operations in the strip for decades.

But UNRWA’s mission is NOT to care for Gazans but only a subset of them; those who are descendants of Arabs who left Israel in 1948. The SAPs who are descendants of people who have long-lived in Gaza (whose grandparents didn’t move there in 1948) are not entitled to UNRWA’s largess.

Do non-“refugees descendants” have to stay hungry? Do they have to pay to rebuild their homes while they watch their neighbors’ houses get rebuilt with global donations? Will aid organizations build houses only for “refugee descendants” and leave other Gaza residents to fend for themselves?

Around 73% of Gazans are entitled to services from UNRWA, according to UNRWA in December 2020. Is the United Nations planning on ignoring the needs of the other 27%? Had UNRWA’s Gazan wards only accounted for 10% of the population, would the situation be different whereby the UN would not profess unique capabilities and not attempt to swoop in to address all of Gaza?

The UN has deliberately deceived the world to imagining that all Gazans – indeed all Palestinians – are refugees, entitled to global support. It uses “Palestinians”, “refugees” and “Gazans” interchangeably, in an attempt to continue to expand and extend its mandate, even though it was always conceived as a temporary agency with finite tasks. At this moment in time, it is advancing a power grab despite its gross and institutionalized failures.

UNRWA has long abused its mandate, and this is a moment to allow a different organization to address the humanitarian needs of ALL Gazans, not just UNRWA wards, and permanently shut down UNRWA in Gaza. Whichever group assumes governance of Gaza – perhaps a Palestinian Authority stripped of all members of Hamas in its parliament – should assume control of reconstruction efforts.

Related articles:

After UNRWA (February 2024)

Stop Genocide. End UNRWA (January 2024)

Shut UNRWA in Gaza Immediately (August 2018)

The United Nations’ Adoption of Palestinians, Enables It to Only Find Fault With Israel (March 2016)

Help Refugees: Shut the UNRWA, Fund the UNHCR (September 2014)

Inside The Failed Syrian State, The UN Zeroes In On Israel

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There is probably no greater example of a failed state in the world today than Syria.

A bloody civil war killed an estimated 600,000 people and displaced many millions internally and around the world. Headed by a ruthless leader who gassed his own people, backed by a leading state sponsor of terror in Iran, the Syrian government fell quickly to a US-designated terrorist organization, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). In its wake (and before), many actors took over swaths of Syria.

The United Nations Security Council met to address the failed Syrian state on January 8, 2025, to consider how to stabilize the situation.

Geir O. Pedersen, Special Envoy of the U.N. Secretary-General for Syria, spoke to the committee about the various parties who are operating in Syria beyond HTS including: the Syrian Democratic Forces and YPG, a US-backed Kurdish militant group, who operate in the northeast; the government of Turkey which has taken over much of northeast Syria along the border of Turkey; a U.S.-led coalition which is fighting ISIL in the northwest; and Israel which has been taking out military sites and chemical weapons in the south.

During his review of the situation, Pedersen only cast Israel as a bad actor, both in “violating the 1974 disengagement agreement,” (with a government that no longer exists), and in “using live ammunition against civilians,” echoing a theme of the U.N. that Israel is seeking a genocide of Arabs in the region.

Report to the UN Security Council about Syria on January 8, 2025

Tom Fletcher, Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator also addressed the council. He similarly spoke of challenges in Syria and only highlighted Israel as a rogue actor harming civilians.

Tom Fletcher report to UNSC highlighted Israel impacting “civilians, including children”

Other countries weighed in, including Syria, Iran and Russia, which took aim at Israel and the United States. No one mentioned Turkey’s seizing land and killing Kurds in Syria.

Syria at the UNSC points finger at the US and Israel only

Turkey addressed the Council even though it is not a member and leveled attacks against Israel, the Kurdish army and ISIS.

Israel did not address the council.

In a failed state with a terrorist group in charge, many terrorist groups operating openly, and several foreign governments with military personnel fighting in Syria, Israel was the spotlight at the U.N. for harming civilians and children.

In the 1970s, the United Nations was seized with the notion that Zionism is racism. Today it is awash in the belief that Israel is a genocidal state. It will most certainly distract the global body from addressing root causes of instability and death in Syria and beyond.

Related articles:

The Axis Of Nonexistence (December 2024)

The Deep Flaws In The UN’s “Peace” Coordinator (August 2024)

United Kingdom’s Home Grown Terrorism, Abroad (June 2023)

Imagining Israel’s Neighbors For The United States (March 2023)

The Anti-Semitism In Anti-Zionism (March 2023)

UN Secretary General Throws Shade on Israel from Lebanon (December 2021)

What “All Hell Will Break Out” May Look Like

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President-elect Donald Trump issued a warning to the U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas to release the 101 hostages it stole from Israel on October 7, 2023, or “all hell will break out” for them and the region. He would not comment further on what that meant for Hamas or its allies but reiterated that it would be severe.

Below are some thoughts on what actions the Trump administration might take, which fall into two principal categories: military and non-military.

Military

Trump’s first term in office did not see much activity in the way of American forces and action. While he did increase spending for the military over the Obama administration, his actual use of force was targeted and limited to particular strikes, such as the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and missile strikes on Syria for using chemical weapons. It is possible that Trump would order targeted attacks on Hamas operatives as well.

The general argument against this is that Israel has already pulverized Hamas in Gaza and there is little else that the U.S. could do. That is not true.

The United States has several things that Israel doesn’t have: massive bombs; incremental intelligence; and global influence.

At various points of the Hamas-initiated war, the Biden administration withheld some armaments to Israel, fearing it would harm civilians. Those bombs and other tools of warfare could be used against Hamas and its allies. Hezbollah tunnels in Lebanon and Iran’s nuclear program could be eviscerated with advanced weaponry, whether given to and launched by Israel or used by American forces directly.

U.S. intelligence and reach spans beyond the immediate actors. One of Hamas’s leaders, Khaled Mashal lives openly in Qatar, where the US has its largest military base in the Middle East. The Trump administration may give Qatar the option of green-lighting the elimination of Mashal and his associates or watch the US move its over 10,000-person force to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as the administration advances the Abraham Accords with a normalization agreement between Israel and KSA.

Non-military

The United States power can bring the world to pressure Hamas through political, economic and judicial actions. This is the opposite approach of the Biden administration and the world which put pressure on Israel to the detriment of the hostages. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken admitted as much that “every time we put pressure on Israel, Hamas backed off from the hostage deal.”

The initiatives start with a simple order: label every government, agency, business or person associated with Hamas a terrorist entity.

The Palestinian Authority‘s parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council, is led by Hamas. The PA would immediately become a designated terrorist group unless it fires every member of Hamas. All members of the PA would be subject to arrest and no organization would be permitted to send material support to the PA. Every US charity that sends money to the PA would lose tax-exempt status and/or be shut down.

The United Nations considers Hamas a legitimate political Palestinian party and its main agency in the region, UNRWA, closely coordinates with Hamas. UNRWA offices in the United States would be closed and the US would push allies to similarly halt funding to UNRWA and close its offices. UNRWA would not only lose all US funding and standing, but possibly the United Nations as well, if the organization continues to legitimize Hamas.

In addition to the “axis of resistance” of the Iranian proxies already on the terrorist list, Qatar and Turkey would be forced to chose between the United States and Hamas. Each would see its economies and regional aspirations quickly collapse should they side with terrorists. Ramifications could include not only moving all US assets out of Qatar to Saudi Arabia, but also supporting Israel and Cyprus to all energy claims in the Mediterranean Sea which Turkey covets.

In the United States, people who provide material support to not just Hamas, but the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA would be committing a criminal act. People would go to jail for up to 20 years or be deported. Entire groups, or perhaps just senior leadership of organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, Students for Justice in Palestine and others could be impacted, depending on their level of support.

In April 2024, Congress enacted the Hamas and Other Palestinian Terrorist Groups International Financing Prevention Act which requires the executive branch to impose sanctions on foreign states or persons that provide certain types of support to Hamas, and other Palestinian terrorist groups. Trump’s version of “hell” for Hamas supporters will be to not only enforce the will of Congress but to expand its targets by capturing the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA as Hamas affiliates.