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The Middle East Is Biden’s Worst Crisis
The region is on fire because the U.S. bid for détente with Iran has utterly failed.
By Walter Russell Mead
UNRWA exists to help fight the war to eradicate Israel
The revelation of ties between the U.N. aid agency and Hamas is a small part of the problem. The real issue is the purpose of the institution, which has always been to perpetuate the conflict.
JONATHAN S. TOBIN
Let’s not get caught up in the details of the controversy that made headlines this past weekend about the fact that 12 employees of UNRWA—the U.N. refugee agency dedicated to assisting the Palestinians—took part in the Hamas pogroms in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The New York Times broke the story, and many of the governments that are the principal funders of UNRWA, including the United States, which is the largest donor giving $422 million to it in 2023, have since expressed various levels of concern or outrage.
No one who knows anything about UNRWA can pretend to be surprised by what happened. The notion put forward by some of its apologists that the people who took part in the terror attacks are just a tiny minority of its 13,000 employees is not to be taken seriously. As The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported, it is estimated that approximately 10% of UNRWA employees are either active members or have ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
For years, it has been well known that UNRWA facilities, including schools and other places that are supposed to be devoted to charitable purposes, have been used by Hamas to store weapons or otherwise assist terrorists. Its education programs are as bad as those run by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority when it comes to indoctrinating young Palestinians in hatred for Israel and the Jews. UNRWA’s creation in 1949, coupled with its actions and the infrastructure it has built up since then, is dedicated to perpetuating the conflict with Israel. Forget philanthropy or—as every other refugee agency in the world focuses on—resettling those displaced by war in some safe place where they can make a new start in life.
That said, the notion that anything is shocking about the fact that a few of the UNRWA staff were caught taking part in the Oct. 7 attacks, including direct participation in kidnapping and mass murder, is a joke.
Sadly, so is most of the discussion about holding UNRWA accountable.
An unaccountable U.N. agency
Much to the dismay of Israel-haters like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the Biden administration announced that it was suspending funding of UNRWA. But when the details are drilled down, it turns out that the United States is continuing to pay the money it already pledged but will only put a pause on sending cash for new projects. The same is true for Germany and Canada, as well as some other donor nations. The government of the Netherlands has suspended all funding but other countries, like Ireland, Spain and Turkey, are refusing to take any actions to hold UNRWA accountable.
If the past is any indication of the future, even those who have spoken out about this, like the United States, will eventually, even if quietly, resume full funding of UNRWA. As part of his policies that attempted to hold Palestinians and their enablers accountable for their support for terrorism and rejection of peace, former President Donald Trump cut all ties with and funding for UNRWA in 2018. Unfortunately, among the first actions when Joe Biden took office in 2021, he reversed that move and restored funding. Biden and his foreign-policy team are steadfast supporters of the United Nations and everything it does, regardless of the fact that it has long been a cesspool of antisemitism.
Even those administration officials who have been the most outspoken in reaffirming Israel’s right to self-defense—like John Kirby, the communications director for the National Security Council, who has also denounced Hamas and supported the goal of its elimination—also defended
The reason for this is that UNRWA has made itself indispensable to the business of caring for Palestinians in Gaza. It is, as it has been for the last 75 years, the primary conduit of assistance to a population that has been made dependent on the international community for all services, including employment. As such, it can and does present itself to the world as the embodiment of philanthropy, providing sustenance to an enormous number of people in need.
That is why any effort to investigate its activities and penalize it for its close ties to terrorists is always derailed by invoking its good works and the notion that if it were shut down, millions would starve.
So, even when UNRWA is caught red-handed storing rockets to be fired at Israel or even having its staff actively taking part in the largest mass slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the odds that its parent organization or the various nations that have spent billions of their citizens’ taxpayer dollars on funding it will do anything other than slap it on the wrist are negligible.
As with the rest of his policies that ignored the advice of the foreign-policy establishment and the “experts,” Trump had it right on UNRWA. The only theoretical hope for there to be peace between Israel and the Palestinians must start with the abolition of institutions that not only provide assistance and employment to terrorists but have as their purpose the perpetuation of a futile quest to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet. UNRWA must not merely be defunded. It must be abolished.
A world full of refugees
The very fact of its existence is a function of the way the international community has acted to prevent a resolution of the conflict.
When UNRWA was created by the United Nations in 1949, the plight of refugees was among the world’s most pressing problems. Up to 60 million people were displaced in Europe during and immediately after the Second World War.
That included those Jews who had survived the Holocaust seeking to go to Israel or the West, as well as millions of others who had been uprooted for one reason or another. Among them were ethnic Germans who were thrown out of their homes throughout Eastern Europe, including traditionally German regions like East Prussia. As Europe adjusted to new borders largely imposed by the demands of the Soviet Union, many people were forcibly evicted and told to move to places where their ethnicity would be welcomed. Any who resisted were not supported by the international community. They were violently repressed, imprisoned and forgotten.
Nor was Europe the only region where there was a refugee crisis. When Britain abandoned its rule of India, the subcontinent was partitioned into two separate nations—largely, Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan. The drawing of those lines on the map created 14 million people who found themselves on the wrong side of the new borders and became refugees. More than 1 million people died in the ethnic and religious violence there as massive populations scrambled to find new homes.
Arab and Jewish refugees
Coming around the same time as the catastrophe caused by the partition of India was the refugee problem caused by Britain’s leaving another of its former possessions: the Mandate for Palestine. The United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states: one for the Jews and one for the Arabs with Jerusalem being an international enclave. While the Jews accepted the partition scheme, the Arabs did not. The leaders of the Palestinian Arabs—like the pro-Nazi Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Al-Husseini—declared war on the Jews. Neighboring Arab nations supported them and invaded the newborn State of Israel on its first day of existence in May 1948.
The Arab war to destroy Israel not only failed; the fighting led hundreds of thousands of Arabs in the former Mandate to flee. A small minority were forced out by Israelis during bitter fighting in some areas. But most of them left out of fear of what would happen to them if they fell under the rule of Jews (and with the expectation that they would take over all the land once the Jews were “thrown into the sea”). That was mostly the product of projection since in many instances Jews captured by their foes were massacred. But it was also the result of propaganda from the Arab side in the fighting in which they sought to demonize their enemies and strengthen the will of the Palestinian Arabs to fight.
During the same period as approximately 700,000 Arabs became refugees, some 800,000 Jews either fled or were forced to flee their homes in the Arab and Muslim world where they had lived for centuries. The very different disposition of those two populations says all anyone needs to know about the next 75 years of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
The Jewish refugees were resettled in a massive philanthropic project funded by Jews around the world. Most of those refugees went to Israel, where they faced hardships in what was then a very poor and embattled country. Today, their descendants make up about half the Jewish population and have contributed enormously to its defense and flourishing as a modern state. Others found new homes in the United States and other parts of the world.
Unlike every other refugee population, the Palestinian Arabs were not resettled. They were kept in camps throughout the Middle East with the largest concentration in Gaza, which was controlled by Egypt from 1949 to 1967. They were prevented from finding new homes in Arab and Muslim countries, where they spoke the language and shared a common culture. Nor were they enabled to go elsewhere to make new lives.
Instead, they were kept in place to wait for the day when they could “go home” to their former villages in what was now Israel. Their leaders and the rest of the Arab world opposed their resettlement, doing all they could to prevent it.
And the agency that enabled this policy to continue for generations was none other than UNRWA.
It’s important to understand that at the time when all these refugee problems arose, the United Nations created two refugee agencies. One, UNRWA, deals only with the Palestinians. The other, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (or UNHCR) has the responsibility for all of the other refugees in the world.
The UNHCR has its flaws, but its job is to help the refugees by giving them not just immediate aid in surviving being displaced by wars and other disasters but also assistance in resettling in places where it will be safe for them. Their goal is to ensure that their problems are resolved and that their children will make new lives rather than continue to live in camps.
By contrast, the UNRWA exists solely to ensure that Palestinian refugees are never resettled. That’s why almost all of the people who are called Palestinian refugees are the descendants of the people who fled the war the Arab world started in 1948. Several generations have been born in the camps but, contrary to the way other populations are treated, all are given the same status as those who were the original 1948 refugees.
A humane and rational policy would have led to their being absorbed into other populations. But that’s not UNRWA’s job. It operates the ultimate welfare state in which generations are kept dependent on charity. Worse than that, its programs and policies all encourage the Palestinians to go on believing that someday Israel will cease to exist, and then they can return to where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived three-quarters of a century ago. Though it pretends to be a humanitarian force, it encourages its charges to look forward to the day when Hamas’s genocidal objective—the mass murder of Israel’s 7 million Jews—will be achieved.
Therefore, it’s little surprise that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas and that among its staff are people who take part in terrorist atrocities. And that much of the aid it receives from the world goes to help Hamas continue to function. UNRWA allows the very people its donors think are helping to be used as human shields in a cynical hopeless war.
So, let’s not waste much time arguing about the details of UNRWA’s complicity in Oct. 7 or other acts of terror. The only discussion that needs to be held is one about its abolition and replacement by a genuine refugee agency. The world needs one that can give Palestinians new homes rather than keep them in misery awaiting another Holocaust for the Jews that they’ve been led to believe will magically solve their problems.
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Trump, has become an easy touch for women who want to get rich and they are all deemed believable..
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E. Jean Carroll's Answer on How She'll Spend Her Trump Money Could Win Him the Election
By Matt Vespa
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Three Presidents .
What did Presidents Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower have in common?
This is something that should be of great interest for you to pass around. I didn't know of this until it was pointed out to me.
Back during the great depression, Herbert Hoover ordered the deportation of ALL illegal aliens in order to make jobs available to American citizens that desperately needed work.
Harry Truman deported over two million illegal aliens after WWII to create jobs for Returning veterans.
In 1954 Dwight Eisenhower deported 13 million Mexicans. The program was called Operation Wetback. It was done so WWII and Korean War veterans would have a better chance at jobs. It took two years, but they deported them!
Now, if they could deport the illegal aliens back then, they could surely do it today. If you have doubts about the veracity of this information, enter Operation Wetback into your favorite search engine and confirm it for yourself.
Why, you might ask, can't they do this today? Actually, the answer is quite simple. Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower were men of honor, not untrustworthy politicians looking for votes!
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The Boldness of Mazi Pilip
The Republican from Long Island is just the live wire to lead the GOP response to the ilk of Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
A Nassau County legislator, and candidate for Congress, Mazi Melesa Pilip. Courtsey Pilip campaign Via Twitter
Could Mazi Pilip be the answer to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar and her ilk? That’s our hope after her interview with our A.R. Hoffman. The GOP majority in the House is down to but two seats. So the special election on February 13 on Long Island will give voters of New York’s third district a chance to boost the GOP’s slender margin in the House and bolster efforts to tame overspending, control the border, and rein in regulatory abuses.
Even if Republicans had a more comfortable position in the House, the merits of the GOP nominee over her Democratic rival, Thomas Suozzi, are clear. Like Ms. Omar, Ms. Pilip is an immigrant from Africa. The youthful Ms. Pilip was born in Ethiopia to Jewish parents. She was airlifted to Israel at 12 and later served in the paratroopers’ brigade in the IDF. She moved to America, settling at Great Neck, Nassau County, and now has seven children.
“She is the American success story,” Peter King, who represented Long Island for some 30 years, tells the New York Times. “Some people have superstar capacity. She walks into the room, people notice her, they listen to her.” Following her election to the Nassau County Legislature, Ms. Pilip’s energies have been focused on “investments in public safety,” her campaign biography says, and she has “held the line on property taxes.”
On the Israel-Hamas war, Ms. Pilip’s election would rebuke a Democratic coterie in the House, including Ms. Omar, that is agitating for a cease-fire. She vows to stand with “our closest ally,” explaining on X that as “a former IDF soldier, I understand how to keep Israel safe, as well as Americans in Israel.” She avers she “will never bow to terrorists.” Ms. Pilip is just the kind of leader to rebut the canard of colonialism from the Democratic Party’s leftists.
The Democrats and their allies, sensing the stakes in the race, are “flooding the zone” with campaign ads, our Russell Payne reports. They plan to spend some $7 million, with $5.2 million coming from the Democrats’ House Majority political action committee amid a larger attempt to smear Ms. Pilip as a “MAGA Republican” candidate. The GOP is stepping in with some $2 million in ads in what the New York Post calls a “catch-up” effort.
“Shame on them,” Ms. Pilip tells Mr. Hoffman. She adds that voters in the third district “are smart enough to realize who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. And I am here to serve the people, to be the voice for everyone.” There are grounds for GOP optimism considering the recent trends on Long Island. “Republicans would seem to enter the race as the party to beat based on the past three years of electoral history,” City & State reports.
That contrasts with Mr. Suozzi’s position vis-à-vis his fellow Democrats, from whom he appears to be keeping a judicious distance. His launch event “featured no other current or former Democratic officials,” City & State notes. He appears to have no plans to seek campaigning help from Governor Hochul. No wonder, seeing as Congressman Lee Zeldin, Ms. Hochul’s rival in 2022, beat her soundly in Nassau County and Long Island.
The Times calls it “a bold gamble by Long Island Republicans” to back Ms. Pilip, whom it calls a “relatively unknown candidate” with a “thin political résumé.” If Ms. Pilip is relatively inexperienced, though, it’s to her credit, given that what she lacks experience in is hiking taxes. Ms. Pilip made a fine impression in her visit to the Sun. She’d be a good bet on Lord Nelson’s advice — “the boldest measures are the safest.”
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Israel’s 116th Day of War
By Sherwin Pomerantz
After a relatively long lull in rocket fire from Gaza, a barrage of 10 rockets were fired at the Tel Aviv area on Monday afternoon. It appears that Hamas is taking unexploded Israeli ordnance and sending it back over the border in our direction. No one was hurt in this latest attack.
The hostage release and cease fire talks on Sunday in Paris seemed to end hopefully. However, on Monday it was reported that Hamas rejected the principles of the agreement and may not be willing to release any of the 136 hostages still in Gaza until Israel agrees to permanently end the war. Yet the Foreign Minister of Qatar said today that there are still avenues open for agreement so….we will see. The story is not over.
Israel Security Agency director Ronen Bar visited Cairo on Monday to discuss the Gaza war effort with the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Abbas Kamel, Axios reported. According to two Israeli sources, the security situation along the Philadelphi Corridor was a major focus of the talks, in particular how Cairo and Jerusalem can work together to prevent weapons smuggling across the 14 kilometer (9 mile) buffer running the length of the Gaza-Egypt border to ensure that Hamas is not allowed to rearm. Cairo opposes Israeli military control over the Philadelphi Corridor. Despite Egypt’s denial of the existence of smuggling tunnels beneath it, security officials believe that the Philadelphi Corridor serves as the primary route for weapons bound for Hamas.
Israeli counterterrorism forces foiled an Oct. 7-inspired terror attack early Tuesday, targeting a Palestinian cell hiding and planning the attack from the Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin in the West Bank. Wanted Hamas terrorist Mohammad Jalamna, 27, who was in direct communication with Hamas leadership abroad, was killed during the operation. He was responsible for transferring weaponry and ammunition to Hamas terrorists across the West Bank for shooting attacks targeting Israelis.
Regarding the United Nations essentially acknowledging that some of its Gaza-based employees participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, the saga continues. The UN also said that it fired employees over their alleged participation in the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. But this is virtually guaranteed to be the absolute least of what they will find when investigators open up that can of worms.
It is now clear that UNRWA exists for the purpose of perpetuating war against Israel, and thus is disinclined to believe a word the Israelis say. Given hard evidence of such a convincing nature it had to act immediately.
None of this should be terribly surprising. There is no such thing as an “international” organization in Gaza, because everything becomes an extension of the group once there. The bulk of UNRWA’s money is spent on “education,” and its schools are rife with bald anti-Semitic incitement and grievance farming. UNRWA teachers have been using a Telegram channel to celebrate the Oct. 7 attacks. And at least one Israeli hostage in Gaza has notified authorities that he was held by an UNRWA teacher.
Then there is the revolving door between UNRWA and the International Committee of the Red Cross. Lazzarini, who runs UNRWA now, had previously worked for the ICRC in Gaza. The incoming director of the Red Cross, Pierre Krahenbuhl, spent years running UNRWA during the time when the schools became regular storage centers for Hamas weapons. UNRWA is inseverable from Hamas as long as Hamas rules Gaza, it’s just that simple. And lest we forget, this is not just some random NGO. It’s the United Nations.
UNRWA is not just corrupt; its existence is a corruption of international laws and norms. It has created its own definition of “refugee” only for Palestinians, because its goal is to keep the conflict unsolved so it can act as a vanguard of the war on the Jewish state. It is a cash conduit to one of the world’s major terrorist groups, which also happens to be an Iranian catspaw. May this be the beginning of a thorough investigation and the end of the west’s complicity in UNRWA’s reign of terror.
On the northern border with Lebanon there continues the tit-for-tat mutual shelling with time running out for a diplomatic solution to getting Hizballah to pull back to north of the Litani River. No one seems to want war with Lebanon, least of all the Lebanese. On the other hand the 100,000 Israeli who were evacuated from northern communities out of an abundance of caution would like to go home but cannot do so until the border is secure.
The good news is that a large number of troops have been brought out of northern Gaza and are returning home to their families. We all owe them an incredible debt of gratitude for not only leaving their families for so long, but putting their lives on the line as well. May the good Lord bless them and their families as we utter thanks for their safe return.
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I will end this memo with a rap up of a conference call l listened to by a young member of Israel's Knesset.
The speaker is obviously conservative and, like me, hawkish. He walked the audience through each of the fronts Israel is facing starting with Gaza.
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In the north of Gaza Israel began with air attacks, then moved troops in and basically has destroyed Hamas' battalions. They have not completed the war on various terrorists and that is now what is happening. This will take time. Since most Gazan Palestinians have left it makes the job less precarious. The IDF is flushing terrorists out, who are hiding in tunnels, and killing or capturing them.
In the south of Gaza, Israel has encircled the largest Gazan City and upon securing it, and the surrounding area, will move to the second largest and hope to end by controlling the Philadelphia Corridor near the border of Egypt and Gaza so the flow of illicit arms to Hamas abates.
The speaker objects to any Israeli aid negotiations and food distribution, at this time, because it flows to Hamas, disrupts the focus of the IDF's mission and sends a message of encouragement that is counter-productive.
He was emphatic, Israel needs to send an intense historic message they will not tolerate another 10/7 and will do everything to insure their people are safe.
He also said it is important the Hamas war must not expand but is not hopeful because Iran controls
what their surrogates can do.
At this point, he does not believe Hezbollah wants an expanded war nor Iran but Israel is prepared to respond and has the war material in place to carry out their goal and mission. The Houthi's are another matter as are the Palestinians living in Judea and Samaria. The IDF has arrested a lot of terrorists in Samaria and that area is more or less quiet but the PA could link with Hamas at any time, However, that un-likely.
He was very clear what Israel had to do should Iran become nuclear. Iran has made clear their genocidal intentions leaving Israel no choice but to engage.
He concluded with a discussion regarding the diplomatic arena and he again was emphatic that, initially and after the conclusion of the war, Israel must reoccupy Gaza for a period of time to insure it's own safety. He also was clear the discussion of a two state solution is premature and disruptive. Why? Because it undercuts the historic message he previous stated Israel must deliver to the world.
He was pressed for time and only answered two questions.
a) He responded Biden has been clear regarding America's commitment to help Israel and b) as I previously noted, Israel was fully prepared to fight on all fronts and had sufficient equipment and war materiel to finish the job with or without further re-supplies because Israel has spent years preparing.
As always, I am encouraged when I hear a clear eyed report but know nothing anyone says generally proceeds in lockstep fashion. In fact, it is obvious Biden is frightened at the prospect of a war with Iran. Lie it or not, that means Israel remains on the leash of our pathetic president. and his even more pathetic advisers, one of whom recently disappeared and was not in touch with Biden for 3 days and Biden seemed unaware .
I don't care how much you may be repulsed by Trump it is beyond comprehension you would favor Biden over Trump if that be your choice.
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