Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: UN

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Thursday, August 31, 2023

The UN's latest anti-Israel legal argument is predicated on lies

On Thursday, the UN published a document titled, "Study on the Legality of the Israeli Occupation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem."

It is 107 pages of tendentious and one-sided arguments all intended to declare Israeli actions since 1967 to be illegal. There are counterarguments to each of their arguments - but they don't let the readers know that.

However, the entire basis of the paper is bogus. Turn to page 18, which declares its "methodology.":

The study takes it as a starting point that the Palestinian territory – i.e., the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip – was occupied by Israel in 1967, in the course of an international armed conflict.

Setting aside Gaza for now, the question is - when did that territory become "Palestinian?"

Looking at newspaper articles in the years after the Six Day War, the West Bank was usually described as "occupied Jordan."

Here are two articles from 1972, the first about how militant Arabs threatened fellow Arabs running for office in the first elections in the West Bank after the war:

When, exactly, did the territory turn from "occupied Jordan" into "occupied Palestinian territory"?

It never happened. The world just went along with Palestinian propaganda and eventually believed it.

The question gets starker when we realize that Jordan's annexation of the West Bank in 1949 was illegal, and almost no nations recognized it. It was never legally Jordanian territory.

So the West Bank was never "occupied Jordan." It was part of the British Mandate of Palestine, the same mandate that promised the land to be the Jewish state. Not a Palestinian homeland - only a Jewish homeland.

This is international law, that has never been abrogated. Israel has a superior legal right to Judea and Samaria than anyone else. Israel's characterization of the territory as "disputed" was probably a mistake - it should have always claimed it all. But "disputed" is accurate, "occupied" is not.

Which is why the Mandate is never mentioned, and the "methodology" deliberately omits it, pretending that the territory is "occupied Palestinian territory" without ever saying when, legally, it became "Palestinian."

The paper spends a lot of time on the argument that the Mandate system provided a "sacred trust" for the rights of self-determination of the peoples in the territories. But as the Palestine Mandate document above shows, only the Jewish people were given that right under the Palestine Mandate. And the reason is as simple as it is unpalatable to the UN's legal "experts" - in 1920, no one considered that there existed an Arab "Palestinian people." The Arabs of Palestine who were speaking of nationalism wanted to become part of Syria, their interest in an independent state only arose (with very few exceptions) after the West drew the borders of British Mandate Palestine and unity with Syria was no longer an option.

To apply the League of Nations Mandate language to apply to the self determination of a people who didn't exist as a people at the time - who didn't even consider themselves a people - is the height of deception.

The next part of the "methodology" is even more absurd:n"The study also takes it as a starting point that Israel continues to occupy the Gaza Strip."

Before Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, no legal expert had ever said that an occupation is possible without soldiers physically on the ground controlling the territory.

For example, see the definition in the 1972 Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms:

Military occupiers are obligated, under international law, to set up a court system, to ensure that cities are governed and continue to run, to set up an entire bureaucracy to run the territory. That is impossible without "boots on the ground," the informal definition of occupation for over a hundred years.

Israel does not control Gaza. It cannot stop rockets or mortars, weapons manufacturing or military exercises. Israel cannot create a military court system - which is required under the rules of occupation. It cannot arrest anyone.

The second sentence makes it quite clear that Area A in the West Bank is not "occupied" even if one accepts that somehow the West Bank is "Palestinian territory."

As with all other legal analyses when it comes to Israel, this paper was intended from the outset to determine that Israel's actions and "occupation" are illegal. It set the ground rules to ensure that pesky arguments like the League of Nations Mandate or the accepted definitions of occupation pre-2005 not even be brought up. (When JFK blockaded Cuba, did the US "occupy" Cuba?)

This isn't international law. It is twisting international law against only one state - coincidentally, the only Jewish state.

And that is only the beginning of the problems with this document. But since the methodology itself is based on lies, that ensures that the rest of the document built on this foundation of lies is invalid as well.

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The Lebanese have always denied Palestinians access to their water network. Almost no one knows, and no one cares.

I spend a lot of time reading reports and news articles about how terribly Palestinians are treated in Lebanon - they cannot become citizens, they cannot access many jobs, there are many laws discriminating against them, they may not build in the camps, they cannot own land outside the camps. It is official, widespread and sanctioned discrimination that is far closer to apartheid than anything Israel has ever done.

But sometimes I still learn something.

UN Habitat wrote a long report on the State of Lebanese cities in 2021. On page 134, I saw something that surprised even me:

Water access standards is one of a range of determinants of slum living conditions. By definition, there are substantial differences between slum and non-slum households in terms of access to water and sanitation. The non-inclusion of slum settlements from service provision is often directly related to the legal tenure of the land in question. The UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme promotes the ‘need to enact laws and policies to dissociate the tenure status from service provision’ (WWAP, 2019:105). Palestinian camps, officially not connected to the public network, are relevant urbansited instances

I may be the first person on the planet to read page 134 of this report.

By and large, Palestinian camps in Lebanon are located in the middle of urban areas. The existing water infrastructure might not be ideal but it exists.

Lebanon decided long ago to deny Palestinian access to municipal water.

One would think that some NGO might have written about this over the past 75 years. But it is really hard to find anyone even elliptically talking about this.

Interpal says, "Palestinian refugees are forced to buy unregulated drinking water from local vendors." The World Health Organization says, "In Shatila, drilled wells within the camp provide water for drinking and other domestic purposes. These wells are managed by entrepreneurs who sell the water to residents, and distribute it as drinking water to households."

No one seems to ask why Lebanon never extended their water supply that already surrounds the camps into the camps themselves. And the people who clearly know about this don't seem to be very bothered by it.

There is a massive amount of anti-Israel reports published by NGOs and the media. New ones appear literally every day - the UN has a weekly newsletter listing them. Hardly any of them even mention human rights abuses against Palestinians outside those that are blamed on Israel.

Interestingly, whenever I mention a problem like this on Twitter, the Israel haters are so offended that they try to change the subject back to how Israel is the worst violator of human rights in the history of mankind.

This bias hurts Palestinians because they cannot even get basic media coverage of their very real suffering in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and elsewhere. No one is interested in these issues because the giant NGO industry is fueled by antisemitism, and they actively discourage highlighting any problem that doesn't blame Israel.

No Jews, no news.

(h/t Irene)

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Since 1948, in any given situation, there seem to always be exactly 420,000 Palestinians

Here's an interesting coincidence.

The UN in 1994:

An estimate made by Abu Lughod indicated that the average number of indigenous Palestinians was about 420,000 in the West Bank and about 80,000 in the Gaza Strip by the end of 1948.

News wires, March 2004:

Schools and virtually every shop were closed in this city {Gaza City], where 420,000 people live.

Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, 2007:

Estimates of IDPs in Israel vary widely. There is no government or United Nations estimate. Sources for estimates are accademics, Palestinian NGOs and Israeli papers. The lowest estimate is 150,000 and the highest is 420,000, which includes the children and grandchildren of Arab villagers displaced in 1948, as well as Bedouin communities displaced later on.

Human Rights Watch, 2010:

Israel’s differential treatment in law, regulations, and administrative practice directly affect the roughly 490,000 Jewish settlers and 420,000 Palestinians in areas under its exclusive control in the West Bank (including in Area C and East Jerusalem).

Daily Sabah, 2018:

The 420,000 Palestinians who currently reside in East Jerusalem possess permanent residency ID cards and are treated as foreign immigrants by the Israeli government. (The article predicted that Israel would take away the residency permits of all those Palestinians, a prediction that, like all of them, never came close to being true.)

Eurasia Review, 2018, headline:

What’s Behind The ‘Disappearance’ Of 420,000 Palestinians In Lebanon?

WASH Cluster, State of Palestine, 2020:

WEST BANK: 482,509 of people suffering limited access to water; 420,000 persons consume less than 50 l/c/d.

OpenDemocracy, April 2020:

Palestinians in East Jerusalem: living under a deadly virus and a violent occupation: "There is inescapable and particular on-going acute anxiety about the future of these 420,000 Palestinians."

World Food Programme, August 2020:

In support of the MoSD’s response plan, which estimated that 70,000 families (420,000 people) have been affected by the spike in COVID-19 in Gaza...

UNRWA, 2021:

UNRWA is a lifeline to nearly 420,000 of the most vulnerable Palestine refugees in Syria.

Jeff Halper in Arena, June 2021:

Of the 150,000 Palestinians who remained in the country, the war displaced 30,000 to 40,000. Not allowed to return to their homes (which were either demolished or turned over to Jewish Israelis) and wanting to remain sumud (steadfast) near their lands, this population of internally displaced Palestinians has today grown to 420,000.

Middle East Monitor, July 2022:

The Nakba resulted in 750,000 Palestinians being driven from their homes; the 1967 Naksa saw another 420,000 forced to leave.

Al Jazeera, October 2022:

Since the attack, Israeli forces have imposed a continuing blockade on the area around Nablus, restricting the movement of about 420,000 Palestinians, including patients, elderly people and children, who must wait for hours before being able to cross.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, July 2023: (Video, 2:04:33)

“This year, actually over, since the beginning of my mandate [May 1, 2022], I have borne witness to a series of deeply distressing events. 420,000 Palestinians, including 91 children, and 56 Israelis, including five children, have been killed. ”

(She later walked this back, saying the number was 426.)

That's 14 separate times, in different contexts, that "expert" quoted a figure of 420,000 Palestinians.

I am not saying this is a conspiracy or anything like that. It is just a very strange coincidence for that number to pop up in such disparate ways.

420,000 seems like a more realistic, solid estimate than "400,000" or "450,000."

(h/t Irene)

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The UN's history of the "Question of Palestine" omits every single Palestinian attack on Jews

The UN has a webpage where it shows a timeline on the "Question of Palestine."

It is biased as hell.

It starts with "1885 – The term 'Zionism' first coined by the Viennese writer, Nathan Birnbaum."

There is no mention of Jewish history in the region for thousands of years. No mention of Jewish kingdoms. No mention of the centrality of Eretz Israel and Jerusalem to Judaism. No mention of the Bible.

But after that, it simply ignores or whitewashes every single act of terrorism by Palestine's Arabs.

It doesn't mention the murderous Palestinian pogrom against Jews in 1929.

It says, "1936/1939 – Palestinian rebellion against the British Mandate and Jewish immigration." But not that Arabs murdered Jews, just that it was a "rebellion."

It doesn't say anything about the Arab League boycott of Jews.

It doesn't mention any Arab attacks on Jews in 1947-48. No outbreak of hostilities hours after the UN Partition resolution, no mention of the constant attacks on Jewish civilians, no mention of the Hadassah Hospital convoy massacre or the many other attacks on Jewish civilians - but it does mention Deir Yassin, and exaggerates the number of dead as "hundreds." .

The UN gets the date of Israel's independence wrong, saying it happened on May 15, 1948.

There were scores of fedayeen attacks by Palestinian Arabs against Israel in the 1950s and 60s, and hundreds of Israelis were killed. Not one incident is mentioned.

But the UN describes the 1966 As-Samu incident, where Israeli and Jordanian troops battled after a land mine killed 3 IDF soldiers, as a "massacre" of Palestinians. 15 Jordanian soldiers and three civilians were killed. It was not a massacre by any definition.

There is not one mention of Palestinian airplane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s.

It says, "1987 – First 'Intifada' begins in the Jabaliya Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip." It doesn't mention that the intifada killed hundreds of Israelis. The many terror attacks that occurred during the Oslo process are nowhere to be found.

Similarly, it says, "Ariel Sharon’s al-Haram al-Sharif visit in September 2000 triggers the Second Palestinian Intifada."

Not a word about Palestinian suicide bombings, or bus bombings, or attacks on pizza shops and Passover seders and bar mitzvahs.

And of course no mention later about rockets from Gaza, massacring rabbis or kidnapping and murdering kids. Hamas is not mentioned as a terror group - or even militant group. In fact, the word "terror" is nowhere to be seen. Neither is "Islam," "Muslim" or "Jihad," although Jews are mentioned.

The Holocaust is not mentioned either. There is simply no information on why Jews might want to have their own homeland in the region.

There is plenty of other anti-Israel bias in wording and choice of incidents.

According to this official UN history, Palestinians have not attacked, let alone killed, a single Jew. The only aggression mentioned is from Jewish and Zionist groups.

The UN's anti-Israel bias is unmistakable even in this public document that is pretending to be objective.

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The UN just said that burning the Quran is against international law

In 2019, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 73/328, "Promoting interreligious and intercultural dialogue and tolerance in countering hate speech." It included this paragraph:

Strongly deploring all acts of violence against persons on the basis of their religion or belief, as well as any such acts directed against their homes, businesses, properties, schools, cultural centres or places of worship, as well as all attacks on and in religious places, sites and shrines that are in violation of international law,

A resolution voted on yesterday thas an identical title. But it has a paragraph that says this:

Strongly deploring all acts of violence against persons on the basis of their religion or belief, as well as any such acts directed against their religious symbols, holy books, homes, businesses, properties, schools, cultural centres or places of worship, as well as all attacks on and in religious places, sites and shrines in violation of international law,

It adds "religious symbols" and "holy books" to what cannot be attacked, and it changes "that are in violation of international law" to "in violation of international law."

In other words, Pakistan just managed to pass a UNGA resolution that states that burning Qurans is against international law.

There was, by all accounts, a major debate. Spain tried to take out the words "in violation of international law" from the text, but its attempt was voted down, 62-44 with 24 abstentions.

And then the entire resolution was adopted by consensus.

While burning the Quran is something to be condemned, it is not against international law, and this is on the slippery slope of adopting Islamic concepts of blasphemy as something the entire world must adopt.

The text is in the preamble, and UNGA resolution itself, has no legal effect, but this is still significant - people use the text of UN resolutions as evidence of what international law is.

Two weeks ago, the UN Human Rights Council passed its own resolution that "Calls upon States to adopt national laws, policies and law enforcement frameworks that address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred that constitute incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, and to take immediate steps to ensure accountability."

As one critic notes, "One only has to look at some of the 28 states that voted in favor of the (HRC) resolution to realize that the real purpose is not to counter hate speech or foster equality and tolerance, but to provide authoritarian governments cover and legitimacy when suppressing dissent."

There is a thin line between hate speech that could lead to violence - which is incitement - and legitimate criticism. Muslim-majority states are trying to blur that line to force the West to adopt their own bans on blasphemy as international law.

As we saw in the UN yesterday, the West caved. But free speech is not something to give up on.

I don't have the text of the UNGA resolution, but the UNHRC resolution has at least two other problematic elements.

One is that, as we've seen, any statements against antisemitism are always paired with condemnations of Islamophobia. But the UNHRC resolution, supposedly against religious hatred, mentioned Islamophobia - and not a word about antisemitism. Which makes it pretty obvious that people are not serious about combating antisemitism.

The other is that the UNHRC resolution refers to the Quran consistently as "the Holy Qur’an." The word "Holy" should not be there - the Quran is only holy to Muslims. The insistence of that language indicates again that these resolutions are not meant to fight religious hatred as much as they are to elevate Islam as a belief over others.

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The world sends a message: Israel should just accept Jews being murdered

From Times of Israel:

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres on Thursday said Israel used excessive force in the counter-terror operation in Jenin earlier this week and blamed Israel for the violence in the West Bank city.

During a press briefing at UN Headquarters in New York City, Guterres said he had been “deeply disturbed” by news of the Jenin operation and “strongly condemns all acts of violence against civilians.”

Asked if his condemnation applied to both sides of the conflict, Guterres said, “It applies to all use of excessive force and obviously in this situation there was an excessive force used by Israeli forces.”

“Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in a crowded refugee camp were the worst violence in the West Bank in many years, with a significant impact on civilians,” Guterres said, blaming Israel for disruptions to water and electricity services, and blocking people from accessing medical care, a charge that Israel denied.

“I once again call on Israel to abide by its obligations under international law, including the duty to exercise restraint and use only proportional force,” Guterres said. “The use of airstrikes is inconsistent with the conduct of law enforcement operations.”

“I understand Israel’s legitimate concerns with its security but escalation is not the answer,” he added. “It simply bolsters radicalization and leads to a deepening cycle of violence and bloodshed.”

The article goes on to quote other UN officials also claiming that the Jenin operation was excessive and disproportionate.

Guterres is the least anti-Israel UN Secretary General in many decades. But his statement reveals the thinking of much of the Western world, even from Israel's putative allies. When they frame their criticisms in terms of proportionality, they are saying that Israel should simply accept that terrorists will kill Jews every few days, and only use token methods to try to stop them.

Jenin's camp had turned into a locus for terror. The PA didn't do anything to stop that from happening. The Jenin Brigades have been building a Gaza-style military center in the midst of a civilian area - just like Gaza. The longer Israel would wait, the more difficult the inevitable counter-terror operation would become, and the more it would affect civilians.

The IDF managed to destroy critical terror infrastructure, something that could not easily be done with only ground troops. The operation took months to plan and clearly the Israeli intelligence on targeting crucial infrastructure was excellent. The additional force and airpower used reduced the number of casualties compared to what a ground-only operation would have done. And every single Palestinian killed was an armed militant - a valid military target.

In other words, this operation was successful by every metric, including proportionality. And while the IDF cannot stop all "lone wolf" operations, it can stop much bigger attacks that were being planned.

But Guterres and much of the Western world, outside of military analysts, simply do not understand the facts. They don't see that the increased firepower is necessary because of the increased capabilities of the terrorists. And they cling to how they pretend things are, not the reality on the ground.

Which brings up another point from another UN official:

On Tuesday, the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk decried the cycle of violence in Israel and the West Bank... Turk said the scale of the Jenin operation, including the use of repeated airstrikes, along with the destruction of property, raised serious issues regarding international human rights norms and standards.

Some of the methods and weapons used “are more generally associated with the conduct of hostilities in armed conflict, rather than law enforcement,” he said.

“The use of airstrikes is inconsistent with rules applicable to the conduct of law enforcement operations. In a context of occupation, the deaths resulting from such airstrikes may also amount to willful killings,” he said.

Turk is saying that as an occupier, Israel is only legally allowed to do "law enforcement" and not treat this as an armed conflict.

He has it exactly backwards. Israel doesn't occupy Jenin - if it did, then the terrorists there would never have been able to build such an extensive infrastructure. Jenin is not under Israeli control, and it is clearly not under Palestinian Authority control - it is under Iranian control by proxy. The terrorists are not "criminals." Criminals don't walk around openly with M-16s.

If Israel would wait longer, Jenin would become another Gaza, and the steps necessary to protect Israeli lives would be much harsher. If these UN officials really cared about human rights, they would want terror groups combatted earlier rather than wait until it is too late.

Israel's actions are the only way to minimize civilian casualties (outside of really re-occupying much of Area A.) People whose very jobs are to uphold human rights should understand these basic facts - and when they are so ignorant of the realities on the ground, they shouldn't say anything until they learn the entire story.

(That being said, Israel once again did not do a good job explaining this operation.)

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The number of mega-large families supported by UNRWA is ballooning. Something isn't adding up.

The more you dig into UNRWA's own website, the sketchier it looks.

UNRWA has a population dashboard showing statistics of those it gives services to (much more than their already wildly inflated "registered refugee" count.)

It shows the size of families that it helps. And some of them are unusually large.

As of the first quarter of this year, UNRWA supports 1642 families of size 15-19, 167 sized 20-24, 36 sized 25-29 and 4 with over 30 members.

The number of mega-families supported, with more than 14 members, has skyrocketed since 2020, going up an astonishing 17%, from 1585 to 1851! The number of families from 10-14 members also went up a great deal, by 14%. At the same time the number of "refugees" only went up by 4.5%.

So what's going on?

There is an outside possibility that there are a few families with over 25 members, because UNRWA allowed men with multiple wives to register. And if the patriarch is a "refugee" then his wives and children are all considered "refugees" as well.

But there is also a good chance that families simply do not tell UNRWA when family members die. Why would they? UNRWA doesn't check, as far as I can tell - they seem to ask people to register deaths on the honor system using an app. Palestinians have been known to not report deaths of family members since the agency began.

Looking at it another way, the population dashboard claims that there are 480461 "refugees" over the age of 70 today (not counting the many non-refugees receiving UNRWA services.) The total number of UNRWA refugees in 1953 was 900,000.

Does it make sense that half the people of all ages living in 1953 are alive today?

They are saying that about 9% of all "refugees" receiving services alive today are over 70, when the population of Palestinians within the area of the British Mandate over 70 stands at about 2%.

UNRWA is not reporting anything close to accurate numbers, and they are exaggerating the number of people they serve a great deal.

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Latest EoZ memes, comics, posters

This is a good batch.

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"Human rights orgs" give the world permission to hate Jews again

In 2001, Barbara Perry wrote a book called "In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crimes." Chapter 7, "Permission to Hate: Ethnoviolence and the State" says:

[H]ate-motivated violence can flourish only in an enabling environment. In the United States, such an environment historically has been conditioned by the activity-and inactivity-of the state. State practices, policy, and rhetoric often have provided the formal framework within which hate crime-as an informal mechanism of control-emerges. Practices within the state-at an individual and institutional level-that stigmatize, demonize, or marginalize traditionally oppressed groups legitimate the mistreatment of these same groups on the streets. This chapter examines the ways in which state rhetoric, policy, and practice provide the context for violence against minorities.

She brings examples of how political figures, by invoking or dog-whistling tropes against oppressed groups, enable hate crimes against the same groups.

The theory seems to have merit. After all, when bigotry is normalized, then the environment is riper for people who want to act in a bigoted way. They don't feel like they are outliers and they believe that there would be fewer consequences for their actions.

There was a cottage industry of people warning that Donald Trump's alleged bigotry would increase hate crimes, and then magically finding such correlations. (The increase in hate crimes began in the second term of the Obama administration, but for some reason no one seems to blame him.)

Relatively few people noted that there was a similar increase in hateful speech from the Left in the same time period - much of it directed at Trump voters.

To be sure, hate from the Left doesn't usually translate into direct hate crimes, while far-Right hate sometimes does. But hate is always directed at the Other - and it is just as reprehensible when the Other is black or gay, or whether The Other is Republican or live in flyover states.

A major barrier to having feelings of hate is that no one wants to believe that they are bigots. They want to believe that their hate is a righteous hate towards a group of people who richly deserve it. It just so happens that groups like Black people, gays, or women are easily categorized and hate towards them is more easily analyzed than hate for political opponents. However, the emotions are the same, and just as destructive - the same feeling of superiority versus the Other and the same imperative that the Other not have the same rights as those of the hater.

Which brings us to modern hate of Jews.

Jews are indeed a defined group with a rich history of victimhood. Outside of the fringe that are white supremacist or neo-Nazi, people don't want to think of themselves as having the label "antisemite.". The Holocaust is still in living memory and no one wants to be on the side of the Nazis.

But lots of people are itching for an excuse to hate Jews without being called antisemitic, indeed while claiming that they are against antisemitism. They want someone to give them permission to hate in a way that they can still look themselves in the mirror - or better yet, to consider themselves paragons of morality.

The UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and other "human rights organizations" have been happy to jump in and provide exactly that permission.

Have you ever noticed that the thorough, multiple debunkings of the "apartheid" slander against Israel get no attention? It is partially because the modern antisemites aren't looking for real reasons to hate Israel and Israeli Jews - they are looking for permission to act on the hate they already had beforehand. Once an Amnesty or a UN gives them that permission, by giving Israel a label of "racist" or "Jewish supremacist," they can pretend that their hate is not toxic Nazi-style bigotry but righteous moral indignation. They have no desire to look beyond the modern slanders of accusing Jews of moral crimes - they have "experts" on their side, and that is all they need to legitimize this new bigotry. The 200 page papers don't need to be read or analyzed; they are meant to simply give permission for the masses to hate Jews eight decades after Auschwitz.

This is the same permission that Barbara Perry noted for bigotry on the Right. NGOs fulfill the functions of the Perry's state-supported hate - in fact, they are in some ways more respected because they position themselves as having no political agenda, only a moral one.

Apologists might argue that this Leftist antisemitism, if they even admit it exists, is still much less serious than far-Right antisemitism. The neo-Nazi antisemites are more likely to have guns and to directly murder Jews, while the Leftist antisemites are merely boycotting Israel. If you define the consequences of antisemitism merely by counting the bodies killed directly by the bigots, they would have a point.

However, we have seen in recent years that while the Leftist version of the world's oldest hatred might not directly attack Jews, it encourages Palestinians and Iranian proxies to attack them - and gives them their own moral cover.

They have created an additional false intellectual framework that claims that Palestinian terrorism is legitimate self defense, and that Israel has no right to defend itself or its citizens from Palestinian terror. They push lies that US military aid to Israel has no oversight and that US arms are being used for war crimes - with the intent to destroy Israel's ability to defend Jews from Palestinian terror. They fund "charities" and Palestinian NGOs that are tightly tied to, and often fronts for, terror groups like the PFLP.

This is simply another layer of looking for, and finding, permission to hate and dehumanize.

Jews killed by right-wing crazies in a synagogue in the US are just as dead as Jews killed by Palestinian Jew-haters while driving in their cars in Judea or exiting their synagogue in Jerusalem. But the Left doesn't consider the latter to be victims of antisemitism - the cognitive dissonance would be too painful So they construct yet another castle in the sky, backed up by academics, pretending that the Palestinians who openly admit and publish their hatred for Jews don't really hate Jews and that they are the victims, not the dead Jews.

The entire house of cards of Leftist justifications for hating Jews (and only Jews) in Israel would collapse in an instant if the "progressive" anti-Zionists would spend five minutes looking at the critiques of the "apartheid" slanders and absurd arguments justifying murdering Jews. Or ten minutes to compare Israel's supposed "crimes" with the acts of any other country in the history of warfare. But truth isn't their goal - they only want to have permission to engage in the same kind of bigotry that they claim is exclusive to the Right. Facts get in the way of their deep desire to put those uppity Jews in their place.

Today, in the streets of London, you can get a crowd of thousands to openly cheer the idea that Palestinians have the right to target and murder Jews, and only Jews, in Israel. They just change the word "murder" to "resistance" and terrorism magically transforms from a crime against humanity into a heroic action.

These bigots have permission from the UN, from Amnesty and HRW, from The Nation and Electronic Intifada, from Peter Beinart and Marc Lamont Hill and dozens of other "intellectuals," to hate Jews - and from there to incite the murder of Jews.

People wonder how the Holocaust could have happened. How, centuries after the Age of Enlightenment that normalized the concepts of human rights and equality, could an entire country be so brainwashed to hate Jews? How could such a hate be not only accepted but enthusiastically promoted by ordinary Germans?

The intellectual groundwork for such an event is being put in place in front of our eyes today.

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There was a most interesting communication between Israel's Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli and Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian territories.

Albanese had recently tweeted that "Israel has a right to defend itself, but can't claim it when it comes to the people it oppresses/whose lands it colonizes." The clear implication is that Jews who are killed by Palestinians have no right to self defense as long as the murderers can claim that they are oppressed by Israel.

Chikli wrote a pointed and detailed response to the UN, demanding that Albanese be fired.

Over 3000 years ago, the moral imperative not to kill was established as the most fundamental commandment given to humanity within the framework of the Ten Commandments - one of the most authentic human rights charter. Throughout history, the importance of the right to life and the prohibition of murder have been developed by philosophers such as John Locke, and has been incorporated into many official documents. One of the most prominent milestones in this context is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948, whose Article 3 declares that ''Everyone has the Right to life, liberty and security of person."

Against the background of this long process of establishing the universal right to life for all individuals, I am writing to express my profound shock, condemnation and dismay at the recent comments made by formal UN employee and special rapporteur, Ms. Frances. Albanese. Ms. Albanese's reprehensible, irresponsible and terror-inciting remarks made earlier this week called into question Israel's very right to defend the lives of its citizens.

Ms. Albanese's statement is not only outrageous but also explicitly denies the right to life and personal security of many Jewish citizens of the State of Israel. Her comments contradict the basic core foundational human rights upon which the United Nations is built, setting a dangerous precedent. It is also unacceptable for a UN representative to make such a statement, even if she thinks that part of the country is disputed territory.

I would like to draw your attention to a concerning matter regarding Ms. Albanese's recent remarks. It appears that her words may have been intentionally influenced by the recent horrific terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians: Just last week, a British-Israeli mother, Lucy Dee, and her two teenage daughters, Maia and Rina Dee, were brutally murdered in the Jordan Valley by a Palestinian terrorist who deliberately rammed their vehicle and then shot them at point blank range. Ms. Albanese's statement seems to suggest that Lucy Dee and her daughters, three innocent human beings driving on a holiday, were not deserving of the right to be protected by the State of Israel.

This statement is especially troubling, as it casts a dark shadow on Ms. Albanese's basic human compassion, and her ability to uphold the principles of the United Nations and carry out her duties as a representative on its behalf.

Regrettably, this is not an isolated instance of Ms. Albanese's relentless, systematic and irrational bias against Israel and display of antisemitism. As a representative who should be applying intemational law equally for all, irrespective of their faith, background or geographic locality, this is deeply concerning.

A particular, troubling example is her speech at a Hamas-sponsored conference in Gaza in November 2022, during which she urged her audience to "resist". Moreover, in recent years, Ms. Albanese has also accused the "Jewish Lobby" of controlling United States and Europe, supported the BDS campaign against Israel, compared Israelis to the Nazis and refused to condemn Palestinian terrorism.

Ms. Albanese's actions and statements clearly violate the impartiality and objectivity requirements outlined in the UN Code of Conduct for Special Rapporteurs. Her clear and persistent display of antisemitic rhetoric, hostility and prejudice towards Israel demonstrates that this particular rapporteur does not uphold these values. The United Nations is failing to uphold its own commitment to protecting fundamental human rights for all and applying equal treatment of all its member states by allowing Ms. Albanese to continue to spew hatred, antisemitism and incite violence. Her blindly one-sided anti-Israel mandate is unacceptable and clearly goes against the principles of the United Nations.

Therefore, I strongly urge you to take prompt action and terminate Ms. Albanese, position's permanently. It is s essential that the United Nations uphold its own principles and convey a resolute message that antisemitism and support for violence and terrorism have no place within its organization. In this context, I would like to refer to Chaim Herzog's powerful speech at the United Nations General Assembly on November 10, 1975, stating that "It is indeed fitting that the United Nations, which began its life as an anti-Nazi Alliance, should, 30 years later, find itself on its way to becoming the world center of anti-Semitism". We very much hope that it is still possible to change this sad situation.

Yours respectfully,
Amichai Chikli
Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism

Albanese did not respond to any of these points. Instead, she composed the equivalent of a schoolyard taunt:

I wonder how the 3000-year-old "moral responsibility [sic] not to kill" can be reconciled with the thousands of Palestinians killed since 2007 in oPt (4k out of conflict; 4.4k in-conflict, i.e. in Gaza: 2008/9, 2012, 2014, 2018/9, 2021, 2022).

She is saying that Israel is hypocritical on two levels: one by not adhering to the same human rights standards that Chikli is saying she is guilty of violating, and secondly of not upholding Jewish laws itself in killing Palestinians.

Even though Albanese has already distinguished herself with her blatant bias and tacit support for Palestinian terror, this is fairly astonishing. By not defending her own words justifying Palestinian "resistance," she is saying that Palestinian terror is not even worth discussion - because Israel is worse.

In her moral universe, two wrongs make a right.

It is clearly a false charge. The vast majority of those killed by Israel were either legitimate targets or collateral damage when Israel was attacking legitimate targets in wartime. Some were tragic accidents.

One is not liable for those deaths under either Torah law or the Geneva Conventions.

Palestinian terrorists, including the killers of the Dee mother and daughters, are guilty of murder in their deliberate targeting of uninvolved civilians; And Palestinian terror is illegal under both of them.

Albanese ignores or condones Palestinian murders while condemning Israel's defensive wartime actions - and she cynically invokes Jewish law to make her case, including that Jews (and only Jews) do not have the right to defend themselves against those who claim "oppression."

In Albanese' perverted moral calculus, Israeli Jews cannot claim to be oppressed by those who daily call for them to be ethnically cleansed from their homes. Only Palestinian lives matter and Palestinian murders are "legitimate resistance;" Jewish Israelis do not have the right to claim either self defense or oppression, which is the golden ticket needed to kill anyone on the other side.

This is another case where Albanese's own words cross the line from "anti-Zionism" into antisemitism.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Abbas: "Commemorating the Nakba must be our highest priority"

Palestinian dictator Mahmoud Abbas gave a speech to a number of dignitaries during a Ramadan Iftar meal on Saturday night at his presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

Part of his message was that the United Nations will officially commemorate for the first time, on May 15, the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba.

Abbas said, "Commemorating the Nakba must be at the top of our priorities in order to preserve our narrative, which we must adhere to and convey to the whole world, which has become a shining truth with which we confront all lies and false narratives that attempt to distort history and facts."

His regard for truth included his saying "What we witnessed today in terms of attacks on our people celebrating the 'Sabbath of Light' in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in occupied Jerusalem, which was preceded by attacks on worshipers in the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque and the desecration of its courtyards, is something condemned and rejected, and it reveals the falsity of the occupation, which claims to allow freedom of worship in the Holy places."

In truth the Israeli police were enforcing agreements with the church officials and the Waqf for both those incidents.

The Nakba narrative that Abbas espouses is as false as everything else he says. But he has no disincentive to lie - after all, the UN really will commemorate the "nakba" on May 15 which will regard the establishment of the Jewish state in the wake of 2000 years of persecution of Jews to be an unparalleled evil.

The lying antisemites are winning, and the media and academia are happily colluding with them.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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"Palestine" ranks better than most countries in "multidimensional poverty" and "human development index"

The UN Human Development Reports of the UN Development Program defines a "Multidimensional Poverty Index" (MPI.)

The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways. It identifies how people are being left behind across three key dimensions: health, education and standard of living, comprising 10 indicators. People who experience deprivation in at least one third of these weighted indicators fall into the category of multidimensionally poor.

The MPI score is based on these metrics:

How do Palestinians do?

Pretty good, actually.

While Western nations are not listed in this chart, the Palestinians are shown to be in far better shape than over 100 countries that are listed. I call out some of them.

Anti-Israel activists like to pretend that Palestinians have "no choice" but to turn to terror, and one of the reasons they like to trot out is how impoverished they are.

If that was the case, then why are we not seeing the same support for terror in the 100 countries who have a higher poverty score than they do?

Until COVID, Palestinians had also been steadily getting better scores every year in UNDP's Human Development Index, but even after a brief setback they are ranked "high" in various metrics.

Israel haters hate context like this. Because by any metric, Palestinians aren't in nearly as bad shape as people in over a hundred countries - but Palestinians get far more aid per capita than every single one of them.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!