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‘Absurd’: UN Condemned Israel Twice as Often as All Other Countries Combined in 2023
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres speaks at the UN headquarters in New York City, US, before a meeting about the conflict in Gaza, Nov. 6, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
The United Nations General Assembly condemned Israel twice as often as it did all other countries combined in 2023, according to UN Watch.
The Geneva-based NGO, which monitors the UN, found that the General Assembly last year passed 14 resolutions singling out Israel, while passing only seven condemning other countries. The international body passed two measures against Russia and one each against North Korea, Myanmar, Syria, Iran, and the United States.
Notably, there were zero resolutions passed condemning countries such as Venezuela, Lebanon, China, Saudi Arabia, or Iraq — or terrorist groups such as Hamas — all of which have poor human rights records or committed extensive war crimes last year.
The UN focusing a disproportionate amount of its time on Israel is a long-standing trend. Since 2015, the General Assembly has passed 141 resolutions condemning Israel, which is more than double the number of condemnatory resolutions targeted at all other countries combined. And since 2006, the UN Human Rights Council has passed 104 resolutions against Israel, as opposed to 99 against other countries.
The resolutions condemning Israel in 2023 included two statements saying that its presence in the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, was illegal; an affirmation that the security barrier in the West Bank “severely impedes the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination”; and a more general assertion that the UN “deplores those policies and practices of Israel that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people and other Arabs of the occupied territories.”
Two of the General Assembly resolutions condemning Israel were specifically tied to its defensive war in Gaza in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Those measures did not mention the Palestinian terror group or condemn the Oct. 7 onslaught, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 others taken as hostages.
Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, called the ratio of condemnatory resolutions “absurd” in a statement, arguing that “the purpose of the lopsided condemnations is to demonize the Jewish state.”
“This demonization fuels the antisemitic agitators in America today and around the world who are threatening Jews on campus, at community centers, and at their businesses,” he added.
Neuer also questioned the European Union’s commitment to equally applying human rights standards, pointing out that “while France, Sweden, and other EU states have supported nearly all of the 14 resolutions adopted against Israel during this General Assembly session, the same European nations have failed to introduce a single UNGA resolution on the human rights situations in China, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Turkey, Pakistan, Vietnam, Algeria, or on 170 other countries.”
His criticism came on the heels of widespread scrutiny of another UN body — UN Women, which describes itself as a “global champion for women and girls” — for its prolonged silence on the extensive gender-based and sexual violence against Israeli women during Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack.
The UN agency for gender equality and women’s empowerment released on Nov. 25 its first statement about the Hamas atrocities — 50 days after the onslaught took place. A week later, on Dec. 1, the agency condemned the Hamas attacks for the time, saying it was “alarmed” by accounts of systematic sexual violence and supported an investigation into the matter.
The criticism reached its apex in November, when UN Women’s deputy executive director did not directly answer a question when asked on CNN why she would not “specifically call out Hamas and the mounting evidence” of mass rapes and sexual violence, including torture, perpetrated against Israeli women and girls.
More than half the countries on the executive board of UN Women are non-democracies, such as Afghanistan. Similar concerns have been expressed about the UN Human Rights Council, whose executive board includes countries such as China, Pakistan, and Sudan — as well as the General Assembly, of which only 44 percent of its members are free democracies, according to Freedom House.
The post ‘Absurd’: UN Condemned Israel Twice as Often as All Other Countries Combined in 2023 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Netanyahu Expects to Meet Trump Next Week in the US
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he expects to travel to the United States next week for meetings with President Donald Trump, after a “great victory” in the 12-Day War with Iran last month.
Netanyahu said in a statement ahead of a cabinet meeting that the visit will also include talks with other top US officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“We still have a few things to finalize in order to reach a trade agreement in addition to other matters,” he said, referring to Trump’s tariff plans. “I’ll also have meetings with congressional and Senate leaders and some security meetings.”
Trump last month announced a ceasefire ending the hostilities between Israel and Iran.
The US president said last week that his administration would send letters to a number of countries notifying them of their higher tariff rates before July 9, when the duties are scheduled to revert from a temporary 10% level to a range of between 11% and 50% announced on April 2 and subsequently suspended.
The U.S. initially set a 17% tariff on Israeli goods sold in the United States.
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Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts

Gazans receiving humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Col. Richard Kemp
A recent Haaretz exposé accusing the Israeli military of ordering troops to fire at unarmed civilians near food aid sites in Gaza relied on mistranslation, selective quotes, factual omissions, and contradictions to construct a narrative of unprovoked Israeli violence, according to independent observers interviewed by The Algemeiner.
Debunking the claim of indiscriminate fire by the IDF, the experts instead described widespread fear of Hamas, not the Israeli military.
The Haaretz report quickly gained traction in international media. Titled “’It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” it was cited by outlets such as NPR, CNN, and Reuters, .
British military analyst Andrew Fox criticized the article for its framing and language. One of the discrepancies he pointed to was the shift in the English version of the story from soldiers firing “towards” civilians, as stated in the Hebrew original, to “at” them. The original Hebrew subheader also specified that soldiers were told to fire “towards” crowds “to distance them” from the aid sites, suggesting the shooting took place as a means of crowd control.
“It’s a matter of intent,” Fox told The Algemeiner. The phrase “‘at civilians’ means they are trying to kill them. It’s misleading because they’re firing warnings to avoid harm rather than shooting to cause harm.”
“Warning shots are something all armies do — we did in Afghanistan — but when you pull the trigger there’s always a risk of harm, and that’s not great,” explained Fox, a think tank researcher and former British Army officer. “Still, there’s a huge difference between that and deliberately targeting civilians.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “shooting towards,” as in the original Hebrew, was “quite reasonable as a means to exercise crowd control in a war zone.”
“It is highly unlikely the IDF would be ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians unless they directly endangered them,” Kemp told The Algemeiner, citing Israel’s interest in the success of US-backed humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza. “The IDF rigidly follows laws of war. It makes no sense for the IDF to want to damage aid efforts. They cooperate with and facilitate [the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] and want it to succeed. The ones who want it to fail are Hamas because it deprives them of control and funds. If anyone has been doing this shooting, it would be Hamas. They have the motive the IDF do not.”
There were other discrepancies in the original headline and its translation. Whereas the Hebrew version reads “Soldiers testify: IDF deliberately shoots towards Gazans near aid collection points,” the English version not only omitted any reference to mediating testimony or attribution, but also framed the event as an empirical fact: “IDF soldiers ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid.” Further, the phrase “waiting for humanitarian aid” may carry specific legal implications under international law, suggesting heightened vulnerability, whereas the Hebrew version referred more vaguely to crowds “near aid collection points.”
The subheader — which claimed soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed civilians “even when no threat was present” — conflicted with the body of the text, which acknowledged that Israeli soldiers were wounded near the aid distribution zones. One sentence, appearing for the first time in the 21st paragraph, stood out: “There were also fatalities and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents.” The piece offered no explanation for how such casualties could occur if, as the article claims, no one else present was armed.
Elsewhere in the article, a soldier is quoted describing the IDF creating a “killing field,” supposedly involving heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers. But if such weapons were used with lethal intent, as Fox pointed out in a Substack post, the casualty rate would be far higher than the one to five reported per day. “That’s not a massacre,” he wrote, going on to quip that the only massacre to take place was one of “journalistic standards by Haaretz.”
“Could some soldiers accidentally miss and hit someone?” Fox wrote. “Yes. That is tragic and warrants investigation. However, the article itself acknowledges that the IDF is already examining those incidents. To jump from that to ‘deliberate killing fields’ is not responsible reporting. It is narrative laundering.”
The lack of video footage of the alleged mass shootings near GHF sites raises questions, given the large volume of media typically produced from Gaza, according to Fox, who noted that Hamas has repeatedly circulated images and clips for propaganda purposes.
“Every Gazan has a mobile phone, and numerous videos of other events have been released,” he wrote. “Why is there a total absence of any credible footage of these supposed IDF combined arms assaults on queuing civilians?”
Kemp, who visited two of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites in the days following the report’s publication, described hearing distant gunfire but reported that the aid operation proceeded mostly without disruption.

Col. Richard Kemp at humanitarian aid site with Gazans. Photo: Provided
“None of the Gazans there showed any concerns [about the IDF] whatsoever,” he said. Many of the civilians identified Hamas, not the IDF, as the main threat to the aid effort — a dynamic not acknowledged in the Haaretz report — telling Kemp they could not return home for fear of being recognized and targeted by Hamas.
“I must have spoken to at least 50 Gazans at each site,” he said. “Many told me they feared Hamas and Hamas threatened them if they used the sites.”
Kemp added that the atmosphere was chaotic but manageable, with GHF workers — most of them local Gazans — interfacing directly with the crowds. He described people smiling, holding up food packages, and expressing gratitude for the aid.
“The overwhelming impression was how grateful they were to be getting free aid for once, as opposed to buying aid looted by Hamas and sold at a premium,” he told The Algemeiner.
Many Gazans at the GHF sites who spoke to Kemp voiced hatred for Hamas and praised the US-backed aid effort, with some chanting “kill Hamas” while others said “I love America” or expressed admiration for President Donald Trump. The alignment between Hamas and UN criticism of the food program was “shocking,” Kemp added, particularly given the visible gratitude expressed by many recipients.
“They associate this aid program with the US,” he said. “They seem to like it, whereas Hamas and the UN seem to be its greatest enemies.”
The post Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS

Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
Two former Australian nurses who were charged over a viral video in which they allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients have been banned from working under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), four months after being suspended from their jobs at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney.
Earlier this year, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, both 27, gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night shift conversation with Israeli influencer Max Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They are now also prohibited from working with or providing any services — paid or unpaid — to NDIS participants for two years.
This latest ban, which took effect on May 9, applies nationwide and prohibits Nadir and Abu Lebdeh from working with NDIS participants or performing any role for or on behalf of NDIS providers in any Australian state or territory.
Abu Lebdeh was charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, she faces up to 22 years in prison.
Nadir was charged with federal offenses, including using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense, as well as possession of a prohibited drug.
Currently, both of them remain free on bail and have not yet entered any pleas, with a court appearance scheduled for July 29. They’ve been prohibited from leaving Australia or using social media while their cases proceed.
According to Nadir’s lawyer, the video was captured “without the consent and knowledge” of his client, and he intends to argue for its exclusion from court.
“We will be challenging the admissibility of the video recording because it was a private conversation which was recorded by the person overseas without my client’s consent and without his knowledge,” Nadir’s lawyer said. “That video recording was made secretly overseas and was unlawfully obtained.”
This incident, which drew international attention, occurred amid a surge of antisemitic acts across Australia since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began in October 2023, with Jewish institutions targeted in arson attacks and businesses defaced.
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, with the escalation continuing amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadrupling from 495 in the prior 12 months.
The number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
The post Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS first appeared on Algemeiner.com.