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A Suppressed Voice for Truth from Within the United Nations
Alice Nderitu. Photo: YouTube/United Nations.
JNS.org – When histories of the war in the Gaza Strip are written—a war triggered by the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—the name of Alice Nderitu probably won’t garner more than a footnote at best. That’s an enormous shame because Nderitu’s courage in confronting the institutionalized obsession of the United Nations with the Palestinians takes us to the heart of the great issues wrapped up in this conflict—its purpose, the manner in which it has been fought and the manner in which it has been presented to the outside world.
The story of Nderitu’s ordeal as the U.N.’s Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide was the subject of an engaging piece by Johanna Berkman published last week by the online magazine Air Mail. Nderitu took over the unpaid position during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. She lasted for nearly four years in the post before U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres decided against renewing her commission last November following a sustained and often abusive campaign directed at Nderitu—a storied human-rights advocate from Kenya—for her refusal to label the fighting in Gaza as a “genocide.”
At the time, Guterres’s decision to effectively sever Nderitu was the subject of a scathing Wall Street Journal editorial that accused the international organization of a “new low” in its efforts to tarnish Israel as the worst offender among its member states, which include such human-rights luminaries as Russia, China and North Korea. But by and large, the scandal passed unnoticed among the chattering classes, despite their tendency to dip their toes into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with agonized appeals on behalf of the “people of Gaza” from time to time. The same was true for the Air Mail piece profiling her; while the Free Press republished it, everyone else pretty much ignored it.
One key reason why was identified by Nderitu herself in her interview with Berkman. For nearly three of the four years of her U.N. tenure, she was incredibly busy but also mostly unnoticed. Her work took her to refugee camps in Bangladesh and Iraq, to the Brazilian interior to monitor the fates of indigenous tribes, and to Chad, where she saw firsthand the impact of the burgeoning ethnic slaughter that has raged, largely outside the media’s view, in neighboring Sudan. “For these other situations,” she said, “nobody seems to bother with what I say.”
The core point that emerges from the profile of Nderitu is that she desperately wants to make these forgotten conflicts a central topic of discussion and action. Reading her comments, I felt a distinct mix of disgust and shame when she related being told by Sudanese refugees: “Right now, nobody is paying attention to our country. If there is ever peace and the cameras go in, you will face the most shocking thing of the century, a genocide that was completely ignored.” That observation is unarguable.
But after the slaughter on Oct. 7, suddenly everyone wanted a piece of Alice Nderitu. They did so not to beseech her to call the Hamas atrocities, which she condemned, a “genocide,” but to compel her to apply the “genocide” determination to Israel, even before the Israel Defense Forces launched its campaign to destroy the Hamas rape squads in Gaza.
This is a good juncture to note that Nderitu is not an advocate of Israel’s side in this war. Nor is she, as far as I am aware, a supporter of Israel more generally. And that’s fine because as a consummate professional, she understands that her personal leanings are not relevant to her work as a genocide prevention expert. As she says, a genocide determination can only be made by a court of law, and no court—despite the efforts of South Africa; Ireland; Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague; and sundry others—has done so thus far.
But in the eyes of those for whom Gaza is all-consuming, Nderitu’s determination to stick to the correct procedure was an unmistakable sign of collusion with the hated “Zionist entity.”
“Filthy zionist rat, you will burn in hell forever,” read one of the more unhinged emails that arrived in her inbox. Her other detractors essentially said the same, albeit in politer language.
As Nderitu emphasizes, the rush to excoriate Israel is the flipside of the absence of any loudly expressed, ongoing advocacy for populations suffering in conflict zones from Kurdistan to the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s why the U.N. Human Rights Council and the World Health Organization each have a dedicated agenda item to condemn Israel but no other country; why there is a dedicated agency, in the form of UNRWA, for the descendants of Palestinian refugees but no one else; and why U.N headquarters in New York City houses a Division for Palestinian Rights but not the rights of any other beleaguered nation.
These institutions are the concrete expression of a strategy that relies on maintaining the status of the Palestinians as victims by not integrating them into the Arab countries where most of them live—in marked contrast to Israel’s integration of thousands of Mizrachi Jews ethnically cleansed from the Islamic world—and by keeping alive the preposterous and morally reprehensible notion that they will one day “return home” and displace their “colonizers.”
That is why, despite many potential flaws on a practical level, US President Donald Trump’s proposal to offer the mass of Gazans voluntary, assisted resettlement in other countries while the coastal enclave is rebuilt should be seen as another attempt to break this mold. Because for as long as the Palestinian question is understood as a purely Israeli creation—one for which the Jewish state alone must atone and pay the price, and one that the world must prioritize at the expense of everything and everybody else—there will never be peace. At best, we will have troughs and peaks of mostly containable conflict, as has been the case for the last century.
Many years ago, I read an interview with the Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who remains imprisoned in Turkey, in which he expressed hope for a resolution of the Palestinian issue since that would allow other issues that receive less attention, like Kurdish self-determination, to enter the spotlight. Neither the Kurds nor anyone else should be forced to wait in line anymore.
If Trump’s proposal compels a shift in how the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is conceptualized and presented, along with the realization that the peace of the world doesn’t hinge upon it, then it will have been worth it for that reason alone.
The post A Suppressed Voice for Truth from Within the United Nations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Valid For All Countries Except Israel’
US passport. Photo: Pixabay.
JNS.org – There’s an unwritten rule among governments in many Muslim countries—when things go wrong at home, turn on the State of Israel.
Bangladesh, one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in Asia, provides the latest example of this tactic. Last week, the authorities in Dhaka announced that they were reintroducing what is essentially a disclaimer on the passports issued to its citizens: “Valid for all countries except Israel.” That shameful inscription was abandoned in 2021 by the government of recently ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, although it was never followed up with diplomatic outreach to Israel, much less recognition of the Jewish state’s right to a peaceful and sovereign existence.
The rationale for the move in 2021 was that Bangladeshi passports had to be brought up to date with international standards. However, the war in the Gaza Strip triggered by the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, has apparently canceled out that imperative.
“For many years, our passports carried the ‘except Israel’ clause. But the previous government suddenly removed it,” Brig. Gen. Mohammad Nurus Salam, passports director at the Department of Immigration, told the Arab News. Somewhat disingenuously, he added: “We were used to seeing ‘except Israel’ written in our passports. I don’t know why they took it out. If you talk to people across the country, you’ll see they want that line back in their passports. There was no need to remove it.”
It’s been 25 years since I was in Bangladesh, where I spent several months as a BBC consultant assisting with the launch of the country’s first private TV news station. One of the aspects that struck me profoundly—in contrast to Salam’s claim that the people want their passports to preclude travel to Israel—was the lack of hostility towards Israel among the many Bangladeshis I met and worked with, and I have no reason to believe that this attitude has fundamentally shifted. Most Bangladeshis are consumed by their own country’s vast problems, and the distant Israeli-Palestinian conflict does not impinge in any way on the resolution of those.
When I told people that I was Jewish, had family in Israel and had spent a great deal of time there, the most common response was curiosity. For the great majority, I was the first Jew they had ever met, and they eagerly quizzed me about the Jewish religion, often noting the overlaps with Islamic practices, such as circumcision and the prohibition on consuming pork.
“What is Israel like? What are the people like?” was a conversation I engaged in on more than one occasion. I remember with great affection a journalist called Salman, a devout Muslim who invited me to his home for an iftar meal during Ramadan. Salman was convinced that there were still a couple of Jews living in Bangladesh, and he combed Dhaka trying to find them so that he could introduce me (he never succeeded because there were no Jews there, but I appreciated his efforts.) I also remember members of the Hindu community, who compose about 8% of the population, drawing positive comparisons between Bangladesh’s Indian-backed 1971 War of Independence against Muslim Pakistan and Israel’s own War of Independence in 1947-48.
To understand why Bangladesh has taken this regressive decision requires a hard look at its domestic politics. In August of last year, the government of Sheikh Hasina—the daughter of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the dominant political figure over the past 30 years—was overthrown following a wave of protest against its well-documented corruption, discriminatory practices and judicial interference. Her downfall was accompanied by a surge of sectarian violence against Hindu homes, businesses and temples, with more than 2,000 incidents recorded over a two-week period. In the eyes of many, Hindus were associated with Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League Party, and the violence against them suggested that Islamist positions were making headway in a country that flew the banner of secular nationalism in its bid to win freedom from Pakistani rule.
The passport decision can be viewed in a similar light: Bangladesh asserting its identity as a Muslim country standing in solidarity with the Palestinians, the Islamic world’s pre-eminent cause, at the same time as breaking with the legacy of Sheikh Hasina’s rule. Yet that stance will not alleviate the fiscal misery of Bangladeshi citizens, with more than one in four people living below the poverty line. Nor will it address the chronic infrastructure problems that plague the country’s foreign trade, or tackle the bureaucracy and red tape that crushes entrepreneurship and innovation.
In short, supporting the Palestinians brings no material benefits for ordinary Bangladeshis, who would doubtless gain from a genuine relationship with Israel that would introduce, among many other advantages, more efficient water technology to counter the presence of arsenic and the lack of sanitation that often renders Bangladesh’s large reserves of water unusable and undrinkable.
Even so, ideology and Muslim identity may not be the only explanations for the Bangladeshi decision. It can also be seen as a gesture towards Qatar, the wealthiest country in the Islamic world, which has artfully cultivated trade and diplomatic ties with a slew of less developed countries, Bangladesh included. Last year, Qatar’s ruler, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, paid a two-day state to Bangladesh that showcased Doha’s contributions in the form of bilateral trade worth $3 billion as well as millions of dollars in Qatari grants for school and higher education. Such largesse on the part of the Qataris is a critical means of ensuring that governments in Bangladesh and other Muslim nations stay away from the Abraham Accords countries that have made a peace of sorts with Israel.
Bangladesh is not, of course, the only country to prevent its citizens from traveling to Israel or denying entry to Israeli passport holders. A few days after the Bangladeshi decision, the Maldives—another Muslim country that enjoys close relations with Qatar—announced that Israelis would no longer be permitted to visit. None of these bans is likely to be lifted as long as Israel is at war with the Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Iran’s regional proxies and the Iranian regime itself.
The ripple effects of that war—antisemitic violence in Western countries, cold-shouldering of Israel by countries without a direct stake in the conflict—will continue to be felt. None of that changes the plain fact that this remains a war that Israel must win.
The post ‘Valid For All Countries Except Israel’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US, Iran Set for Second Round of Nuclear Talks as Iranian FM Warns Against ‘Unrealistic Demands’
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attends a press conference following a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, April 18, 2025. Tatyana Makeyeva/Pool via REUTERS
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said a deal could be reached during Saturday’s second round of nuclear negotiations in Rome if the United States does not make “unrealistic demands.”
In a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, Araghchi said that Washington showed “partial seriousness” during the first round of nuclear talks in Oman last week.
The Iranian top diplomat traveled to Moscow on Thursday to deliver a letter from Iran’s so-called Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, briefing Russian President Vladimir Putin on the ongoing nuclear talks with the White House.
“Their willingness to enter serious negotiations that address the nuclear issue only, without entering into other issues, can lead us towards constructive negotiations,” Araghchi said during the joint press conference in Moscow on Friday.
“As I have said before, if unreasonable, unrealistic and impractical demands are not made, an agreement is possible,” he continued.
Tehran has previously rejected halting its uranium enrichment program, insisting that the country’s right to enrich uranium is non-negotiable, despite Washington’s threats of military actions, additional sanctions, and tariffs if an agreement is not reached to curb the country’s nuclear activities.
On Tuesday, US special envoy Steve Witkoff said that any deal with Iran must require the complete dismantling of its “nuclear enrichment and weaponization program” — reversing his earlier comments, in which he indicated that the White House would allow Tehran to enrich uranium to a 3.67 percent threshold for a “civil nuclear program.”
During the press conference, Araghchi also announced he would attend Saturday’s talks in Rome, explaining that negotiations with the US are being held indirectly due to recent threats and US President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran — which aims to cut the country’s crude exports to zero and prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
“Indirect negotiations are not something weird and an agreement is within reach through this method,” Araghchi said.
He also indicated that Iran expects Russia to play a role in any potential agreement with Washington, noting that the two countries have held frequent and close consultations on Tehran’s nuclear program in the past.
“We hope Russia will play a role in a possible deal,” Araghchi said during the press conference.
As an increasingly close ally of Iran, Moscow could play a crucial role in Tehran’s nuclear negotiations with the West, leveraging its position as a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council and a signatory to a now-defunct 2015 nuclear deal that imposed limits on the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Trump withdrew the US from the deal in 2018.
Since then, even though Tehran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon, the UN’s nuclear watchdog – the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – has warned that Iran has “dramatically” accelerated uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level and enough to build six nuclear bombs.
During the press conference on Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said that “Russia is ready to facilitate the negotiation process between Iran and the US regarding Tehran’s nuclear program.”
Moscow has previously said that any military strike against Iran would be “illegal and unacceptable.”
Russia’s diplomatic role in the ongoing negotiations could also be important, as the country has recently solidified its growing partnership with the Iranian regime.
On Wednesday, Russia’s upper house of parliament ratified a 20-year strategic partnership agreement with Iran, strengthening military ties between the two countries.
Despite Tehran’s claims that its nuclear program is solely for civilian purposes rather than weapon development, Western states have said there is no “credible civilian justification” for the country’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
The post US, Iran Set for Second Round of Nuclear Talks as Iranian FM Warns Against ‘Unrealistic Demands’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Reps. Dan Goldman and Chris Smith Issue Statement Condemning Shapiro Arson Attack As ‘Textbook Antisemitism’
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) holds a rally in support of US Vice President Kamala Harris’ Democratic presidential election campaign in Ambler, Pennsylvania, US, July 29, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) and Rep. Chris Smith (D-NJ) issued a statement condemning the recent arson attack against Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as a form of “textbook antisemitism.”
“Governor Shapiro is the Governor of Pennsylvania and has nothing to do with Israel’s foreign policy, yet he was targeted as an American Jew by a radicalized extremist who blames the Governor for Israel’s actions. That is textbook antisemitism,” the statement read.
Shapiro’s residence, the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion, was set ablaze on Sunday morning, hours after the governor hosted a gathering to celebrate the first night of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Shapiro said that he, his wife, and his children were awakened by state troopers knocking on their door at 2 am. The governor and his family immediately evacuated the premises and were unscathed.
Goldman and Smith added that the arson attack against Shapiro serves as “a bitter reminder that persecution of Jews continues.” The duo claimed that they “strongly condemn this antisemitic violence” and called on the suspect to “be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
Pennsylvania State Police said that the suspect, Cody Balmer set fire to Shapiro’s residence over the alleged ongoing “injustices to the people of Palestine” and Shapiro’s Jewish faith.
According to an arrest warrant, Balmer called 911 prior to the attack and told emergency operators that he “will not take part in [Shapiro’s] plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people,” and demanded that the governor “stop having my friends killed.”
The suspect continued, telling operators, “Our people have been put through too much by that monster.”
Balmer later revealed to police that he planned to beat Shapiro with a sledgehammer if he encountered him after gaining access into his residence, according to authorities.
He was subsequently charged with eight crimes by authorities, including serious felonies such as attempted homicide, terrorism, and arson. The suspect faces potentially 100 years in jail. He has been denied bail.
Shapiro, a practicing Jew, has positioned himself as a staunch supporter of Israel. In the days following Hamas’s brutal slaughter of roughly 1,200 people across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Shapiro issued statements condemning the Palestinian terrorist group and gave a speech at a local synagogue. The governor also ordered the US and Pennsylvania Commonwealth flags to fly at half-mast outside the state capitol to honor the victims.
Shapiro’s strident support of the Jewish state in the wake of Oct. 7 also incensed many pro-Palestinian activists, resulting in the governor being dubbed “Genocide Josh” by far-left demonstrators.
US Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (NY) chimed in on the arson attack Thursday, urging the Justice Department to launch a federal investigation, claiming that the incident could be motivated by antisemitism.
Schumer argued that the arson attack targeting Shapiro, who is Jewish, left the Pennsylvania governor’s family in “anguish” and warned that it could serve as an example of “rising antisemitic violence” within the United States. He stressed that a federal investigation and hate crime charges may be necessary to uphold the “fundamental values of religious freedom and public safety.”
Thus far, Shapiro has refused to blame the attack on antisemitism, despite the suspect’s alleged comments repudiating the governor over his support for Israel. The governor has stressed the importance of allowing prosecutors to determine whether the attack constitutes a hate crime.
The post Reps. Dan Goldman and Chris Smith Issue Statement Condemning Shapiro Arson Attack As ‘Textbook Antisemitism’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.