A truck, marked with United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) logo, crosses into Egypt from Gaza, at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, during a temporary truce between Hamas and Israel, in Rafah, Egypt, Nov. 27, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

Israel cannot be forced to allow the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA to operate in Gaza, the United States said on Wednesday at a World Court hearing in The Hague.

Israel last year passed a law that banned UNRWA from operating in the country, as it said the organization had employed members of Hamas who took part in the attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The UN said in August that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the assault and had been fired. Another Hamas commander, confirmed by UNRWA as one of its employees, was killed in Gaza in October, according to Israel.

Beyond the Israeli government, research organizations and media outlets have publicized findings showing numerous UNRWA-employed staff, including teachers and school principals, are active Hamas members, some of whom were directly involved in the Palestinian terrorist group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, while many others openly celebrated it.

The United Nations General Assembly in December asked the UN’s top court to give an advisory opinion on Israel’s obligations to facilitate aid to Palestinians that is delivered by states and international groups, including the United Nations.

At the third day of hearings on the matter, the US said Israel had the right to determine which organizations could provide basic needs to the population of the Palestinian territories.

“An occupational power retains a margin of appreciation concerning which relief schemes to permit,” US State Department legal adviser Joshua Simmons said.

“Even if an organization offering relief is an impartial humanitarian organization, and even if it is a major actor, occupation law does not compel an occupational power to allow and facilitate that specific actor’s relief operations.”

Simmons also stressed the “serious concerns” Israel has about UNRWA‘s impartiality.

UN and Palestinian representatives at the opening of hearings on Monday had accused Israel of breaking international law by refusing to let aid into Gaza.

Since March 2, Israel has completely cut off all supplies to the 2.3 million residents of the Gaza Strip, and food stockpiled during a ceasefire at the start of the year has all but run out. Experts and Israeli officials have long that Hamas steals much of the aid to fuel its terrorist operations and sells some of the remainder to Gaza’s civilian population at an increased price.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said in Jerusalem on Monday that Israel had submitted its position in writing to the hearings, which he described as a “circus.”

The post US Backs Israel’s Ban on UNRWA Gaza Aid Operations at World Court first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

April 20, 2025, Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard University and Harvard Square scenes with students and pedestrians. Photo: Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect.

Last week Israel commemorated Yom HaShoah, the country’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

As I stood at silent attention along with an entire country, listening to the one minute long commemorative siren and thinking of the role the Holocaust has played in our collective past, I couldn’t help but hear its haunting echoes in our present.

Harvard University recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, purportedly in defense of “academic freedom.” The specific “freedom” Harvard is defending is to harass, intimidate, and physically assault Jewish students with impunity, and in violation of Title VI of the Federal Civil Rights Act. Harvard now claims that the White House’s actions violate the university’s First Amendment rights. They do not.

A quick note: at RealityCheck we encourage our readers to support (and oppose) policies, rather than people. How one feels about any politician (including President Trump) should be irrelevant to one’s opinion on the safety of Jewish students, and the proper enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Here’s what you need to know to build your own, well-informed opinion.

Since October 7, 2023, Harvard University has been host to more than a year and a half of attacks on Jewish students, including: physical assaults, vandalism, harassment, demonstrations, divestment resolutions, classroom disruptions, calls for “intifada” and other death threats, and a disgraced university president who infamously testified before Congress that calling for the genocide of Jews might not be antisemitic because, “it depends on the context.”

The Trump administration has demanded that Harvard University comply with a list of requirements to ensure basic safety and equal protection for all students on campus, including: banning masks by protesters, cooperating with law enforcement, reviewing disciplinary policies, increasing accountability by those responsible for student safety, and an end to so-called “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) programs, which for years have been used to limit Jewish and Asian admissions to Harvard (and which have been rejected by the United States Supreme Court).

Upon Harvard’s refusal to comply with its demands, the administration made good on a threat to pull $2 billion in Federal funding, with the promise of more cuts to come, as well as a request that the IRS consider revoking the university’s tax exempt status.

In its lawsuit, Harvard claims it has a First Amendment right to refuse the White House’s Title VI demands. It does not.

As a general matter, the First Amendment guarantees the right to all manner of abhorrent personal expression, including: racism, obscenity, outright lies, victim blaming and victim shaming, and even the right to oppose basic American values. However, nothing in the US Constitution obligates the American people to pay for such activities.

More specifically, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act requires that, “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

In this case, Jewish students at Harvard most certainly suffered exclusion, and were most certainly denied the benefits of a safe education, at an institution that is Federally funded to the tune of billions of US taxpayer dollars.

Harvard has objected not only that the funding cuts are illegal under the First Amendment, but also immoral because they will impact a variety of research programs that provide positive benefits to the world, including in fields like health care. Yet a long line of Supreme Court cases, following the 1974 precedent of Bob Jones University v. Johnson, disagree. These cases hold that, by choosing to violate the Civil Rights Act, a university endangers Federal funding for all of its programs, and that it is absolutely appropriate for the Federal government to use such funding as leverage to ensure compliance. In effect, the Supreme Court’s view is that it is the university, and not the White House, that is endangering its own programs: by permitting racism within its ranks, in violation of Federal funding rules.

Harvard does have a potentially successful argument that the White House did not follow certain procedural requirements, such as providing notice and an administrative hearing. However, even if successful, this argument will not prevent Federal funding cuts, but will merely require the White House to fulfill the mechanical requirements before moving forward.

Harvard’s campus newspaper has touted an open letter signed by some 100 Jewish students objecting to the White House’s demands, claiming that President Trump is causing more harm than good. However, those 100 signatures comprise only 4.6% of Harvard’s approximately 2,300 Jewish students. In other words, over 95% of Harvard’s Jewish population did not sign the letter, including students such as Shabbos Kestenbaum, who is pursuing one of several ongoing Title VI lawsuits against the university, and students like Yoav Segev and Moshe Y. Dembitzer, who were recently a part of related suits.

The case has been set for oral arguments on July 21 before US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee, who previously ruled in favor of Harvard’s racially motivated admissions policies. Judge Burroughs’ decision was subsequently overruled by the Supreme Court.

To get an idea of how Harvard’s lawsuit is likely to play out, either at the trial level or eventually on appeal, one may look to the ongoing case of Gartenberg v Cooper Union, the New York college where students attempted to hide in a library while under violent, antisemitic attack, just weeks after the massacre of October 7. In February, Judge John P. Cronan vigorously denied the college’s motion to dismiss stating, “The Court is dismayed by Cooper Union’s suggestion that the Jewish students should have hidden upstairs or left the building, or that locking the library doors was enough to discharge its obligations under Title VI. These events took place in 2023—not 1943—and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment, not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic or attempt to escape from a place they have a right to be.”

I could not have said it better myself, and so I won’t attempt to: these events took place in 2023 — not 1943.

Excluding Jews from academic life through violence and intimidation, all while cloaked in the garment of arrogant moralizing, was one of the most notable hallmarks of early Nazi Germany, long before such exclusion became codified into Nazi law. Whether history will repeat itself depends on what America does next.

This year, on Yom HaShoah, “never again” must mean now.

Daniel Pomerantz is the CEO of RealityCheck, an organization dedicated to deepening public conversation through robust research studies and public speaking.

The post Yom HaShoah and Harvard’s Complete Refusal to Address Hatred and Attacks on Jews first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

In this photo illustration a LinkedIn logo is seen displayed on a smartphone screen with a computer keyboard in the background in Athens, Greece on January 10, 2022. Photo: by Nikolas Kokovlis/NurPhoto/Reuters

Since 2012, I have been an active member of LinkedIn. Like many professionals around the world, I saw it as a place to connect, grow, and engage with a global network. For years, that vision held true. LinkedIn was a space for ideas, innovation, and respectful dialogue.

But everything changed after the 2014 Gaza War.

The platform slowly transformed. Political discourse became more prevalent — and with it, a rising tide of anti-Israel rhetoric and antisemitism. The successful spread of Pallywood-style propaganda seeped into what was once a neutral professional environment. I began to see not just criticism of Israeli policy, but open hatred of Jews, Israelis, and Zionists.

As the founder of the NGO Time To Stand Up For Israel, I took to LinkedIn with purpose. For years, I posted three times a day — informing, educating, and reporting, often in a journalistic tone. My goal was simple: to share facts, tell stories, and create awareness. And for a while, it worked.

Until it didn’t.

Without warning, my account was deleted — silenced through mass reporting and doxing campaigns that targeted pro-Israel voices. I was not alone. Other voices supporting Israel — Jewish users, Israeli professionals, and Zionist advocates — were censored, shut down, or swept off the platform.

No appeal. No explanation. No justice.

In my case, I did contact LinkedIn — and to their credit, they responded. But they absolutely refuse to tell me why my account had been flagged or disabled. I had no chance to even have a discussion — let alone see — what content they said violated their terms of service.

My account was eventually restored, but then I ran into the same problems again. And once again, I could not have any access to LinkedIn’s decision-making or their justification for removing content.

LinkedIn, a company now owned by Microsoft, has made itself nearly untouchable. There is no easily accessible help desk. They demand highly confidential documents like a passport copy just to consider reinstatement. And even then, there’s often silence.

Meanwhile, antisemitic hate thrives. I have personally seen posts that glorify Hitler, that mock the Holocaust, that spew vile messages like — and many of these posts remain unchallenged and unremoved.

Why? Because LinkedIn is too big, too powerful, too shielded. Today, LinkedIn boasts over 1.2 billion users and monetizes its platform with high-priced subscriptions and services. Yet with all this power comes an absence of responsibility.

Many people remain largely unaware of LinkedIn’s selective censorship, its opaque processes, and its AI-driven responses that leave users powerless. Real people lose their livelihoods, businesses, and professional networks overnight — without explanation, and often without recourse.

We were told that LinkedIn was a place for professionals. For connection. For opportunity. But if speaking up for Israel gets you banned, while celebrating Hitler gets you likes, what kind of platform is this really?

And more importantly — when does it stop?

Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.

The post My Journey at LinkedIn: Censorship, Silence, and the Cost of Speaking Up for Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.