JNS.org – The role of the US State Department in preventing the rescue of European Jews during World War II is well known. Top officials at Foggy Bottom instructed American consulates in Europe to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Jews trying to flee the Nazi death machine from coming to the United States. In the American Jewish community, the perception of the State Department is of a cabal of antisemites.

It doesn’t mean that everyone in the department was (or is) an antisemite, but clearly, the obstructionism that came from the leadership during the Holocaust years was responsible for the death of many thousands, if not millions, of Jews who could have been rescued.

Most recently, the State Department under President Joe Biden and headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued the “tradition,” albeit, not against European Jews but rather toward the State of Israel. According to Michael Herzog, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, hostile elements within the department actively sought to limit Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip and block key security decisions taken by the Netanyahu government. Herzog told Israel’s largest daily, Israel Hayom, that “there are many within the State Department who are not just unfriendly to Israel but outright hostile.”

Herzog revealed that officials at State warned their Israeli counterparts last year against a retaliatory strike against Iran following the Islamic Republic’s missile attack against Israel on Oct. 1, 2024, with nearly 200 ballistic missiles. Israel was warned that any action taken might escalate into a regional war. Although the Iranian attack caused little damage or casualties in Israel, Herzog told US officials that in the Middle East, once attacked, rather than “containing it,” a counterstroke must hit back at the enemy harder and painfully. He said for Israel, retaliation was an existential matter. If Israel failed to respond to Iran, its deterrence would collapse, which would invite more attacks from Iran and its proxies.

Herzog said that Blinken also moved to implement targeted sanctions against the Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Unit 504. This unit deals with human intelligence and interrogation. Herzog said Blinken had “already made up his mind, but we managed to stop him just in time.”

Among Herzog’s disclosures was the fact that the State Department has a team focused specifically on tracking Israel’s use of US weapons. This constitutes a double standard since America does not apply such a level of scrutiny to any other country.

The Biden administration also sought to pressure Israel against entering Rafah by delaying and freezing weapons shipments, including 2,000-pound bombs, which the administration justified on humanitarian grounds. Herzog made clear that although there was no formal arms embargo, “bureaucratic delays and political pressure slowed down deliveries at crucial moments.” These obstructions prolonged the war, inflicting increased casualties on Israelis and Palestinians.

Herzog concluded that “in the end, we had to work around US pressure. If we had followed all their advice, our enemies would have sensed weakness. Instead, we acted in Israel’s best interest, even when it meant standing up to our closest ally.”

While Biden might have had pro-Israel instincts, he was under severe pressure from anti-Israel factions within his administration, especially those at State. The administration did little to curb violent antisemitic riots on US college campuses, funded in large part by Qatar. Herzog stressed that the Biden administration “allowed bureaucrats with an anti-Israel agenda to influence US policy, by making sure that nearly every Israeli request was delayed, watered down or obstructed.”

Several Biden foreign-policy officials resigned over US policy toward Gaza, including Josh Paul, former director of the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, who resigned in October 2023; and Tarik Habash, who worked for the US Department of Education and resigned in January 2024.

The two have since formed an anti-Israel political action committee called A New Policy PAC. In an Oct. 16, 2024 interview with the Huff Post, they articulated their opposition, if not hostility, toward Israel, advocating among other things for boycotting the Jewish state. Said Paul, “I think it’s very clear that the policies that the United States has been pursuing, certainly for the last year and frankly before that, have been deeply harmful to the Palestinian people, but also to American interests where we are seeing ourselves, our credibility around the world shattered, the stability of the Middle East cast into doubt, and civil rights at home also increasingly damaged by the debate around this issue.”

Typically, Paul and Habash reflect an inherently anti-Israel, if not antisemitic attitude that is pervasive in US institutions. They don’t blame the Hamas terrorists for repeated attempts to destroy Israel in accordance with the terror group’s charter, which culminated in the murderous Oct. 7 assault on Israel. Instead, they put the onus on Israel for its legitimate response against a murderous group that promised to repeat many more “Oct. 7” attacks on Israel. Their concerns for human rights don’t apply to the Israeli hostages kidnapped from their beds, raped, starved and tortured.

Fortunately for Israel, most American presidents and the majority of American citizens understand what Paul and Habash do not: Israel is a vibrant democracy that shares US values and interests and is the only loyal and reliable partner Washington has in the Middle East.

The post The US State Department’s Hostility Toward Israel first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org – Purim is a serious festival. Yet many people consider it merely a children’s masquerade party. The very notion of dressing up, wearing masks and creative costumes to disguise ourselves is the subject of much rabbinic commentary.

Why do we wear masks on Purim?

There is a wide variety of answers. Here are just a few:

• God initially concealed His face in the Purim story. We seemed to be on our own, facing total annihilation, until events turned around in our favor.
• The name of God is hidden in Megillat Esther, the “Scroll of Esther.” Imagine a whole book of Holy Scripture and God’s name does not appear once.
• Esther kept her Jewish identity hidden until she was called upon to save her people.
• The name Esther itself means hidden. In Deuteronomy 31:18, God says, “And I will surely hide (in Hebrew, astir) My face on that day … ”
• The miracle of Purim was not that obvious. The Jewish people’s deliverance from Haman’s final solution was masked in natural events.

And on this last note, it’s not only when God is splitting the sea or feeding us bread from heaven that we can discern the source of our miraculous survival and sustenance. God’s footprints can be seen all over His world. The Purim story is a classical saga of politics and palace intrigue, but behind the tale lies the hidden hand of God.

It just so happened that Queen Vashti was deposed, and the talent scouts found Esther. She was a nice Jewish girl who wasn’t looking to be the new queen, but she was drafted into the beauty contest and found favor in King Ahasuerus’s eyes.

It just so happened that Mordechai overheard two of the king’s palace guards plotting to assassinate Ahasuerus and told Esther, who, in turn, told the king in Mordechai’s name.

It just so happened that the king was suffering from insomnia and asked for his book of chronicles to be read to him so he could fall asleep. And the page that the reader opened to just so happened to be about how Mordechai saved the king’s life.

It just so happened that Haman arrived at the king’s palace—at that very moment—to ask for the king’s blessing to hang Mordechai, and the tables were quickly turned upside down.

And it just so happened that we had an insider in the palace, and Queen Esther was able to save the Jewish people single-handedly.

Each of these events, and there were others, could be put down to coincidence or good luck. We have all had the good fortune of having a good woman in the right place at the right time.

But when you consider all of these “it just so happened” events together, it can no longer be a random string of coincidences or simply serendipity. There has got to be a controlling hand moving the pieces on the board in a premeditated manner. We Jews call it Divine Providence.

Indeed, Purim reminds us to recognize the presence of God in natural events, too. The Creator is not only found in the supernatural.

Of course, the sun rising in the east every morning is a miracle. But when something is a daily occurrence and happens like clockwork, we tend to take it for granted. It’s only on rare occasions, like when we are on vacation and get to see a magnificent sunrise or sunset, that we even notice this magnificent miracle.

Yes, traditionally, we recite a thanksgiving blessing in the presence of a minyan—a public prayer quorum of 10 men—when we emerge from a dangerous experience safely. We Bentch Gomel, as it is called, after a voyage over the sea or desert, recovery from serious illness or freedom from incarceration. But if you think about it, we experience so many deliverances every day. Most of them go unnoticed. There are countless little miracles (and many not-so-little miracles) that occur, but they’re all part of our regular routines, so we take them for granted.

You crossed a busy highway and got to the other side safely. How many near-misses do we have when it comes to cars? My wife and I were driving home from a wedding late one night, and a car came straight at us at top speed. He was driving on the wrong side of the highway. I managed to move lanes quickly and avoid a head-on collision, which I doubt anyone could have survived at that speed! Thank God that does not happen every day.

And what about waking up every morning? And what of the food, clothing and shelter we enjoy? Do you know there are billions of people in the world who are not privileged to have these conveniences that we take for granted? If you have a home, a car and a computer, you are way ahead of half the world’s population.

And please don’t take your good health for granted. When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why all the adults would say abi gezunt, “As long as you have your health.” What were they going on about health? Believe me, today, I understand it only too well.

We can be nonchalant about our business success, too. We may even be cynical. We can argue that our success is due to our business acumen and hard work, or we can be honest and appreciate that there are many smart, hardworking people out there who do not enjoy success. Why, then, should we?

And we can realize that God Almighty is clearly protecting Israel from all its murderous neighbors—and enemies who are not its neighbors at all—who are plotting our destruction, God forbid, or we can simply say that the Israel Defense Forces is the greatest army in the world and we protect ourselves. To be blind to all the miracles that have helped neutralize Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran is not only cynical, it is intellectually dishonest.

Whether it is in our personal lives or our national life, looking beneath the surface and reading between the lines is essential to understanding what is happening and appreciating that it isn’t just business as usual. That it isn’t even necessarily natural or logical. It is miraculous, albeit somewhat hidden from view. Our job is to probe beneath the surface to discern the hand of God in our own lives and the life of our nation.

With that awareness comes sensitivity, and then our attitude begins to change. We can verbalize and express our gratitude. We can share with the less fortunate, which is an important Purim mitzvah. We can do something for God as an expression of our thanksgiving for the little hidden miracles that keep us going through life.

May God continue to protect us all, and may we be wise enough to pierce the veil and see beyond the facade and behind the mask.

Purim Sameach!

The post Behind the Mask first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

JNS.org – We are currently experiencing the worst surge of antisemitism in living memory. But that realization shouldn’t lull us into thinking that the world prior to October 2023 was a relative bed of roses for the Jewish people. From the end of the Second World War until the Hamas massacre in Israel, there were myriad episodes and events which underlined that hatred and suspicion of Jews as a collective did not die out with the Nazis.

Later this year, we’ll mark the 50th anniversary of one of the most heinous of those outbursts, whose fallout we are still living with: the passage by the U.N. General Assembly of Resolution 3379 of Nov. 10, 1975, which determined that Zionism, the national liberation movement of the Jews, was a form of racism.

Israel and its allies have eight months to decide whether that anniversary will be marked as a posthumous victory or as a day of mourning.

Sure, one could argue that victory already came in 1991 when, in the wake of Iraq’s expulsion from occupied Kuwait and the consequent US attempt to convene regional peace negotiations, American diplomacy—which, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, was without a serious rival—secured the General Assembly’s repeal of its 1975 resolution. But that, sadly, was a fleeting victory for two reasons.

Firstly, the anti-Zionist ideology underpinning the resolution persists. Orchestrated by the Soviet Union, Resolution 3379 denounced Zionism as a “threat to world peace and security.” It drew an explicit linkage between Israel and the former white minority regimes in South Africa and Zimbabwe to demonstrate its charges of “racism” and “apartheid.” Those charges will sound eerily familiar to Jewish college students now weathering the pro-Hamas onslaught, all born long after 1975.

Secondly, while the General Assembly annulled Resolution 3379, the pro-Palestinian bureaucracy created within the United Nations at exactly the same time also persists. As a result, the world body still behaves as though “Zionism is racism” remains on the books. If the November anniversary is to carry any message of hope for Israelis and Jews, then it’s imperative to tackle and dismantle that bureaucracy, and its associated propaganda operation.

In the 18 months that have lapsed since the Hamas pogrom in Israel, we have seen that bureaucracy in action. UNRWA—the agency originally created in 1949 to deal with the first generation of Arab refugees from Israel’s War of Independence—has been a mainstay of anti-Israel messaging, unphased by the unmasking of dozens of its employees as Hamas operatives. The U.N. Human Rights Council, which dedicates an entire agenda item to Israel alone at its thrice-yearly deliberations while ignoring serial violators like Russia, Iran and North Korea, last week released a litany of fabricated accusations in the guise of a “report” that amounted to what Israel called a “blood libel.” One of the more noxious Israel-haters on the scene, Francesca Albanese, continues to serve as the U.N. special rapporteur on the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

It’s now time to focus on those elements of the Palestine bureaucracy that are comparatively hidden. The U.N.’s Department of Political Affairs operates a subsidiary Division for Palestinian Rights, whose job is to carry out the agenda of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, consisting of 25 members and 24 observers drawn from the member states. Abolishing that committee, and therefore the division along with it, should become an explicit aim of the State of Israel, the various Jewish non-governmental organizations with observer status at the United Nations, and the broader community of research and advocacy organizations pushing for Israel’s sovereign equality within the U.N. system.

The committee was created on the very same day as the passage of the “Zionism-is-racism” resolution to give concrete expression to the anti-Zionist manifesto the resolution embodied. The “inalienable rights” that this committee represents include the “exercise by Palestinians of their inalienable right to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted.” Note the terminology used here—not “Palestinian refugees of the 1948-49 war,” but all Palestinians, including those born after 1948 in the Arab world, Europe, North America and Latin America. It doesn’t take tremendous insight to realize that it is a formula for the elimination of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel—the very same formula that drives the present pro-Hamas solidarity movement and gives it the undeserved gloss of human rights.

The costs of running this committee are estimated at $6 million annually. As I wrote a few months after Donald Trump’s first-term presidential inauguration, “In international organizational terms, that’s unremarkable, but when you consider how the money is spent, it’s little short of obscene. One would like to imagine that fact is one that President Trump will grasp instinctively, and act upon accordingly.” Trump’s dislike of bloated, politically charged bureaucracies hasn’t wavered in the interim. For that reason and assorted others, it is reasonable to expect that when former New York Rep. Elise Stefanik is finally confirmed as the administration’s choice as ambassador to the United Nations, she will make dismantling the committee a priority.

Last September, when the General Assembly passed a resolution demanding Israel’s immediate withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, warning that the Jewish state “must bear the legal consequences of all its internationally wrongful acts,” Stefanik issued a scathing response. “The United Nations overwhelmingly passed a disgraceful antisemitic resolution to demand that Israel surrender to barbaric terrorists who seek the destruction of both Israel and America,” she stated. “Once again the U.N.’s antisemitic rot is on full display as it punishes Israel for defending itself and rewards Iranian-backed terrorists.”

The “rot” Stefanik was referring to is (as she no doubt realizes) institutionalized and structural, embedded within the organization’s heart for 50 years, if not longer. In 1965—two years before the Six-Day War brought Israel control of the West Bank, Gaza and eastern Jerusalem—the Soviets insisted at the drafting sessions for the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination that a condemnation of “Zionism” be included alongside “Nazism” and “antisemitism.” As the Israeli scholar Yohanan Manor observed, the convention debates “showed the Arabs and the Soviet Union that it was possible to have Zionism condemned if they could just find a way to secure the support of the Afro-Asian bloc.”

Ten years later, they achieved just that with the passage of Resolution 3379. How would the abolition of the committee be achieved? Many years ago, the late American diplomat Richard Schifter told me that “a significant number of ambassadors in New York vote against Israel without instructions from their governments. Because these resolutions involve budgetary questions, they require a two-thirds majority vote under the provisions of the U.N. Charter. So the answer to the problem is that you reach out to heads of government. You get them to give instructions to the ambassadors on how to vote.”

There is now a precedent for that: In August 2020, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky withdrew his country from the committee just a few months after his election. Given its commitment to protecting Israel within the United Nations, and its associated agencies and departments, the United States must pursue the same outcome with as many states as possible—between now and November and, if necessary, beyond.

The post It’s Time to Abolish the UN’s Pro-Hamas Bureaucracy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.