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It’s Time to Abolish the UN’s Pro-Hamas Bureaucracy
Delegates react to the results during the United Nations General Assembly vote on a draft resolution that would recognize the Palestinians as qualified to become a full UN member, in New York City, US, May 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
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.
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Lebanon Claims It Is Replacing Hezbollah in the South
Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Nawaf Salam speaks at the presidential palace on the day he meets with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, in Baabda, Lebanon, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
JNS.org – Lebanon’s leadership declared in recent days that the Lebanese Army has begun replacing Hezbollah forces in the country’s southern region.
In an April 15 interview with The New Arab, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun announced that 2025 would be the year of the Lebanese state’s monopoly on arms.
Aoun pledged that only the state would have weapons, referring to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), and stressed this goal would be achieved through direct dialogue with Hezbollah, while explicitly ruling out steps that could ignite conflict with Hezbollah.
“I told the Americans that we want to remove Hezbollah’s weapons, but we will not ignite a civil war in Lebanon,” Aoun said, referencing a meeting with US Deputy Envoy Morgan Ortagus.
Aoun added that Hezbollah members could potentially integrate individually into the LAF but rejected replicating the Iraqi model where Shi’ite, Iranian-backed paramilitary groups formed independent units within the military. He asserted the LAF was conducting missions throughout the country “without any obstruction from Hezbollah.”
Hezbollah member Mahmoud Qamat, however, responded by stating, “No one in the world will succeed in laying a hand on this weapon,” according to Lebanese media.
Hezbollah Member of Parliament Ali Fayyad stated the group was open to internal dialogue but warned against pressure on the LAF to disarm Hezbollah.
Col. (res.) Dr. Hanan Shai, a research associate at the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy and a former investigator for the IDF’s commission on the 2006 Second Lebanon War, told JNS on Wednesday that statements by Lebanese officials and the activities of the Lebanese army are “unequivocally an achievement for Israel.”
But Shai warned that due “the weakness of the Lebanese army, the IDF cannot rely on it and must back it up with its own parallel defense—mainly through detailed intelligence monitoring and targeted thwarting of any violation not only in Southern Lebanon but also [deep] within it, including at sea and air ports.”
The fragility of the situation was highlighted when a LAF soldier was killed, and three others were wounded while attempting to neutralize suspected Hezbollah ordnance in the Tyre district of Southern Lebanon on April 14.
Hezbollah’s real intentions were also apparent when its supporters reportedly burned billboards celebrating Lebanon’s “new era.”
Most tellingly, the Israel Defense Forces is continuing to detect intelligence of illegal Hezbollah activity in Southern Lebanon, and acting on that intelligence. Overnight between April 15 and 16, the IDF conducted strikes against Hezbollah infrastructure in Southern Lebanon.
In one strike near Aitaroun in Southern Lebanon, an IDF aircraft killed Ali Najib Bazzi, identified by the IDF as a squad commander in Hezbollah’s Special Operations unit. Other recent IDF actions included strikes and artillery fire targeting a Hezbollah engineering vehicle near Ayta ash-Shab in Southern Lebanon.
Meanwhile, reports emerged suggesting Hezbollah was actively adapting its methods for acquiring weapons. Reports indicated a shift towards sea-based smuggling routes utilizing Beirut Port.
The Saudi Al-Hadath news site reported on April 8 that Iran’s Quds Force created an arms smuggling sea route that bypasses Syria.
Amidst these reports, Aoun visited Beirut Port on April 11, calling for strict government cargo monitoring.
Karmon expresses skepticism
Senior research scholar Ely Karmon of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at Reichman University in Herzliya stated, “There’s no doubt there’s a change in Lebanon, first of all on the political level— the fact that President Joseph Aoun was elected—supported by the West, the United States, Saudi Arabia.”
In addition, he said, “Hezbollah’s political weight in parliament and in Lebanon in general has dropped significantly after the blow they received from the IDF.”
On the other hand, Karmon expressed deep skepticism about Aoun’s stated path to disarming Hezbollah. Aoun’s statement that he “isn’t interested in coming to military confrontation with Hezbollah,” and that it needs to be a “slow process,” as well as his call for Hezbollah to enter Lebanese army units, should not be taken at face value, according to Karmon.
“I don’t really believe it. First of all, because traditionally, in the Lebanese Army, most of the soldiers were Shi’ites, for a simple demographic reason. And therefore, the integration of thousands of Hezbollah fighters or personnel into the army—certainly at this stage in my opinion—it’s a danger that they’ll take control of the army from within, after they’ve already for years cooperated with the army.”
He added, “We know, for example, that they received weapons from the Lebanese Army—tanks and APCs—when they operated in Syria in 2013, 2010, and they even presented them publicly in Qusayr [in Syria]. On the other hand, we also heard one article from a Hezbollah representative who’s on their political committee, stating, ‘Absolutely not, we will not give up the weapons!’ It is clear there’ll be opposition.”
Karmon said he was skeptical about Lebanese government claims about taking over around 95 out of some 250 Hezbollah positions in Southern Lebanon. Karmon assessed that Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors would be cautious but that they would continue to try “as usual, to act and to bring in weapons, to prepare some infrastructure in case, for example, there is a crisis in the negotiations on the Iranian nuclear issue.”
The post Lebanon Claims It Is Replacing Hezbollah in the South first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Tradition, Tradition!’
An image from “Family at the Seder,” from the 1935 Haggadah by artist Arthur Szyk (b. 1894, Lodz, Poland—d. 1951, New Canaan, CT). Photo: Courtesy of Irvin Ungar
JNS.org – How important is tradition in Judaism? Obviously, the answer is that it is very important. I mean, they even dedicated a major song by that title in “Fiddler on the Roof!”
How strong is the need for tradition in the spiritual consciousness of Jews today? Despite the effects of secularism, I’d venture to suggest that there is still a need inside us to feel connected to our roots, our heritage and our sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Perhaps more than any time of the year, Passover is the season when millions of Jews embrace their traditions with love, warmth and lots of nostalgia.
But for vast numbers of our people, tradition alone has not been enough. And that applies not only to the rebellious among us who may have cast aside their traditions with impunity, but also to many ordinary, thinking people who decided that to do something just because “that’s the way it has always been done” was simply not good enough.
So what if my grandfather did it? My grandfather rode around in a horse and buggy! Must I give up my car for a horse just because my Zaidy rode a horse? And if my Bubbie never got a university degree, why shouldn’t I? Just because my grandparents practiced certain Jewish traditions, why must I? Perhaps those traditions are as obsolete as the horse and buggy?
There are masses of Jews who think this way and who will not be convinced to behave Jewishly just because their grandparents did.
We need to tell them why their grandparents did it. They need to understand that their grandparents’ traditions were not done just for tradition’s sake, but there was a very good reason why their forbears practiced those traditions. And those very same reasons and rationales still hold good today. There is, in fact, no such thing as “empty ritual” in Judaism. Everything has a reason, and a good one, too.
Too many young people were put off by tradition because some cheder or Talmud Torah teacher didn’t take their questions seriously. They were silenced with a wave of the hand, a pinch of the ear, the classic “when you get older, you’ll understand,” or the infamously classic, “just do as you’re told.”
There are answers. There have always been answers. We may not have logical explanations for tsunamis and other tzuris, but all our traditions are founded on substance and have intelligible, credible underpinnings. If we seek answers, we will find them in abundance, including layers and layers of meaning, from the simple to the symbolic to the philosophical and even mystical.
The seventh day of Passover recalls the “Song of the Sea” sung by Moses and the Jewish people following the splitting of the sea and their miraculous deliverance from the Egyptian armies. Early on, we find the verse, “This is my God and I will glorify Him, the God of my fathers, and I will exalt Him.”
The sequence is significant. First comes “my God,” and only thereafter “the God of my fathers.” In the Amidah prayer, the silent devotion, which is the apex of our daily prayers, we begin addressing the “Almighty, as our God and the God of our fathers … Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Again, “our God” comes first. So while the God of our fathers, i.e., tradition, most definitely plays a very important role in Judaism, an indispensable prerequisite is that we must make God ours, personally. Every Jew must develop a personal relationship with God. We need to understand the reasons and the significance of our traditions lest they be mistaken for empty ritual to be discarded by the next generation.
Authentic Judaism has never shied away from questions. Questions have always been encouraged and formed a part of our academic heritage. Every page of the Talmud is filled with questions and answers. You don’t have to wait for the Passover seder to ask a question.
When we think, ask and find answers to our faith, the traditions of our grandparents become alive, and we understand fully why we should make them ours. Once a tradition has become ours and we realize that this very same practice has been observed uninterruptedly by our ancestors throughout the generations, then tradition becomes a powerful force that can inspire us forever.
The seders we celebrated at the beginning of Passover are among the most powerful in our faith. They go back to our ancestors in Egypt, where the very first seder was observed. How truly awesome is it that we are still practicing these same traditions more than 3,300 years later!
Our traditions are not empty. They are rich and meaningful and will, please God, be held on to preciously for generations to come.
With acknowledgments to Chabad.org.
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Thousands of Protesters Rally Against Trump Across US
“Protect Migrants, Protect the Planet” rally in New York City, U.S., April 19, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs
Thousands of protesters rallied in Washington and other cities across the US on Saturday to voice their opposition to President Donald Trump’s policies on deportations, government firings, and the wars in Gaza and Ukraine.
Outside the White House, protesters carried banners that read “Workers should have the power,” “No kingship,” “Stop arming Israel” and “Due process,” media footage showed.
Some demonstrators chanted in support of migrants whom the Trump administration has deported or has been attempting to deport while expressing solidarity with people fired by the federal government and with universities whose funding is threatened by Trump.
“As Trump and his administration mobilize the use of the US deportation machine, we are going to organize networks and systems of resistance to defend our neighbors,” a protester said in a rally at Lafayette Square near the White House.
Other protesters waved Palestinian flags while wearing keffiyeh scarves, chanting “free Palestine” and expressing solidarity with Palestinians killed in Israel’s war in Gaza.
Some demonstrators carried symbols expressing support for Ukraine and urging Washington to be more decisive in opposing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Since his January inauguration, Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk, have gutted the federal government, firing over 200,000 workers and attempting to dismantle various agencies.
The administration has also detained scores of foreign students and threatened to stop federal funding to universities over diversity, equity and inclusion programs, climate initiatives and pro-Palestinian protests. Rights groups have condemned the policies.
Near the Washington Monument, banners from protesters read: “hate never made any nation great” and “equal rights for all does not mean less rights for you.”
Demonstrations were also held in New York City and Chicago, among dozens of other locations. It marked the second day of nationwide demonstrations since Trump took office.
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