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The United Nations: Where Killing Jews Pays
Israeli security forces work at the scene of what police said was a suspected car-ramming attack, at the entrance to Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of eastern Jerusalem May 16, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
On the cusp of the new year, Jews globally find themselves breathless, tied in knots as the world tries to award international recognition to those who kill us and wish us dead.
Hamas launched its brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, then hid behind and beneath civilians, with a singular goal: to instigate a bloody war that would turn global opinion against Israel and in favor of its purpose — to eradicate the world’s only Jewish state.
The international community is acceding to Hamas’ grotesque desires.
Masochistic leaders Keir Starmer, Anthony Albanese, Mark Carney, and Emanuel Macron rewarded Hamas for overtly invading Israel with empty statehood recognition, partly because of the radical Islamic movements that are taking root in their own countries of the UK, Australia, Canada, and France.
The international community is obsessed with accusing Israel of flouting international conventions. We hear endlessly about the Geneva Conventions, usually as applied against Israel with respect to unsupported allegations — and never in relation to Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, which are definitely breaking the Geneva Conventions.
As such, I want to introduce you to another convention that everyone conveniently forgot this week: the Montevideo Convention.
Since 1933, the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States has served the international community as the governing document establishing the basic criteria of statehood. Article 1 states:
The state as a person of international law should possess:
a. a permanent population;
b. a defined territory;
c. government; and
d. capacity to enter relations with other states.
A state may exist without formal recognition if it possesses these characteristics, but the inverse cannot be true. A state cannot be willed into existence if it lacks these features.
Unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state contravenes the required presence of these elements under international law.
First, the continued demand for a “right of return” by Palestinian leaders confuses the concept of a permanent Palestinian population. Will Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan evict Palestinians languishing in their refugee camps and send them “home?” Does this mean Palestinian leadership will abandon the “right of return” to Israeli territory because they now have their own state? Will Palestinians throw away keys passed down from generation to generation as they radicalized their youth to demand homes that have not existed for 80 years?
Further, who may live in this state and have citizenship? Surely any Jews in the West Bank should be treated as equal citizens. Once statehood is declared, undoubtedly the world will demand an end to apartheid in Palestine, given that Jews currently may not live in Palestinian Authority territories. Right?
Second, none of the announcements clearly defined the territory of this state. What are its borders? What is its capital? Even the UK’s Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy acknowledged to the BBC that no actual state exists, calling the UK’s announcement an aspirational statement — an attempt to “hold out for” a two-state solution. Has he never heard of putting the cart before the horse?
More problematic are vague references to a reversion to pre-1967 Six Day War boundaries. Under such declarations, Jerusalem again will be divided, with the Kotel — the Jews’ holiest site — potentially in Palestinian territory. Hebrew University, Hadassah Hospital, the Jewish Quarter — all may fall within a Palestinian state if borders are recognized unilaterally.
Dangerous de facto realities have already been created on the ground, with the British consulate renaming its eastern Jerusalem address online as within “Palestine” instead of “Israel” this week.
Imagine how emboldened terrorists will be to attack these places once London decides to declare them part of a nonexistent Palestinian state. Does anyone think the Palestinian Authority will allow Jews to live in or travel safely to those locations in eastern Jerusalem? Will Jews be able to pray at the Kotel, study at Hebrew University, or live in the Jewish Quarter?
Third, who represents the government of this state? Mahmoud Abbas is in the 18th year of his four-year term. Meanwhile, Hamas has governed Gaza with an iron fist since 2005. Without Israel as a mutual enemy, these groups would slaughter each other. Who owns the capital, and is it in the West Bank or Gaza? Where will embassies be established?
These are questions that the Montevideo Convention intended to be answered before declaring statehood.
Finally, with whom does the international community intend to establish relations? With a proscribed terror group in violation of their own laws? Most countries cannot engage with Hamas, one of two Palestinian governing bodies. What happens if Abbas dies, elections are held, and Hamas wins control of the West Bank? It is a distinct possibility, and it’s one reason that Abbas has not held elections for 18 years. The fact is, there is no one government that represents all Palestinians. The Palestinian schism since 2005 itself demonstrates the premature nature of statehood recognition.
Far more problematic for Palestinians is the failure to play this game out to the end. They can no longer be refugees under the auspices of UNRWA if they are a permanent population of a defined state. Palestinian refugee status is eviscerated by statehood; the two cannot exist on the same plane. All rights and benefits accruing from and institutions constructed around that fiction logically should end. But the UN is so wrapped up in the grift pervading this sick system that it would never countenance such a loss.
Furthermore, statehood comes with duties as well as rights. A Palestinian state should be subject to the same international norms governing war crimes, human rights, and terrorism as other UN members. A nascent Palestine will be born a rogue state, instantly subject to sanctions for flagrantly violating these norms — but we all know that will never happen.
The new state’s swaddling cloth will be laundered terror funding, its wet nurse international leaders who coddle its human rights violations, and its first words contempt for the communities that gave it everything it did not deserve because it sought the murder of Jews instead of peace.
This week’s lesson in international diplomacy is simple and terrifying: slaughtering Jews pays.
Ellen Ginsberg Simon is an attorney living in New Jersey and an advocate against antisemitism on college campuses through the Jewish Alumni Council and Brown Jewish Alumni & Friends.
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Sydney Teen Arrested for Knife Attack on Jewish Man Amid Surge in Antisemitic Hate Crimes
Demonstrators hold a placard as they take part in the ‘Nationwide March for Palestine’ protest in Sydney, Australia, Aug. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
A teenage boy in Sydney has been arrested for allegedly attacking a Jewish man at knifepoint on a train — the latest antisemitic incident in a troubling rise of anti-Jewish hate crimes across Australia.
On Wednesday, the New South Wales Police confirmed that a 16-year-old boy was charged earlier this week over the antisemitic knifepoint assault of a Jewish man on a train.
According to police reports, two assailants approached a 66-year-old Jewish man as he neared the train doors. They allegedly attacked him with a knife while shouting antisemitic remarks before fleeing the scene.
Shortly after the attack, the man was given medical attention on-site, though no major injuries were reported, before filing a formal police report.
NSW Police arrested the 16-year-old in Padstow, a suburb in Sydney’s southwest, but authorities are still searching for the second attacker as the investigation continues.
He was charged with intent to commit an indictable offense, common assault, publicly threatening violence based on religion, and intentionally intimidating someone to cause fear of physical harm.
As of now, the teenager remains in custody, having been denied bail and arraigned in a children’s court on Wednesday.
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 the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
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, a significant increase 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.
Since the Oct. 7 atrocities, the local Jewish community has faced a wave of targeted attacks, with several Jewish sites across Australia subjected to vandalism and even arson amid an increasingly hostile climate.
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UN Sanctions on Iran Loom After Vote to Delay Fails
Members of the United Nations Security Council vote against a resolution by Russia and China to delay by six months the reimposition of sanctions on Iran during the 80th UN General Assembly in New York City, US, Sept. 26, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
United Nations sanctions on Iran are set to be reimposed on Saturday, Britain’s UN envoy said on Friday after a Russian and Chinese Security Council resolution to delay them failed, prompting Tehran to warn that the West bore responsibility for any consequences.
The decision to restore sanctions by Western powers is likely to exacerbate tensions with Tehran, which has already warned that the action would be met with a harsh response and open the door to escalation.
The Russian and Chinese push to delay the return of sanctions on Iran failed at the 15-member UN Security Council after only four countries supported their draft resolution.
“This council does not have the necessary assurance that there is a clear path to a swift diplomatic solution,” Britain’s envoy to the United Nations, Barbara Wood, said after the vote.
“This council fulfilled the necessary steps of the snapback process set out in resolution 2231, therefore UN sanctions targeting Iranian proliferation will be reimposed this weekend,” she said.
UNITED NATIONS SANCTIONS RETURN ON SATURDAY
All UN sanctions on Iran are due to return at 8 pm EDT on Saturday (0000 GMT) after European powers, known as the E3, triggered a 30-day process accusing Tehran of violating a 2015 deal meant to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons.
Diplomats had said the resolution to delay sanctions for six months had been unlikely to pass, after last-ditch talks between Iran and Britain, France, and Germany failed to break a deadlock.
Nine countries voted no, while two abstained.
Russia’s deputy envoy to the United Nations accused the Western powers of burying the diplomatic path.
US BETRAYED DIPLOMACY, E3 BURIED IT, IRAN SAYS
“The US has betrayed diplomacy, but it is the E3 which have buried it,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the council, saying the snapback was “legally void, politically reckless, and procedurally flawed.”
“Diplomacy will never die, but it will be more difficult and more complicated than before,” he told reporters after the Security Council meeting.
The European powers had offered to delay reinstating sanctions for up to six months to allow space for talks on a long-term deal if Iran restored access for UN nuclear inspectors, addressed concerns about its stock of enriched uranium, and engaged in talks with the United States.
The US representative at the council said Iran had failed to address E3 concerns meaning a return of sanctions was inevitable, although she left the door open for diplomacy.
France said the return of sanctions was not the end of diplomacy.
UN sanctions would come into force immediately on Saturday, while European Union sanctions would return next week.
Iran’s economy is already struggling with crippling sanctions reimposed since 2018 after US President Donald Trump ditched the pact during his first term.
The sanctions would restore an arms embargo, a ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing, a ban on activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, a global asset freeze and travel bans on Iranian individuals and entities, and would also hit its energy sector.
Addressing the UN General Assembly earlier on Friday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country bombed Iran’s nuclear installations with the United States in June, said the world should not allow Iran to rebuild its nuclear and military programs.
“We lifted a dark cloud that could have claimed millions and millions of lives, but ladies and gentlemen, we must remain vigilant,” Netanyahu told the General Assembly on Friday.
“We must not allow Iran to rebuild its military nuclear capacities, Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium. These stockpiles must be eliminated, and tomorrow UN Security Council sanctions on Iran must be snapped back,” he said.
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K-12 Union Antisemitism Is Politicizing Classrooms, New Report Says
Illustrative: A pro-Hamas demonstrator uses a bullhorn during a protest at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on March 11, 2025. Photo: Daniel Cole via Reuters Connect.
Public sector education unions have turned K-12 classrooms into theaters of anti-Zionist agitation, thereby alienating Jewish teachers and students, according to a new report by the Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI).
Titled, “Breaking Solidarity: How Antisemitic Activists Turned Teacher Unions Against Israel”, the report examines several major teachers unions and their escalation of anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish activity following the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel — a series of actions which included attempting to sever ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), staging protests in which teachers led chants of “Death to Israel,” and teaching students that Israel constitutes an “settler-colonial” state which perpetrates ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.
In New York City, report author Paul Zimmerman writes, the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) has advanced from fostering popular support for anti-Zionism among students to seeking cover from government by placing one or more of its fellow travelers in high office. The UFT endorsed the New York City mayoral candidacy of Zohran Mamdani in July, calling the avowed socialist and Hamas sympathizer a potential “partner.”
“The historical record shows that, whatever their shortcomings, previous generations of teacher-union leaders stood up to antisemitism in K-12 schools on behalf of their Jewish members and promoted strong US support for Israel in the face of existential attacks on that country,” the report states. “Now, antisemitic activists grossly dishonor that legacy by weaponizing teacher unions to spread antisemitism, intimidate Jewish teachers, and recast the classroom as a battlefield against the West.”
Zimmerman outlines three concepts for reforming union conduct, reserving a significant role for the US Congress, which holds the power to investigate the union bosses and subpoena them before its relevant committees. He also calls on teachers to register their opposition by withholding compulsory union dues which ply union leadership with both resources and legitimacy.
“In the end, however, the millions of teachers who want no part in indoctrinating their students in anti-Western ideology — including antisemitism — or supporting unions that care more for supporting radical candidates and causes than making schools safe for Jewish educators and students must vote with their feet,” he concludes. “These teachers. who simply wish to help their students learn about the world and lead productive and meaningful lives, should consider abandoning their unions and cutting off the dues that subsidize this ugly agenda.”
Union antisemitism is receiving increased national attention, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
On Monday, Jewish students employed as graduate workers by Columbia University filed a federal complaint against their campus labor union — Student Workers of Columbia, an affiliate of United Auto Workers (UAW) — alleging that its bosses devote more energy and resources to pursuing “radical policy proposals” than improving occupational conditions.
The National Right to Work Foundation (NRTW), a nonprofit organization which fights for worker mobility and freedom of representation that is providing the students legal counsel free of charge, said in a release shared with The Algemeiner that the students, who have formed the advocacy group Graduate Researchers Against Discrimination and Suppression (GRADS), are subjected to abuses which magnify problems inherent in compulsory union membership — chiefly that they may be forced to accept as representatives of their interests union bosses who act in “bad faith” and hold offensive beliefs.
NRTW pointed to another similar example in August, writing in a letter to the US Congress’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce that higher-education-based unions controlled by United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE) are rife with antisemitism and anti-Zionist discrimination.
“Tracing its roots to communism in the 1930s, the UE is a radical, pro-Hamas labor union that has a long history of antisemitism,” the NRTW, one of the US’s leading labor reform groups, wrote on July 30 in a message obtained by The Algemeiner. “The UE openly supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which is designed to cripple and destroy Israel economically. Today, the UE furthers its antisemitic agenda by unionizing graduate students on college campuses and using its exclusive representation powers to create a hostile environment for Jewish students. The hostile environment includes demanding compulsory dues to fund the UE’s abhorrent activities.”
In July, the National Education Association (NEA) teachers union’s Representative Assembly to ban the ADL, a measure that would have proscribed the union’s sharing ADL literature which explains the history of antisemitism and the Holocaust. In the lead up to the vote, a website promoting the policy, titled #DroptheADLFromSchools, attacked the ADL’s reputation as a civil rights advocate and knowledgeable source of information about antisemitism, the very issue the group was founded to fight.
The ban garnered the support of extreme far-left groups — such as Black Lives Matter, Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) — and others which have praised the use of terrorism against Israel and the broader Western world to advance a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which necessitates destroying the Jewish state. Its approval by the Representative Assembly prompted the ADL to say that the activists behind it were attempting to “isolate their Jewish colleagues and push a radical antisemitic agenda on students.”
Ultimately, the NEA Executive Committee refused to enact the ban, drawing praise from the ADL for having moved “reject this misguided resolution that is rooted in exclusion and othering.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.