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Will the Gaza War Produce Better Palestinian Leadership?

A militant fires a rocket launcher during what Hamas says is an engagement with its fighters during a battle with Israeli forces amid Israel’s ground offensive in a location given as near Beit Hanoun, Gaza, in this still image taken from video released November 17, 2023. Hamas Military Wing/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

Who should control Gaza after the major combat stops? Can new, better Palestinian leaders be empowered? This is debatable.

One school of thought is that the Palestinians cannot do much better than the men (they are all men) who dominate the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank. Secretary of State Blinken implies this view by insisting on a PA role in governing Gaza on the “day after.”

Another school of thought is more hopeful, or in any event more ambitious. It sees the Gaza war as a chance for Palestinians, with outside help, to make a quantum-leap improvement in their politics and society.

There will inevitably be large sums of reconstruction aid donated by Western countries and perhaps also Gulf Arab states. Whichever Palestinians are given power to spend that aid will, for that reason alone, become politically influential.

The United States can help arrange to channel the aid through a body whose governors would include Palestinians committed to conditions set by the donors. The main conditions could be radical but hard to argue against: (1) don’t steal the funds, (2) civilian projects only and (3) don’t promote hatred of Israel or the donor countries. There could also be more specific guidance — for example, construct permanent housing rather than rebuild “refugee camps,” and require schools to promote non-violent resolution of disputes rather than extremism. This would be the opposite of the approach taken for 75 years by the UN agency for Palestinian relief (UNRWA), which has dedicated itself to perpetuating the war against Israel.

Palestinians agreeing to administer the reconstruction would need security for themselves and their families, who might have to be removed to safe places abroad. The current Palestinian leadership would see them as political rivals, indeed enemies.

The Gaza war is a major historical event, and donors can set goals accordingly. They need not be content to aim for minor reforms of current institutions. Rather, they can pursue serious improvement in the political culture. The benefits could be large. In any event, there is no harm in trying to move substantially beyond the status quo.

Working with Israelis, Saudis, Emiratis, Bahrainis, Egyptians, and representatives of major aid donors such as Canada, the EU, and Japan, US officials can identify competent, well-intentioned Palestinians and organize security for them. The reality is that a random set of Palestinian business people would likely do a better job than the leaders now in power.

The aid donors can draw on the talents of Palestinian engineers, medical doctors, and lawyers, especially Palestinians who have lived in the West and know first-hand the benefits of living under the rule of law. What is crucial is that the new administrators not come from the ranks of the PLO (which runs the PA), Hamas, or other terrorist or extremist groups. The existing political institutions are the problem, not the solution.

There are capable Palestinians who are not ideologically extreme. The aid donors’ challenge is to recruit those who might have the courage, integrity, and ability to spend future aid money properly. It bears repeating that this means using the aid to buy not explosives, rockets, and tunnels for terrorist attacks, but apartment buildings, sanitation systems, power plants, and financial support for farms and factories. It should finance schools that teach useful skills, rather than indoctrinating kids to become martyrs in hopes of destroying Israel and the West.

The Palestinian people have never had such leadership. They have never benefited as they should from the billions of aid dollars donated to help them. And the aid donors — shamefully — have never before actually insisted that their funds be spent properly.

Would the newly empowered Palestinians have legitimacy? Not at first, but no Palestinian leader now has a democratic mandate. The issue is not democracy but effective, relatively humane administration. New leaders may garner support if they use the aid to improve their people’s lives, without enriching themselves or provoking war with Israel.

Helping better leaders arise would serve not only Palestinian interests but also those of the United States and much of the world. The effort may not succeed. But if it doesn’t, the current leaders will remain in power. The Palestinians will continue to suffer ill-government without a realistic hope of statehood. Though President Biden often talks of a “two-state solution,” there’s not even a glimmer of a chance of that outcome under existing Palestinian political circumstances.

It is hard to overstate the significance of bad leadership. For over 100 years, violent, self-serving authoritarians have failed the Palestinian Arabs, producing neither general prosperity nor statehood, but only endless unsuccessful war against the Jews.

It is telling that the main Palestinian leaders sided with the Turks in World War I, the Nazis in World War II, the Soviets in the Cold War, Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, the jihadists after 9/11 and, most disastrously for themselves, with the anti-Zionists in the Arab-Jewish conflict over Palestine. The ideology, instincts, and reasoning of Palestinian leaders have always favored the wrong side, the losing side, the anti-democratic, anti-Western, anti-humane side. This has been a problem for the Israelis, but a calamity for the Palestinians.

From the 1920s till after World War II, Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin al-Husseini shaped and dominated Palestinian political culture. He used public funds corruptly to accumulate personal power and burned down the homes of Arab political opponents. He fomented anti-Jewish violence by promoting an ideology that combined Islamism, nationalism, and false conspiracy theories about Jewish plots to destroy Muslim holy places.

From the late 1960s till his death in 2004, Yasser Arafat ran the Palestine Liberation Organization and then the Palestinian Authority more or less in the Mufti’s style. He framed his rejection of Zionism as a matter of honor and ruled out any permanent compromise with Israel. In 2000, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to recognize a Palestinian state in an area greater than 95% of the West Bank and Gaza. Arafat turned that offer down. He could have created a Palestinian state. He insisted instead on a Palestinian “right of return” that would have forced Israel to relinquish its Jewish majority.

From 2004 till now, PA President Mahmoud Abbas has also proven inflexible. In 2007-08, he refused to accept an Israeli peace offer similar to Barak’s. Yet Abbas is widely described as a “moderate,” which is true only in contrast to Hamas’ singular fanaticism.

The PA’s civil administration has always been chaotic, dictatorial, and corrupt. That is why Hamas, which at the time had no record of governing, won the 2006 Palestinian community-wide elections. Hamas was able to take control only in Gaza, however. The PA, still today in charge of the West Bank, remains unpopular, which is why there have been no elections since 2006.

Many of the millions of Palestinians are accomplished people who, under the right circumstances, could provide better leadership than Haj Amin, Arafat, or Abbas has done. It’s a low bar. What can be done to help decent people hurdle it?

Gaza war convulsions are making possible changes in the political landscape that did not seem possible beforehand. The opportunity should not be frittered away on small-beer initiatives to try to reform the PA. Considerations of humanity and peace combine here with considerations of security and US national interests. The Biden administration would advance US interests if it tried to empower a new Palestinian governing class untainted by corruption and ideological extremism.

Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, served as Under Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration. A version of this article was published on February 13, 2024, by The Free Press. 

The post Will the Gaza War Produce Better Palestinian Leadership? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Israeli Soccer Team Pays Tribute to Murdered Bibas Family With Special Orange Jerseys

A special jersey created by Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv F.C. to honor Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas. Photo: Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv F.C./Instagram

The professional Israeli soccer team Bnei Yehuda Tel Aviv FC honored the late Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas, who were murdered by Hamas terrorists, by wearing special orange jerseys that featured their images during Monday night’s game

On the front of the bright orange jerseys was a drawing of Shiri, 32, hugging her two red-headed sons. All three family members were abducted from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel by Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023, held captive in the Gaza Strip, and then brutally murdered. Their names were written in Hebrew underneath the drawing on the jersey, which also had a Hebrew message on the front that said: “We will not forget, and we will not forgive.” Three black hearts appeared under the image of Shiri and her boys.

Additionally on the jersey was a special logo that Bnei Yehuda created for Shiri’s husband, Yarden Bibas, who was also kidnapped and survived Hamas captivity.

The team’s traditional logo is orange and features a standing lion that has one paw on a soccer ball and another paw holding a Star of David. In honor of the Bibas family, the team added to the lion’s chest an image of a ribbon that symbolizes a call for the return of all the hostages abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. Above the lion there was a message in English that read “We Will Never Forget,” and below the animal it read, “Bibas Family.”

“Bnei Yehuda is the orange group of Israel,” the team said in an Instagram post. “Our color symbolizes community, commitment, and family, and when the whole world was exposed to Ariel and Kfir’s ginger hair, the connection was instantaneous. Tonight, the color orange takes on an even deeper meaning — not only our identity, but also our way of remembering, honoring, and perpetuating.”

The club also announced that it will rename two teams in its youth department to further honor the Bibas children. The teams will be called “Bnei Yehuda — Kfir Bibs Tel-Aviv” and “Bnei Yehuda — Ariel Bibs Tel-Aviv.”

The team said, “As a club with a huge soul and heart, we decided to perpetuate the name of Ariel and Kfir in a way that will stay for generations.”

Eliran Oved, the manager of Bnei Yehuda, said the bright orange color of the jerseys “will always remind us to remember, not forget, and continue to embrace our community with genuine love.”

Bnei Yehuda players wore the special jerseys during Monday night’s game against Hapoel Ramat Hasharon. Bnei Yehuda won the game 2-0 and dedicated the victory to the Bibas family. Yarden Bibas later thanked the team for honoring his late wife and children with the special jerseys, saying it gave him “goosebumps” to see.

Ariel was 4 and Kfir was 10 months old when they were murdered in November 2023 during Hamas captivity, according to the Israel Defense Forces. They were held hostage in Gaza for 503 days, and their bodies were returned to Israel last week on Thursday. Hamas claimed they returned Shiri’s dead body that same day, but after the body’s return to Israel, forensic examination showed that it did not belong to her. Hamas turned over her real body to Israel on Saturday.

Forensics examination of Kfir and Ariel’s bodies revealed that Hamas terrorists killed the brothers “with their bare hands,” said IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari. “Ariel and Kfir Bibas were murdered by terrorists in cold blood,” Hagari explained. “The terrorists did not shoot the two young boys — they killed them with their bare hands. Afterwards, they committed horrific acts to cover up these atrocities.”

Abducted when he was 9 months old, Kfir was the youngest hostage kidnapped by terrorists from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the youngest to have been killed. Shiri’s parents, Margit and Yosi, were also murdered by Hamas during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Three generations were murdered by Hamas terrorists that day, as well as the Bibas family dog. Yarden was kidnapped but released by Hamas on Feb. 1 as part of a ceasefire agreement between the terrorist group and Israel. Sixty-three hostages are still being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The post Israeli Soccer Team Pays Tribute to Murdered Bibas Family With Special Orange Jerseys first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Here’s What New York’s Governor Needs to Do About CUNY

CUNY pro-Hamas students and supporters setup encampment at the school’s campus in New York City on April 25, 2024. Photo: Steve Sanchez via Reuters Connect

It is time for New York Governor Kathy Hochul to put some teeth into New York State’s Executive Order 157, by disciplining the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. 

According to New York State’s Office of General Services, Executive Order No. 157 (EO 157) directs State entities to “divest all public funds supporting the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against Israel. The first-in-the-nation action will ensure that no State agency or authority engages in or promotes any investment that would further the harmful and discriminatory Palestinian-backed Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign in New York State.”

This Executive Order was signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo on June 5, 2016. EO 157 is still in effect.

The Professional Staff Congress (PSC) is the union that represents approximately 30,000 professors and staff who are employed by the City University of New York (CUNY) and the CUNY Research Foundation.

PSC membership is open to full-time and part-time professors, and staff who have retired. On January 23, 2025, the delegate assembly of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) approved the, “PSC and NYCERS [sic] Israeli Investments Divestment Resolution” (PSC BDS Resolution). The Delegate Assembly is the principal governing body of the Professional Staff Congress, and the policy forum for the PSC. The Assembly discusses, debates, and designs the policy positions of the PSC. This resolution calls for divestment of PSC assets from Israel and Israeli companies. 

Here is the relevant part of the resolution:

And, be it further resolved that the Professional Staff Congress shall divest its own funds from any investment vehicle that includes in its portfolio stocks and bonds of Israeli companies and Israeli government bonds no later than the end of January 2026, and shall continue in good faith to try to meet that investment objective.

The PSC resolution clearly supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanction (BDS) movement that seeks to weaken, isolate, and delegitimize Israel. The PSC resolution states: 

Whereas, in the past, such as during the period of apartheid rule in South Africa, American institutions such as colleges and labor unions have used the tool of divestment to show their disapproval of state policies that violate international human rights laws, and also to weaken those states economically.

This PSC CUNY resolution places the PSC in direct conflict with the State of New York. How can the CUNY PSC be the representative of CUNY employees if New York State is prohibited from negotiating and signing contracts with the PSC?

I am a member of the CUNY Professional Staff Congress and I am outraged. I hope I am not alone.

The January, 2025 resolution of the PSC Delegate Assembly is just like their June 10, 2021 “Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People” (CUNY PSC Resolution in Support of the Palestinian People, June 10, 2021).

The 2021 screed is a one-sided polemic that places the entire blame for the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians squarely on Israel. It is clear from the text of the 2021 resolution — “Whereas, Israel’s pattern and practice of dispossession and expansion of settlements, dating back to its establishment as a settler colonial state in 1948” — that the PSC views Israel as an imposed state, not a legitimate country. 

EO 157 asserts: “the State of New York will not permit its own investment activity to further the BDS campaign in any way, shape or form, whether directly or indirectly” (EO 157). 

The intention of the PSC to divest its assets from Israel and Israeli companies is clear support of the BDS campaign, and this requires Governor Hochul to act.

It is now incumbent upon Hochul to enforce EO 157 and cut direct and indirect financial support to the PSC until the PSC revokes its commitment to actively support the BDS campaign. 

The first move by New York State should be to add the PSC to the list of “Institutions or Companies Determined to Participate In Boycott, Divestment, or Sanctions Activity Targeting Israel” (List of Companies and Institutions that engage in BDS Activity). The second step should be to exclude the PSC from future discussions and negotiations with New York State.

The BDS movement does the propaganda work of Hamas and prolongs the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis. By passing the BDS resolution, the PSC has become complicit in prolonging this catastrophic war that was launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023. The PSC is certainly not advocating for peace, but rather for the destruction of Israel. 

Charles A. Stone is a Professor at Brooklyn College, CUNY.

The post Here’s What New York’s Governor Needs to Do About CUNY first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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The Bibas Children Were Murdered in Cold Blood; Why Won’t the World Admit It?

Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum

We are publishing the details confirmed by Israel regarding the Bibas family‘s deaths because Yarden Bibas has expressed his wish for the world to know how his beloved wife and children were killed.

According to Israeli officials, four-year-old Ariel and nine-month-old Kfir Bibas were strangled to death by their Palestinian captors. Their bodies were then mutilated with rocks to simulate the effects of an airstrike.

These findings were confirmed in a forensic examination conducted in Israel after Hamas returned their remains in yet another macabre spectacle in Khan Yunis, where armed terrorists paraded black coffins on stage before an exhilarated crowd.

While the identities of Ariel, Kfir, and fellow hostage Oded Lifshitz—who was also abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz—were quickly confirmed, forensic tests revealed that the remains Hamas had claimed were Shiri Bibas’ actually belonged to an unidentified Palestinian woman. Shiri’s body was only handed over later, transferred to the Red Cross in Gaza before being returned to Israel on Friday.

Israeli officials have determined that Shiri was murdered in the same brutal manner as her sons in November 2023.

The world witnessed the sheer savagery of Hamas terrorists and the Palestinian civilians who joined them as they stormed across the border into Israel on October 7, 2023.

Many of us remember, in excruciating detail, some of the most horrifying moments of that day: the terrorist who called his father to boast that he had killed ten Jews “with his own hands,” using the phone of a woman he had just murdered alongside her husband. The body of Shani Louk, brutalized and lifeless, paraded through Gaza on the back of a pickup truck as a crowd of civilians jostled to further desecrate her remains. The terror on Noa Argamani’s face as she reached for her boyfriend while being sandwiched between two Palestinian men on a motorbike, abducted into Gaza.

Yet even among these horrors, the cold-blooded murder of a mother and her two young children stands apart. It is difficult to grasp such evil, and yet we must. We must say it, again and again: Shiri Bibas and her sons were murdered in Gaza by Palestinian terrorists with their bare hands, their bodies mutilated afterward. They did not die in an airstrike, as Hamas has falsely claimed, and no media organization should be permitted to repeat this lie—parroting the very group responsible for the atrocities of October 7.

Since the release of their bodies, along with six hostages—including two who had been held captive by Hamas for over a decade—we have publicly called out several media organizations that continue to promote the grotesque falsehood that Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were killed in an Israeli airstrike. Among them: MSNBC, TIME, and the Associated Press.

The tragic confirmation of the Bibas family’s deaths has laid bare—like no other event—just how deeply the Western media has normalized the propaganda of an Islamist terrorist organization that is banned in every single country where these outlets operate.

The New York Times, for example, referred to the Bibas family and Oded Lifshitz as “prisoners” of Hamas, a grotesque distortion of reality. NPR described Hamas handing over the wrong body of Shiri Bibas—despite their prompt delivery of her remains on Friday, proving they knew exactly where she was—as a simple “mistake.” ABC News and The Telegraph went so far as to cast doubt on whether the wrong remains had even been handed over, framing Israel’s DNA-confirmed identification as a mere “allegation.” Both outlets only corrected their reports after swift intervention from HonestReporting.

Meanwhile, The Washington Post obscenely referred to Ariel and Kfir Bibas as “youths”—using language that mirrors Hamas’ own dehumanizing rhetoric. And then there was the BBC’s Jon Donnison, who equated Hamas’ staged propaganda spectacle with Israel, declaring that the “propaganda efforts by both [were] pretty nauseating.”

Let that sink in. A journalist, paid by British taxpayers as per the BBC‘s funding model, compared the parading of the bodies of Israeli children before a crowd in Gaza to something he imagines Israel is doing. It is beyond the pale.

And yet, when HonestReporting’s Editorial Director, Simon Plosker, called Donnison out on X (formerly Twitter), the BBC journalist’s response was frankly embarrassing.

This is where we are now. In some cases, particularly when media outlets issue rapid corrections, these distortions can be attributed to laziness. But in others—like Donnison’s—it is simply Western media acting as a PR machine for a terrorist organization. And in his case, he’s doing it on the British public’s dime.

The pattern is clear: When Hamas lies, too many journalists rush to print it. When Israel tells the truth, they call it an “allegation.”

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

The post The Bibas Children Were Murdered in Cold Blood; Why Won’t the World Admit It? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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