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Is This Really a ‘Peace’ Agreement? History Says No
An aerial view shows the bodies of victims of an attack following a mass infiltration by Hamas gunmen from the Gaza Strip lying on the ground in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
Whatever else is offered under the Israel-Hamas agreement, offering Palestinian statehood would undermine authoritative international law. To wit, beyond any reasonable doubt, both the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have been responsible for decades of barbarous anti-Israel terrorism. Moreover, the entities that operate this continuous criminality have never sought a Palestinian Arab state that would co-exist with the existing Jewish State. Always, its unhidden objective is to destroy Israel.
Corroborative evidence of this is abundant. In this “One-State Solution,” all of Israel would become part of “Palestine.” Already, on official PA and Hamas maps, all of Israel, not just Judea/Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza, is identified as “Occupied Palestine.” Cartographically, therefore, Israel has already been removed.
The PA and Hamas both remain clear about their commitment to terror-violence as the sole path to Palestinian “self-determination.” It follows that Palestinian prisoners now being exchanged for Israeli hostages will escalate criminal harms against the innocent. In all likelihood, the Trump-brokered agreement will set the stage for a force-multiplying encore of October 7 defilements. Significantly, previous prisoner releases by Israel produced new waves of anti-Israel terrorism.
In the future, what should Jerusalem say to new victim families of agreement-generated crimes?
Plausibly, over time, some freed terrorists will likely plan calibrated escalations to chemical, biological, or nuclear (radiation dispersal) terrorism. Also likely will be variously coordinated rocket attacks on Israel’s nuclear reactor at Dimona. Though generally forgotten, Hamas already launched such an attack in the past, but was not yet technically able to inflict serious levels of destruction. This earlier terrorist incapacity is rapidly disappearing.
Terrorism is a codified and customary crime under binding international law. Its explicit criminalization can be discovered at all listed sources of the UN’s Statute of the International Court of Justice. This signifies that whenever Palestinian jihadists claim the right to use “any means necessary” against an Israeli “occupation,” their arguments are unsupportable in relevant law.
After the “peace agreement,” the PA and Hamas will mirror their long-bloodied past. From the beginning, all supporters of Palestinian terror-violence against Israelis have maintained that the “sacred” end of Palestinian insurgency justifies the means. Leaving aside the everyday and ordinary ethical standards by which any such argument must be unacceptable, ends can never justify means under conventional or customary international law
Empty Palestinian witticisms notwithstanding, one person’s terrorist can never be another’s freedom-fighter.
While it is true that certain insurgencies can be lawful (for prominent example, “just cause” is at the heart of the US Declaration of Independence), even residually permissible resorts to force must conform to humanitarian international law. These resorts are distinction, proportionality, and military necessity — standards that were made applicable to insurgent armed forces by Article 3 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the 1977 Protocols to these Conventions.
Regarding the rule of “proportionality,” this does not demand equivalent or symmetrical force, only force that is measured against clearly-stated and legitimate goals.
Whenever an insurgent force resorts to unjust means, its actions become terroristic ipso facto. Even if ritualistic Palestinian claims of an Israeli “occupation” were reasonable, any corresponding right to oppose Israel “by any means necessary” would be false. Specifically, any openly unjust means would be an expression of criminal terrorism.
These unchallengeable or “peremptory” legal standards are also binding on all combatants by virtue of customary and conventional international law, including Article 1 of the Preamble to the Fourth Hague Convention (1907). This foundational rule, called the “Martens Clause,” makes all persons responsible for upholding the “laws of humanity” and the “dictates of public conscience.”
History deserves some pride of place. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964, three years before there were any “occupied territories.” What, therefore, was the PLO attempting to “liberate” between 1964 and 1967? There can be only one logical answer.
In law, terrorist crimes mandate universal cooperation in apprehension and punishment. As punishers of “grave breaches” under our decentralized system of international law, a system created after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, all states are required to search out and prosecute, or to extradite, individual terrorist perpetrators. In no circumstances are states permitted to treat terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
There is more. States are never authorized to support terror-violence against other states, whether by direct action or by acting within protective terms of an international agreement. This is emphatically true for the United States, which identifies international law as the “supreme law of the land” at Article 6 of the Constitution and at assorted Supreme Court decisions. The American nation was formed by its Founding Fathers according to timeless legal principles of Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries and the Hebrew Bible.
If the Trump-brokered Israel-Hamas agreement leads to Palestinian statehood, Israel could expect tangible enlargements of terror violence. And because some of the new state’s assaults on Israel would be ones of direct military action rather than insurgency, international law would identify these actions as “crimes of war.” Here, the only decipherable changes would be linguistic.
There is one final observation. As the Israel-Hamas agreement coincides with President Trump’s new mutual security pact with Doha, Palestinian terrorists and war criminals who flee to Qatar would be granted immunity from law-based punishments. Very quickly, such immunization could lead Hamas and other jihadi fighters to implement new and more insidious cycles of terrorist assault. None of these agreement outcomes could reasonably be called “peace.”
Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).
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One Person Killed, 14 Hurt in Blast in Iranian Port of Bandar Abbas, Iranian Media Reports
FILE PHOTO: An aerial view of the Iranian shores and Port of Bandar Abbas in the strait of Hormuz, December 10, 2023. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo
At least one person was killed and 14 injured in an explosion in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas on Saturday, a local official told Iranian news agencies, but the cause of the blast was not known.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency said that social media reports alleging that a Revolutionary Guard navy commander had been targeted in the explosion were “completely false.”
Iranian media said the blast was under investigation but provided no further information. Iranian authorities could not immediately be contacted for comment.
Separately, four people were killed after a gas explosion in the city of Ahvaz near the Iraqi border, according to state-run Tehran Times. No further information was immediately available.
Two Israeli officials told Reuters that Israel was not involved in Saturday’s blasts, which come amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington over Iran’s crackdown on nationwide protests and over the country’s nuclear program.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
US President Donald Trump said on January 22 an “armada” was heading toward Iran. Multiple sources said on Friday that Trump was weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces.
Earlier on Saturday, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused US, Israeli and European leaders of exploiting Iran’s economic problems, inciting unrest and providing people with the means to “tear the nation apart.”
Bandar Abbas, home to Iran’s most important container port, lies on the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway between Iran and Oman which handles about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil.
The port suffered a major explosion last April that killed dozens and injured over 1,000 people. An investigative committee at the time blamed the blast on shortcomings in adherence to principles of civil defense and security.
Iran has been rocked by nationwide protests that erupted in December over economic hardship and have posed one of the toughest challenges to the country’s clerical rulers.
At least 5,000 people were killed in the protests, including 500 members of the security forces, an Iranian official told Reuters.
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How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists
After a pro-Palestinian protest at a New Jersey synagogue turned violent in October, the Trump administration took an unusual step — using a federal law typically aimed at protecting abortion clinics to sue the demonstrators.
Now, federal authorities are attempting to deploy the same law against journalists as well as protesters against Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid the agency’s at times violent crackdown in Minneapolis.
Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, a local journalist, and two protesters were arrested after attending a Jan. 18 anti-ICE protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, Justice Department officials said Friday. Protesters alleged the pastor at Cities Church worked for ICE.
The federal law they are accused of violating, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, or FACE, prohibits the use of force or intimidation to interfere with reproductive health care clinics and houses of worship.
But in the three decades since its passage in 1994, the law had almost entirely been deployed against anti-abortion protesters causing disruptions at clinics.
That changed in September of last year, when the Trump administration cited the FACE Act to sue pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange, New Jersey.
It was the first time the Department of Justice had used the law against demonstrators outside a house of worship, Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division, said at the time.
The novel legal strategy — initially advanced by Jewish advocacy groups to fight antisemitism — is now front and center in what First Amendment advocates are describing as an attack on freedom of the press.
“I intend to identify and find every single person in that mob that interrupted that church service in that house of God and bring them to justice,” Dhillon told Newsmax last week. “And that includes so-called ‘journalists.’”
How the law has been used
The FACE Act has traditionally been used to prosecute protesters who interfere with patients entering abortion clinics. Conservative activists have long criticized the law as violating demonstrators’ First Amendment rights, and the Trump administration even issued a memo earlier this month saying the Justice Department should limit enforcement of the law.
But in September, the Trump administration applied the FACE Act in a new way: suing the New Jersey protesters at Congregation Ohr Torah.
They had disrupted an event at the Orthodox shul that promoted real estate sales in Israel and the West Bank, blowing plastic horns in people’s ears and chanting “globalize the intifada,” a complaint alleges.
Two pro-Israel demonstrators were charged by local law enforcement with aggravated assault, including a local dentist, Moshe Glick, who police said bashed a protester in the head with a metal flashlight, sending him to the hospital. Glick said he had acted in self defense, protecting a fellow congregant who had been tackled by a protester.
The event soon became a national flashpoint, with Glick’s lawyer alleging the prosecution had been “an attempt to criminalize Jewish self-defense.” Former New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy pardoned Glick earlier this month.
The Trump administration sued the pro-Palestinian protesters under the FACE Act, seeking to ban them from protesting outside houses of worship and asking that they each pay thousands of dollars in fines.
At the time, Nathan Diament, executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told JNS he applauded the Trump administration “for bringing this suit to protect the Jewish community and all people of faith, who have the constitutional right to worship without fear of harassment.”
Diament did not respond to the Forward’s email asking whether he supported the use of the FACE Act against the Minneapolis journalists and protesters.
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, a pro-Israel group that says it uses legal tools to counter antisemitism, did not express concern over the use of the FACE Act in the Minnesota arrests — and emphasized the necessity of protecting religious spaces from interference.
“The idea that ‘you can worship’ means nothing if a mob can make it unsafe or impossible,” Goldfeder wrote in a statement to the Forward. “So if you apply it consistently: to protect a church in Minnesota, a synagogue in New Jersey, a mosque in Detroit, what you are actually protecting is pluralism itself.”
Goldfeder has also attempted to use the FACE Act against protesters at a synagogue, citing the law in a July 2024 complaint against demonstrators who had converged on an event promoting Israel real estate at Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. That clash descended into violence.
The Trump administration Justice Department subsequently filed a statement of interest supporting that case, arguing that what constituted “physical obstruction” at a house of worship under the FACE Act could be interpreted broadly.
Now, similar legal reasoning may apply to journalists covering the Sunday church protest in Minneapolis. Press freedom groups have expressed deep alarm over the arrests, arguing that the journalists were there to document, not disrupt.
The arrests are “the latest example of the administration coming up with far-fetched ‘gotcha’ legal theories to send a message to journalists to tread cautiously,” said Seth Stern, chief of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation. “Because the government is looking for any way to target them.”
The post How a law used to protect synagogues is now being deployed against ICE protesters and journalists appeared first on The Forward.
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Nearly 90% of Turkish Opinion Columns Favor Hamas, Study Shows
Pro-Hamas demonstrators in Istanbul, Turkey, carry a banner calling for Israel’s elimination. Photo: Reuters/Dilara Senkaya
About 90 percent of opinion articles published in two of Turkey’s leading media outlets portray the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in a positive or neutral light, according to a new study, reflecting Ankara’s increasingly hostile stance toward Israel.
Earlier this week, the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Institute released a report examining roughly 15,000 opinion columns in the widely read Turkish newspapers Sabah and Hürriyet, revealing that Hamas is often depicted positively through a “resistance movement” narrative portraying its members as “martyrs.”
For example, Turkish journalist Abdulkadir Selvi, writing in Hürriyet, described the assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as “a holy martyr not only of Palestine but of Islam as a whole” who “fought for peace,” while portraying Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “the new Hitler.”
JPPI also found that most articles in these two newspapers took a neutral stance on the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, offering almost no clear condemnation of the attacks and failing to acknowledge the group’s targeting of civilians.
Some journalists even went so far as to praise the violence as serving the Palestinian cause, the study noted.
In one striking example, Hürriyet published an article just one day after the attack, lauding the “resistance fighters” who carried out a “mythic” assault on the “Zionist occupying regime” and celebrating the killings.
In other cases, some journalists went as far as to portray Hamas as treating the Israeli hostages it kidnapped “kindly,” denying that the terrorist group had tortured and sexually abused former captives despite clear evidence.
“There was not the slightest indication that the Israelis released by the Palestinian resistance had been tortured,” Turkish journalist Hilal Kaplan wrote in Sabah, denying claims that the hostages had suffered brutal abuse.
“They all looked exactly the same physically as they did on Oct. 6, 2023, more than a year later,” he continued.
Prof. Yedidia Stern, president of JPPI, described the study’s findings as “deeply troubling,” urging Israeli officials not to overlook the Turkish media’s positive portrayal of Hamas and denial of its abuses.
“We must not normalize incitement and antisemitism anywhere in the world – certainly not when it comes from countries with which Israel maintains diplomatic relations,” Stern said in a statement.
According to the study, nearly half of the columns expressed a positive view of Hamas, while approximately 40 percent took a neutral position.
The analysis also found that around 40 percent of opinion columns mentioning Jews or Judaism contained antisemitic elements, with some invoking “Jewish capital” to suggest global power, while others compared Zionism to Nazism or depicted Jews as immune from international criticism.
For instance, two weeks after the Oct. 7 atrocities, Turkish journalist Nedim Şener wrote in Hürriyet that global Jewish capital and control over media and international institutions had brought the United States and Europe “to their knees,” allowing Israel to carry out a “genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.”