UNRWA institutions in Gaza – schools, clinics, hospitals, and more – harbored Hamas killers and weapons, with Hamas terror attack tunnels built right underneath them. And dozens of UNRWA personnel were complicit or active participants in the October 7 assault on Israel.

It turns out that more than 2,000 UNRWA employees were also terrorists in either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). A fifth of UNRWA school administrators were Hamas terrorists, and 10% of the senior positions (school principals and their deputies, directors, and deputy directors of training centers) were also members of Hamas or PIJ. More than 200 UNRWA staff were Hamas killers with unmistakable terrorist records, and hundreds more openly celebrated the October 7 rapes and murders.

Beyond Gaza, UNRWA is rotten to its core. Its schools in Judea and Samaria, Jordan, Lebanon, and elsewhere validate the so-called Palestinian "right of return," the "right" to demographically overwhelm Israel, thus perpetuating Palestinian war against Israel instead of helping to solve the conflict.

Watchdog organizations tirelessly have documented the hate taught in UNRWA classrooms. Palestinian children learn that Jews are liars and fraudsters, and that Jews spread corruption which will lead to their annihilation. Terrorists are glorified as role models. Lessons that incite violence are taught across all grades and subjects, including in math and science classes. Inevitably, the systematic teaching of hatred and violence within the UNRWA school system results in Palestinian terror against Israel.

And of course, the agency does nothing to resettle Palestinian refugees. In fact, the number of UNRWA-registered "refugees" continues to exponentially grow. UNRWA refuses to remove from its registry millions of people who hold foreign citizenship and residency, and who, by any other "refugee" concept, would no longer be considered refugees.

In short, while UNRWA professes to be a humanitarian organization, its true goal is to perpetuate the hope that Palestinians will one day flood and destroy Israel. UNRWA is plainly an enormous obstacle to peace.

DESPITE THIS, last Friday the UN renewed UNRWA's mandate for another three years, on the mistaken assertion that the organization is an indispensable humanitarian tool.

Fortunately, real changes on the ground in Gaza and in eastern Jerusalem are proving just how wrong this is and how things can be done so much better without UNRWA.

In Gaza, UNRWA has been blessedly replaced by over a dozen other aid organizations. As Enia Krivine of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has shown, relief organizations are delivering aid and services just fine without UNRWA's radicalizing agenda.

The UN Development Program (UNDP) is managing waste management. Fuel distribution is managed by the UN Office for Project Services (UNOPS). The World Central Kitchen has been effective at delivering food alongside the World Food Program (WFP). The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has taken a larger role in children-related humanitarian responses. The World Health Organization (WHO) is providing medical aid to field clinics and hospitals.

UNRWA's decades-long monopoly on aid and services – which came part and parcel with annihilationist messaging about Israel – has finally been broken. The Trump administration (through its Civil-Military Coordination Center in Kiryat Gat) gets partial credit for this. Now the administration is considering hitting UNRWA with terrorism-related sanctions, something that would appropriately cripple the organization.

For its part, new Israeli laws that came into effect this year outlaw coordination with UNRWA, making it difficult for UNRWA (which had used Israel as its base of operations for decades) to continue delivering its services. Not surprisingly, UNRWA's well-paid lobbyists and advocates warned that Israel's move would have catastrophic consequences. It has not.

For example, UNRWA schools in Jerusalem have been closed down. A thousand or so eastern Jerusalemite Arab students have moved to other institutions, including schools that teach the Israeli curriculum. This is an exceptionally good thing. (Why the heck was UNRWA ever allowed to open schools in Jerusalem?!)

Under the new laws, all UNRWA facilities in Jerusalem are supposed to be shuttered too, especially the agency's vast, main compound in Maalot Dafna (Sheikh Jarrah). Israeli police finally raided the compound this week, seizing equipment and replacing the UN flag with an Israeli one (– an act that was of course condemned by the UN secretary general).

(The compound is scheduled to become a residential neighborhood with 1,400 apartments. Haredi community activists already are bickering over control of the project, which abuts other mostly haredi neighborhoods.)

Next is financial action against UNRWA. The Bank of Israel is supposed to force Israeli banks to close UNRWA's accounts, and the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare is supposed to stop processing benefit payments to UNRWA employees. The Ministry of Finance already has cancelled the agency's substantial tax exemptions on imported cars, fuel, and equipment. But UNRWA still owes Jerusalem years of unpaid property taxes, worth millions of shekels.

Slowly, slowly (too slowly), the ministries of defense and foreign affairs are stopping the issuance of work/residence permits to UNRWA employees, too.

MOVING from axing UNRWA to a constructive post-Gaza-war framework, the "international community" must focus on rebuilding Palestinian society – free from rank corruption, destructive indoctrination, coddling of terrorism, and the overall moral rot that for too long has contaminated international politics relating to Palestinians.

First and foremost, this means elimination of refugee status for all Palestinians living in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. "Refugee camps" must be transformed into regular neighborhoods or towns, and their residents redefined as, well, local residents – not refugees.

Second is meaningful curriculum overhauls in Palestinian educational institutions from kindergarten through university, eliminating antisemitic and anti-Israel materials, and the adoption of population-wide deradicalization initiatives.

Third is action towards total demilitarization of Palestinian areas (excepting lightly armed police forces), as envisioned and promised in the Oslo Accords 30 years ago – but never pursued seriously.

Alas, Israel has little confidence in the ability of anybody to swiftly rebuild Palestinian society or "reform" Palestinian government, unless the Palestinians themselves wish to do so.

Throwing more aid money at the Palestinians certainly won't help, just as it has not done the trick over the past thirty years since the Oslo Accords were signed.

Despite tens of billions of dollars and euros invested in the Palestinian Authority by the "international community," there is no democracy, no rule of law, no transparency, no sustainability, no investment in economic stability, and no peace education in the PA. Not a single refugee has been resettled. Not one hospital has been built in the West Bank. Only one sewage treatment plant.

But there is plenty of nepotism and corruption, "pay-for-slay" handouts (meaning the incentivizing and rewarding of terrorism against Israel), violent propagandizing against Israel (including support for Hamas's October 7 invasion and massacres), and diplomatic assault on Israel in every possible international forum.

As for Western "security assistance" to the PA, this has produced mixed results, at best. The PA does not effectively control key terrorist nodes in the West Bank, and PA security personnel repeatedly have participated in or facilitated terror attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers. PA security personnel account for 12% of all Palestinian terrorists held by Israel.

In short, the overall return on Western investment in Palestinian maturity and independence is abysmal. Real reform of Palestinian government and society is going to be a long, arduous process and must involve penalty and penance not just reward and recognition.

Which is why it is asinine of France, Britain, Canada, and others to resurrect illusions of imminent Palestinian statehood. Regrettably, their gambit is a recipe for devastating disappointment and protracted conflict.

The post Finish off UNRWA now appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Therefore, Israel must appreciate and work with Trump as best possible over the next two years to lock-in further gains (as Martin Oliner this week correctly argued in these pages).

But the fact that Donald Trump does not do ideology is problematic. His exceptionally transactional approach to political and foreign affairs – thinking that money, dealmaking, and the force of his personality can fix everything and lead to swift peace everywhere – is refreshing but also dangerous. It leads him to ignore the villainous nature of people like Ahmed al-Sharaa and Zohran Mamdani.

I can understand to some extent Trump's buttering-up of the new Syrian president Sharaa (aka Mohammed Al-Jolani). America has a strategic interest in drawing Syria into the US orbit, and away from Russia and Iran. Israel shares this aspiration (although doubts that Sharaa is a reliable partner).

I can understand to some extent Trump's love fest with Saudi and Emirati leaders, which stems from strategic reasons (as above) alongside Trump's great desire for mega-investments in America from these extremely wealthy countries.

Israel shares Trump's aspiration for expansion of Abraham Accord-style regional partnerships with the Saudis (although it should not and will not pay the diplomatic high price for such accords that the Saudis apparently are currently demanding).

But Trump's buddy-buddy-like meeting in the Oval Office with Mamdani, the incoming mayor of New York City, upsets me terribly. As does Trump's non-response to virulent antisemitic voices emerging in a significant branch of his own political party.

Mamdani represents a broad cultural shift in America in which opposition to Jewish peoplehood has become a mark of moral virtue. Mamdani's victory means that it is legitimate to slander Israel with allegations of genocide and tar all Jews with insinuations of apartheid and "white" slave-mastering; that it is kosher to wage Marxist and Islamist class warfare against Jews and Zionists.

Tucker Carlson of the extremist MAGA right-wing represents the rise of Nazi-like and Christian supersessionist thinking in radical Republican circles.

So I cringe and cry when President Trump sits in his Oval Office chair silently by as Mamdani brazenly accuses Israel and its main backer, the United States of America, of genocide and war crimes. As if this was not any offense to Trump and to America, as if this were not an outrage against Jews and Israelis, and as if this weren't an assault on truth and decency.

I shudder when Trump has nothing to say about Carlson's consorting with Holocaust-denying and outright Jew-hating creeps like Nick Fuentes. As if this did not happen, as if this has no major impact on public discourse in the mainstream political party that Trump claims to lead.

IN TRUTH, Trump may not have been listening to either Mamdani or Carlson. He has, as we have learned, a wooden ear for all things ideological. He thinks that only the practical political act is meaningful, that all leaders can be cajoled or wedged into his lane by the force of a deal.

Now it is true as Trump loyalists have said that there is value in wearing one's ideology lightly. This allows for the flow of fresh thought, frees one up to react to crises in unexpected and novel ways, and keeps your enemies guessing.

But in the long term, Trump's ideological truancy is rigorously wrong. Rejection of moral limits in politics and ignorance of ideological currents in global affairs lead to incoherent or corrupt policy or both. Combine this with narcissist craving for deals that ostensibly prove one's "greatness," and you have a recipe for bad results. You open the door to gargantuan strategic mistakes and to deep ideological rot.

The two immediate theaters where such bad policy results are emerging are the Russia-Ukraine and Hamas-Israel conflicts.

Ukraine is being abandoned by Trump to Russian ravaging, and Israel is being handcuffed in its existential war with radical annihilationist Islam.

Kyiv is expected to permanently relinquish Donbas to Russian conquest, and Jerusalem dare not make a military move without Trump's approval. Neither Ukraine nor Israel can upset the transactional-on-steroids, global and regional "peace" deals that Trump is driving.

In the Middle East, it is ridiculously inappropriate to declare "peace in our time for the first time in 3,000 years," while imposing a flawed freeze on the situation. Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran have not been sufficiently defanged or deterred.

In Gaza specifically, Trump seems to be dialing back from demands for real disarmament of Hamas and instead pushing for rapid reconstruction while overseeing the free flow of humanitarian aid straight into the hands of Hamas. Equally upsetting is Trump's internationalization of the conflict in Gaza by inviting-in Egyptian and Turkish troops and offering the snake-like Qataris a central role in controlling territory bordering Israel.

Alas, Trump's non-dogmatic methodology for "solving" conflicts, refreshing in some contexts, is deleterious here. It ignores the fact that major actors in the regions like Turkey, Qatar, and Iran apply an ideological-hegemonic prism to regional affairs, and are in fact fighting a civilizational against America and the Western world (and of course against Israel).

It ignores the need to distinguish between good and evil, between victim and perpetrator, between necessary escalation and all-out civilizational collapse.

In this regard, the Jewish People and the State of Israel are this generation's great generator of moral purpose. We are attempting to awaken the West from suicidal slumber, from dangerous cultural and strategic malaise; to help Trump and the West defend against the worst radical actors on the world stage and rout the insidious forces that threaten to undermine Western righteousness from within.

The post Trump's Truancy appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Haredi leaders are not budging. Despite October 7, despite the near-existential threat situation Israel finds itself in across seven fronts, despite the attendant acute military manpower crisis, despite the enormous sacrifices in dead, wounded, and displaced, and despite financial deprivation, household disruption, and emotional trauma experienced by so many Israeli families religious and secular alike – haredi leaders remain adamant that "yeshiva boys" cannot be drafted in any minimal way (whether they are really learning Torah full time or not).

These leaders are overwhelmingly cut-off from the war reality that "mainstream" Israel is living, purposefully and devastatingly so. Alas, they are disconnected, even unfeeling towards the broader public – as several condescending critical statements and recent interviews of the highest-ranking rabbis and their spokesmen have sadly made clear.

(For a particularly revealing and infuriating example, see the interview given three weeks ago by Yisrael Friedman, editor of the main haredi newspaper Yated Neeman, to the Religious Zionist newspaper Makor Rishon.)

I no longer believe that this can be changed even if the most drastic punitive measures were applied (and they won't be) – like a complete cut-off of government funding for everything haredi from schools that don't teach basic secular subjects to the massive subsidies that non-serving Kollel families enjoy in municipal taxes, health insurance, school tuition, daycare, and more.

I just don't see solutions on the horizon for the constitutional, political, and social crisis over haredi draft exemption (even though I believe that there are pathways to a better place in the very long term along the lines of haredi "hesder" yeshivas, which are growing very slowly).

There are certainly no solutions that will adequately address the IDF's immediate needs, which is about 10,000 new soldiers a year, including at least 6,000 full-time combat soldiers in the 18-24 age cohort. No "change government" headed by the current opposition leaders is going to be able to fix this, even if such an alternative government were to be voted into office next year. That's the miserable reality.

WHAT REMAINS is adoption of a moral stance as a matter of principle; the proclamation from every platform of the sociological and ideological suffering of serving Israelis – the echoing of their scream.

And within the religious world, it is extraordinarily necessary to defiantly distinguish distorted haredi interpretations of religious ideology regarding military service from authentic Torah ideology in this regard. This is an obligation for the sake of the "honor of Torah" as well as it being an emotional and social imperative.

In these pages in June 2024, I debunked at length four pseudo-foundational concepts that haredi ideologues cite in defense of their refusal to participate in "carrying the burden" of military service. Today, we'll let the voices of Religious Zionist heroes and heroines sound the siren.

Listen to Noa Mevorach of the Religious Zionist "Shutafot LaSheirut" movement (Partners in Service), speaking earlier this year to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. She held up her husband's conscription notice for reserve duty – his fifth tour of IDF reserve service since the Simchat Torah (October 7, 2023) invasion of Israel and the massacres led by Hamas.

"The blood of great Torah scholars from my community who went to battle for Israel over the past year, the husbands of my friends who were killed in battle and whose kids are orphans – cries out from the ground," exclaimed Mrs. Mevorach.

"I hear the discussion here in this committee where it is repeatedly said that haredi men cannot be drafted except by consensus, that they cannot be drafted against their will, that force won't work. And that the great goal of the proposed new draft legislation is to softly and slowly reach a 50% draft of haredi men over the next ten years."

"Behold my husband's fifth draft notice! I ask every member of Knesset to consider this: Why am I not eligible for a 50% discount too, for a 50% reduction in the army burden placed on my husband and on the shoulders of my family? Give me a 50% reduction! "

"I'll take either the holidays of Tishrei (Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Succot) or the holidays of Nissan (Pesach) in this cutback, so that my husband can be home for 50% of the holidays and we won't have to sit at the holiday table alone or go to my parents."

"Why am I not eligible for 50% savings? Who decided and with what authority was it decided that one particular population in the State of Israel, the haredi public, is entitled to a 50% discount? I also want the option to choose such a bargain!" concluded the valiant Noa Mevorach.

This week, a large group of (mostly religious) bereaved families published a petition aimed at members of Knesset from Religious Zionist and traditional backgrounds, in opposition to the Bismuth draft evasion proposals.

Among the signatories are Rabbanit Avivit Granot (mother of Amitai z"l), Rabbi Benny Kalmanson (father of Elhanan z"l), Hagai Lober (father of Elisha z"l), Rabbi Yonatan Sltoki (father of Yishai z"l and Noam z"l), Rabbanit Rachel Goldberg (widow of Rabbi Avi Goldberg z"l), Yair, Sarah, and Shira Schwartz (the family of David z"l), Haya Hexter (mother of Yakir z"l), Tovah and Ariel Shinkolevsky (parents of Yakir z"l), Miriam and Aharon Haber (parents of Zecharia z"l), Zvika Greenglick (father of Shauli z"l), Haim and Leli Deri (parents of Saadia z"l), Tzofia Dickstein (mother of Ivri z"l), and twenty other families.

"We call upon MKs from religious and traditional backgrounds to reject the current draft (evasion) proposals on ideological grounds. This is not the way of Torah! 'Every person must participate in a milchemet mitzva, a war of commandment and merit' – so teaches our tradition, and so we taught our sons; Torah teaching that unites the People of Israel and does not divide the nation."

"On October 7 and in the two years since, our sons, brothers, and husbands sallied forth to defend the nation, in the name of Torah, out of mutual responsibility for all Israelis, out of responsibility for the fate of the Nation of Israel. They left home and did not return. The pain that we feel is endless, and this requires us to speak out."

"We do not seek to end Torah study. On the contrary, we know that Torah is the lifeblood of our people. But the Torah of Israel does not allow one to exempt himself from the burdens of the public; it obligates everybody to collective responsibility. This is the Biblical commandment 'Do not stand idly by when the blood of your neighbor is at stake.' All the much more so when your neighbor is fighting to save you!"

"Specifically out of respect for Torah and those who study it, it is difficult for us to hear people using Torah to justify exemption from military service along with exemptions from basic social and economic obligations. A nation cannot survive if a third of its citizens enjoy all benefits of society without shouldering its obligations. Not today, and not in the future."

"Therefore, the basic minimal requirements for new draft legislation involve true participation of the haredi public in national service with strict enforcement, and the denial of government budgets to the haredi public until this happens. Do not vote for the current legislation, which allows for continued draft dodging, involves more feeding at the trough, does concrete damage to Israel's national security, and insults the Torah tradition by which our loved ones lived and died."

"At this historic moment we say to our representatives in Knesset: Stiffen your spine and speak proudly in the name of Torah in the Land of Israel. Do not assault our common values, do not degrade our tradition, do not disappoint all those who have paid the highest price for defense of Israel and for the resilience of our people."

The post Alas, no Haredi draft appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Charles Dickens famously began his 1859 novel A Tale of Two Cities with the above dichotomous description of reality. Such a bifurcated reading seems to apply to Israel's current strategic situation too. We seem to be living in two different worlds based on two divergent worldviews with two contradictory conclusions.

From one perspective, Israel is winning on all fronts. It crushed Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis with American support, and proved to everybody in the world that it can bounce back from stinging collapse to reasserted regional dominance.

Israel has reset its defense policies to prioritize offense against all threats, real-time and developing. No one says boo as Israel daily bombs enemy emplacements and reinforcements in Lebanon, Syria, and even Gaza. Washington runs cover on this for Israel. President Trump is wising up to the chicanery of Hamas and Turkey too.

Moreover, Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio just drove through a UNSC resolution that accepts the indefinite halving of Gaza with Israeli control of the eastern section; insists on total demilitarization, disarmament, and deradicalization of the remaining Palestinian-held Western half; makes clear that there is no legal or practical obligation to create a Palestinian state (thus pushing back against French President Macron and others who have "recognized" a hallucinatory, non-existent state); and does not define peace as contingent on Israel territorial withdraws in the West Bank.

On the contrary, the administration has justified/legitimized intensified Israeli settlement in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria.

The United States is willy-nilly driving Saudi-Israeli normalization, coming sooner or later, with clear linkage between Saudi moves towards Abrahamic peace with Israel and the goodies like jets and nuclear facilities promised to the Saudis. The administration also promises to maintain Israel's qualitative military edge, even if it sells F-35 jets to Riyadh five years down the line.

Washington is tightening sanctions on Iran and probably will rejoin Israel in striking at Iran's still-dangerous nuclear and missile facilities again this year. In the meantime, Trump is massively replenishing Israel's armaments for the next wars. Trump is also scheming smartly on the broader strategic stage, acting to bring Kazakhstan and other Asian powers into alignment with America (and Israel) and away from partnership with Russia, China, and Iran.

And oh yes, Trump's practical, Israel-friendly diplomacy played a key role in securing the near-miraculous release, all-at-once, of the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

And finally, can you imagine how perilous the Mideast situation, and Israel's, would have been if a radical progressive Democratic candidate had won the US presidential election?

ON THE OTHER HAND, perhaps Israel's strategic situation ain't so rosy. Radical Islam – including Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Turks and Qataris – is on the rebound. The world is doing little to stop Iran's nuclear rebuilding, Hezbollah's rearming, or Hamas' re-asserting of dictatorial control in Gaza.

Israel's borders remain porous; thoroughly penetrated by Iranian-supplied drones delivering weapons to terrorists and criminal gangs. Terrorism is on the rise in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria – fueled by the massive numbers of hardcore Palestinian terrorists just released from Israeli prisons.

And Trump? He thinks he can reshape the region by hucksterism and braggadocio alongside mega-business deals, ridiculously declaring "peace in our time for the first time in 3,000 years," and handcuffing Israel in the process. Israel dares not make a military move – not even a local strike on remaining Nukhba cells underground in eastern Gaza – without Trump's approval. Israel must not upset the transactional-on-steroids, egocentric, big money "peace" deals that Washington is advancing!

It seems that Trump does not want to disappoint his dictator buddies in Ankara and Doha, nor his new dictator buddy in Damascus either. Nor his "best friend" from Riyadh, whose wobbly Saudi throne could "blowback" F-35 jets against Israel in an Islamic coup situation.

It is almost as if Trump is ignorant of the enduring ideological, transnational/religious nature of conflict in the region, thinking instead that money and the force of his personality can fix it all.

So, Trump is imposing a flawed freeze on the situation. He is "Bibi-sitting" Binyamin Netanyahu, preventing Israel from finishing the job in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. He already seems to be dialing back from demands for real disarmament of Hamas and instead pushing for rapid reconstruction in Gaza. American troops headquartered at the new "Civil-Military Coordination Center" in Kiryat Gat essentially are overseeing the free flow of humanitarian aid straight into the hands of Hamas.

Equally upsetting is Trump's internationalization of the conflict in Gaza by placing US troops in Israel and inviting Egyptian and Turkish troops into Gaza. (Israel must prevent this!). Hamas denies that it ever agreed to disarm or accept an "International Stabilization Force" (ISF) in Gaza, but Trump wants Israel to swallow the delusion that Azerbaijani and Indonesian soldiers will waltz into Gaza under ISF auspices and then Hamas will melt away.

Worse of all is that after two years of heroic battle against Hamas, and with tough battles ahead against Hamas in the West Bank, Trump expects Israel to swallow the re-tabling of Palestinian statehood as a possible "pathway" to peace in the future. UNSC resolution 2803 introduced by the US even references the rotten French-Saudi declaration on a two-state solution and the even worse "New York" plan voted on in the General Assembly.

How disappointing, especially when this comes from the Trump administration! October 7 should have been a super-final nail in the coffin of the Palestinian statehood boondoggle, not a spur to a Security Council resolution that revives it!

So where are Israel's strategic-diplomatic gains? What happened to mass emigration of Gazans and recognition of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria?

Alas, one gets the feeling that President Trump is riding on Israel's hard-fought battles to advance his own, narrower, secular-materialist goals.

And despite his super pro-Jewish and pro-Israeli address to the Knesset just a few weeks ago, Trump now is turning a blind eye to rank antisemitism and anti-Zionism growing in the MAGA wing of his Republican party, by refusing to sideline hate-purveyors like Tucker Carlson and Groypers like Nick Fuentes.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair." Israel must maneuver with wisdom and caution through these muddy times, contending with confounding narratives and bewildering alternatives. Above all, Israel must act with determination to protect its core interests against foe and friend alike.

The post A tale of two strategic worlds appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

First of all, it is time to acknowledge that reasoned public debate on this important issue has been squelched by the overpowering campaign of the Hostage Family Forum – in support of the mass release of Palestinian terrorists in exchange for Israeli hostages bechol mechir, "at any price."

Any deviation from the politically correct line – "bechol mechir" – as dictated by Einav Zangauker and company led to doxxing, silencing, even violent shaming. Public discourse was distorted by the very well-funded megaphones of Kaplan Street.

After all, everyone knows – because this has been true in every previous case – that released Palestinian terrorists assuredly will strike again, with God-only-knows how many Israeli casualties in the future. The release of over 2,000 terrorists, including hardened and experienced Palestinian mass murderers, certainly will incentivize future kidnappings, pour gasoline onto the terrorist fires already raging in Judea and Samaria, and catapult Hamas towards its intended takeover of Judea and Samaria.

Thus, repeated deals over the past two years to release Palestinian terrorists for Israeli hostages held in Gaza might have been the most necessary thing in the world to do, but it also may be the most disastrous thing Israel has done. The cost will pay out over a prolonged period, and it will be steep.

Up until this year, the 2011 deal for Gilad Shalit was the worst: More than 1,000 terrorists including Yahya Sinwar were released in exchange for Shalit. In fact, almost the entire Hamas command structure that planned the Simchat Torah (October 7, 2023) assault on Israeli towns and cities, which killed over 1,200 Israelis on one day, was made up of terrorists released in the Shalit deal.

Mahmoud Qawasameh, for example, a terrorist released in the Shalit deal, planned the kidnapping and murder of the three teenagers Naftali Fraenkel, Eyal Yifrach, and Gilad Shaer in Gush Etzion in 2014. He was re-arrested by the IDF earlier this year while hiding out with other terrorists in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and released again in last month's US-brokered hostage deal.

In fact, under the Trump administration's hostage and ceasefire 20-point plan, Israel released more than 1,950 Palestinian terrorists, including 250 who were serving life sentences for deadly attacks, as well as an additional 1,700 more Palestinians arrested since October 7, 2023. This is on top of a previous batch of about 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners released by Israel back in February as part of an earlier deal to free some Israeli hostages.

And once again, like all previous times, the Israeli "security establishment" confidently (and I say, misleadingly) has assured Israeli politicians and the public that it "will know how to manage the situation," i.e., how to track the terrorists and crush any nascent return to terrorist activity without too much harm done. But this has never proven to be true. Every deal involving the release of terrorists has led to much bloodshed, planned and carried out by these released terrorists.

So much so that two decades ago, Israeli leaders decided that a stop had to be put to this precarious situation. A committee headed by former Supreme Court President Meir Shamgar was appointed in July 2008 to recommend to the government principles for conducting negotiations for the retrieval of prisoners, hostages, and missing persons.

Its conclusions, apparently very restrictive (meaning that no more mass terrorist releases would ever be possible under Israeli law and policy) were purposefully held back until after Shalit's release in 2012 and then classified as "top secret" – and were never formally adopted by any government. Several legislative proposals based on Shamgar principles have since been floated, but somehow they have always flopped.

One example: Yesh Atid chairman Yair Lapid proposed legislation in 2015 that would make it illegal to free more than one terrorist for any one Israeli civilian or soldier held hostage. Unfortunately, that bill never passed.

Alas, in the face of such Israeli delinquency, Hamas and its jihadist compatriots have learned that kidnapping Israelis pays handsomely. And so, it is only a matter of time, almost an inevitability, that they will attempt to snatch and torture more hostages.

They assuredly will do so, unless Israel resolutely changes policy – defying the overwrought campaigns that until now have distorted clear strategic thinking on this matter.

DIRECTLY RELATED to the urgent necessity for a new strategic policy on handling terrorists and terrorist demands is the need to severely punish Nukhba terrorists – those barbarians who were the rapists, torturers, and executioners of October 7, many of whom proudly filmed and broadcast their atrocities.

Some 250 such sub-human Palestinians have escaped judgement until now – not one has yet been indicted – because Jerusalem feared that prosecuting them would derail efforts to free the innocent Israeli hostages held by Hamas. And so they wait peacefully in Israeli jails for a next hostage-terrorist release deal.

Now is the time to harness the full force of Israeli justice against them. In my mind, this means setting up a special court for genocide and war crimes, and applying the death penalty in some cases (with life imprisonment for the rest with no possibility of release).

This is because the monstrous attacks in which these butchers participated should not be treated merely as acts carried out by an assortment of isolated terrorists, with each terrorist tried only for his individual share of slaughter according to pinpoint evidence against him.

Rather, they need to be hauled up before an Israeli court of justice and indeed before the virtual tribunals of the world as Islamo-Nazis who knowingly were carrying out an attempt to slaughter all Israelis and exterminate the State of Israel – as Hamas leaders clearly planned and openly boasted about.

Consider this an Israeli version of the Nuremberg trials of 1945-46 against Nazi leaders, whose purpose was not only to mete out resounding justice against Nazis but to expose and record for posterity Nazi plans, ideology, and crimes. So too with Hamas. Its annihilationist agenda must be unmasked and delegitimized; its denialist supporters shamed; and its spirit crushed.

The war crimes trials of the Nukhba will provide a platform for the survivors of the southern Israeli towns and cities that were targeted by the terrorists, and for the survivors of the Nova festival massacre too, to testify in court while their searing recollections of being attacked are fresh, and before Palestinian and global anti-Israel denialism takes further root.

The war crimes trials must also inevitably expose the enthusiastic support that Hamas received from the Palestinian Authority, from Turkey and Qatar, from radical Moslem organizations (many parading as benevolent Islamic "charities" in the West), and from foul fellow travelers around the world.

I can hear the pragmatic-cautious and liberal-humanist objections already. It will be argued that show trials and death sentences only create more Palestinian "martyrs" fueling further Islamo-Nazi war against Israel; and that executions are not in keeping with "Jewish values."

I say that the "pragmatic" objection is poppycock, and the "humanist" (or faux "Jewish") objection a disgrace.

A show trial with death sentences would be worthwhile, effectual, and exceedingly ethical. It would affirm Israel's intentions to win its wars against all enemies and would assert the Jewish People's commitment to leading the world in a moral battle against true evil.

The writer is managing senior fellow at the Jerusalem-based Misgav Institute for National Security & Zionist Strategy. The views expressed here are his own. His diplomatic, defense, political, and Jewish world columns over the past 30 years are at davidmweinberg.com.

The post Never again? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Here in Israel, coming together on Shabbat is more prevalent, powerful, and needed than ever. It is a core component of Israeli national healing after two years of searing war and several years of deep internal discord. Shabbat observance must be and increasingly is a source of renewed national and religious identity, and a unifying force in Israeli society, providing a sense of meaning and connection for a large majority of Israelis.

This reflects the multifaceted spiritual revolution underway in Israeli society especially among youth – a phenomenon that is finding expression in the arts and the army, and beyond. It is amazing to me that the words of all songs on the best-selling new album of Israel's most popular secular rock band, "HaDag HaNachash," are drawn from scripture or the siddur (prayer book)!

Most prominently, dozens of the Israeli hostages held barbarically by Hamas have returned to tradition. In their interviews and books, people like Adam Berger, Eitan Horn, Eli Sharabi, Matan Angrest, Omer Shem-Tov, Rom Braslavski, and Segev Kalfon relay how they found God in Gaza, or at least deep inspiration in Jewish heritage and religious rituals. Their stories seem to have inspired their families and friends to adopt Shabbat and other Jewish practices, too.

"In the chains of captivity, in the darkness of the Hamas dungeons, many hostages kept Shabbat – defiantly, tenderly, faithfully, while our heroic soldiers on the front lines marked Shabbat under fire, welcoming in Shabbat with full hearts," wrote Rabbi Goldstein in a press release this week in advance of "Shabbat Yisraelit" (the Israeli name for the Shabbat Project).

Ahad Ha'am indeed had it right when he quipped: "More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews."

Add that to the scenes this past Simchat Torah of survivors of the Nova Festival dancing in the Gaza envelope and in Tel Aviv with Torah scrolls – and you discover that the pintele Yid, the Jewish soul, still burns deep inside our individual and national consciousness.

There are fantastic organizations working in Israel to build on and reinforce this Jewish awakening such as Tzili Schneider's Kesher Yehudi, which over the past two years has added 3,000 pairs of chavrutot, religious-secular Torah study partners, to its people-building stable.

All this holds wonderful long-term potential for a broad Israeli identity upgrade, a move beyond a strict secular/religious binary towards widespread embrace of a continuum of Jewish identity and practice. It is an identity elevation that fuses age-old Jewish heritage with Zionist secularism to create a replenished and healthier Israeli nation; a nation with the roots and resilience to withstand all challenges.

THE REINVIGORATION of Jewish and Zionist identity underway in Israel must be embraced by Diaspora Jewry too since it is under assault by radical forces from without and self-annihilationist forces from within.

The election of the Islamist/Communist politician Zohran Mamdani in New York City – the world's largest Jewish city; and the discourse about "Israel-the-Genocide-Maker" of Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow – the city home to Canada's largest Jewish community, are only the latest stark reminders of a broad assault on Jews and Zionists.

Obviously, American and Canadian Jewish communal organizations (and their counterparts in Britain, France, Australia and elsewhere) need to fight back against antisemitism and anti-Zionism with all political tools available. So, yes to advocacy, yes to building political alliances, yes to interfaith and inter-communal relations work.

But Jews abroad must also dig deep. They must pour greater-than-ever effort into rediscovering and reinforcing their Jewish identities, into Jewish education and practice, into parochial schools and shuls, into Torah, tefilla, tallit and tefillin (Jewish law and prayer, with ritual talismans like prayer shawls and phylacteries).

Nothing short of a deep commitment to traditional Jewish ritual practice – with its personal strictures and many community boundary demands – is likely to lead to a revitalization of Jewish life abroad (and subsequently create a solid basis for recovery in Diaspora-Israel relations, too).

In my view, this requires not just occasional Temple attendance or once-yearly lighting of Chanukah candles, but true observance of Shabbat and dietary laws, daily devotion to prayer, holding fast to sacred family structures and to in-marriage, and most of all – a passion for studying Torah regularly.

This is the only historically proven formula for sustainable Jewish life, and this holds especially true today when Jewish identity is under frontal assault.

To successfully navigate the treacherous waters of today, we need Jews with no trembling knees, Jews who know who they are and what they stand for, Jews who are armed with the wisdom and the values handed down by our forefathers and refined throughout the Jewish ages.

SINCE WE'RE talking about Shabbat, it is crucial to digest a sophisticated understanding of Shabbat; to reflect on the deep meaning of Sabbath observance for modern man and the contemporary world.

Shabbat is not merely about the "joy of face-to-face conversation around the family Shabbat table," or the "spiritual nourishment of a shared meal," or the "glow of candlelight, heard laughter around the table, and fine food and wine," or the switching off of cellphones. (These are the sweet platitudes about Shabbat often mentioned in the media.)

Nor is Shabbat observance in our day and time primarily utilitarian. Despite what people think, Shabbat is not mainly about "resting" or "recharging" one's batteries so that one can go back "refreshed" to work on Sunday or Monday. Shabbat is not just a certain type of leisure time.

Rather, the Jewish concept of Shabbat is an attempt to teach man the proper balance between creative action (work) and contemplative restraint (passivity); between an obsessive drive to build, achieve and succeed that is the basis of Western civilization, and the ego-nullification and submissiveness of Eastern civilizations (as expressed, for example, in Zen Buddhism).

By observing the Sabbath, Jewish tradition teaches a careful oscillation between the two civilizational ideas; fashioning an idea of human creativity that integrates the salient features of each.

The Jerusalem scholar Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Lifshitz has written that: "During the week, man creates worlds, as in the West; while on the Sabbath, his creative action gives way to contemplative restraint, as in the East." And both are necessary. "In the Jewish view, neither achievement nor passive unification with nature is seen as ideal. It is through the kind of creative activity that results from the combination of the two that man achieves great things, in imitation of the Creator. The Sabbath teaches about the rhythm of all true creativity, human and divine."

Thus, the prohibition on doing melacha (certain types of intentional workmanship) that is at the core of halacha (Jewish law) for Shabbat, is primarily spiritual. It is not meant just to institutionalize "downtime" or protect workers from the harsh demands of capitalism. It teaches us the basics of Jewish faith. It is theology about the share in Creation assigned to man by the Creator; and about the restraints on man's narcissism and compulsions that is critical to his well-being and that of the world.

Shabbat is also about dveikut or cleaving to G-d (and by extension also to family and to peoplehood). By imitating G-d's creation of the world over six days and then His "resting" on the seventh day, man can "adhere" or cling to a Divine message. That message – the centrality of creative drive circumscribed by moral and spiritual restraints – is what unifies us a Jewish civilization and a people.

In short, the Jewish People everywhere are sorely in need of much greater public and private Shabbat observance. Certainly, Israeli society is too aggressive, too arrogant and over-achieving, too materialistic, too fiercely ideological and even violent.

And so, we need to impose upon ourselves more humility and self-discipline. We need to create psychic vacuums that suspend our struggles and rivalries and allow for joint meditation on our commonalities and values. We need a void where Jews can come together and search for renewed shared meanings, to discuss and dream together.

We need the wide mental spaces and healing calm created by the Sabbath. We need the unifying potential embedded in G-d's great gift of Shabbat.

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You would not know about the real sources of instability – which are sharply escalating Palestinian terrorism, a wild rash of Palestinian arson attacks, and surging illegal Palestinian construction in zones of strategic importance to Israel.

Israel must get a handle on these matters by acting forcefully against the terrorism and wildcat building, and it must buttress its long-term claim on Judea and Samaria by building strategically in accelerated fashion, especially in the Jerusalem envelope and Jordan Valley.

Everybody knows that Nablus and Jenin (and Tulkarem and Qalqilya and more) have become dens of hard-core, Iranian-supplied terrorist cells. The threat of terrorist assault from the western Samaria seam line into central Israel is concrete too, and already there have been scattered shootings over and through the security barrier into the Bat Hefer and Mount Gilboa areas.

The discharge of jailed terrorists into Judea and Samaria, part of the hostage release deal with Hamas, already is adding fuel to this fire.

So much for the Oslo Accords promise of a demilitarized and deradicalized Palestinian autonomous entity.

(And if you think that Indonesian and Azeri troops, alongside "neutral" Palestinian Authority administrators, and American, Egyptian, and European monitors sitting in an air-conditioned control center in Kiryat Gat are going to do any better in demilitarizing and deradicalizing Palestinians in Gaza – you're apparently using hallucinatory drugs!)

Additionally, there are at least 90,000 defiantly built Palestinian homes and shanty towns that have cropped up illegally in Area C of the West Bank in recent years, almost all of which can be considered strategic threats to Israel.

These structures actively are changing the map of Area C, purposefully placing Palestinians in areas that never before had an Arab presence, dividing the settlement blocs, encroaching on access routes (forcing the Israeli government to pave bypass roads to the bypass roads, which leads to accusations of land expropriation, etc.) – all in an attempt to prevent any future logical division of the territory into neighboring polities (for those who still believe in the wisdom of this).

In the seamline buffer zone (meaning adjacent to the security barrier that Israel constructed mostly along the Green Line over three decades) stretching from the northern tip of the Jordan Valley to Ein Gedi in the south, Palestinians and their European backers have built more than 17,000 illegal structures within a one-kilometer radius of security and border barriers.

In the Jerusalem envelope, Palestinians have grabbed over 2,600 dunam of land, and over the past decade built 1,500 unauthorized buildings in Shuafat and Kafr Akab alone, some 20 stories tall. (These were built without license and supervised engineering standards. God help residents of these buildings if an earthquake hits Jerusalem.)

And every single day, Palestinians and their extreme left-wing Israeli anarchist allies torch the grazing grounds of cattle in the central Binyamin and Samaria highlands where pioneering Israelis have established a string of some 130 ranches (in Hebrew: havot); or as Western media and hostile NGOs call them, "wildcat settler outposts."

The grass and brush that grows in the vast and mostly unsettled parts of Binyamin and Samaria are "natural gold" for feeding these herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. Burning the pastures is outright warfare, designed to firebomb Jewish "settler sheep" off the land and drive settlers from the area.

This is not too different from the devastation caused by thousands of incendiary balloons and kites sent over the Gaza border by Hamas since 2018, firebombs that destroyed tens of thousands of acres of nature reserves and farmland in southern Israel. (Experts say it will take years to rehabilitate the burned farm fields in southern Israel.)

SINCE DECLARATION of Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is not in the cards anytime soon, and alone this anyway won't do much to improve the situation, what needs to be done now?

First, IDF Central Command chief Maj. Gen. Avi Bluth needs more troops, resources, and support for the aggressive counter-terrorist strategy he has adopted. This involves near-nightly interdiction raids into terrorist hideouts in large cities with brigade-level power and heavy engineering and air strike support. It also increasingly involves targeted assassinations (as opposed to arrests or re-arrests) of key terrorist operatives.

Second, the government needs to encourage young families to move into existing and expanded Judea and Samaria cities and towns by building homes rapidly and cheaply. Try caravans and high-rise buildings. Alas, it has simply become too expensive to move/live in Ariel, Gush Etzion, Maale Adumim, and other localities from which there is easy access to Gush Dan and Jerusalem work centers.

In this regard, the government must continue to cut the red tape that encumbers more massive settlement in Judea and Samaria. While it is considered politically incorrect these days to credit Minister Betzalel Smotrich with anything, here he can be saluted. He has brought about the legalization or establishment of 50 towns involving 45,000 potential building starts, invested NIS 7 billion in roads (that serve Israelis and Palestinians), secured the placement of dozens of towers for cellphone and other communications, and processed through legal approvals of 30,000 dunams as state land.

He now needs to initiate the planning of new strategic arteries like Highway 80 which would run from Arad in the Negev to Mishor Adumim; an international airport in the Horkania Valley between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea; and a major rail route through the Jordan Valley.

Third, the government should take over responsibility for key fields of governance in Areas B and C that long have been criminally neglected by the Palestinian Authority, like sewage treatment and management of waste dumps.

Fourth and supremely important, Israel must take control of Arab schools and classrooms in the broad Jerusalem envelope, where the teaching of hostile-towards-Israel materials is rampant. A recent report by the Ministry of Education found that dozens of eastern Jerusalem schools not only use PA textbooks but also teach physics through calculations of slingshot velocity and distance against Israeli troops, and teach literature through the genocidal poetry of Egyptian Islamist ideologues.

SO I ASK: As Israel heads into an election year, which of the candidates for prime minister is truly going to build in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, and who is going to bury the building in years more of sterile peace processing and doomed attempts to achieve "international consensus"? Who can most be trusted to capitalize on the opportunities before Israel for de facto advancement of long-term diplomatic and security control of Judea and Samaria?

Is Binyamin Netanyahu finally serious about significant building in the E-1 quadrant (something that is critical for Jerusalem's growth and security) or is he just pumping out pre-election promises that will fizzle in the face of global diplomatic pressures and International Criminal Court threats?

Would his challengers Benny Gantz, Gadi Eisencott, Naftali Bennett, and Yair Lapid dare to finally build in E-1 and the settlement blocks, as they have claimed in the past? Or do they head a political groupings so riven with contradictions (including affiliation with parts of the hard Left) that would prevent movement in any coherent direction?

Could Yisrael Beytenu czar Avigdor Liberman be trusted to stand for building or deciding anything other than stoking his own ego and purveying a cynical hate-fear agenda, and then selfishly forcing Israel into yet another election campaign?

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It is time for the United States to lead a global process of repentance and repair by defunding the UN all-together and replacing it with a series of professional bodies free of fecund hostility to Jews/Israelis and liberated from radical anti-American ideologies.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations back in 1975, ripped into the infamous resolution, recognizing it was an attempt to demean America by demeaning its ally. He repudiated what he would later call the "Big Red Lie" as an assault on democracy and decency. And he warned that this libel would enter the international bloodstream.

Alas, he was right. With its perverse Soviet-orchestrated distortions of language, history, and reality, Resolution 3379 "reeked of the totalitarian mind, stank of the totalitarian state" – as Prof. Gil Troy reminds us in an important article this week in Commentary Magazine.

Troy: "With the bully's instinctive genius, the haters understood what would hurt Israel's reputation most – and what the world would swallow easily. They showed how to foist broadly-agreed-upon aversions – to racism, to genocide – onto the Jews."

"Totalitarian anti-Zionism helped Western elites cast Palestinians as noble, oppressed, disenfranchised people of color and Israelis as ignoble, oppressive, racist whites. It helped progressives ignore the Palestinian national movement's violence, Islamism, sexism, and homophobia. The Red-Green alliance united leftists with Islamists, and Moynihan's 'Big Red Lie' became the 'Big Red-Green Lie' that refuses to die."

Ben Cohen and David May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington detailed this week the extraordinary resources devoted by the UN to the demonization of Israel.

This begins with the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, which drives the Israel-as-colonialist and Israel-as-an-apartheid-state narratives (over $3 million per year over 50 years).

It continues with the UN Palestine Committee and the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People; the Division for Palestinian Rights; the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which has been shown to be a close collaborator of Hamas; the UNHCR (High Commissioner for Refugees) special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories; and the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices.
Even more absurd are UNHRC (Human Rights Council) Agenda Item 7, which requires the body to scrutinize Israel's human rights record at every meeting it convenes (Israel is the only country subject to this treatment); the UN Register of Damages (since 2007 to assist Palestinians in collecting on claims of damages allegedly incurred by the construction of Israel's security barrier in the West Bank); and so many other virulently hostile bodies.
Then there are the International Criminal Court (ICC) which has issued warrants for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense minister, Yoav Galant (on the basis of malevolent falsehoods and serial abuses of its own processes); and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) which has falsely accused Israel of illegally occupying the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

Grotesque accusations against Israel of genocide, apartheid, and crimes against humanity bounce around the UN, the ICJ, the ICC and non-governmental organizations such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch. They feed these claims into each other's reports and then repeat and recycle them to create an infernal echo chamber of Israel demonization.

US Senators Mike Lee (R-UT), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rick Scott (R-FL) and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced the DEFUND Act, which would initiate the United States' withdrawal from the United Nations, citing in part the U.N.'s actions toward Israel.

But the UN offense is not just about Israel. As researchers Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, Edwin Black, and Claudia Rosett have shown the U.S. government provides more than $20 billion to the UN and related international organizations and multilateral entities – that are pugnaciously anti-American and radically woke too.

The Trump administration started in the right direction by ending US funding for UNRWA. The complete dismantling of UNRWA is the next challenge. Its $1.5 billion budget can much better be spent on real refugee settlement and peacemaking, perhaps through the new US-led stabilization administration for Gaza.

Trump also should reopen the 1947 agreement locating UN headquarters, tax free, in NY. And yes, defunding of the UN all-together may be warranted, at least for a while – as prophylactic treatment.

Personally, I don't really believe that the UN can be reformed. It operates with no real accountability, no functional moral compass, and no mechanism for acquiring any such vital features. It has developed a tyrant-friendly, diplomatically immune, and collectively irresponsible DNA.

Worse still, as Melanie Phillipps has written, it is an "unstoppable geyser of moral and intellectual corruption. It teaches the West that lies about Israel are truths and truths are lies, and it has turned what the West tells itself is morality and conscience into an agenda of evil."

It has ensured that the West can no longer distinguish more generally between victim and oppressor, reality and propaganda, right and wrong. Treating the UN and the 'international law' it has promoted as the moral arbiters of global order is not just a sick joke. It has made the world sick, too.

Although everybody knows that the UN is broken, it's pretty much taboo to call for its shutdown. The usual defense of the UN is that "it may be imperfect," but "it's all we've got" – a refrain that tends to be accompanied by prescriptions for reforms that either won't stick or won't work at all.

The counter argument is this: Is the UN really the best we can do? Do we have to settle for a system that elects Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran to lead human rights councils, women's rights agencies, and cultural bodies? If the UN is "all we've got," and it can cavalierly disregard slaughters in Syria and Sudan while outrageously branding Israel a war criminal enterprise, then it is way past time to come up with something else!

Therefore, it is time to create alternatives to the UN, like a "Covenant of Democratic Nations," an UN-successor entity limited to nations governed by democratic principles. This body could nullify crazy acts and nasty resolutions – such as UNESCO's denial of Jewish Jerusalem. The Covenant also would seek to create a long-overdue new body of reformed and updated international law.

Claudia Rosett's book What To Do About the UN demurs from this. She feels that the ideal of "world peace" led by democracies is an overreach. It is too driven by ideals that won't translate easily into action. (Just how will democracy be defined for membership purposes?).

Her guiding principle for replacing the UN is competition, the establishment of professional agencies with no grandiose moral pretensions. Competition is what takes down monopolies, and the UN is the biggest monopoly of them all.

It is a mammoth helped along by immunities, privileges and lavish government contributions, and it is backed by legions of special interest NGOs around the globe that lobby for more.

As a result, Rosett writes, the UN has become like the failed collectivist experiments of the 20th century; those huge old Soviet state enterprises and gargantuan Chinese communist industries. It was and is very hard to shutter these behemoths since they are tied into every aspect of a dysfunctional economy plus their employees' lives. They are a terrible drain.

You fix this by creating competition. So, Rosett proposes the establishment of several coalitions that are not so much pegged to ideals, but rather are mission-driven by countries with specific shared interests – like NATO during the Cold War.

As for the residual usefulness of some type of global "talking shop" in which even Iran can bluster and Russia can dissimulate – well, if at all, this should be a forum for exchange of views only; for blowing-off steam. Rosett: "It should be a General Assembly minus the votes and minus agencies with multi-billion-dollar budgets. It is not a joke to suggest that it would be better to be housed in a gymnasium somewhere in Iowa (or Siberia) than in a multi-billion-dollar gilded chamber in Manhattan."

Thinkers and experts need to apply themselves diligently to this task. It is time for those with know-how, resources, and genuine goodwill toward future generations to take an in-depth and non-polemical look at the opportunity cost to the West of cleaving to the UN.

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Blessed be the dealmakers and peacemakers, indeed! The relief they have brought to the hostage families, indeed to the entire nation of Israel and Jewish communities worldwide, is overwhelming.

At the same time, one can only explode at the nasty narratives, distorted political predictions, and self-foolery that have accompanied the dealmaking and are now making the diplomatic rounds.

The first piece of awful and unfair discourse is the denial of any credit to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for the hostage release deal. The "say" in most international media and much of the left-wing-dominated Israel press is that US President Trump raped Netanyahu into agreement; that Netanyahu was dragged kicking and screaming into the accord. Worse yet is the allegation that Netanyahu could have freed the hostages in a similar deal one year ago but refrained from doing so for narrow political reasons.

Neither accusation is accurate. Netanyahu deeply desired this hostage deal and end-of-war arrangement for myriad reasons, mainly because now was the right time to cash-in on the IDF's achievements in Gaza (which have gone as far as possible for this year given operational and diplomatic restraints) and on Israel's powerful strikes in Tehran and Doha.

The front-loading of the deal – whereby Israel's gains (hostage release, all hostages) came first and Israel's gives (mainly military withdrawals and allowance for some rebuilding in Gaza) are backloaded and dependent on Arab good behavior – is a sweet arrangement that was not at all possible one year ago.

The political nastiness which negates Netanyahu's navigation of the accord to completion on Israel's preferred terms is matched by a second piece of bias – the over-attribution of credit to US President Donald Trump for the accord.

Of course, Trump is a hero of the day. Without his Machiavellian maneuvers and masterful playing of regional actors, alongside explicit threats and promised rewards, no deals could have been reached. And Trump's forceful backing for Israel through regional and international challenges as expressed so wholeheartedly in his Knesset speech this week, must be acknowledged as miraculous.

But the slavish, over-the-top tributes to Trump that were everywhere (including the front pages of this newspaper) also bore an offensive odor, a stink of spite, a cruelty directed at Israel's own leaders, a slap-down to Netanyahu in particular.

At least Trump had the honesty and grace to accord great credit to Netanyahu in reaching this blessed moment and to the brave soldiers of the IDF and their families.

A third distortion in evaluation of the accord is the near ignoring of the price paid by Israel, namely the release of thousands of bloodthirsty, convicted Palestinian terrorists. One can count on the fingers of one hand the number of stories in global media, and in much of the Israeli media, about the murderers released and the dangers this entails to every Israeli and Jew.

Dealing Palestinian terrorists for Israeli hostages might be the most necessary and moral thing in the world to do, but it also may be the most disastrous thing Israel can do. The cost will pay out over a prolonged period, and it will be steep.

The released terrorists assuredly will strike again, with God-only-knows how many Israeli casualties in the future. Their release certainly will incentivize future kidnappings, pour gasoline onto the terrorist fires already raging in Judea and Samaria, and catapult Hamas towards its intended takeover of Judea and Samaria. We know this to be a fact because this has been the case with every previous terrorist release.

But you wouldn't know this from most "expert" evaluations, political figure statements, and international reportage this week.

A fourth and infuriating aspect of the diplomatic situation brought about by the agreement is the feral rush of countries, especially European countries, to rebuild Gaza. The "international community" is revving-up donor conference after donor conference to raise funds for Gazan rehabilitation – even under de facto Hamas rule. The talk this week was of $70 to $120 billion in funds to provide Palestinians in Gaza with "human dignity" and "humanitarian relief" – with passion and concern that would be admirable if it weren't so counterproductive at this point.

The world-at-large still has said nothing at all about Hamas's use of women and children as human shields, hospitals as weapons depots, or United Nations schools as launchpads for rockets. It has said little at all about Hamas's violent seizure of humanitarian aid shipments into Gaza or its targeting of Palestinians approaching aid centers operated by the US- and Israel-affiliated Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

The world is incapable of admitting that Hamas's dictatorial and genocidal regime in Gaza is responsible for every bit of ruin suffered by Palestinians, and it has nothing but platitudes to offer about how this time it might be different.

But what really gets my goat is that nobody around the world is talking about raising even one penny for rehabilitation and reconstruction of Israel; of Israel's southern and northern areas that have been depopulated and devastated by Hamas and Hezbollah attacks over the past two years and even the past decade. Not a penny for the battered people of Israel – war widows and orphans, terrorized civilians, traumatized soldiers, and battered businesses. Except for Jews abroad, nobody is prioritizing relief and aid for Israel.

Sure, with the war over, Western countries will now return to buy Israeli technology and weapons for their own benefit, and cooperate in science and the arts too, but lavish sympathies and abundant budgets are reserved for the attacking Palestinians not the attacked Israelis.

The fifth thing that angers and frightens me about the new diplomatic accord is its distorted political predicate which "internationalizes" Gaza.

Under the accord, Egyptian soldiers or EU cops will disarm Hamas troops, and Qatari or Turkish officials will rein-in and replace Hamas officials in Gaza. This is nonsensical. A bad and costly joke.

No Western figure like Tony Blair or an international "Board of Peace" chaired by President Trump is truly going to guarantee demilitarization of Gaza, never mind assure good governance and peace education. Only Israeli troops might have completely stripped Hamas of its weapons, and only a full-on occupation of Gaza by a foreign power (like the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II) might end the corruption, violence, and hatred deeply embedded in Gazan society.

So, what will internationalization of Gaza accomplish? It will handcuff Israel, making it impossible to operate against a resurgent terrorist threat there. That always was the main motivation behind the long-standing Palestinian attempt to "internationalize" the conflict, to bring-in foreign monitors and troops – to constrain and curb Israel.

Which brings us to the self-foolery and arrogance of the accord which once again hints at Palestinian statehood in the future. As if this is at all realistic or wise in the medium-to-long term; as if Palestinians in Gaza (and in Judea and Samaria) have demonstrated any willingness whatsoever to reconcile with Israel.

The blabbering at this moment about Palestinian statehood is the very essence of victory for Hamas terrorism and incentivizes more acts of massacre. Merely mentioning Palestinian statehood now gives Hamas more sway in Palestinian politics than it ever had, especially in Judea and Samaria.

But don't confuse the "international community" with facts – like the support of three-quarters of Palestinians in the West Bank for the October 7 Hamas-led massacre, or the support of governors in the Palestinian Authority for terrorism and the active participation of its Fatah Party in the wave of terror attacks threatening central Israel.

Instead of pushback against the increasingly genocidal Palestinian national movement, we get more perilous pablum about the "urgency" of Palestinian statehood. Instead of action to retaliate and truly deter Hamas from ever raising a hand against a hostage again, we get diplomatic rewards for Palestinian intransigence and violence.

International wags should ask themselves: Is their effort to bolster Palestinians with "recognition" of faux statehood and with oodles of aid money helping Palestinians mature? Or is it merely deepening Palestinian dependency, perpetuating Palestinian victim-martyrdom identity, prolonging the campaign to demonize Israel as a genocidal monster, and in the end, just plainly and unabashedly weakening Israel?

Alas, one suspects that the latter motivation, tinged with a smidgen of deep-seated antisemitism, is the main impulse.

The post Anger, alongside relief appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

Remember the "Mavi Marmara"? The ship was the lead boat of the 2010 Turkish attempt to (supposedly) highlight humanitarian needs in Gaza. In reality, the so-called "freedom flotilla for Gaza," led by the terrorist-supporting Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH), was nothing more than a violent attack on Israel, meant to bolster Hamas.

Since then, Israel has been assaulted by similar "flotillas" packed with many bad actors and very little humanitarian aid – in 2011, 2015, 2016, 2018, and this year too. The latest attempt to sail into Gaza in support of Hamas involved over 50 ships, all intercepted by Israel last week. The rag-tag collection of terrorist-supporting trawlers came from Algeria, Greece, Italy, Libya, Spain, and Tunisia, with participants from 16 noted "peace-loving" countries like Ireland, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, and Venezuela.

Deporting the malicious anti-Israel activists was easy, although an argument could have been made for locking them all up on criminal offenses and throwing away the key.

More difficult is the question of what to do all the "humanitarian attack boats." Israel does not need these bothersome rink-a-dink ships crowding its ports, and there is absolutely no reason to give the boats back to their evil operators and owners.

So, after getting our hostages home, before major IDF withdrawals from Gaza, and before conjuring-up broader peace deals, it is time for a little payback against the nasty actors out there. Here are ten punishing and purposeful things Israel could usefully do with the terrorist trawlers.

1. Load the ships with humanitarian supplies (and perhaps a few weapons too) for the persecuted Armenians and downtrodden Kurds and set sail for the shores of their oppressor – Turkey. In the ports of Mersin, Marmaris, and Antalya we can unload all the wheelchairs, Band-Aids, chocolate bars, baby toys, bullets, slingshots, electric steel-cutting saws, knives, and other goods donated by peace-loving Israelis. While we're at it, in each city Israel could set up an expansive traveling museum exhibit on the Armenian genocide and the inalienable rights of the Kurdish people to independent statehood.
2. Rename the boats for Israeli hostages held for two years in barbaric captivity by Hamas in Gaza, then load the boats with several hundred Hamas terrorists held in Israeli prisons. (Even after the coming releases, there will remain plenty more Palestinian mass murderers in Israeli prisons, including the Nazi-like Nukhba raiders of October 7.) Anchor the boats off the coasts of Qatar and Turkey under heavy guard, with no food and no visits from the Red Cross. Tell the dictators of Doha and Ankara that they can have their terrorist buddies and the boats too, if all political and financial aid to Hamas ends. Wait them out.
3. Rebrand the ships as "Karine A," "Karine B," and so on, then launch an Israeli flotilla for peace. Sail our armada into the ports of Doha, Imam Khomeini, Istanbul, and Jeddah broadcasting messages of reconciliation and democracy. The Israeli "Voice of Peace" radio station will broadcast from the ships into every home in the Mediterranean and Arabian seas. News broadcasts will spotlight Israel's academic, cultural, and high-tech successes, and its global medical/humanitarian efforts; alongside reports on racism, discrimination, slavery, terrorism, and antisemitism in the Arab and Moslem worlds.
4. Christen the ships as "Donald J. Trump I," "Donald J. Trump II," and so on, and refit them as escape vessels that will sail refugees from Gaza to new lives elsewhere in the world – far away from the ruinous military kill zone of Gaza wrought by Hamas, a strip of land pockmarked by over 750 kilometers of attack tunnels and weapons manufacturing bunkers dug underneath almost every school, hospital, and home.
5. When done giving safe passage from Gaza to all those European countries who so love the peaceful Palestinians of Rafiah, Khan Younis, and Dir-al-Balach (– evidence repeat UN resolutions endorsed by Europeans swearing faithfulness to Palestinian freedoms), the boats can be retrofitted as tax free casinos for Trump's grand "Riviera" plan. They can be anchored off the rebuilt golden resort city of Gaza. European lords and princesses, and Qatari emirs along with their American business partners, will enjoy preferential access and VIP gambling privileges.
6. Rename several ships as "Exodus I," "Exodus II," and so on, and set sail for the Iranian ports of Bandar-Abbas and Bushehr to force the release of Iran's remaining Jews. With a sufficient media pool, a high-profile inter-faith delegation, and a smattering of Nobel laureates aboard, we should be able to embarrass the clerics of Tehran into ending their blockade against Jewish emigration. While visiting Bushehr, we could also take a tour of the nuclear reactor, to see up-close, first-hand, how Iran is producing peaceful medical isotopes there.
7. Rename the ships for 50 Israeli towns and farming communities ravaged by Hamas invasion and missiles, then sail the ships for the Arabian (formerly "Persian") Gulf and block Kharg Island, which handles over 90% of Iran's crude oil exports. Consider this Israel's contribution to the "snapback" of international sanctions against Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs, which mandates no international oil trade with Iran. China will suffer from this the most, deservedly so.
8. Retrofit the ships as passenger ferries for Ultra-Orthodox (haredi) Israelis who prefer to emigrate rather than serve in the IDF or do national service. First to sail can be the radical former chief Sephardic rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who keeps threatening to demonstratively decamp for the Diaspora in order to avoid participation in what he calls shemad, "spiritual annihilation." (This is how he views any sharing by haredi Jews, G-d forbid, in the Israeli national burden of military service.) I will help Yitzhak Yosef pack his bags and walk the gangway up the deck.
9. Sell the ships on the international market to cover the health expenses of wounded Israeli soldiers and of Israeli families destroyed by Hamas' October 7 attack. Leftover funds can help rebuild southern and northern Israeli towns devastated by Hamas and Hezbollah. Alternatively, Israel could cut the boats up into pieces and sell chunks as souvenirs on E-Bay, to fund psychological rehabilitation and provide income support for the very many Israeli war widows and orphans.
10. Sink the ships just outside the territorial waters of Britain, Canada, France, Ireland, and Spain to protest their hubris, hypocrisy, and hostility to Israel. Just blow the boats up in their faces.

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