The first lesson to be learned (or relearned) from Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that the absence of deterrence can be fatal for any nation. The bravery and determination displayed by the leaders and citizens of Ukraine are impressive, but have not prevented Putin's onslaught. In the West—mainly the United States and NATO—good intentions and strong words of support notwithstanding, the lack of a credible deterrent to dissuade Putin was clearly evident, including to the Kremlin.

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Deterrence of a powerful and determined opponent is inherently complex and uncertain. During the Cold War, strategists agonized over the best means of preventing Moscow from challenging and weakening American power and the NATO alliance, including MAD—mutual assured destruction. But when the Soviet state collapsed, and the end of history was declared, deterrence was largely forgotten, allowing Putin to build up his forces without interference. By the time the United States and NATO woke up to the threat, Russia had full control.

For Israel, the events in Ukraine are an important reality check. Israelis recognize that no outside power, not even the United States, can be relied on to guarantee survival in the face of a powerful threat. In 1948, after defeating the combined Arab attack at great cost, David Ben-Gurion understood the need for the tiny Jewish state to be capable of defending itself against future threats, as was demonstrated in 1967. Later, having America as an ally added to Israeli security, but did not replace the centrality of self-reliance.

As a result, for 74 years, Ben-Gurion, his successors and Israel's security establishment have continued to prioritize strategic deterrence. The best means of preventing an attack is by convincing enemies that the response will be swift and intolerable, and that in threatening Israel's survival, their own existence would be at stake.

However, in recent years, lapses in deterrence are cause for concern and require strengthening and reinforcement. Specifically, in the face of ongoing threats from the Iranian regime and its proxies, and against Hamas in Gaza, Israeli responses fall short. Against threats to wipe "the Zionist entity" of the map, a series of pinpoint and anonymous attacks attributed to the Mossad have not stopped Tehran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. And in Lebanon, under the eyes of the United Nations and the so-called international community, Hezbollah acquired and deployed tens of thousands of rockets and missiles stored in civilian areas, and aimed at the Israeli population. This force is the forward arm of the Iranian threat.

Sixteen years ago, in 2006, the IDF did a good job of restoring deterrence, after Hezbollah killed a number of soldiers and snatched two bodies to hold for ransom. The IDF launched what was termed as a "disproportionate" response that lasted for five weeks, and including intense bombing of the Hezbollah stronghold under the streets of Beirut, but ended without a decisive knock-out. But since then, Israel has allowed the terror proxy to rebuild and expand its arsenal of deadly missiles, resulting in an unstable situation of mutual deterrence, at best, which the leaders of Iran and Hezbollah could decide to disrupt at any time. And if Iran crosses the nuclear finish line, it will be even more difficult for Israel to neutralize this deadly force.

Similarly in Gaza, Israel has allowed Hamas to produce and smuggle in thousands of rockets. The wars of 2008/9, 2014 and 2021 damaged the terror infrastructure significantly, while trying to avoid killing the civilian "human shields" used to protect these weapons and their operators. But the terror groups quickly produced more rockets and repaired the kilometers of tunnels though which they are transported and controlled.

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A major reason that Israel has stopped short in deterring or preventing Hezbollah and Hamas from recovering quickly is the fear of international condemnation. In the United Nations and via powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) claiming human rights and international law agendas, Israelis were boycotted, labeled as "war criminals" and threatened with investigations by the International Criminal Court. During the Gaza wars, the IDF assigned lawyers to monitor combat operations, and limited counterattacks, hoping to persuade the ICC prosecutor to drop politically motivated actions. This effort failed, and more importantly, also weakened deterrence.

Both of these situations demonstrate the difficulties of deterring terror organizations in contrast to established states with institutions and assets that the leaders do not want to lose. But this does make deterrence any less necessary. U.N. condemnations, campus boycotts and pseudo-investigations, although psychologically painful, are far less costly than the death and destruction from shooting wars. In this important dimension, the events in Ukraine are an important wake-up call.

Featured on JNS.org, this article first appeared in the Jewish Journal.

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Twenty years ago, the world's human rights community came to Durban, South Africa for a conference called to eliminate racism and discrimination. This event took place just a few days after a Palestinian terror attack in Jerusalem killed and maimed Israelis in a pizzeria filled with teenagers and young families. But the thousands of self-proclaimed human rights activists at Durban did not mention the attack or the victims; for them, Israelis do not have human rights. Instead, the diplomats, UN officials and leaders of powerful non-governmental organizations (NGOs) focused on demonizing Israel and Zionism.

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Durban was the blueprint for the 21st century antisemitism. The Arab Lawyers Union distributed caricatures of Jews with fangs dripping blood, and delegates picked up copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion forgery. Well-organized mass marches through the streets, with placards declaring "Zionism is racism," were accompanied by speeches denouncing Israeli "apartheid." Arafat and his chief propagandist Hanan Ashrawi were flown in to denounce Israeli "apartheid."

The plan to hijack Durban was formed months before, at a UN preparatory conference in Tehran. There, the strategy of equating Israel to apartheid South Africa was developed into a full scale war plan. The NGO Final Declaration and Program of Action, composed in Tehran, was a strategy for political war. Israel was labeled as a "racist apartheid state," guilty of "genocide," and racist crimes against Palestinians." They demanded that all countries implement policies for "the complete isolation of Israel as an apartheid state."

Immediately after Durban, the same NGOs and UN allies moved to implement the strategy. Human Rights Watch led the other groups with allegations of war crimes following every Israeli response to terror, whether from Hamas in Gaza or Hezbollah from Lebanon.

The NGO Durban war has continued for 20 years, including the flood of "reports" recently on the apartheid lie. The European-funded organizations campaign for boycotts targeting Israeli universities and businesses, athletes and cultural events, often joined by church groups with classical theological antisemitic agendas under the banner of BDS (boycotts, divestment and sanctions).

The constant drumbeat from Durban has contributed significantly to violent antisemitic attacks worldwide. Recent statistics from the US, Britain, and European countries highlight the hate directed against Jews and Jewish or Israeli targets.

Nevertheless, the Durban framework remains on the UN's permanent agenda. The one day events in the UN General Assembly known as Durban IV was called so that officials and affiliated NGOs can celebrate their successes in this war of hate. To their credit, President Biden and the leaders of Canada, Britain, and a number of European governments refused to participate.

But the antisemitism and obsession with Israel will continue, under the façade of human rights. Now, as in 2001, many of those who claim to speak in the name of morality and law continue to support the perpetrators of inhuman brutality, and erase the victims of terror and injustice. This is the legacy of Durban after 20 years.

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Seventeen years ago, in 2004, a European Parliament visiting delegation to Israel asked me to brief them on EU funding for Palestinian and Israeli political NGOs under the banners of human rights, peace and other worthy causes. Although the budgets were small then ("only" a few million Euros), they were significant and did major damage. But before I could speak, an EU official tried to prevent my presentation, declaring that I was about to reveal state secrets. His face turned redder when I pulled out the numerous brochures from the NGO grantees with the EU logo.

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But beyond the logos, the details of the deep and often personal European relationships with the leaders of influential Palestinian and Israeli NGOs were and remain closely guarded state secrets, on the level of nuclear weapons. This strange and fundamental departure from the transparency that is central to democratic norms explains why year after year, the members of an NGO network linked to a terror organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), are among the main recipients of European funding. Since 2011, the European governments have provided at least 200 million euros to these organizations, including 40 million from the European Union, and probably more from subcontracting that is not reported and from grants that remain hidden.

The arrest and indictment of a number of four individuals with high-level positions in the benignly named Health Workers Committee, who are charged with diverting NGO funds directly to terror groups, shines a bright spotlight on this core dimension of the NGO industry. After many years of hiding the details and denying the extensive evidence of links published in NGO Monitor research reports, it will now be harder for the European officials in charge of the funding to continue to claim "we did not know", "the evidence you provide is not absolute proof…", or "we do not need to examine the recipients because other countries and the UN are funding the same groups."

In official correspondence and awkward meetings with European ambassadors and other officials, they offered rehearsed justifications for funding for Palestinian and Israel NGOs leading anti-Israel "apartheid" demonization. Often reading uncomfortably from pre-cooked slogans, they have claimed (without credibility) that their governments only support projects and not organizations, that the NGO links to the PFLP are outdated and invalid, and even that the PFLP is a legitimate political organization. The long-standing relationships between PFLP officials and their European sponsors, including leaders of powerful church groups such as Pax Christi, are never acknowledged.

Recently, however, recognition of the damage done and the need for independent oversight regarding these NGO relationships has gradually increased. One year ago, Olivér Várhelyi, EU Commissioner for Neighborhood and Enlargement (which has jurisdiction over some of the seven distinct EU funding mechanisms) ordered a comprehensive investigation of terror ties involving NGO grantees, and declared that such funding "will not be tolerated." That report is expected very soon.

In addition, the European Parliament's committee responsible for budgetary issues ("Discharge") recently told EU officials to "thoroughly verify" that funds are not "allocated or linked to any cause or form of terrorism and/or religious and political radicalization." Grant funds that went to any person or organization with terrorist ties must be "proactively recovered, and recipients involved are excluded from future union funding." To the degree that the officials implement this policy, the results will require a fundamental change in the NGO funding process.

In the Netherlands, the foreign and development ministers initially rejected the information showing clear links between their funding for the UAWC and the officials charged with the 2019 murder of Rena Schnerb, but later, they were forced to retract their claims. Under parliamentary questioning, they acknowledged that Dutch funding paid part of the salaries, and suspended grants pending an investigation by a private firm, which has begun.

These and similar developments in other countries suggest that after many years, the results of free-flowing European support to the NGO industry, without transparency and due diligence, are becoming too costly. Perhaps as a result of the most recent developments and arrests, the careless and dangerous European NGO subcontracting will be reduced or stopped. But even if this happens, the immense damage resulting from these policies will take many years to repair.

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It was established after diplomatic talks that culminated in the Rome Statute in 1998, and even then it was clear that Israel would become the main target of Arab states and anti-Israel groups claiming to champion international humanitarian law.

Over the past two decades, having invested tens of millions of dollars, euros and pounds, these political players have spearheaded an ongoing campaign to drag Israel through the ICC's doors. One of the organizations leading the anti-Israel industry, Human Rights Watch, is managed by Ken Roth, an obsessively anti-Israel activist who has surrounded himself with other extremists.

Amnesty International also operated over this period, albeit less effectively. And alongside the familiar Israeli non-governmental organizations, numerous Palestinian NGOs with ties to the PLO and PFLP terrorist groups also joined this campaign over the past decade.

These groups rely on funding from European governments. Four Palestinian organizations − Al-Haq, Al-Dameer, PCHR and Al-Mezan − have received direct funding from Switzerland, Holland, Sweden, and Demark to document "war crimes" and petition the ICC. Other groups involved in similar activities are funded by Great Britain, the European Union, Belgium, Germany and others.

The claims put forth by these groups receive automatic attention from the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the global media. We saw this in 2002 when Israel was accused of a "massacre" in Jenin, in the Goldstone report after Operation Cast Lead, or in the report about the Gaza-fence riots. Common to all these reports and others is the ignoring of Palestinian terrorism, missile fire, and exploitation of children and women; while highlighting "Israel's war crimes." The Israeli government was too slow to understand the threat. The defensive approach, spearheaded by the legal experts in the IDF and other bodies, was predicated on attempts to prove to the ICC that the legal process in Israel makes external intervention extraneous. But because the ICC is a political body, this approach had no chance of success.

On the other hand, an aggressive political and diplomatic strategy, based on hitting the ICC's already small budget, can still succeed. The United States, which similar to Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, has already condemned the ICC for its anti-Israel bias, but American pressure alone won't be enough to deter the court's chief prosecutor.

Washington and Jerusalem need to expand the scope of the counterattack together with other democracies whose sovereignty is being threatened by the ICC. We can expect support from Great Britain, whose soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan are under similar scrutiny; and Australia's prime minister has already voiced his opposition to the attempts to investigate Israel.

The question that remains is whether Europe will come to its senses, despite its support for some of the organizations leading the campaign. If countries such as Holland, Norway and Denmark deliver a message to the ICC that its survival depends on ceasing the anti-Israel, and some would argue anti-Semitic witchhunt, they can perhaps fix some of the damage.

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Unfortunately, the reality now, as it was then, is quite different. In contrast to the optimism, the Palestinians and their allies are currently moving at full speed to continue their campaign of demonization targeted at Israel. 

Most notably, Palestinians, in coordination with an army of NGOs, are pressing the effort in the International Criminal Court to take the false "war crime" accusations to the next stage – a pseudo-investigation of Israel.

Over the past week, a number of these groups have submitted briefs (many of which go beyond absurd in stretching the truth in history and facts) to prop-up Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's weak attempt to justify this travesty. The NGO list includes Al Haq, Al Mezan and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), which work very closely with the PA in this campaign and are funded by European governments. 

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Among their Israeli allies, the Israeli left-wing group B'Tselem wrote a report accompanied by a media campaign, (also enabled by European funders). As usual, B'Tselem blamed Israel exclusively for the conflict, erasing the long history of rejectionism and terror, and even accused Israel of exploiting the Holocaust in rejecting the ICC prosecutor's arguments. Breaking the silence, Gisha and other NGOs continued to blame Israel for not doing enough to stop the spread of the coronavirus among Palestinians, repeating their one-line agenda – "occupation, occupation, occupation" – including for Gaza, where the "occupation" ended almost 15 years ago.  

In parallel and also flying in the face of Rivlin's optimism is the continuation of the discriminatory boycott, divestment, sanctions campaign (BDS), which is trying to exploit their latest "achievement" in the form of a UN Human Rights Council (HRC) blacklist of selected businesses falsely accused of violating international law. 

Human Rights Watch lobbied HRC Commissioner Michelle Bachelet to join this nasty form of warfare and is pressing this dubious success while corona rages. HRW head Ken Roth's twitter feed contains frequent propaganda, and Omar Shakir, who was hired by Roth to lead the BDS attack, finds gullible allies, like a student reporter for the Harvard Crimson, to repeat his lies. (Shakir left Israel a few months ago after his visa was not renewed.) 

Sarah Leah Whitson, another veteran Israel-hater, continued along the same path in the face of the coronavirus. "Such a tiny taste. Missing a tablespoon of blood," she tweeted. (This was Whitson's response to Mairav Zonszein, who wrote, "6 million Jewish Israelis will now get a taste of what around the same number of Palestinians living under occupation have experienced for over half a century.") 

After almost 20 years as one of Roth's top warriors in the war to demonize Israel, Whitson recently left and joined the Quincy Institute – a new political "think tank" funded by billionaires George Soros and Charles Koch.

The ongoing demonization and political war against Israel, continuing unabated despite the global corona disaster, is an important reality check for all of us. While hoping for a better future of beating swords (or keyboards of propaganda) into plowshares is an important part of human nature and Jewish tradition, blind faith can also have dangerous consequences.

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For the past two decades, these political actors have continuously led campaigns aimed at bringing Israel before the ICC, spending tens of millions of dollars, euros, and pounds. One of the leaders of this industry is Human Rights Watch, which during this entire period has been led by an obsessive anti-Israel activist (Kenneth Roth). Roth hired numerous anti-Israel activists, including Omar Shakir. Amnesty International has run a similar effort, although with less impact. In parallel, a number of Palestinian NGOs closely linked to the PLO and to the PFLP terror organization have added to the campaign, accompanied by the usual Israeli groups.

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European government funding has been essential for this process. Four Palestinian NGOs – Al-Haq, Al-Dameer, PCHR, and Al Mezan – have been directly funded by the Swiss, Dutch, Swedish, and Danish governments and their grants specify the documentation of "war crimes" and similar accusations. Other groups involved in this process are funded by the EU, the UK, Belgium, Germany, and other countries.

The accusations made by these groups have been copied automatically and promoted intensively by the UN Human Rights Council and on media platforms. The reports began in 2002 with the false "Jenin massacre" allegations, followed by many others, including the 2009 Goldstone Report and this year, the UN's report on the Gaza border confrontations. All largely ignore Palestinian terrorism and rocket attacks, thereby making the accusations of Israeli "war crimes" stand out.

In theory, the ICC's objective is to provide a framework for holding the world's worst tyrants and war criminals to account, particularly in countries where there are no functioning courts or governments to hold them to account. The massive campaign designed to artificially force Israel to the center for the court's agenda not only erases the history of the conflict, but more importantly, is fundamentally immoral.

Given this background, and after 21 years, the decision of the prosecutor was largely predictable. Unfortunately, the Israeli government was slow in understanding the threat and the requirements for a successful strategy. The defensive approach, led by lawyers in the IDF and elsewhere, was based on attempts to show the court that the Israeli judicial process made external intervention redundant. But because the ICC is a political body, these efforts were ignored.

In contrast, an aggressive political and diplomatic strategy, based on threatening the ICC's already thin budget and perhaps its survival, can still defeat this effort. The US, which, like Israel, did not sign the Rome Treaty, has already condemned the move, but American pressure alone is probably insufficient to deter the prosecutor.

Washington and Jerusalem need to expand this counterattack to other democracies whose sovereignty is threatened by the ICC. The UK, led by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is a likely ally – British soldiers sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq are also targets of NGO-led campaigns at the ICC. Australia and perhaps Canada are also potentially allies too.

The question is whether Europe, despite its support for the NGOs involved in this travesty, will find the necessary political backbone. If countries like Holland, Norway, and Denmark tell the court that their survival depends on ending this anti-Israel, and, many will argue, anti-Semitic witch hunt, they can undo some of the damage.

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But the problem continues in other and in some ways even more virulent forms. For example, the "Occupied Palestinian Territory" branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA-oPt) is also neck-deep in political warfare and demonization.

Under the guise of providing aid, this agency sends out a constant flow of false accusations, including reports to the Security Council and "news items" promoted on its specialized ReliefWeb media platform. The officials also coordinate the agendas of dozens of NGOs that are active in these political attacks. The anti-Israel Norwegian Refugee Council and the Palestinian NGO Network (PNGO) are among their main partners in promoting radical goals.

But the façade that has protected OCHA-oPt and its partners is being slowly stripped away. Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N.'s "Humanitarian Coordinator," complained that "U.N. Watch and NGO Monitor (the organization I founded and lead) are out there to delegitimize humanitarian action in Palestine, including allegations of misconduct and misuse of funds." In January, his organization's bulletin warned against what they refer to as Israeli "de-legitimization, access restrictions, and administrative constraints," and warned about a nefarious "network of Israeli civil society groups … with the apparent support of the Israeli government." No details are provided – only shadowy allegations and hints of dark conspiracies. For the record, NGO Monitor neither requests nor receives any support from any government, unlike OCH-oPt's circle of friends.

Wading further into the mud, this diatribe refers to "targeted defamation and smear campaigns [that] allege violations of counter-terrorism legislation … Most of these allegations are baseless or misrepresent and distort critical factual or legal elements. Humanitarian organizations operating in the oPt adhere strictly to the principles of neutrality, impartiality, independence and humanity…"

Behind the bluster, the evidence clearly exposes OCHA-oPt's facade. For example, a number of core groups are affiliated with terror organizations such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, as first documented in NGO Monitor's meticulous research (in sharp contrast to U.N. practice) and reiterated by the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs. The terror links of groups such as the Palestine Center for Human Rights (PCHR), Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), Addameer, Al Haq and others – members of OCHA's "displacement working group" – are neither "baseless" nor distortions.

The claim to "adhere strictly to the principles of neutrality" is a farce. Partners such as Norwegian People's Aid, and Medical Aid for Palestinians, devote significant resources to demonizing Israel. Also, many of OCHA-oPt's NGO clients are among the leaders of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel BDS and lawfare campaigns before the International Criminal Court. Their Israeli NGO partners, such as B'Tselem and Adalah, are political opposition groups with no role in humanitarian aid. Use of terms such as "neutral" and "impartial" in this context strips them of all meaning.

The text also condemns "restrictions imposed on humanitarian staff and operations," by which they apparently mean the arrests of NGO and U.N. officials for diverting funds and materials to terrorist organizations in Gaza. There have been a number of cases in which aid officials, including U.N. employees, were tried and convicted of diverting large funds to Hamas. In 2016, World Vision's Gaza manager Mohammed Halabi was charged with stealing $50 million for use in terror attacks. Neither the terror links nor the arrests were mentioned in the propaganda because for OCHA-oPt, all Palestinians are victims, and terrorism does not exist.

This and similar diatribes from the Palestinian propaganda industry reflect a real threat. A series of detailed research reports, particularly from NGO Monitor, have resulted in much-needed reforms imposed by the donor countries. As noted by OCHA-oPt, 23% of its NGO allies had been "forced to alter, suspend or terminate existing programs, in part or in full; 22% said they had faced threats of or actual legal or administrative actions against them; and 55% reported that they had to answer additional donor queries about their programming. Overall, 43% … indicated that the campaign had undermined their funding for certain types of activities."

As countries such as Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Norway, the European Union and others re-evaluate their NGO funding policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zone, the impacts will increase. After their basic due diligence failures in following OCHA's "coordination" and wasting millions in taxpayer funds on groups that promoted the opposite of the moral values that were claimed, these governments had no choice but to change policies. As a result, the anti-Israel propaganda machine coordinated by OCHA-oPt has considerably fewer resources to wage these wars.

The crisis faced by this and other U.N. agencies claiming to be assisting the Palestinians is the result of their own fundamental failures, and no amount of empty rhetoric, bemoaning the "shrinking of the operational space available for humanitarian work" will hide this reality. Eventually, even OCHA-oPt, like UNRWA, will be forced to stop these wasteful and destructive propaganda wars which have cost Israelis, Palestinians and American taxpayers so much.

This article is reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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In recent years, nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies are increasingly accusing Israel of abusing and falsely arresting Palestinian minors while at the same time turning a blind eye to the minors' involvement in terrorist activities.

In Nov. 2017, NGO Monitor alerted Israeli lawmakers, government offices and civil society organizations that this issue would become central this year and would be used to launch a political attack against us.

Many of these initiatives focus on children, especially the documentation of supposed violations by Israeli security forces. Many of them are funded by the countries whose representatives attended the conference. This quasi-propaganda campaign is being led by the Defense for Children International – Palestine, which supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and has ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist group. Just last week, the Arab Bank and Citibank stopped providing services to the group as a result of these terror ties. As part of its propaganda efforts, the DCIP has tried to have the Israel Defense Forces added to a UNICEF blacklist of organizations that violate children's rights. Among the organizations that appear on the list are terrorist organizations like Islamic State and Boko Haram.

The propaganda campaign has gained steam ever since. In the United States, legislation was proposed in November 2017 to "to promote and protect the human rights of Palestinian children and to ensure that United States taxpayer funds shall not be used to support the military detention of Palestinian children." The BDS organizations behind the legislation based their claims directly on the findings of the DCIP report.

The December arrest of 16-year-old Ahed Tamimi for slapping an IDF soldier paved the way for a variety of these activities. In February, the British Parliament convened to discuss the "the military detention of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities." During the discussion, lawmakers discussed UNICEF data that relied on a DCIP report and was not independently verified on the "systematic and sustained harm to Palestinian children who come into contact with the Israeli military detention system."

Contending with the exploitation of children for the purposes of terrorism and incitement in schools and in the media is a serious challenge for Israel. In every democracy, there is a legal mechanism that exists for this very purpose. In order to criticize Israel, one must first compare it to countries like the U.K. and U.S., among others. The organizations leading the campaign, of course, choose to ignore this fact.

The conference in the Knesset is an inseparable part of the international propaganda campaign that misrepresents Israel as a systematic violator of children's rights. In this campaign, there is never any serious discussion of human rights, the exploitation of children for warfare by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas and certainly no mention of Israeli children.

All the information necessary to contend with this circus exists. Everyone, including the lawmakers who protested the cynical exploitation of children in the Knesset, are aware of this. The problem is that instead of initiating, Israeli authorities have chosen only to react. The time has come for Israel to initiate moves in this political war and steps against the European countries that fund it.

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The Israeli government, which will be represented by Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, expressed its support for emergency aid, recognizing that if the Gaza regime collapsed, it could cause another war. While the basic needs of Gaza's civilian population, like electricity and potable water, are obvious to all, another round of funding won't solve the core problem there, especially given that the role Hamas is playing in the crisis is being ignored. So to prevent the next crisis, and the one after that, real change is necessary.

Israeli interests demand that Hanegbi switch roles from an observer to a central actor in the event and that he ask for an orderly plan to shut down the U.N. Relief and Works Agency. Hanegbi needs to prevent viable alternatives to the destructive status quo that for 70 years has defined Palestinians in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, etc. as refugees from the 1948 War of Independence, leading billions of dollars of international aid to be funneled into perpetuating the Palestinian narrative about a "right of return." The unstinting support of various Israeli governments and the Israeli defense establishment for UNRWA has caused considerable damage, and it's time to think up more efficient ways of helping that are not tied to the Palestinian narrative or to terrorist organizations. The political price of continued cooperation with UNRWA outweighs all other considerations.

The U.S. has started to understand this and has frozen $100 million in UNRWA funds until serious reforms to the organization are made. Despite condemnation of the American move from the U.N., other donor nations, the international aid industry, and the Palestinians, a discussion of the problems in UNRWA is vital.

In response to the U.S. move – in what appears to be a political move to demonstrate "solidarity" with the Palestinians – the governments of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Sweden promised to use their tax revenues to cover the amount that the U.S. has withheld from UNRWA. Of course, this isn't what will help the Palestinians. The opposite – we should start putting together a plan to dismantle UNRWA within no more than five years.

With or without UNRWA, the discussions in Brussels should include the establishment of supervisory mechanisms that will put an end to funds meant for hospitals, schools, and housing being exploited to build terror tunnels and other Hamas infrastructure. For years, donor nations trusted nongovernmental organizations, which report independently and are not subject to audit. Along with Israel, the donors must implement technological tools that will guarantee independent and objective oversight that will prevent the diversion of aid funds, which ultimately steals basic needs from the civilian population and leaves them exposed and vulnerable when the next war comes.

In addition, the fact that Hamas has been holding the bodies of two Israeli soldiers (Lt. Hadar Goldin and Staff Sgt. Oron Shaul) for more than three years should be raised at every international discussion about aid money. The Israeli government should use every form of leverage to influence donor nations to help bring them back to their families, and remind the same donor nations that they have a moral responsibility to condition aid on the return of Goldin and Shaul's bodies.

The government cannot allow the status quo to continue. The Brussels meeting is a critical moment that offers an opening to change the failed policy that gives hundreds of millions of dollars to strengthen an even more failing system.

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