Author Archives: Rabbi

by Chaim Silberstein and Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

(Published at https://www.jns.org/evict-unrwa-from-jerusalem/)

The recent exposure of the Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA’s complicity in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre has prompted many countries—including the United States, the United Kingdom and France—to suspend their funding of the organization. This awakening resulted from the overwhelming evidence that UNRWA in Gaza is not only permeated with Hamas members and supporters and has allowed its facilities and vehicles to be used for terror, but that UNRWA itself has become a wing of Hamas. Its permanent defunding and disbandment should follow.

At the same time, we should not neglect UNRWA’s nefarious activities in Jerusalem, which greatly resemble its activities in Gaza. For example, UNRWA subsidizes and controls seven schools in eastern Jerusalem located in Shuafat, Silwan, Wadi-al-Joz, the Old City, the Mount of Olives and Sur Baher. The curriculum at these UNRWA schools is rife with anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement. The students, as young as first- and-second graders, are educated to believe in Israel’s illegitimacy as well as the religious imperative of murdering Jews wherever they can be found. A video dating from 2022 recently surfaced that showed students in these schools boasting of their willingness to become suicide bombers. They proclaim that “all Palestine is ours and the Jews are terrorists” and “stabbing Jews brings honor to Palestinians.”

These UNRWA schools are spawning the next generation of terrorists under the sponsorship of the international community. UNRWA has reported that it spends more than half of its billion-dollar budget on education. Its schools are generally unlicensed and illegally built on Jerusalem municipal land. Past efforts by the government of Israel to close these schools or end UNRWA’s management of them have failed, even though Israel’s Ministry of Education is legally responsible for supervising them. These efforts have failed mainly due to inertia, lack of will and international pressure.

In addition, UNRWA long ago illegally seized, built on and now occupies Jerusalem land owned by the Jewish National Fund. This area, spanning many acres, is located in Kafr Akeb within the municipal borders of Jerusalem and close to the Kalandia crossing. To take over this territory, UNRWA even uprooted a grove planted decades ago by the JNF. Clearly, this land should be restored to the JNF and UNRWA’s presence removed.

UNRWA maintains extensive office facilities in Jerusalem, including its local headquarters and the UNRWA Microfinance Department on Shlomo Zalman Shragai Street between Ramat Eshkol and Maalot Dafna. It does so even though it does not recognize this area as under Israeli sovereignty. The Microfinance Department purportedly provides credit and financial services to households, entrepreneurs and small-business owners, but its Jerusalem office is  central to UNRWA’s involvement in Judea and Samaria. Its every action is designed to undermine Israeli sovereignty and weaken Israeli security.

UNRWA’s Jerusalem activities are inimical to Israel’s security. UNRWA has interfered in the Israeli legal system, including protests against the lawful eviction of Arab squatters in Jerusalem neighborhoods. The organization maintains a daily log of incidents in which Israeli security forces “reportedly opened fire” on Palestinians, almost never providing the context, background or counterterror nature of these incidents.

UNRWA exists exclusively to perpetuate the refugee status of a fourth and fifth generation of purported descendants of refugees from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. It maintains refugee camps in Jerusalem and makes no effort to resettle its inhabitants in permanent residences. It seeks to thwart any chance of peace by stoking Palestinian grievances through its educational, cultural, legal and political activities.

Put simply, UNRWA is nothing less than a hostile entity operating with impunity in Jerusalem, Israel’s capital city. It is waging a cold war against Israel’s existence. It is corrupt, antisemitic, anti-Israel and an ill-concealed cover for Hamas terror.

Action must be taken immediately. UNRWA’s network of schools in eastern Jerusalem should be shuttered by the Israeli government. Management of education in these areas should be transferred to Israel’s Ministry of Education and the curriculum completely revamped. UNRWA’s illegal seizure of land across Jerusalem must be reversed, with the organization evicted and the area restored to the control of the Jewish National Fund.

Indeed, the time has come to banish UNRWA entirely from Jerusalem and the State of Israel as a whole. UNRWA is an anachronism, and a harmful and counterproductive one at that. Actual Arab refugees in the Land of Israel, like refugees around the world, should fall under the purview of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Their descendants should not be considered refugees at all. The goal should be to resettle genuine refugees rather than keep them as useful pawns in the war against Israel. The Jewish state should no longer indulge UNRWA’s absurd attempt to prolong the conflict by producing new “refugees” on an industrial scale.

The presence of UNRWA and other U.N. institutions in Jerusalem constitutes a clear and present danger to Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem and the entire Land of Israel. It threatens the well-being and the very lives of all Israelis. It is an inexcusable encroachment on Israeli land and domestic affairs. It should no longer be tolerated.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

On October 7, Palestinian Arab terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, aided by Gazan “civilians” of all ages, invaded Israel, pillaged, plundered, raped, and marauded, murdered approximately 1200 Jews, wounded thousands, and kidnapped hundreds. Tens of thousands of Israelis remain displaced, exiles in their own country.

The Palestinian Authority has yet to condemn the brutal assault and subsidized it in the form of its pay-for-slay program which continues, with a steadily increasing number of terrorist recipients. The attack was greeted with widespread celebrations among Palestinian Arabs and their supporters across the world.

And Joe Biden wants to reward these people with an independent state, recognized by the United States and the Western world.

This is not only morally repugnant; it is also diplomatic folly, which, if it ever succeeds, would pose a mortal danger to Israel’s existence. Biden has said some nice things and done some important things for Israel since the invasion, for which we should be thankful; he has also said some nasty things and done some incredibly harmful things to Israel, for which we should be wary of his continued support.

An independent Palestinian state is a moral obscenity for several reasons. It literally rewards terror – past, present, and future. Biden and his minions, much like they are doing with Ukraine, are hoping that Israel can defend itself but not prevail in this conflict.

The obsession with Gazan refugees (while concurrently indifferent to the condition of Jewish refugees) has, with irrational Israeli acquiescence, resulted in the unremitting resupply of Hamas’ fuel, food, and other provisions, instead of the evacuation of Gazans from the war zone which is a right afforded all other refugees enmeshed in a conflict. It is designed to make Israel’s military effort much more difficult, essentially an endorsement of the Gazans’ employment as human shields and hampers any possibility of rescuing the hostages. Israel has foolishly consented to this.

Even worse, by insisting since the invasion that Israel cannot remain in Gaza, hold any territory, reduce Gaza’s land size, or displace its population, Biden has created a win-win scenario for Palestinian Arab terrorists. When they attack, they get to murder and plunder as they see fit. They can achieve their goals of sowing fear and terror, murder and mayhem, among Israeli civilians. And when they are repulsed, they lose nothing. They can be crushed, vanquished, and their territory conquered, but then Israel is expected to return the land to the aggressor.

Heads, we lose; tails, they win. With those odds, further attacks are not only inevitable; they are logical. There is then no downside to terrorist acts against Jews.

Obviously, Hamas in Gaza functioned as an independent state. It had defined borders and exercised sovereignty over the territory and its population. And they used this autonomy to build an unimaginably diabolical terror apparatus. Perhaps Biden’s priority in his planned state will be the reconstruction of Hamas’ tunnels, which have been seriously damaged during Israel’s retaliation. Seriously. Win-win for terror.

Why, then, would otherwise intelligent people (all right, they are not all intelligent) proffer – at this point, in the middle of a war – the creation of a Palestinian state?

It is because that is the only tool in their diplomatic toolbox. They have nothing else. In the 1970’s-1990’s, it was assumed that a second Palestinian state (in addition to Jordan) posed an existential threat to Israel. By the 2000’s, this threat was being belittled by elements in the Israeli establishment, mainly those who brought upon us the Oslo catastrophe. If anything, though, the threat has escalated since then, as weaponry has become more deadly and tactics more advanced.

Nevertheless, this remains the only tool in their toolbox. It is perceived as the panacea for everything that ails the Middle East, even though that has been repeatedly disproven. It matters not that most Israelis are against it and most Palestinian Arabs are against it. The international fantasy of the Palestinian state utterly disregards the harm that will be inflicted upon us. We are the guinea pigs of the two-state illusion. And if, G-d forbid, it is somehow foisted upon us, and we are again invaded and brutalized? Well, then, the world will try again, and again. Because they have nothing else.

Whether we are at war or the region is relatively quiet, the diplomats feel the time is ripe for a Palestinian state. When terror strikes and when terror is thwarted, a Palestinian state is the answer. It doesn’t matter – up or down, left or right, day or night, right or wrong – a Palestinian state solves everything, or at least, it is worth it that we die trying to accommodate our enemy. That is the very definition of an empty toolbox.

The most recent threat leaked from the US is the unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at war’s end, whether or not we agree. Certainly, that is not the act of a friend or an ally, but so be it. We should recall that “recognition” comes and goes and is not always beneficial to the recipient.

-The US recognized South Vietnam, even went to war and lost more than 55,000 soldiers defending it, but such recognition mattered little in the end. South Vietnam no longer exists.

-The US recognized Taiwan as China – until it did not, leaving it in diplomatic limbo for the last half century with a tepid commitment to its defense (no one seriously entertains the possibility that the US under any Democratic leader would intervene militarily if China invaded Taiwan, or least they should not entertain that).

– The US commitment to Afghanistan was sturdy, at great cost in blood and treasure, until it completely dissipated, seemingly in an instant, a hasty and deadly withdrawal that resembled America’s retreat from Saigon in 1975.

Such recognition – an overtly hostile act towards Israel that should be interpreted as such – is not insignificant but it is also not the end of the world and could have little effect on the ground (aside from nefarious UN involvement that could include sanctions). It will further color the United States’ reputation in much of the world as an unreliable ally. And these types of trial balloons are often floated to try to win concessions in other areas – cease fire, returning Gazans to their homes, more aid, etc.

More ominous is Biden’s unilateral decision to sanction four “extremist settlers.” In his haste to punish some Jew for something to curry favor with Arab voters in America, Biden neglected certain phases in any prosecution – investigation, indictment, arraignment, trial, and verdict. Instead, he jumped straight to the sentencing phase, trampling every notion of justice in a free society.

The four Jews have not been charged with anything in Israel; it seems likely that some anti-Israel leftist group singled them out. The farce is as unnecessary as it is bogus – so-called settler violence, never murderous, against Arab is down in the past year, even as Arab violence against settlers is up. And if the metric for sanctions is, as the Executive Order put it, “actions… that threaten the peace, security, or stability of the West Bank,”

Biden should consider sanctioning himself. His desire to establish a Palestinian state will not bring peace, will undermine security, and will destabilize Judea and Samaria.

In any event, we too have played an unfortunate role leading to this dramatic moment and anticipated confrontation. Repeated Israeli governments have failed to provide any strategic vision, instead couching Israeli policy in the amorphous objective of “providing security.” That surely is a worthy goal per se, but it is insufficient as a strategy. It also engenders the claims of our interlocutors that account for (from their perspective) Israel’s security needs, such as a demilitarized state.

Of course, those with an empty toolbox will not recall that the Palestinian Authority was supposed to be demilitarized, as was Gaza after the reckless retreat, and that didn’t turn out well for us.

But we persist, voting time after time for some guy presented to us as “Mr. Security” and never quite succeeding. If our toolbox only contains “security, security,” that too is a losing argument. Too many people across the globe think we are occupying someone else’s land in order to provide security for ourselves. It is time to change the narrative.

Why are we in Judea and Samaria? Why should we not – for the third time! – surrender Gaza to an enemy who attacked us? Why are we in the land of Israel altogether? It is not because of security. It is not because we have “historical ties,” as the cliché goes. It is because this is the land that G-d bequeathed to our forefathers and to their faithful descendants. It is because this land is the foundation on which the Torah is to be fully realized and implemented. It is because we have lived in this land in an unbroken chain since the time of Joshua – a land given to us as the holy land and G-d’s chosen land. That is why we are here.

Faithfulness to the Torah is the key to our continued residence. It provides our spiritual worthiness. “Security” is the mundane manner by which we fortify the divine plan in real time in this world. It is a secondary consideration.

Those with an empty toolbox trumpet our need for security as justification for a diplomatic impasse and opposition to a Palestinian state. But our toolbox – call it our Aron Hakodesh, if you will – needs only the Torah, the basis for our rights in this land. The one tool in the toolbox crowd construes that as extreme. They have nothing else, and they would not grieve that much if their machination was our ruination. They do not want us to win – and they will do everything they can to turn our military victory into a diplomatic defeat, as has frequently happened in the past. And we have allowed that to happen because we have lacked, and failed to articulate, a comprehensive vision of what we want and who we are.

We would be in a better position – spiritually, militarily, and even diplomatically – if we embraced the reality that we are here because this is G-d’s land and He in His wisdom and kindness gave it to us so that we, as a nation, should be able to propagate His word to the world. The world will never adopt that approach if we don’t. And when we do (see keepgodsland.com), we will base our statecraft not on ephemeral political considerations but on eternal values, as befitting an eternal people.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com on January 21)

 There is something abnormal about the “innocent civilians” of Gaza that we would do well to recognize, especially since the blood libel at The Hague is premised on their suffering brought about by the war they and their elected representatives launched against us.

When G-d informed Moshe of the consequences of the tenth and final plague – the death of each Egyptian first born – He noted that there will be a “great outcry” in Egypt at that time that will lead to liberation for the Jewish people. The great biblical commentator Malbim (1809-1879) explained that “outcry” as the “outcry of rebellion” (Shemot 11:6) as the Egyptian people, horrified at their fate and their Pharaoh’s obstinacy “wanted to kill Pharaoh.” They had endured enough suffering, blamed Pharaoh and not the Jews, and wanted relief. That got Pharaoh’s attention and he searched for Moshe and Aharon to inform them that they and the people of Israel should all leave, and immediately.

How is it that there is no indigenous rebellion in Gaza? After all, we are told that there are some 40,000 Hamas fighters in a population of “innocents” that number well over a million people? The “innocents,” apparently, outnumber the terrorists some 25-1, or even 30-1. How is it that aside from a few scattered voices blaming Hamas – often terrorists in captivity conveniently changing their tune or some random Gazan found by the media – there is no movement to displace Hamas?

A few better questions: how is it that Israel lacks informants among the Gazan population? How is it that not one Gazan has revealed the location of any of the hostages (indeed, many Gazan “civilians,” as we now know, have held our capitives hostage in their own homes)? How is it that not one Gazan has revealed the location of the tunnel entrances, sparing our soldiers the hazardous task of finding them? After all, those entrances are usually located in their own homes, or in the schools to which they send their children, or in the mosques in which they pray, or in the hospitals where they presumably seek medical care. If they were as innocent as the world portrays them to be, why the reticence?

There are several inevitable conclusions to be drawn from this. It is the way of the world that people suffering under the yoke of a brutal, deadly, and unwanted leadership try to overthrow those leaders and replace them with leaders who better share the society’s values. Most of the United States’ Declaration of Independence is devoted to articulating the basis of that right. For a society that suffers under despotic rule, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government.” That the civilians of Gaza are so docile means that they are either cowardly – or complicit.

Cowardice is a state of mind and difficult to prove conclusively. Even though the “innocent civilians” far outnumber their terrorist leaders, it requires great courage to begin a frontal battle against well armed and evil fighters. But it requires less courage to surreptitiously help Israel, reveal the entrances to bunkers and tunnels, even reveal the location of any of the hostages. That none of this is happening means that the second possibility – complicity – is the more likely reason why Gazans accept the Hamas regime, rejoice in the war against the Jews and the torture they inflicted and are inflicting on our civilians, even participated in the atrocities of October 7 – and would vote for Hamas again given the chance.

That the world has accepted this false dichotomy between Hamas and Gazans is partly mendacity, bias, and insincerity – but it is also partly our government’s fault as it has made little effort to accentuate the complicity of civilian Gazans in the current conflict. Worse, our leaders’ vain boast the day after the massacre that “not one drop of water or fuel will enter Gaza until all the hostages are released” dissipated almost instantly under pressure. Nothing projects weakness more than making promises you can’t keep and threats that you will not carry out. It was a missed opportunity to expose the myth of the “innocent civilians.” 

We are now dealing with those consequences in many ways, not least of which is the continued captivity for the hostages. As our soldiers have reported, Hamas routinely sends out young children and mothers wheeling carriages to ascertain where Israeli soldiers are bivouacked. It presents an almost incomprehensible dilemma for our military. You can’t shoot them – even though their presence and mission endangers our soldier’s lives. I dare all the self-appointed faux moralists across the West to present a solution to that dilemma. Yet, whose Jewish father, husband, son or brother must die in order to protect the lives of these “innocents” who report the location of our forces to Hamas which then shoots RPG’s or other projectiles at our forces? At the very least, this presents an opportunity for our government to dispel the myth of the “innocent civilian,” call for the immediate relocation of anyone who wants to leave, and stop pretending that the future of Gaza is the restoration of the past. For complicity does not only mean that they are actively engaged in terrorism. Complicity also means that they have been educated on hatred of Jews and the illegitimacy of Israel. That cannot be changed, and we should stop pretending that it can change. Let the innocents go abroad and make better lives for themselves; to the extent that they wish to stay only demonstrates how complicit they are.

It is sobering to think that Pharaoh’s Egyptians were more normal, more sophisticated, cared for their children more, had greater respect for life, and feared Pharaoh less (notwithstanding his claim of divinity) than modern Gazans who acquiesce in their suffering, are accomplices in a cult of death, and far from seeking Hamas’ overthrow, voted them into power in 2006 and still support them. We choose to avert our eyes but they have signed on to a cult which declares (Article 8 of the Hamas Charter) “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes.” This death wish is embodied in the oft-quoted statement of radical Muslims that “we love death like you love life,” which they perceive as Jewish weakness and not – as normal people perceive such an assertion – as pathological.

It is not too late for our leaders to reverse the perception of the “innocent civilians” that is leading us directly back to the past, as if we have learned nothing. That the world assumes that “Gazans” should and will control Gaza on the day after makes a mockery of our suffering and sacrifices. Jewish pride, candor forcefully but rationally expressed, and a clear sense of our strategy for the future are the demands of the hour, if we want to salvage something positive from the catastrophe imposed upon us. Innocent? Hardly. And that point must be hammered repeatedly by all who speak in Israel’s name.