The UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), at the request of the Human Rights Council, has issued a “a database of all business enterprises involved in certain specified activities related to the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Stephen Daisley explains why the Council—whose members include Qatar, Pakistan, Libya, and Venezuela—is so concerned with commerce in this fictitious region:

[This] list doesn’t explicitly encourage the blackballing of companies mentioned. But it is a nod and a wink to the methods of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. It’s too obvious to be clever but it’s still sly: a coycott, rather than a boycott.

BDS’s economic warfare against the Jewish state has had little success, but that’s not the point: a UN body is tacitly legitimizing its agenda and even doing the research for it. The UN’s obsession with this tiny strip of land on the shores of the Mediterranean has nothing to do with human rights. If Vlad the Impaler were around today, he’d be a special rapporteur on exsanguination and no one in Geneva would see anything untoward about it.

Israel can take care of itself. The people the UN harms when it works to isolate and delegitimize Israel are the Palestinians, and not just the 36,000 who work in the settlements. It rewards and reinforces the rejectionist mindset that has kept them stateless and will go on keeping them stateless. It tells them that their long, painful campaign of national self-harm is just and holds out false hope that it will one day triumph. It won’t. Israel is here to stay, and the priority of anyone who professes to be pro-Palestinian should be convincing the Palestinians to recognize that fact and, on that basis, finally accept offers of peace and statehood. If you care about Palestinian human rights, your efforts should be directed toward creating a Palestinian economy in which the companies listed by the OHCHR want to invest.

Until then, put [the] list to good use. Buy from, sell to, and invest in the very companies [it singles] out. . . . I appreciate some of you will have misgivings about getting mixed up with dangerous sorts like date-growers and pastry chefs, but trust me: it’s all for a good cause.

For some time, opponents of U.S support for Israel have been urging the White House to end the war in Gaza, or simply calling for a ceasefire. Douglas Feith and Lewis Libby consider what such a result would actually entail:

Ending the war immediately would allow Hamas to survive and retain military and governing power. Leaving it in the area containing the Sinai-Gaza smuggling routes would ensure that Hamas can rearm. This is why Hamas leaders now plead for a ceasefire. A ceasefire will provide some relief for Gazans today, but a prolonged ceasefire will preserve Hamas’s bloody oppression of Gaza and make future wars with Israel inevitable.

For most Gazans, even when there is no hot war, Hamas’s dictatorship is a nightmarish tyranny. Hamas rule features the torture and murder of regime opponents, official corruption, extremist indoctrination of children, and misery for the population in general. Hamas diverts foreign aid and other resources from proper uses; instead of improving life for the mass of the people, it uses the funds to fight against Palestinians and Israelis.

Moreover, a Hamas-affiliated website warned Gazans last month against cooperating with Israel in securing and delivering the truckloads of aid flowing into the Strip. It promised to deal with those who do with “an iron fist.” In other words, if Hamas remains in power, it will begin torturing, imprisoning, or murdering those it deems collaborators the moment the war ends. Thereafter, Hamas will begin planning its next attack on Israel:

Hamas’s goals are to overshadow the Palestinian Authority, win control of the West Bank, and establish Hamas leadership over the Palestinian revolution. Hamas’s ultimate aim is to spark a regional war to obliterate Israel and, as Hamas leaders steadfastly maintain, fulfill a Quranic vision of killing all Jews.

Hamas planned for corpses of Palestinian babies and mothers to serve as the mainspring of its October 7 war plan. Hamas calculated it could survive a war against a superior Israeli force and energize enemies of Israel around the world. The key to both aims was arranging for grievous Palestinian civilian losses. . . . That element of Hamas’s war plan is working impressively.