Confronting Anti-Semitism at the United Nations

On January 22, the UN General Assembly held a special meeting to discuss anti-Semitism. With the exception of speeches by the Israeli and American ambassadors, and by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévi, the session amounted to a gathering of foxes discussing how best to guard the hen house. Ben Cohen suggests a better approach:

While it would be churlish to demean the efforts of Jewish advocacy organizations and the Israeli UN delegation in helping to pull off the meeting, it’s important to recognize that our side of the debate doesn’t have full control of the proceedings, and never will. As long as we fail to control the substance of the debate, and as long as we are powerless to weed out anti-Semites . . . from these deliberations, we will never properly explain to the world what anti-Semitism involves.

Ultimately, it’s not about trading in discredited stereotypes or being nasty to individual Jews. . . . In the era of the Jewish state, anti-Semitism . . . seeks the restoration of the status quo that prevailed before World War II, when there was no Jewish state, and when Jews were by definition a minority at the mercy of others.

That is what we have to oppose. And so, if there is a future meeting about anti-Semitism at the UN, or at a national parliament, or any similar body, let’s state at the beginning that the movement to destroy Israel—which spans Middle Eastern governments, Middle Eastern terrorist groups, and assorted Western activists brandishing signs in favor of anti-Israel boycotts—is the greatest concern and the greatest threat. If we can’t say any of those things, then it’s probably not worth holding the meeting to begin with.

Read more at Algemeiner

More about: Anti-Semitism, Anti-Zionism, Bernard-Henri Levy, United Nations

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict