Shalom all,

The number of IDF deaths since the beginning of the ground offensive has now reached 224. The number of hostages still held by Hamas and other terrorists is estimated at 136. 

THIS PAST WEEK REVEALED the involvement of 10% of UNRWA employees in the Gaza Strip, including teachers in schools run by that U.N. agency, are connected with terrorist organizations and are Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives and at least a dozen were involved in the October 7th massacre. As a result of these disclosures by Israel, gained through interrogations of militants arrested during attack on Black Saturday, UNRWA fired “several” employees “to protect the agency’s ability to deliver humanitarian assistance”. As the above reports further indicates, the spokesman for Antonio Guterres, the U.N. Secretary-General, said that he “is horrified” by the accusations and that an “urgent and comprehensive independent review of UNRWA will be conducted”. Unfortunately for UNRWA, following those disclosures, the U.S. State Department temporarily halted funding the that agency, a move that was followed by Canada that review will be too little and too late. A review of the continued existence of UNRWA should have been conducted many decades ago, when it outlived its original purpose.

According to its website, titled United Nations Relief and Works Agency for “Palestine Refugees”, UNRWA was established by the U.N. General Assembly in 1949, “with a mandate to provide humanitarian assistance and protection to registered “Palestine” refugees in the Agency’s area of operations pending a just and lasting solution to their plight…Tens of thousands of “Palestine” refugees who lost their homes and livelihoods due to the 1948 conflict continue to be displaced and in need of support, nearly 75 years on.” One with any sense of perspective and understanding would have to ask: “Why, after 75 years, are there still refugees from the Israeli War of Independence in 1948?” 

My posts of September 8 and 18, 2018, entitled “UNRWA-Debunking and Defunding a Deception”, parts one and two, dealt extensively with the politically-motivated establishment of UNRWA and answered the above question. The first of those posts stated, in part:

“By October, 1948, less than half a year after the establishment of the State of Israel, there was heated debate over the exact number of Arab “refugees” who left Israel. According to the United Nations, the number was estimated to be about 500,000….However, the UNRWA, for the purpose of its trying to obtain a census of Arab refugees in 1950, defined “refugee” as “a person normally resident in Palestine who had lost his home and his livelihood as a result of the hostilities and who is in need.” This definition was modified by UNRWA to include those people who had lived in “Palestine” a minimum of only two years preceding the 1948 conflict. These definitions differed from that of the 1951 Refugee Convention and further perpetuated the great cloud of unresolved doubt regarding the true number of Arab refugees. But, instead of being absorbed by the Arab nations in and around the Middle East, the matter of the refugees remained a political tool, which exploited and perpetuated the issue of the so-called “Palestinian refugees”. UNRWA played a major role in this matter, allowing the definition of a “Palestinian” refugee to also include the descendants of the original so-called “refugees”, resulting in the multiplying of the numbers of alleged “refugees” by hundreds of percent over the original numbers of 1948, whatever they actually were. So, instead of resettling and rehabilitating so-called “Palestinian refugees”, UNRWA has actually perpetuated their existence . . . and its own, thus furthering, rather than resolving, the “Palestinian refugee” issue. The claim of “refugee” status is based on voluntary information supplied by the individuals who seek to benefit from the services of UNRWA.

“Present numbers are estimated  to be some 5.5 million refugees. Even if some of these so-called “refugees” became citizens of different countries, they are still treated as “refugees” by UNRWA and eligible for its aid. The “repatriation”, of these alleged “refugees” is one of the major demands of the so-called “Palestinians”. The political structure was and remains well-oiled, well-funded and enables UNRWA to continue its unending goal of providing for the ever-increasing numbers of “Palestinian refugees” – until now….

“It is important to get a perspective of where the billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money have gone over the years. Some of it, unsurprisingly, has ended up in the pockets of the Hamas terrorist organization, many of whose members are openly on the payroll of UNRWA’s full-time staff of some 23,000 people. Despite the almost 70 years since its creation and a present annual budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, getting these so-called “refugees” status in different countries is not any closer now than it was back in 1948. UNRWA’s creation was flawed from the outset. It was devoted to one people group and has acted over the last three score and ten years to perpetuate not only the Middle East conflict, but its own existence. The world community has been duped and has been paying a hefty price for the privilege of being used as a financial tool to help prolong a situation that it condemns and wrongly blames Israel for causing. If you want to know where the problem areas of the world are, follow the money.

“The time is long past due for UNRWA’s existence to come to an end and for Arab countries in the Middle East to absorb all of the so-called “Palestinian refugees”, which they have refused to do for the past 70 years. A lie has been perpetrated during all that time. It was repeated over and over again, more and more loudly over the years and is even believed by those who promulgated the lie, to create a great myth – the myth that Israel stole “Palestinian” land. One cannot steal from someone what that someone never owned.” 

In 2018, it was already known that Hamas members were on the payroll of UNRWA. So why did this matter rise to the surface only now? Because it was politically expedient for everyone involved to ignore it. How many of the billions of dollars that were funded to UNRWA ended up in the hands of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad in Gaza? We may never know. But, we do know that the tunnel infrastructure that was built by Hamas over the past 17 years required massive funding. Some of the tunnels were under UNRWA-supported institutions. Maybe those expenses were written off as “renovations”! 

Despite the decision of the U.S. to pause funding of UNRWA, the Biden Administration sent millions of dollars to UNRWA, which were said to have been committed back in November, 2023. “Critics have long argued that UNRWA is directly tied to Hamas terrorists. On Tuesday, New Jersey GOP Rep. Chris Smith introduced a bill, known as the ‘Stop Support United Nations Relief and Works Agency Act of 2024,’ that would cut off U.S. funding.” It’s about time!

The Dry Bones Blog – 28th January, 2024

AND THEN, the Biden administration dropped its bombshell on Israel, when U.S. State Department spokesman, Mathew Miller, told reports last Wednesday, January 31st, that the United States  was “actively pursuing the establishment of an independent “Palestinian” state. According to an article in The Jerusalem Post, citing the Hebrew website Walla, “US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken order the US State Department to prepare staff work that will examine the possibility of American and international recognition of the state of “Palestine” the day after the war in Gaza.” One would would think that such a one-sided step could not be implemented, given the long-standing U.S. policy that such recognition, if it were to happen, should be the result of direct negotiations between the parties involved. But, as mentioned in the above article: “A senior US official said that the war in Gaza and the efforts to find a diplomatic solution opened the way for a re-examination within the administration of many old paradigms in the policy of the United States towards the Israel-“Palestinian” conflict. According to him, there are elements within the Biden administration who recommend changing policy and moving towards recognizing a “Palestinian” state as a first step in a renewed peace process and not as a last step that would be the result of negotiations between the parties.” This is sheer lunacy on the part of the Biden administration and reveals a total lack of understanding of the nature and underlying causes of this ongoing conflict.

The establishment of a so-called “Palestinian” state is not the real issue and, in any event, it is not really desired either by the people in Gaza or by those in Judea and Samaria. The real issue is the existence of the State of Israel anywhere on land that was once occupied by Islam, which remains holy to Islam, even if they are no longer in control of it. Hence, the proclamation “from the river to the sea” is not a call for “Palestinian” independence, or for statehood, but rather a call for the elimination of the State of Israel fully and completely. In its purest sense, this decades-old conflict since the establishment of Israel in the midst of a sea of Islamic countries is a holy war that has existed from the days of our forefathers and, at its core, is not only regarding the existence of the State of Israel, but the continued existence of the Jewish people, who need to recognize and call upon the Messiah of Israel.

WHILE WE ARE TRYING TO FIGHT A PHYSICAL WAR, the present politics of the Biden administration are working to grant success to Hamas and the defeat of Israel. In Jonathan S. Tobin’s lengthy, but extremely cogent and astute article, appearing in Jewish News Syndicate yesterday, he summarizes it all in the title: “It’s Biden who’s playing politics with the Gaza war, not Bibi.”  Tobin then goes on to state, in part: “[Netanyahu] may be pursuing two goals that cannot both be achieved as well as clinging to his pre-war strategic objective of getting Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. Yet the real scheming going on right now is in Washington, not Jerusalem. It is Biden who is playing a double game in which he seems willing to ensure Hamas’s survival in power in order to settle scores with Netanyahu, as well as to defeat former President Donald Trump in November…That’s the context for the discussions about the latest proposal for a ceasefire and the release of 136 hostages—some living and some presumed dead—in which the double-dealing government of Qatar is playing a central role. Whether or not this effort, like previous ones, will be shot down by Hamas, Netanyahu will continue to face enormous pressure from both the families of the hostages and the United States to either pause or end the war…as the war heads towards its fifth month, Biden’s practice of talking out of both sides of his mouth on the conflict—backing Israel while also bashing and pressuring it to scale down its military campaign—has escalated to the point where a tipping point may soon be reached. American involvement in the hostage talks seem not so much to be focused on freeing the captives as they are on hamstringing the Israeli war effort and wrong-footing Netanyahu.

“While Washington’s focus on demands for the creation of a Palestinian state as part of a far-reaching postwar deal involving Saudi normalization may be wildly unrealistic, it is only understandable if seen in the context of a gambit to topple the Israeli coalition while winning Biden back the favor of left-wing and Arab-American voters whose anger over his supporting Israel’s right to self-defense has imperiled his re-election campaign…It’s also clear that Biden’s attempts to balance his support for Israel and not stopping the flow of arms resupply that enable the continuation of the war (which he has threatened to halt) with talk of a Palestinian state and gestures like sanctions on Israeli settlers accused of violence against Arabs are nothing more than cheap political maneuvers…No matter how [Netanyahu] navigates the current crisis or whether he survives in office, he seems not so much to be playing politics as his opponents claim as clinging to the only stand that makes any sense if Israel is to truly ensure that there will be no more Oct. 7 attacks. Biden, on the other hand, is doing nothing but playing to his party base, seeking to convince them that he shares their contempt for Israeli lives that is a key element in the calls for a ceasefire before Hamas is eliminated…[Biden’s] cynical tricks may or may not gain him votes, but the real loser in his politicization of Middle East policy is the security of a Jewish state that is being endangered by his vendetta against Netanyahu.” (Emphasis mine) The once believed and often touted “unbreakable bond between the U.S. and Israel” is being strained to the breaking point. Politicians need to hear and to heed the voice of their constituents. U.S. voters can press their representatives to continue to support Israel. They will be blessed in return. That is part of God’s promise to Abraham (Gen. 12:3).

AS FOR THE PRESENT HOSTAGE DEAL NEGOTIATIONS, I am referring you to Carolyn Glick’s explanation of the current negotiations and why their implementation means defeat for Israel. While I would encourage you to listen to the entire presentation, which touches on a number of different issues, it is particularly important to listen to the comments from minutes 4:14-8:14.

ONE FINAL NOTE: The situation in the north is reaching a boiling point. Hezbollah aggression has reached the point where Israel will need to do more than just respond to rockets, RPGs, anti-tank missiles and UAVs. Lebanon is unable to control the Hezbollah, who has ignored its obligation under U.N. Resolution 1701, which brought about the end of the Second Lebanon War, in 2006. Israel MUST pursue action to move the Hezbollah north of the Litani River, and create a buffer zone, as stated in Article 8 of the above Resolution, “free of armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the Government of Lebanon [weak as it is – my addition] and of UNIFIL” [United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon], which will not engage in any fighting. If we wait too much longer, we will end up with tens of thousands of missiles being launched into Israel, which will cause extensive damage to Israel’s infrastructure, particularly in the north, but also to areas south of Haifa. And then, Israel will follow through with its warnings and Beirut will be turned into a second Gaza.

Yes, it’s been quite a week.

And notwithstanding all that has been said here and the attempts of the prince of the power of the air to discourage us, God also has a few things to say: 

“Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘It will yet be that peoples will come, even the inhabitants of many cities. The inhabitants of one will go to another, saying, “Let us go at once to entreat the favor of the Lord, and to seek the Lord of hosts; I will also go.” So many peoples and mighty nations will come to seek the Lord of hosts in Jerusalem and to entreat the favor of the Lord.’ Thus says the Lord of hosts, ‘In those days ten men from all the nations will grasp the garment of a Jew, saying, “Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you.”’” (Zechariah 8:20-23)

Have a healthy and God-honoring week.

Bless, be blessed and be a blessing.
Marvin