As those of you who have watched mainstream television today are aware, Israeli allegations that several employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) participated in the 7 October Hamas attacks have taken prime position on the news bulletins.
In a discussion of these developments with Iran’s Press TV earlier today, I was given the opportunity to identify the attention being given to this scandal as intentional distraction away from the real news of the day which continues to be the genocidal activities of Israel in Gaza, with another 165 civilians reportedly murdered yesterday. This is not to say that those guilty of betraying their UN mission and aiding the Hamas attack should not be held accountable and punished. But their misdeeds must not take the world’s eye off the ball, which is to ensure the implementation of the judgment against Israel over its genocidal intentions in Gaza issued by the International Court of Justice in The Hague on Friday, and in particular to expand many times over the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians with immediate effect.
As I further mentioned in the interview, on this weekend we have marked three anniversaries that have great relevance to the tragedy now playing out in Palestine. First, Remembrance Day for the original Holocaust, meaning the genocidal destruction of European Jewry by Nazi Germany. Second, the ending of the blockade of Leningrad in WWII, which was, of course, one aspect of Germany’s genocidal policies with regard to Russia and caused the death of more than one million Russian civilians. Third, and unnamed in this interview, was the anniversary of the liberation of the detainees of the Auschwitz concentration camp by the Red Army. These anniversaries are a strong reminder that Netanyahu and his government are abusing the memory of genocide to provide cover for their own present day atrocities.
See https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/128354
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024
Postscript, 29 January: As several readers have commented, the decision by the United States, the U.K. and a number of other states to suspend contributions to UNRWA over Israeli allegations that 12 staff participated in the 7 October Hamas attacks out of a total employee headcount of 13,000 had significantly greater impact than stealing the headlines on yesterday’s news programs. The economic impact of these suspensions has been to virtually cut in half the funds available for the UNRWA activities not only in Gaza but in the broader region. It now appears that more than two million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, for example, will face hardship due to the funding suspension since they also are cared for by the same UNRWA programs.
Put another way, the Israeli accusations have been magnified by the USA and its vassals into a cruel punishment against Palestinians wherever they may be in revenge for the ruling last Friday of the International Court of Justice finding Israel guilty of intent to commit genocide in Gaza. That ruling, if implemented, would assure greater flows of aid to the Gaza Strip population. Now it may have the opposite effect of exposing them to still greater misery.
Interview mit dem iranischen Press TV über den Wirbel um die Beteiligung mehrerer UNRWA-Mitarbeiter an den Hamas-Anschlägen vom 7. Oktober
Wie diejenigen unter Ihnen wissen, die heute die Hauptnachrichten im Fernsehen verfolgt haben, haben die israelischen Anschuldigungen, dass mehrere Mitarbeiter des Hilfswerks der Vereinten Nationen für Palästinaflüchtlinge im Nahen Osten (UNRWA) an den Hamas-Anschlägen vom 7. Oktober beteiligt waren, den ersten Platz in den Nachrichtensendungen eingenommen.
In einer Diskussion über diese Entwicklungen mit dem iranischen Fernsehsender Press TV hatte ich heute die Gelegenheit, die Aufmerksamkeit, die diesem Skandal gewidmet wird, als absichtliche Ablenkung von den wirklichen Nachrichten des Tages zu bezeichnen, die weiterhin die völkermörderischen Aktivitäten Israels im Gazastreifen sind, bei denen gestern Berichten zufolge weitere 165 Zivilisten ermordet wurden. Damit soll nicht gesagt werden, dass diejenigen, die sich des Verrats an ihrer UN-Mission und der Unterstützung des Hamas-Angriffs schuldig gemacht haben, nicht zur Rechenschaft gezogen und bestraft werden sollten. Aber ihre Missetaten dürfen die Welt nicht von der Aufgabe ablenken, die darin besteht, die am Freitag vom Internationalen Gerichtshof in Den Haag gegen Israel wegen seiner völkermörderischen Absichten im Gazastreifen gefällte Entscheidung umzusetzen und insbesondere die humanitäre Hilfe für die Palästinenser mit sofortiger Wirkung um ein Vielfaches zu erweitern.
Wie ich in dem Interview weiter ausgeführt habe, haben wir an diesem Wochenende drei Jahrestage begangen, die für die Tragödie, die sich jetzt in Palästina abspielt, von großer Bedeutung sind. Erstens der Gedenktag für den ursprünglichen Holocaust, also die völkermörderische Vernichtung des europäischen Judentums durch Nazi-Deutschland. Zweitens die Beendigung der Blockade von Leningrad im Zweiten Weltkrieg, die natürlich ein Aspekt der völkermörderischen Politik Deutschlands gegenüber Russland war und den Tod von mehr als einer Million russischer Zivilisten verursachte. Der dritte Jahrestag, der in diesem Interview nicht genannt wird, ist der Jahrestag der Befreiung der Häftlinge des Konzentrationslagers Auschwitz durch die Rote Armee. Diese Jahrestage sind ein deutlicher Hinweis darauf, dass Netanjahu und seine Regierung das Gedenken an den Völkermord missbrauchen, um ihre eigenen aktuellen Gräueltaten zu decken.
Siehe https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/128354
Nachtrag, 29. Januar: Wie mehrere Leser angemerkt haben, hatte die Entscheidung der Vereinigten Staaten, des Vereinigten Königreichs und einer Reihe anderer Staaten, die Beiträge an das UNRWA wegen israelischer Anschuldigungen auszusetzen, wonach 12 der insgesamt 13.000 Mitarbeiter an den Hamas-Anschlägen vom 7. Oktober beteiligt waren, weitaus größere Auswirkungen als nur die Schlagzeilen in den gestrigen Nachrichtensendungen zu stehlen. Die wirtschaftlichen Auswirkungen dieser Aussetzungen haben dazu geführt, dass die für die UNRWA-Aktivitäten nicht nur im Gazastreifen, sondern in der gesamten Region verfügbaren Mittel praktisch um die Hälfte gekürzt wurden. Es sieht nun so aus, als ob mehr als zwei Millionen palästinensische Flüchtlinge in Jordanien durch die Aussetzung der Finanzierung in Bedrängnis geraten werden, da sie ebenfalls von denselben UNRWA-Programmen betreut werden.
Anders ausgedrückt, die USA und ihre Vasallen haben die israelischen Anschuldigungen zu einer grausamen Bestrafung der Palästinenser, wo auch immer sie sich aufhalten, ausgeweitet, um sich für die Entscheidung des Internationalen Gerichtshofs vom vergangenen Freitag zu rächen, in dem Israel des vorsätzlichen Völkermordes in Gaza für schuldig befunden wurde. Die Umsetzung dieser Entscheidung würde einen größeren Zustrom von Hilfsgütern für die Bevölkerung des Gazastreifens sicherstellen. Jetzt könnte es den gegenteiligen Effekt haben, indem es die Bevölkerung einem noch größeren Elend aussetzt.
Gilbert Doctorow 
What evidence, other than the words of Israeli spokesmen, have we seen to substantiate these allegations?
Also, after killing perhaps a hundred UNRWA workers in Gaza due to Israeli occupation forces indiscriminate (and maybe not so indiscriminate) killing of just about anything that moves, the Israelis may need this excuse to cover up their own crimes. I simply do not believe anything that comes from Israel.
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Given Netanyahu is on record as supporting funding of Hamas, to avoid dealing with the more moderate PA and the possibility of a Palestinian state, why isn’t there more effort to point out he is far more responsible for Oct 7th, than the vast majority of Palestinians?
Would have Hamas been anything more than another radical fringe group, without that funding?
Maybe we should start to examine the causes. Our beliefs. The software driving society.
Consider that democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Ancient Israel was a monarchy. The Big Guy Rules, like the religion.
Rome adopted Christianity for the monotheism, as the Empire was rising from the ashes of the Republic. The Big Guy Rules.
Monotheism provided the eschatological basis for the next 1500+ years of monarchy. When the West went back to democracy and republicanism, it required separation of church and state, culture and civics.
The logical flaw in monotheism is that ideals are not absolutes.
Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The creed, code, heroes, narratives at the core of every society are ideals. The center of gravity, without which they would break apart. Tower of Babel.
The universal, on the other hand, is the essential and elemental. So a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through and animating the film, rather than the narratives played out on it.
To culture, good and bad are some cosmic conflict between righteousness and evil, while in nature, it’s the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. So while culture is the stories we tell children, nature is an enormous computer, that doesn’t always give us the answers we want to hear.
The consequence of viewing morality as absolute, rather than ideals of a functional society, is that as fear of God died, there was no other organic code to replace it, so the Will to Power, might is right, rose to fill the void.
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I don’t know why anyone with half a brain takes seriously Israeli allegations against UNWRA staff. Israel is bringing about genocide in GAZA now in front of the eyes of the world against Palestinians. There’s also genocide enquiry against Israel brought by South Africa, which has given graphic testimony about Israel’s illegal and vicious behaviour towards Palestinian whose territory they illegally occupy. lsrael has also for decades ignored thousands of reports by United Nations human rights rapporteurs pointing out how Israel, has been illegally attacking, arresting, and depriving Palestinians of food, water, medicines, and generally making their lives hell, but Israel has taken no notice of all these reports for decades.
Wake up western countries! Look at all this, that you’ with your phony values have turned a blind eye to for decades! – Kay
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Meanwhile, there are reports surfacing that UK bank customers are facing difficulties, obstruction and even suspension of their bank account for trying to make a donation to the UNRWA.
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How can a UK bank legally block its customer from sending funds to the UN agency responsible
for aiding Palestinians, who are suffering srael’s genocidal war? How can a bank treat customers,
grilling them like that? Is the UK no longer a democracy? Surely this can’t be legal, no law has been passed by the UK government to prevent banks from allowing customers to fund the UN aid agency.
In fact, according to International law professor Francis Boyle who discussed implications of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order in South Africa’s genocide case against Israel, the cutoff of funds to UNRWA, the Biden admin’s legal complicity under both international and US law, and how this might play out at the UN Security Council and General Assembly. – Watch (video edited by Decensored News ):
Boyle is well-qualified to weigh in on the matter: After becoming the first lawyer to successfully argue a genocide case at the ICJ (also known as the World Court) on behalf of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Boyle then went on to win a second order in that case—“massive and overwhelming in their favor against Yugoslavia, to cease and desist from committing all acts of genocide,” he explains. “This was the first time ever that any lawyer had won two orders in one case since the World Court was founded in 1921.”
Here’s a summary of some of key points Boyle made during the interview:
• The Biden administration’s aiding and abetting of Israel’s genocide is a violation not only of Article 3e of Genocide Convention, but also the US government’s own Genocide Convention Implementation Act, which Biden himself sponsored as a Senator.
• Countries abruptly cutting off UNRWA funds are now in violation of Article 2c of the Convention: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
• The Biden admin’s UNRWA funding cut is a felony under the Genocide Convention Implementation Act.
Countries who send weapons to Israel can now be sued at the ICJ for their role in the genocide. Originally published on the Decensored News website. For more reporting like this, please follow Decensored News – Kay
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That’s a fair and reasonable question pirmeditor.
It would seem reasonable to surmise that this kind of action against ‘wrongthink’ is merely another manifestation of the infamous ‘rules based order’ operating at lower levels. It is not as if we have not already seen this before. The Canadian Government took exactly the same kind of approach two years ago in effectively outlawing its subjects who donated even small sums of money to the truckers protests by ceasing their bank accounts.
The key issue here at every level is the complete absence of what the majority of normal people recognise as due process. In the post-modernist approach adopted by the West’s ‘rules based order’ – we make the rules, you obey the orders – any allegation is treated as an automatic guilty verdict with no need for the testing of evidence.
An approach which operates on multiple levels across the Collective West. Where, just as with the UNRWA allegations, sanctions and sentences are applied on the basis of untested allegations in numerous instances. From people losing their employment for privately tweeting the ‘wrong’ opinion; Members of Parliament being suspended by the Party; even ordinary Party members disciplined and expelled. All either without any due process hearing or with normal due process being reversed in which, at best, the accused have to prove their innocence or explain their ‘unacceptable’ behavoir rather than the those making the allegations having to prove their guilt.
And the bottom line is that it is more than reasonable to expect that those who make such decisions which brutally end the lives of ordinary people in other parts of the world will have no qualms whatsoever in taking the same approach with their their own populations who they deem to be deplorables should it suit their convenience.
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Yes, Dave Hansell, that’s it, due legal process is being ignored! So called “democracies” in the west are abandoning their “values. ” Sad to hear that Canada is also ignoring lawful processes. We have to challenge all this. It’s why Julian Assange is still cooped up in solitary confinement in a UK prison. Lawless Britain, acts together with its ally, the America bully, who wants to put Assange in prison for 175 years for exposing US war crimes. which is meant to scare Journalists from challenging this growing tyranny. Thanks very much for publicising the case of the British woman being prevented by a UK bank, from sending money to UNRWA. Has it been covered in newspapers? – K
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“Has it been covered in newspapers? – K”
As I stopped reading the fiction of any UK newspaper a long time ago I took the precaution of not holding my breath when looking on my search engine (Startpage). Only four pages of links/listings available with only the skwawkbox article previously provided covering the story. Quelle suprise!
Probably classed and defined as “misinformation/disinformation” by the Rupert’s who think they are in charge.
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