As usual the U.N. is all talk and no action in regards to what to do with UNRWA -- an organization proven to be riddled with terrorist operatives. UN Chief Outlines Four Options for Embattled Palestinian Relief Agency UNRWA https://english.aawsat.com/arab-wor...ons-embattled-palestinian-relief-agency-unrwa A review of the embattled United Nations Palestinian relief agency UNRWA, ordered by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, has identified four possible ways forward for the organization that has lost US funding and been banned by Israel. The proposals, seen by Reuters, are: inaction that could see the potential collapse of UNRWA; a reduction of services; the creation of an executive board to advise UNRWA; or maintaining UNRWA’s rights-based core while transferring services to host governments and the Palestinian Authority. While Guterres ordered the strategic assessment of UNRWA in April as part of his wider UN reform efforts, only the 193-member UN General Assembly can change UNRWA’s mandate. UNRWA was established by the General Assembly in 1949 following the war surrounding the founding of Israel. It provides aid, health and education to millions of Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. “I believe it is imperative that Member States take action to protect the rights of Palestine refugees, the mandate of UNRWA and regional peace and security,” Guterres wrote in a letter dated on Monday and seen by Reuters submitting the UNRWA assessment to the General Assembly. The review comes after Israel adopted a law in October, which was enacted on January 30, that bans UNRWA's operation on Israeli land - including East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognized internationally - and contact with Israeli authorities. UNRWA is also dealing with a dire financial crisis, facing a $200-million deficit. The US was UNRWA's biggest donor, but former President Joe Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly October 7, 2023, attack by the Palestinian Hamas group that triggered the war in Gaza. The funding halt was then extended by the US Congress and President Donald Trump. FOUR OPTIONS The UN has said nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Hamas attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon - killed in September by Israel - was also found to have had an UNRWA job. The UN has vowed to investigate all accusations and repeatedly asked Israel for evidence, which it says has not been provided. Israel has long been critical of UNRWA, while UNRWA has said it has been the target of a "fierce disinformation campaign" to "portray the agency as a terrorist organization." Guterres and the UN Security Council have described UNRWA as the backbone of the aid response in Gaza. The first possible option outlined by the UNRWA strategic assessment was inaction and the potential collapse of the agency, noting that “this scenario would exacerbate humanitarian need, heighten social unrest, and deepen regional fragility” and “represent a significant abandonment of Palestine refugees by the international community.” The second option was to reduce services by “aligning UNRWA’s operations with a reduced and more predictable level of funding through service cuts and transfer of some functions to other actors.” The third option was to create an executive board to advise and support UNRWA’s commissioner-general, enhance accountability and take responsibility for securing multi-year funding and aligning UNRWA’s funding and services. The final potential option would see UNRWA maintain its functions as custodian of Palestine refugee rights, registration, and advocacy for refugee access to services, “while progressively shifting service provision to host governments and the Palestinian Authority, with strong international commitment to funding.”
Jewish tradition has this thing called midrash, "the art of keeping stories alive by refusing to let them stay static". It fills in gaps in the Torah with imaginative expansions, interpretive flourishes, and yes, total fiction, to make ancient texts relevant and compelling. Aka when theology became spin. This technique can be brilliant. It trains the mind to: Spot inconsistencies (“Why doesn’t the Torah say how Rebecca felt about marrying Isaac?”) Ask uncomfortable questions (“What if Moses didn’t actually stutter?”) Complicate harsh theology with multiple perspectives (“Here are 12 takes to soften this brutal verse.”) But there’s a downside: midrashic thinking can become a reflexive way to smooth over contradiction and moral tension, to justify rather than interrogate. For example: Problem: The Torah says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, making his punishment seem unjust. Midrashic Fix: “Actually, Pharaoh first hardened his own heart five times — so it’s fine.” Result: A clever theodicy… that may obscure the original ethical dilemma. To unaware outsiders, this can look like: “Stop overcomplicating things!” “Why not take the text at face value?” “Your ‘questions’ sound more like rationalizations.” “You're too clever for your own conscience.” And when midrashic habits leave the realm of scripture and enter politics or warfare, the result can be pure evil: a capacity to over-explain, reframe, or retroactively justify actions in real-time that others see as clearly excessive. When used to soften scripture, midrash is a tool of cultural life extension. When used to soften and reverse reality, it can become something that leads to just shrugging when the actual truth is replaced with a better sounding one. Edit: I think midrash is a lot of what gives Jews they famous capacity for comedy, which is for the most part, spotting an absurdity in the taken for granted. There is also legal "halakhic" midrash vs "aggadic" narritive midrash. That doesn't mean it's inherently malicious. But it also means, fairly or not, that Jews are often seen as too quick with a convincing fabrication. However, when that same habit is used to construct the official story, especially in law, geopolitics, or warfare, it deserves not admiration for its cleverness, but hard scrutiny for its consequences.
I miss my daughter's Jewish neighbour in LA to argue with. He trained as a rabbi but got into Hollywood 'not that Jews control Hollywood, but Jews control Hollywood'. He is a big Monty Python fan, basically everything he remembers about Christians is from Life of Brian and horror films. He was not a Zionism fan so limited scope for proper arguments. I wondered how things would have been different if midrash was something explicitly addressed in the film. I cooked up a little missing scene: "Midrash Madness: The Ministry of Interpretations" [Scene opens in a cluttered office. A large sign reads: “The Ministry of Interpretations, All Divine Ambiguity Resolved While-U-Wait.”] Clerk (wearing a yarmulke, thick glasses, and robes): Next! Brian (confused, clutching a Torah scroll): Er, yes. I found a passage that says “And Moses lifted up his hand, and smote the rock.” What does it mean? Clerk (instantly enthusiastic): Ah! Excellent choice! That’s Midrash Class II, Subsection 47b, Footnote 8. Now, would you like the literal, allegorical, or postmodern-Zionist-skeptical interpretation? Brian: Just... what happened? Clerk (ignoring him): Literal: He hit the rock. Water came out. Smashing success. Allegorical: The rock is our stubborn hearts. Moses, the divine therapist. The water? Emotional availability. Postmodern-Zionist: The rock is Judea. The hand is a colonial metaphor. And Moses? He's a construction crane. Obviously. Brian: But why would God tell him to hit the rock? Clerk: Aha! Classic problem. Here’s the Midrashic fix: God didn’t really want him to hit it. He wanted Moses to almost hit it. It was a test of restraint. Brian (dubious): So God punished Moses for... following instructions? Clerk (grinning): Precisely. Divine ambiguity. Keeps the scholars busy for centuries! [A Rabbi runs in with a massive scroll.] Rabbi: Emergency! The scroll says “Thou shalt not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” Does that apply to oat milk? Clerk (pulls lever; trapdoor opens; he drops the Rabbi into a pit labeled “Talmudic Limbo”) Clerk (to Brian): Don’t worry. He’ll land on a pile of interpretations. Very soft. Brian: This is insane. Clerk (offended): Sir! This ministry has been keeping ambiguity alive for over a thousand years! If we stopped, people might start taking the text at face value! Imagine that chaos! You want that bloodbath on your hands? Brian: So it’s not about finding truth? Clerk (smiling): Truth? Oh no, no, no. We don’t find truth. We generate options. Rabbi (from below): "But what if the mother goat converted to Buddhism?" [A bell dings, everyone stops.] Clerk: Tea time! [Fade out as klezmer music plays, slightly manic]
Behind a paywall.... ‘There is nothing the world can do about it’: Australian takes on controversial Middle Eastern role Najah al-Rajabi’s family has lived in their home since 1975. Melbourne-born Daniel Luria is leading the fight to install Jewish families there instead. By Matthew Knott July 11, 2025 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...sial-middle-eastern-role-20250709-p5mdtb.html All eyes on East Jerusalem: Murals on the houses of the Batn al-Hawa neighbourhood seek to draw attention to the eviction of Palestinians from their homes.Credit: Kate Geraghty East Jerusalem: She could hear it any day now. The sound Najah al-Rajabi has been dreading. The thud on the door telling her that time is up: she is being evicted from the home she has lived in for the past 55 years. The prospect of looming homelessness for the 18 family members in the home terrifies her. “I’ve cried so much I lost all my tears,” the widow, 69, says, her weary face framed by a purple hijab. “I’m dying inside. I’m an elderly woman and I have nowhere else to go.” More than her own welfare, al-Rajabi fears for her grandson who lives downstairs. Awad, 31, has been in a coma since suffering a stroke six years ago, and relies on a ventilator to stay alive. His room resembles a hospital ward, not a bedroom. “What if we are evicted and he is thrown onto the street?” she says. “Even a few minutes without electricity could put his life at risk.” When eviction day comes her disabled 23-year-old granddaughter, who needs a wheelchair to get around, will also be homeless. As she speaks, a litter of newborn kittens nuzzle their mother on the kitchen floor, blissfully unaware of the mounting anxiety of the humans in the house. Like many buildings in this part of East Jerusalem’s Silwan district, it is covered in brightly coloured murals of flowers and eyes painted by pro-Palestinian artists as part of a project called “I witness Silwan”. Najah al-Rajabi and her grandson Awad Nasser al-Rajabi in the family home in the Batn al-Hawa neighbourhood of Silwan, East Jerusalem.Credit: Kate Geraghty Al-Rajabi’s narrow apartment may be modest but, for her, it is a sacred place. It is where she has spent almost all her life, where she raised her nine children and dozens of grandchildren. She cherishes her balcony’s spectacular view of Al-Aqsa Mosque, considered the third-holiest site in Islam. Al-Rajabi’s late husband Awad bought the house from a Palestinian owner in 1975, and she has the documents to prove it. Yet in the eyes of the Israeli legal system, they count for nothing. On June 22, the Israeli Supreme Court rejected her family’s final appeal against an eviction process that began a decade ago. Within 30 days, a Jewish family is set to move into her home, taking advantage of a law that allows Jews who owned property in East Jerusalem before 1948 to reclaim it. Israel seized East Jerusalem in the six-day war of 1967 and considers it a part of its undivided capital city. By contrast, almost all the world’s countries, including the Australian government, regard East Jerusalem as occupied territory and the prospective capital of a future Palestinian state. Today it is home to around 362,000 Palestinians and 234,000 Israelis. The al-Rajabi household is one of around 80 Palestinian families, consisting of more than 700 people, who face eviction in Batan al-Hawa, a densely populated neighbourhood in Silwan. Located just steps away from some of the most treasured sites for Judaism, Islam and Christianity, it has become one of the world’s most bitterly contested patches of land. The battle being fought here – house by house, street by street, block by block – is not just about property but politics, power and identity. It can prove fatal. An imminent court decision on the possible eviction of six Palestinian families in East Jerusalem triggered a 2021 conflict between Hamas and Israel that led to an estimated 270 deaths. [paste:font size="6"]The Silent War - Palestinians under Israeli settler threat in East Jerusalem In Silwan we meet another grandmother, Asmahan Shweiki, 79, who is preparing to be kicked out of the home her husband bought in 1988. On June 16, the Israeli Supreme Court told her family members they had a month to vacate the property before they would be removed. “We are living in a scary moment, I have no other place to go,” she says. “There are memories in every part of this home.” Zuhair al-Rajabi, a relative of Najah and the head of the Batan al-Hawa neighbourhood association, says residents are facing a form of “psychological warfare”. “They are trying to demolish our strength, fighting us in every way they can: the army, police, settler organisations, the court.” Zuhair al-Rajabi, head of the Batn al-Hawa neighbourhood committee, says he and his neighbours are subjeted to “psychological warfare”.Credit: Kate Geraghty For the past 80 years, Silwan’s population has been almost entirely Palestinian, but energetic Jewish non-government organisations are working to change that. Playing a leading role is an Australian-Israeli whose love for the Collingwood football club is exceeded only by his passion for Israel, and his determination to expand a Jewish presence throughout Jerusalem. Daniel Luria, 65, grew up in Melbourne but believes life only began when he moved to Israel 30 years ago. “In Australia I was an alien in someone else’s beautiful country,” he says. “My home has always been here.” For the past 25 years, the passionate Zionist has worked as the executive director of Ateret Cohanim, a group that says it “stands at the forefront of Jewish land reclamation in Jerusalem”. Luria summarises the organisation’s mission as “ideological real estate with an enormous number of political ramifications”. Like the Palestinians fighting to remain in their homes, he frames the property battle in East Jerusalem in militaristic terms. “The war with Iran may be over, but the war for Jerusalem goes on,” he says. Melbourne-born Daniel Luria, executive director of Ateret Cohanim, works to facilitate the transfer of homes from Palestinians to Israelis in East Jerusalem Credit: Kate Geraghty It’s a battle fought not only over bricks and mortar, but language. Luria calls Silwan by its biblical name of Shiloach, and flinches when the term Palestinian is mentioned. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it a thousand times: there has never been a Palestinian people, nation, heritage, history. It doesn’t exist … Of course, there are Arabs who live in Israel today and inside Jerusalem. And if an Arab wants to live in a Jewish state for the Jewish people I will roll out the blue-and-white carpet for him and kiss his hand.” Palestinians say they have a proud national identity and an ancient connection to Jerusalem. Jerusalem Showing a low-resolution version of the map. Make sure your browser supports WebGL to see the full version. To limit the growth of the Jewish population in places like East Jerusalem, the Palestinian Authority has made it a crime, punishable by death, for Palestinians to sell property to Israeli Jews. The Palestinian mufti of Jerusalem has also issued a fatwa forbidding Palestinian Muslims “from giving up, or selling Jerusalem and the land of Palestine to the enemy”. Luria says most of Ateret Cohanim’s work consists of facilitating voluntary property sales from Arab owners to Jewish buyers, a task made necessary by the strict Palestinian restrictions on property sales to Israelis. The organisation’s critics view its work as far less benign. In 2009, Ateret Cohanim activists were accused of breaking into a Palestinian home in Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter and changing the locks after trying to present a fake bill of sale for the property (the group denied the accusations). “Ateret Cohanim has been accused of using methods that include bribery, straw companies and the exploitation of legal technicalities to gain ownership of Palestinian homes,” Amnesty International wrote in a 2022 report. Recordings published in 2018 showed the organisation’s chairman and attorney offering Palestinian property owners prostitutes and Viagra, and threatening to destroy their reputations unless they agreed to sell their homes. Evictions rising in East Jerusalem A voluble character, Luria is proud of his organisation’s work and happy to share his views, which he knows some will find provocative. But he declines a request to walk through Shiloach, insisting the story is better understood when viewed from a distance. From a lookout near the Mount of Olives, he points with pride to the Israeli flags now dotting the district and a synagogue that Ateret Cohanim reclaimed in 2015. “The Arab and the Muslim world basically understands one thing: strength and strength of conviction. This here is the story of strength of conviction.” Shiloach was inhabited by Yemenite Jews from 1882 until 1938, when rioting forced them out, and they were resettled in other areas. From this time, Palestinians – many of whom were fleeing conflict elsewhere – moved into the area, which they call Silwan. The Israeli courts have found that much of the land in neighbourhoods like Batan-al-Hawa belongs to a charitable trust formed by Yemenite Jewish leaders in the 1800s. This makes the Palestinian families living there today “illegal squatters” in Luria’s words, a view affirmed by the highest levels of the Israeli judiciary. “There’s no question about ownership in relation to deed and title,” he says. “Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying through their teeth.” An armed Israeli security guard escorts Israeli settler children past Palestinian homes that have been issued with demolition or eviction notices.Credit: Kate Geraghty According to a February report in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, an investigation by the Israeli Justice Ministry found the charitable trust, which has filed dozens of eviction lawsuits against Palestinian families, is “nothing more than a fictitious entity managed entirely by the Ateret Cohanim Association, in violation of the endowment’s charter and contrary to the rules of proper administration”. Luria insists the two organisations are separate entities, although he sees how they are confused. “We obviously have similar overall interests,” he says. “Anywhere in the world, if someone is illegally squatting on your property it makes perfectly good sense to get your property back from the courts.” By contrast, human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the Israeli non-profit B’Tselem say the mass eviction of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem is so extensive it amounts to a form of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. In June, the Office of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights said evictions of Palestinians in East Jerusalem violate international law and “form part of a concerted campaign by the Israeli State and settler organisations, which target Palestinian neighbourhoods to seize Palestinian homes and expand Jewish settlements”. Luria describes the 43 Jewish families his organisation has helped move into the area as modern pioneers, praising them for their willingness to live surrounded by Palestinians who don’t want them there. “This is the most hostile neighbourhood in the country,” he argues. Jewish residents, he says, have had washing machines dropped on them by their Palestinian neighbours and been attacked with Molotov cocktails. Unlike Palestinian residents in East Jerusalem, they are entitled to government-funded security protection and allowed to carry firearms. The Jewish residents moving in today are not necessarily descendants of the Jews who fled the area in the 1930s and few have Yemenite heritage. “It’s not a relevant factor,” says Luria. “We are the indigenous people of this land: Jews have a right to come back to this land, live in this land, and especially to get back properties that the Jews were thrown out of. I can’t think of anything more obvious or straightforward than that.” Fakhri Abu Diab’s home looks like a bomb site. Indeed, it appears virtually identical to the Israeli homes destroyed in missile attacks during last month’s 12-day war between Israel and Iran. But it was bulldozers that turned his home into a pile of rubble on Valentine’s Day last year. Fakhri Abu Diab among the ruins of his home in the Al-Bustan neighbourhood that was demolished by Israeli authorities in February last year.Credit: Kate Geraghty “It was like they were bulldozing my heart,” he says, standing at what used to be the front door of his home. “I begged them to stop. I couldn’t fight or do anything. I lost my power.” Heirlooms, documents and family photos were destroyed, but he salvaged a rusty blue kerosene lamp used by his mother to illuminate the house at night. The accountant, 63, is a prominent community leader in Al-Bustan, a neighbourhood in Silwan that many Israelis believe is the site of the biblical garden of King David. He has spent the past 20 years leading the opposition to a controversial municipality plan to raze all 100 homes in Al-Bustan and turn the area into an archaeological tourism park. The authorities told him they were demolishing his home because of unauthorised extensions he made to his property, which was built before the establishment of the state of Israel. He was charged $14,000 for the demolition of his home, including a bill for the drinks and snacks consumed by the workers while they bulldozed his property. The Biden administration condemned the demolition of Abu Diab’s home, saying such acts “damage Israel’s standing in the world” and “obstruct efforts to advance a durable and lasting peace and security that would benefit not just Palestinians but Israelis”. Princeton University professor Richard Falk, a former United Nations special rapporteur for Palestinian issues, has argued that such demolitions “violate international law, with certain actions potentially amounting to war crimes”. Human rights groups say the demolition rate has surged under the cover of the war in Gaza, which has distracted international attention from the displacement of Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Israeli authorities demolished a record 181 homes in East Jerusalem last year because of a lack of building permits, according Ir Amim, a left-wing non-profit focusing on Jerusalem’s role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This included a quarter of all the homes in Al-Bustan, which was designated as green space in the 1970s, prohibiting construction by residents. Ir Amim researcher Aviv Tonovsky says that, unlike Israelis, it is virtually impossible for Palestinian families in East Jerusalem to receive permits to build new homes or renovate their ageing and often overcrowded properties. “Everyone knows how dangerous it is to build without a permit, but they don’t have a choice,” Tonovsky says. “There is a very direct political aim here: to push Palestinians out of Jerusalem.” Amani Mousa Odeh points to what used to be the kitchen of her partially demolished home.Credit: Kate Geraghty The front section of dentist Amani Odeh’s family home was razed last month, but she plans to move back in, defying a self-demolition order. As with Abu Diab, the authorities sent her a bill for demolishing her home. “They are trying to break people, they want us to be nothing,” she says. “But this is our land, our place.” She named her 11-year-old daughter Silwan, reflecting her love of the neighbourhood where she grew up. Determined to remain on his property, Fakhri Abu Diab has erected a makeshift building made of lightweight steel for him and his wife to live in behind the wreckage of their former home. He says the authorities have taken control of his bank account and told him they will come back and demolish his temporary home unless he does so himself. Remarkably, he says the Jerusalem municipality is still charging him property tax on the home it knocked down. He suffers high blood pressure his doctors say is caused by stress. But he stays put, growing zucchinis and capsicums in his garden and tending to chickens and geese just as his mother did on the same spot. Like grandmother Najah al-Rajabi, awaiting imminent eviction in her apartment nearby, he knows his home will be seized and that he could lose his Jerusalem residency permit if he leaves. “I want to stay with my history, stay where I belong,” he says. Daniel Luria is equally resolute about his mission to spread a Jewish presence through as much of the Holy City as possible. Slowly but surely, he believes, he and his allies are winning the war for Jerusalem. “This land belongs to one people and one people only,” he says. “Jerusalem runs through our veins, as does Israel, and there is nothing the world can do about it.”
UNRWA operates with over 30,000 staff, most of them local Palestinians, across Gaza, West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan. They fired the 12 accused of direct involvement by Israel, even though Israel not making their evidence public. Do you EVER get tired of being dumbass? Maybe if you tried knowing things first you might like it?
The IDF has killed hundreds of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists proven to be on UNRWA's payroll. This thread outlines endless examples.