United Nations' Material Support for Terrorism: Allegedly Gave $1.3 Billion to Hamas in Cash, Presumably for Weapons
Corruption and Bias Have Reduced the UN to Irrelevance

by Con Coughlin  •  October 13, 2024 at 5:10 am

• Gavriel Mairone, the attorney who is representing the plaintiffs, argues that these shocking allegations demonstrate that, for more than a decade, UNRWA's aid distribution network was involved in widespread fraud and corruption. The lawsuit claims this scheme not only enriched Hamas but also funded terrorism, playing a pivotal role in the October 7 attacks.

• The first damning evidence of the UN's complicity in the worst terrorist atrocity committed in Israel's history emerged after Israel's military reported that 450 workers employed by UNRWA were "military operatives from Hamas and other armed groups" and has shared this intelligence with the United Nations.

• The dossier of "a UN crime against humanity" and its demonization of Israel is too long to list, but one can get a glimpse of it...

• A better idea, given the body's recent woeful record on its handling of the Middle East, would be to demolish the entire infrastructure of this corrupt and institutionally biased body.

Accusations that the United Nations funded Hamas's terrorist infrastructure by transferring $1.3 billion to the organisation, some of which was used to finance the purchase of weapons used in last year's October 7 attacks, will only add to the view that the UN is no longer fit to fulfil the role for which it was originally intended. Pictured: The UN's New York headquarters. (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)

Accusations that the United Nations funded Hamas's terrorist infrastructure by transferring $1.3 billion to the organisation, some of which was used to finance the purchase of weapons used in last year's October 7 attacks, will only add to the view that the UN is no longer fit to fulfil the role for which it was originally intended.

A lawsuit filed in US Federal Court by victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks makes damning accusations against the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) that it was involved in orchestrating a large-scale money laundering operation from which the terrorist organisation benefitted.

The suit alleges that significant amounts of humanitarian aid intended for Gaza residents were diverted to Hamas.

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Resistance or Terror: The Importance of Dosage

by Amir Taheri  •  October 13, 2024 at 4:00 am

• However, it is hard to see how the October 7 attack could be categorized as an act of resistance by freedom-fighters... For Hamas, October 7 was a war of choice, not a war of necessity, and its goal wasn't just to terrorize a real or imaginary foe but to murder as many non-combatants as possible.

• Terror is used to persuade or force an adversary into doing something you want or stop doing something you don't want and sadly, in many instances it works. However, if an act of terror transcends certain boundaries, it could produce the opposite of what the terrorist hoped for. In other words, it is all a matter of dosage.

• Without the "Al-Aqsa Storm" raid, no Israeli prime minister, let alone Benjamin Netanyahu, who happened to have hit the nadir of unpopularity, would have dared to launch a total war aimed at flushing Hamas out of Gaza and Hezbollah out of Lebanon.

• Sinwar isn't the first victim of unintended consequences and won't be the last either.

• In hindsight, it seems that the late leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, understood the importance of dosage in terror and/or resistance.

• This is why initially, to the surprise of some, Nasrallah refused to enter the danse-macabre opened by Sinwar.

• We may never know what persuaded or forced Nasrallah to abandon his usual caution and join an adventure beyond his control. My guess is that he didn't jump, but was pushed. Your guess as to who pushed him.

However, it is hard to see how the October 7 attack could be categorized as an act of resistance by freedom-fighters. For Hamas, October 7 was a war of choice, not a war of necessity, and its goal wasn't just to terrorize a real or imaginary foe but to murder as many non-combatants as possible. Pictured: Hamas terrorists on their way into Israel from Gaza Strip, on their mission to murder Jews, on the morning of October 7, 2023. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

These days, my two favorite bookshops in Paris and London are devoting a full shelf to books on or inspired by Hamas's "Al-Aqsa Storm" October 7 invasion of Israel.

Some of these books offer various accounts of what happened on that day and could be classed as extended reportages of the kind news magazines offered in the good old days of print journalism. The most interesting of these, Trey Yingst's Black Saturday, which broadens its scope to offer a portrayal of the subsequent war in Gaza. Because the author is a television reporter, his fast-paced reportage often resembles a newsreel. That, however, does not prevent him from offering often deep insights into the mind-sets of the two adversaries.

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The God Particle

by Lawrence Kadish  •  October 13, 2024 at 3:30 am

Pictured: The Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs boson was confirmed in 2012. The section pictured is located in Echenevex, France, on the border with Switzerland. (Photo by Valentin Flauraud/AFP via Getty Images)

Few of us could master the curriculum when we were in school. Atoms, electrons, charged particles; it was a strange and alien world that few of us understood and even fewer could embrace much less master.

Yet we live in a 21^st Century world that has been defined by the fundamental discoveries revealed, controlled, and directed by the laws of physics. Far more than some distant and mysterious field of study, theoretical studies that began decades ago continue to yield results that few could have foreseen, touching people around the globe.

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