It Wasn't a Deal – It Was a Crime

by Alan M. Dershowitz • January 17, 2025 at 5:00 am

The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a "deal." It was an extortion.... The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime.
When a terrorist group "negotiates" with a democracy, it always has the upper hand. The terrorists are not constrained by morality, law or truth. They can murder at will, rape at will, torture at will and threaten to do worse. The democracy, on the other hand, must comply with the rules of law and must listen to the pleas of the hostage families.
Especially complicit, with blood on their hands, are supporters of Hamas on university campuses who chant for intifada and revolution. Also complicit are international organizations, such as the International Criminal Court, that treat Israel and Hamas as equals.
[L]et us put the blame for ALL the deaths in Gaza where it belongs: on Hamas and the useful idiots and useless bigots who support murderous terrorists.

The decision by the Israeli government to make significant concessions to the Hamas kidnappers should never be called a "deal." It was an extortion. Would you call it a deal if somebody kidnapped your child and you "agreed" to pay ransom to get her back? Of course not. The kidnapping was a crime. And the extortionate demand was an additional crime. Pictured: A Hamas terrorist holds two of the many Israeli children that Hamas murdered, or abducted and brought as captives to the Gaza Strip, on October 7, 2023. (Image source: Hamas/X [Twitter])

So the proper description of what occurred is that Israel, pressured by the United States, capitulated to the unlawful and extortionate demands of Hamas as the only way of saving the lives of kidnapped babies, mothers and other innocent, mostly civilian, hostages.

This was not the result of a negotiation between equals. If an armed robber puts a gun to your head and says, "your money or your life," your decision to give him your money would not be described as a deal. Nor should the extorted arrangement agreed to by Israel be considered a deal. So let's stop using that term.

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UN Blocks Aid to Gaza to Fake a Famine

by Daniel Greenfield • January 17, 2025 at 4:00 am

On January 2, for example, 189 trucks filled with aid entered Gaza. Only 147 trucks, however, were collected on the Gazan side, with another 800 trucks worth of aid waiting to be collected. Food has been piling up and rotting on the Gaza side because it's not being delivered by the UN.
The United Nations claims that Israel is starving Gaza, when it's the UN that is actually stalling aid deliveries to save Hamas.
Mercy Corps, for example, issued a statement blasting Israel for supposed "impediments to aid delivery" and demanded a crackdown on Israel.
An NPR story, however, revealed that "some organizations have hired armed men in Gaza to protect their trucks, but most, including Mercy Corps, refuse to do this."
There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The only crisis is that Islamic terrorists are losing a war that they started. International organizations have become an arm of Islamic terrorism, funding, employing and lobbying for Islamic terrorist organizations who are at war with the free world.
Not only should we not fund the UN and other "aid groups" or provide them with tax-exempt status, we should sanction them for their financial and political relationships with Islamic terrorist organizations, and treat any money going to their operations in Gaza, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan and other terror zones as a criminal act of providing material support to terrorists.

The United Nations claims that Israel is starving Gaza, when it's the UN that is actually stalling aid deliveries to save Hamas. Pictured: A line of trucks carrying humanitarian aid wait to cross into the Gaza Strip on November 11, 2024 at the Erez Crossing, in Israel. (Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

Every day, the UN, international organizations and the media claim that everyone in Gaza is starving to death because they have no food, and every day Israel's COGAT aid coordination agency lists exactly how many trucks filled with humanitarian aid have actually entered Gaza.

On January 2, for example, 189 trucks filled with aid entered Gaza. Only 147 trucks, however, were collected on the Gazan side, with another 800 trucks worth of aid waiting to be collected. Food has been piling up and rotting on the Gaza side because it's not being delivered by the UN.

Politicians, activists and the media have spent over a year perpetuating a myth that Israel is blocking food deliveries into Gaza, when there is actually more aid coming in than the aid groups complaining about Israel "blocking aid" can handle or be bothered to deliver to Gazans.

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