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In this mailing:
* Pierre Rehov: The Mirage of 'Humanitarian Reconstruction': Billions for Gaza — But Who Will Prevent the Next Jihad?
* Amir Taheri: US Elections: Will Trump Thank Mamdani?


** The Mirage of 'Humanitarian Reconstruction': Billions for Gaza — But Who Will Prevent the Next Jihad? ([link removed])
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by Pierre Rehov • November 9, 2025 at 5:00 am
* The UNDP's own auditors uncovered more than 100 investigations into fraud, bribery, and "ghost projects." If corruption could flourish under nominal Iraqi government control, imagine the diversion potential in Gaza — where much of the terror regime remains intact.
* Earlier UN experiments, such as the Oil-for-Food scandal, showed how -- when oversight is weak and politics trumps accountability -- "humanitarian" programs become self-enriching rackets.
* For years, Hamas forces have been filmed confiscating relief shipments directly from UN trucks and warehouses. It is not chaos; it is a business model.
* These are not isolated abuses — they form a structural pattern in which humanitarian efforts in fact bankroll jihad.
* After Hamas's October 7, 2023 invasion of Israel, investigations confirmed that many UNRWA employees participated in or facilitated the Hamas attacks, leading more than 20 donor countries — including the U.S., Canada, and Germany — to suspend funding. Some countries, however, under political pressure, resumed payments months later, even as fresh evidence emerged of UNRWA staff ties to Hamas's military wing.
* The U.S. administration... continues to push for a "political process" aimed at reviving a desired "peace framework" partially disconnected from the region's realities. Washington may view reconstruction as a path to normalization, but for Israel — the country whose citizens were massacred and whose borders remain under threat — security comes before expediency, and survival before consent.

For years, Hamas forces have been filmed confiscating relief shipments directly from UN trucks and warehouses. It is not chaos; it is a business model. These are not isolated abuses — they form a structural pattern in which humanitarian efforts in fact bankroll jihad. Pictured: Masked members of the Hamas-controlled "People's Protection Committees" guard a humanitarian aid truck in the southern Gaza Strip on April 3, 2024. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)

When the guns fall silent, Western governments rush to rebuild. The European Union, the United States, and several Arab states are now pledging tens of billions of dollars to "reconstruct" Gaza. The impulse may be humane, but the outcome could be catastrophic. Unless funds are subjected to strict, transparent and enforceable controls, they will once again be used to fertilize the same terror infrastructure responsible for Gaza's destruction.

Lessons from the Rubble of Mosul

In Iraq, after ISIS's defeat, the UN and Western donors launched the Funding Facility for Stabilization (FFS), pouring more than $1.5 billion into bridges, hospitals, and power grids. Within two years, the UNDP's own auditors uncovered more than 100 investigations into fraud, bribery, and "ghost projects." If corruption could flourish under nominal Iraqi government control, imagine the diversion potential in Gaza — where much of the terror regime remains intact.

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** US Elections: Will Trump Thank Mamdani? ([link removed])
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by Amir Taheri • November 9, 2025 at 4:00 am
* The real test of Trump's durability will come in next year's midterm elections.
* Socialism might have been invented by a character in Charles Dickens's novel Oliver Twist, when the cheeky street urchin, along with other urchins being served the orphanage's soup, shouts, "More!" He doesn't care that if he gets more, someone must get less.
* Obama understood that. He "socialized" large chunks of the healthcare sector, almost 12 percent of GDP, while swearing he wasn't doing socialism.

Pictured: Zohran Mamdani speaks to the media in Queens, New York on November 4, 2025. (Photo by Leonardo Munoz/AFP via Getty Images)

The election of Zohran Mamdani as New York City mayor is widely hailed as a political setback for President Donald Trump across the global commentariat. European pundits describe it as a sign that populism, triumphant for the past few years, may be peaking out.

At first glance, pundits may seem to have hit the bullseye. Mamdani represents anti-Trumpism in many ways.

He is a Muslim, while one of Trump's first moves in his first term as president was to ban citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from traveling to the US. Mamdani describes himself as a Twelver Shi'ite, which brackets him with what Trump regards as an especially challenging brand of religion. The fact that in Tehran official media has hailed Mamdani's "victory" reinforces that impression.

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