RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/29/the-un-is-rotten-to-the-core/

The war in Gaza may be over, but the global hostility towards Israel is as fierce as ever. Hamas’s most lurid propaganda claims, accusing the Jewish State of every crime against humanity imaginable, are now treated as fact by Western governments, media and academia. Globalist institutions – from the UN to international courts – are now totally corrupted by Israelophobic lies.

Barrister Natasha Hausdorff – legal director at the UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust – has long been battling against these libels. She recently returned to The Brendan O’Neill Show to discuss the return of the hostages and the lie of the Gaza ‘genocide’. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. You can watch the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: What role do you think the West’s abandonment of Israel played in the horrors of the past two years?

Natasha Hausdorff: I think certain people have blood on their hands. The hostages that will not be returning alive to their families, the deaths of soldiers in pursuit of releasing them all, the killing of Palestinian civilians who also suffered Hamas’s endless abuse – these things should not have gone on as long as they did. The war should have ended far, far sooner. We must recognise the impact that global support for this barbaric, genocidal terrorist organisation has had in prolonging it, in delaying a deal.

There has been this bizarre pantomime playing out, where the UK’s Labour government has claimed credit for playing some role behind the scenes in securing the peace deal. The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, rightly called this delusional.

The reality is that over the past six months, the UK government, as well as others that recognised Palestine, have done nothing except impose arms embargoes against Israel and criticise it constantly, making this deal so much harder to realise. The damage that certain Western states have done with their political positioning is truly unforgivable.

O’Neill: What role have the international media played?

Hausdorff: There has been this enormous propaganda war, a war of misinformation, which does inevitably inform people’s positions. Frankly, I’ve seen an abject absence of journalistic integrity. The media have refused to report the truth out of Gaza.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/un-international-court-of-justice-harangues-israel-again/

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is a contaminated appendage of the UN system, which should have been removed decades ago. Yet it remains as a symbol of the UN’s poisonous bias against the Jewish State of Israel.

UNRWA is devoted exclusively to Palestinians it registers as “refugees,” which is separate and distinct from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that handles all the rest of the world’s refugees. UNRWA was supposed to operate as a temporary organization to provide humanitarian relief and services for the original Palestinian refugee population of about 700,000 Arabs following the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. But it turned into a self-perpetuating bureaucracy, which, unlike UNHCR, defines “refugee” as including generation after generation ad infinitum of the millions of descendants of the original refugees. Moreover, unlike UNHCR, UNRWA continues the status of “refugee” for Palestinians even if they have become citizens elsewhere (e.g., Jordan).

UN humanitarian organizations are supposed to operate neutrally, impartially, and independently of any undue outside influence. UNRWA has operated in the completely opposite manner. Nevertheless, the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion on October 22, 2025 concluding that international law requires Israel to fully cooperate with UNRWA in fulfilling its mission to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians.

The ICJ dismissed the overwhelming evidence Israel presented proving its allegation that UNRWA cannot be trusted to perform its services neutrally, impartially, and independently of Hamas’ influence. The advisory opinion is a hopelessly one-sided political statement against Israel, not a carefully reasoned and impartial judicial decision. Fortunately, an advisory opinion is non-binding as a matter of law.

UNRWA does not carefully vet its employees, resulting in the hiring of numerous members of Hamas and other terrorist organization members as well as individuals with close family ties to terrorists. One former Commissioner-General of UNRWA shamelessly declared: “Oh, I’m sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll, and I don’t see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant, and we do not conduct political vetting to exclude individuals based on their affiliations.” Another former Commissioner-General remarked: “Our employees are part of the social fabric of Gaza and its ecosystem. And as part of that social fabric in Gaza, you also have Hamas.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/26/what-the-west-could-learn-from-israel/

Hostages Square in Tel Aviv is quiet now. The paraphernalia of hope remains. Yellow ribbons dance in the breeze. The flap of a hundred Israel flags breaks the silence. There’s still the burnt-out car that was recovered from the ‘road of death’ in the south, where Hamas slaughtered fleeing families on 7 October 2023. I look inside at its blackened remains, the squelched leather, the warped metal, and wince at the thought of what suffering must have unfolded in this suffocating space. In one corner of the square is an unsteady pile of placards featuring the faces of the 251 Israelis seized two years ago: the retired equipment of a moral movement no longer needed.

For the hostages are home now. The living ones at least – Israel still awaits the return of the remains of some of the stolen. It was in this urban throughway outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art that Israelis gathered these past two years to pray for the abducted. It was christened Hostages Square, and I expect that’s how it will always be known. Even Google Maps calls it that now. Its most striking feature is a mock Hamas tunnel, a 30-metre concrete bunker designed to simulate the experience of being a hostage in Gaza. I crouch and enter. After two minutes, claustrophobia kicks in. There are men who spent two years like this, and Israel wants to make sure the world never forgets.

Much of it already has, though. As I peruse a vast wall of stickers showing the smiling faces of the men and women who were stolen – some of whom made it home, some of whom did not – I feel a sudden flush of anger. Anger that Israel was left almost entirely alone to agitate for the precious lives and liberty of these abducted Jews. Anger that there were not similar Hostages Squares in London, New York, Berlin. Anger that the same yellow ribbons that flutter so lovingly here were violently torn down on the streets where I live by medieval mobs eaten up by a demented hatred for the Jewish State.

And anger that hardly anyone in Europe knows the name Alon Ohel. A gleaming piano has pride of place in Hostages Square. It has Alon’s photo on it alongside huge yellow lettering that says: ‘You are not alone.’ Alon, 24, is an accomplished pianist who was taken from the Nova music festival and held for 738 days with shrapnel in his right eye. He’s free now, and his sight is slowly improving. We all went to see the Roman Polanski film about a Jewish pianist ghettoised by the fascists of the 1940s – who will tell the story of this Jewish pianist held underground by the fascists of the 2020s? The hope is that when he recovers from his long, black captivity, he will come to Hostages Square and play this piano. The sweet music of defiance.

A short walk and I am in Dizengoff Square. It could not be more different. This old square has become a makeshift monument to the Israelis who have died in this infernal war Hamas started and yet it pulsates with life. It throbs with noise and bustle. Armies of people sup espressos in the al fresco cafés that encircle it. People lounge on the green. And every day, at every hour, they come to see an extraordinary spectacle: the hundreds of lovingly framed photos of the dead that have been perched on the perimeter wall of the square’s fountain. Untold numbers of joyful, youthful faces. Photos, it strikes me, of men and women who will have been born well into the 2000s, and yet whose lives have already been given for their country on the scorched, unforgiving battlefield of Gaza.