President Isaac Herzog averred Thursday that the United Nations has been failing to keep up with the amount of aid Israel is inspecting, and that the world body is to blame for the little amount of aid entering the Strip even after Israel has opened up its Kerem Shalom crossing to ease the bottleneck.

“Unfortunately, due to the utter failure of the UN in its work with other partners in the region, they have been unable to bring in more than 125 trucks [of aid] a day,” Herzog said in a meeting with visiting French Senate President Gérard Larcher.

“Today it is possible to provide three times the amount of humanitarian aid to Gaza if the UN — instead of complaining all day — would do its job,” Herzog said.

--snip--

In recent weeks, multiple videos have circulated on social media of Gazans discovering stockpiles of aid in UNRWA facilities, and expressing anger at the organization for not distributing desperately needed supplies to citizens.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday called out other countries for not demanding Hamas surrender.

“What is striking to me is that even as, again, we hear many countries urging the end to this conflict, which we would all like to see, I hear virtually no one saying – demanding of Hamas that it stop hiding behind civilians, that it lay down its arms, that it surrender. This is over tomorrow if Hamas does that. This would have been over a month ago, six weeks ago, if Hamas had done that,” Blinken said during a press briefing at the State Department Wednesday.

“How can it be that there are no demands made of the aggressor and only demands made of the victim,” Blinken went on to say.

The strong comments from Blinken come as the United Nations Security Council continues to negotiate a resolution calling for a suspension in fighting and encouraging more humanitarian aid into the beleaguered Gaza Strip, and as the United States’ support for the resolution remains unresolved.

In a slight revision of the map of the Middle East, the United Nations seemingly placed Jordan next to Gaza in an embarrassing post on social media.

A humanitarian convoy filled with life-saving food has crossed from Jordan into Gaza for the first time since conflict broke out in the Middle East.@WFP says the delivery is a crucial step for reaching people in need. https://t.co/KptegPpfnJpic.twitter.com/H5IPVIICRd
— United Nations (@UN) December 20, 2023

"A humanitarian convoy filled with life-saving food has crossed from Jordan into Gaza for the first time since the conflict broke out in the Middle East," the organization stated on X (formerly Twitter), seemingly forgetting, or ignoring, that an entire country stands between Jordan and Gaza.

Social media users were quick to point out to the international organization that it is impossible to "cross" from Jordan into Gaza without crossing Israel.

--snip--

From the silence of women's organizations on the sexual violence suffered by Israeli women at the hands of Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacres to the revelations of the deep connections between Hamas and UNRWA, the UN has lost much public face for its supposed one-sided position during the conflict.

Pro-Palestine activists target ‘genocidal’ Israeli hummus in shops

Pro-Palestinian campaigners are labelling pots of Israeli hummus stocked in British supermarkets as “profiting from genocide”.

The anti-Israel BDS movement – which stands for boycott, divestment and sanctions – calls for activists not to buy Israeli products in order to put economic pressure on companies operating in the country.

It claims on its website that the hummus and dips brand Sabra previously supported the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) with donations.

The campaign’s website states: “Sabra hummus is a joint venture between PepsiCo and the Strauss Group, an Israeli food company that provides financial support to the Israeli army.”

However, The Telegraph understands that BDS’s website refers to a Sabra brand sold in the US.

Hamas has allegedly rejected an Israeli offer for a one-week ceasefire in exchange for the release of hostages, saying they wouldn’t discuss releasing the hostages until a full ceasefire first goes into effect, Egyptian officials said, according to the Wall Street Journal report on December 20.

Ismail Haniyeh, the head of the political wing of the terrorist organization, met with intelligence officials in Cairo earlier today to discuss Israel's offer but allegedly said that he was there to obtain a full ceasefire and more humanitarian aid.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad would have been included in talks for the first time, however, they demanded a ceasefire before any negotiations begin. They also demanded all Palestinian prisoners be released in exchange for 100 hostages.

A wide generational gap is apparent in Americans’ views surrounding the war between Israel and Hamas, with the youngest demographic differing from the public at large, according to a new poll.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris poll found that two-thirds of voters between the ages of 18 and 24 believe Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated that way, while 73 percent of all voters said this notion is false.

Mark Penn, the chairman of the Harvard CAPS-Harris poll, said that as additional research is conducted into the knowledge about Israel and Hamas possessed by 18-to-24-year-olds compared with the rest of the public, the more “unbelievable” the findings are.
He said the finding that two-thirds of the youngest voters view Jewish people as oppressors after 6 million Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust “stands out as representative of [Generation] Z’s attitude towards Jews and Israelis.”

--snip--

But the youngest age group differed from others in how calls for genocide on campus should be handled. About three-quarters of all voters said students who call for genocide of Jewish people should face consequences, but just less than half of those 18 to 24 said the same.

The Hamas terrorist organization did what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could not: Unite Israel – according to human rights activist Majed El Shafie.

Sitting in the lounge at the David InterContinental Hotel, the Egyptian refugee who converted from Islam to Christianity and now lives in Canada told The Jerusalem Post on Monday morning that he would like to thank Hamas for “showing the world the ugly face of extremism” and “for displaying the rise of antisemitism in Western countries – no one was aware of how bad it was. “And, I would like to thank them for uniting the Jewish people and activating them.”

--snip--

El Shafie founded OWFI, an organization at the forefront of conducting rescue missions for religious minorities across multiple countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan. His human rights organization has helped liberate Yazidi girls from the clutches of ISIS and assisted the Uyghur Muslim minority in China.

“Hamas is determined to commit a second Holocaust in Israel,” El Shafie said. “We must not agree to a ceasefire.”

He said that the OWFI report is vital because it is not written by an Israeli or Palestinian, or by a Muslim or a Jew, but by a Christian with an Egyptian background.

--snip--

Tegin, who has more than 25,000 TikTok followers, is part of a group of Black Israelis in their 20s and early 30s who have been vigorously defending Israel online — and in English — since its war with Hamas began on Oct. 7. They are an informal but increasingly visible part of Israel’s public diplomacy, known as hasbara, which seeks to defend Israel from criticism and burnish the country’s image overseas, and kicks into high gear during wartime. (TikTok, especially, has become a major online battleground, with a recent analysis showing that pro-Palestinian hashtags are massively outperforming pro-Israel hashtags on the platform.)
While they each have their own politics and communication styles, these creators said in interviews that they are motivated by a desire to raise awareness about Israel’s diverse population. All of them except Aynaw, who did not respond to requests for comment, said they are creating Israel-related content on their own initiative, and that the government is not paying them to do hasbara on its behalf. (Like all soldiers, Tegin and Logan receive wages from the IDF to perform their regular military duties.)

“I was looking to show the world that as strange as it may sound, there are also quite a few Black people in Israel, and we live good lives, so there is no need to use my skin color as an excuse” to criticize the country, Tegin, who lives in Haifa, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

--snip--

There are more than 200,000 people of African descent who call Israel home, including about 170,000 Ethiopian Jews, 30,000 asylum seekers (primarily from Eritrea and Sudan), 3,000 Hebrew Israelites (Black people who identify as descendants of the ancient Israelites but are not recognized as Jews according to Jewish law), and an unknown number of Black Jewish immigrants from the United States and African countries. There are also people who identify as Afro-Palestinian who live inside Israel’s borders.

Besides the asylum seekers, all of these people trace their genealogical or spiritual roots to the Holy Land. “Most of us see our return to the land of Israel as prophetic,” Moore, who was raised in the African Hebrew Israelite community in Dimona, said in an interview. (The community, which considers Israel to be located in northeastern Africa, is not connected to the radical “Black Hebrew Israelite” groups in the United States whose members denigrate Jews and Israel.)

Israeli security forces eliminated a number of terrorist squads in Gaza, and seized significant weapons, including a bomb that was found in a Shejaia medical clinic near a school, the IDF said on Tuesday.

The statement came with a video showing the device, found in a garbage can near the door to the clinic.

In a raid on terrorist infrastructure in Khan Yunis, IDF soldiers shot down a terrorist who had launched an anti-tank missile at Israeli forces. The IDF located a munitions storehouse containing explosive charges, weapons, and grenades, the statement said.

The IDF released photos of the seized weapons, as well as a vest with "UN" on the front.

Kamal Adwan Hospital director Ahmad Kahlot of Jabalya in northern Gaza has confessed to the Shin Bet that Hamas took over his hospital as a military operations center, it was revealed on Tuesday.

Kahlot told his interrogators that he joined Hamas in 2010 at the equivalent rank of a brigadier general.

Next, he said that many of the hospital staff double as members of Hamas’s al-Qassam brigades. These include doctors, nurses, paramedics, and other staff.

More specifically, he said that the hospital had 16 staff members who doubled as terror operatives for Hamas.