‘What are your predictions for 2024?” a friend asked me this week. I declined to answer.
In my worst nightmares, I didn’t predict Israel’s 2023 – the destructive divide over the government’s proposed judicial reform, the response to it that overshadowed the first nine months of the year, and the Hamas terrorist invasion and mega-atrocity of October 7 that has dominated the last three months.
But I feel safe predicting that the war on the terrorists and its economic and social repercussions will continue to have an impact in the coming year, not only in Israel but around the world.
It is more than disconcerting that the country’s intelligence agencies and Military Intelligence did not predict the mass assault, despite the information that had been mounting.
Two weeks before the invasion, my colleague Seth J. Frantzman suggested keeping an eye on the renewed Palestinian riots on the border with Gaza, and I concurred. There is no satisfaction in saying “Told you so” – only sadness and frustration.
I also worried when Hezbollah held massive maneuvers close to Israel’s northern border earlier this year. The sight of armed Hezbollah terrorists on motorbikes was clearly designed as a show of strength. It also put a lack of Israeli deterrence on display. Similar to the situation on the southern border, Israel wanted to believe that the terrorists were fully deterred and wouldn’t put economic needs at risk by attacking the “Zionist entity.”
In October 2022, I predicted that the decision by then-prime minister Yair Lapid to cede Israel’s economic waters, including part of a gas field, to Lebanon would not buy peace with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
I didn’t need a crystal ball. You can “buy” peace – or at least quiet – with rational actors, but not with those motivated by an ideology like global jihad. And this is the lesson that the world is learning the hard way. It’s a matter of foresight, not hindsight.
A MESSAGE on social media grabbed my attention this week. I don’t know who gets the original credit, but it summed up what should be obvious.
“Imagine if on October 8, 2023, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously to condemn Hamas for war crimes, demanded the immediate return of all hostages, and ordered Qatar to extradite Hamas leadership to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, where they could have been tried for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Had that occurred, think of how many people in Gaza would be alive today. Then ask yourself why that didn’t happen.”
Or ask me. That’s an easier question to answer than what will be in the coming year.
The UN's anti-Israel bias
There is a built-in bias against Israel at the UN. More than 40 of the UN’s 193 members are Muslim-majority countries, while there’s just one Jewish state. As Israeli diplomat Abba Eban once put it: “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the Earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13, with 26 abstentions.”
The UN General Assembly and Human Rights Council are required to hold regular sessions highlighting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, but nothing on the Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis. There is also an open-ended UN Commission of Inquiry into Israel’s actions.
The UN has allocated vast resources to ensure the continuation of the Palestinian “refugee” issue – through UNRWA, the association that is dedicated to the Palestinians alone. Palestinians uniquely are entitled to pass on their refugee status to future generations. According to a Gatestone Institute report this week, UNRWA has a $1 billion budget and employs some 30,000 people. It has no incentive to solve the “refugee problem,” even after 75 years.
The UN also has a special department acting on behalf of these perpetual refugees – the UN Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. Palestinian misery is a big business. How many of the billions of dollars in aid money that has poured into Gaza from international bodies and governments disappeared into the creation of the vast network of terror tunnels and weapons, some of them at UNRWA facilities?
The situation in the UN General Assembly, where resolutions are non-binding, is difficult. The status of the Security Council, whose resolutions can be legally enforced, is absurd: There are five permanent members, each with the right of veto: The US, the UK, France, Russia, and China.
You don’t need to be blessed with prophetic powers to see that the interests of Russia and China – who belong to an axis with Iran – will continue to conflict with those of the other three permanent members. Keep in mind that Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022, is in no hurry to give up that fight, and it gains from the spotlight being deflected to Israel’s response to the Hamas invasion and Hezbollah threat. The same goes for China, which continues to threaten Taiwan.
Elections are scheduled to be held in more than 70 countries in the coming year. The impact of at least three will stretch far beyond their own borders, as Israel Hayom’s Foreign Editor David Baron noted this week: On January 13, elections are scheduled for Taiwan (Republic of China). The results might determine whether or not the Republic of China opts to protect its independence at all costs, including a conflict with the People’s Republic of China.
Taiwan is a truly democratic country. The same cannot be said of Russia, where Baron predicts that Putin cannot fail to win, but the question of the percentage of support he receives might influence the scope of the war in Ukraine. And, of course, there is the election in the US in November 2024, whose results will be felt around the globe.
Even support for Israel is tainted with naivety and moral equivalence
EVEN WHEN there are expressions of sympathy for Israel, they have been mixed with naivety and the dangers of moral equivalence.
A picture being shared on social media this week shows a church in Zurich, decorated from foundations to spire in the colors of three flags: Israel’s, Ukraine’s, and the Palestinian flag. If the message was meant to be one of peace and goodwill, it missed the mark. Having included the Palestinian flag with the Israeli one, they might as well have included the Russian flag along with the Ukrainian one.
Hamas invaded southern Israel on October 7, abducting, raping, torturing, beheading people, and burning down homes with residents inside. It’s the classic definition of chutzpah to then play the victim when Israel responds.
But double standards when it comes to the treatment of Israel are nothing new – and not always as innocent as the Christmas decorations on a Swiss church.
The massive wave of antisemitism around the world – which started after the Hamas attack but before Israel’s response – should also set off warning signals. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations held under the slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are not innocuous expressions of free speech: They are expressions of support for genocide and the destruction of the Jewish state. These are not calls for peace. On the contrary.
Iranian-supported terrorism reaches from Tehran to the Red Sea, via Kataib Hezbollah in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, and the Houthis in Yemen. World shipping is already under immediate threat, with huge economic implications for the coming year.
The targeted killing this week in Syria of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Sayyed Razi Mousavi was not a sign of the war spilling over but of an attempt to curb it. Mousavi’s elimination sends a stronger message to Iran than the efforts by the West to appease it and allow Iran to reach the threshold of nuclear military capability. Hoping for the best is not a good strategy. That much must be clear from October 7, 2023.
The UN Watch NGO noted this month that the UN General Assembly passed 14 resolutions condemning Israel during 2023, compared to seven on the rest of the world combined: one each for the regimes of North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Myanmar; one on Russia’s violations in Crimea and one on Russian aggression in Ukraine; and one against the US embargo of Cuba.
While I’m hesitant to make predictions for the new year, I expect that the UN will continue to make resolutions of the wrong kind. The world needs to show resolve against global jihad, not anti-Israel resolutions.