Israel 173, Rest of the World 71: What the UNGA Record Shows

A Viral Graphic Reveals a Decades-Long Pattern of Selective Outrage

A viral graphic tallying UN General Assembly country-specific resolutions from 2015 to 2025 has been making its way around social media. Here it is:

But like everything we see online, we have to be skeptical. We must do the work to determine if we’re being fed propaganda or truth? So I did the work.

As it turns out, from 2015 to 2023, the UNGA adopted 154 resolutions against Israel compared to 71 for the rest of the world combined.¹ And by 2025, Israel’s UNGA cumulative tally did in fact reach 173.²

So the graphic is accurate. This starkly illustrates the UN’s skewed priorities and its moral failure to uphold the Charter’s promise of equal treatment.

The UN General Assembly (UNGA) and Human Rights Council (UNHRC) have long targeted Israel with resolutions far exceeding those for any other nation. At the HRC, a structural driver of that distortion is what’s known as “Agenda Item 7.”³

Agenda Item 7 is a permanent, standing, Israel-only slot, that places Israel on the HRC agenda at every single session. No other country is treated in this way.⁴ In 2007, then UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, criticized the decision warning that singling-out Israel with a dedicated agenda item would undermine the Council’s credibility.⁵

Contrast the treatment of Israel with those of oppressive states like Iran and North Korea who face only intermittent resolutions, usually annually, while abusers such as China or Saudi Arabia face far fewer country-specific texts at the UNGA and only episodic HRC scrutiny, despite documented atrocities.⁶

This imbalance is not accidental. Voting blocs, including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, routinely sponsor anti-Israel resolutions, while frequent Western abstentions allow them to pass. Morally, it undermines the UN’s charter commitment to equality, shielding dictators while hounding a democracy defending itself against terrorism.⁷

While Blood libels originated in medieval Europe, falsely accusing Jews of murdering children for ritual blood, inciting pogroms like those in 1144 Norwich or 1475 Trent, the United Nations has become an institutional amplifier for their modern echoes. These myths migrated to the Middle East (e.g., the Damascus affair, 1840) and reappear today in claims that Israel harvests Palestinian organs⁸, poisons wells⁹, or deliberately starves Gaza children¹⁰ often amplified post-October 7, 2023.

A 2025 UN-commissioned report even accused Israel of “genocide” in Gaza, leaning heavily on Gaza-authority/Hamas-sourced data,¹¹ invoked imagery of systematic extermination that mirrors libelous tropes of inherent Jewish malice.¹² By commissioning and promoting such a report, the UN effectively sanctions this form of political antisemitism. Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Netanyahu and Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, denounced these as modern blood libels.¹³ As discussed at length in Blood Libel #1, such accusations not only distort facts but morally conflate self-defense with ritual murder, repackaging antisemitism under the banner of human rights.

The Occupation Obsession: The UN’s Excuse for Bias

This article examines why the ‘occupation’ has become the UN’s moral pretext for its disproportionate focus on Israel.

The assertion that the IDF’s presence in Judea and Samaria¹⁴ is the central cause of the conflict, now serves as the UN’s guiding moral premise and chief justification for its disproportionate censure of Israel.

Yet when compared to other long-running occupations, and when measured against Israel’s unique legal circumstances, the claim of singular illegality collapses.¹⁵¹⁶

Still, for fairness, let us first grant them their premise: long-term military control over a civilian population is fraught, and that is the strongest case critics have. But the moment we hold this claim up to objective reality, it shatters.

From the Oslo Accords, where Israel recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, to the far-reaching territorial concessions proposed by Israeli leaders at multiple summits, the historical record demonstrates significant Israeli efforts toward granting the Palestinian’s a state, efforts that were consistently undermined by Palestinian leadership choosing maximalist aims, statelessness and perpetual war over sovereignty and peace. It is these choices, and not Israeli intransigence, that have been the primary driver of the occupation’s duration.

A. The Core Driver of the Duration of the Conflict: A History of Rejectionism

The original British Mandate for Palestine¹⁷ (which incorporated the Balfour Declaration) was designed to provide for a home for the Jewish people and it included the territory on both sides of the Jordan River.¹⁸

In 1922, the British partitioned Jewish Mandatory Palestine, separating the land east of the Jordan River and reserving it for the Arab population of the region (e.g., the “Palestinians”) creating the Emirate of Transjordan¹⁹ (which became independent Jordan in 1946). This area, comprising roughly 77% of the original Mandate territory, was designated as an Arab state where the provisions for the Jewish National Home were explicitly excluded. The Arab population thus received an independent state on the majority of the original territory mandated for a Jewish homeland.

Despite the establishment of this large Arab state, all subsequent discussions have involved a second partition of Mandatory Palestine and concerned only the remaining territory west of the Jordan River. Despite losing 77% of the area designated for a Jewish national home, the Israeli government has, on numerous occasions, offered a second state to the Palestinian people. Objective reality confirms that the Palestinian leadership has rejected every opportunity to codify what is known as the “two-state solution” and establish themselves an additional state encompassing the Gaza Strip and the vast majority of the West Bank. This is not a matter of debate; it is a brutal historical record of refusal.²⁰ Let’s walk through the history of the process to create a Palestinian state.

• 1937 Peel Commission Report: This was the first official proposal for a partition of “Palestine” (excluding TransJordan) into two states. The Jewish leadership was willing to negotiate, but the Arab Higher Committee, led by Hajj Amin al-Husseini,²¹ categorically rejected the very concept of a Jewish state, insisting on a single Arab state over all of Palestine.²²

• 1947 UN Partition Plan: The UN offered to partition what remained of Mandatory Palestine (excluding Jordan) into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted. The Arab leadership categorically rejected it and immediately launched a war aimed at wiping out the newly declared Jewish state ²³. Their goal was not two states, but one state, cleansed of Jews.

• 1967 Khartoum Resolution (The “Three No’s”): Following Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, launched preemptively against Egypt’s blockade of the Straits of Tiran, massing of troops on Israel’s borders, expulsion of UN peacekeepers, and explicit threats to annihilate the Jewish state, alongside attacks from Jordan and Syria, the Arab League convened in Khartoum and adopted a resolution famous for the “Three No’s”: No peace with Israel, No recognition of Israel, No negotiations with Israel.²⁴ This rejection immediately after a major war solidified the position that all of the occupied territories would have to be returned before peace could even be considered, maintaining a state of perpetual belligerency.

• The Camp David Summit (2000): Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat unprecedented concessions: a Palestinian state over nearly ~95% of the West Bank and Gaza, a capital in East Jerusalem, and a resolution on the refugee issue. Arafat walked away, rejected the proposal outright, offered no counter-proposal, and subsequently launched the devastating Second Intifada, a terror war of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.²⁵

• The Olmert Offer (2008): Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert went even further in 2008, offering to withdraw from virtually all of the West Bank and place the Old City of Jerusalem under international control.²⁶ Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected it, claiming the gaps were too wide.

• The Trump “Peace to Prosperity” Plan (2020): Officially released in January 2020, this plan proposed a Palestinian state, conditioned on security requirements and Palestinian acceptance of various terms, including a capital in East Jerusalem neighborhoods outside Israel’s security barrier and Israeli sovereignty over major settlement blocs. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas, rejected the plan before it was even formally released, calling it a “conspiracy” and a “thousand no’s” and subsequently severing security and civil ties with both the U.S. and Israel.”²⁷

Even where negotiators dispute percentages or refugee clauses, contemporaneous accounts show Palestinian leaders walked away without tabling executable counteroffers that recognized a Jewish state, prolonging statelessness and the very occupation they decry. And in every case, followed their rejections with wars of aggression and terrorism against the State of Israel.

Negotiators like Dennis Ross, who served as U.S. envoy, have documented how Arafat and Abbas walked away without proposing alternatives, prioritizing maximalist demands over pragmatic peace.²⁸ The pattern is clear: Palestinian leadership has consistently refused to accept any deal that requires recognizing the permanent existence and legitimacy of a Jewish state on any land in the region. They have prioritized the maximalist, genocidal goal of total liberation over the practical creation of a sovereign state. This political refusal is structurally reinforced by agencies like UNRWA, ensuring that the maximalist ideology of rejection is passed down to every subsequent generation, guaranteeing the conflict’s duration.

B. The Moral Failure of the Pay-to-Slay Program

Beyond the length of the “occupation”, antagonists assert that the occupation itself is fundamentally immoral. Yet, no moral argument against Israel can stand when the Palestinian leadership actively incentivizes and rewards the murder of civilians.²⁹

The Palestinian Authority (PA) operates the “Martyrs’ Fund” and the “Prisoners’ Fund,” which transfer hundreds of millions of dollars annually to terrorists jailed in Israel and the families of those killed while committing attacks.³⁰ Crucially, the payment scale is not needs-based; it is directly linked to the length of the sentence served, meaning the most money is paid to those who have committed the most heinous murders and received life sentences.³¹

This is not a social safety net. It is a state-sponsored, financial infrastructure, known colloquially as “pay to slay,” designed to reward and perpetuate terrorism. When a government deliberately chooses to fund homicide over healthcare, its moral standing to complain about its political circumstances is completely evaporated. The U.S. codified this concern in the Taylor Force Act (2018), restricting certain aid until the PA reforms prisoner/martyr payments tied to offense severity.

C. The Proof of Israel’s Capacity for Peace.

The remaining argument supporting the resolutions against Israel’s “occupation” presupposes that Israel is the intransigent, belligerent party, incapable of making peace or tolerating a non-Jewish population. The facts rebut this on two fronts:

Peace with the Arab World:

Israel has made actual, stable peace treaties with every Arab nation that has pursued peace with Israel.³²

• 1979: Peace with Egypt.

• 1994: Peace with Jordan.

• 2020: The Abraham Accords with the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.

These agreements demonstrate that Israel is perfectly capable of normalizing relations, ceding territory, and engaging in economic and security cooperation when it encounters a partner willing to recognize its existence and ensure its security. The conflict is not Israeli-Arab; it is Israeli-Palestinian, and the fault lies with the party that rejects peace.

The Status of Arab Israelis:

Israel has within its borders 2 million Arab citizens.³³ These citizens vote, serve in the Knesset, hold positions in the Supreme Court, practice their religion freely, and are, by demographic count, the largest minority group in the country.³⁴ The lived reality of more than 2 million Arab citizens undercuts caricatures of Israel as eliminationist or ‘genocidal.’ If Israel’s goal was elimination, this population would not exist, hold rights, and participate in the political process.

The Institutional Engine of Perpetual Rejection: The Role of UNRWA

The pattern of political rejection detailed above is not an isolated phenomenon; it is underpinned by a sustained ideological engine of hostility nurtured by international institutions. The most prominent example of this institutional enablement is found in The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) which exemplifies this hypocrisy, operating separately from the UNHCR with a mandate that perpetuates Palestinian refugee status across generations, unlike global standards that prioritize resettlement.³⁵

Notably, the UN spends nearly 3x the amount per refugee on Palestinians ($271 per refugee) compared to every other displaced person globally ($99 per person, managed by UNHCR). This exceptional status is sustained by UNRWA’s structure.³⁶

In its schools serving 500,000 students in Gaza and the West Bank, curricula promote jihadism, antisemitism, and elements echoing blood libels.³⁷ A 2023 IMPACT-se report analyzed UNRWA-distributed textbooks glorifying violence, such as a Grade 5 Arabic unit praising Dalal al-Mughrabi’s 1978 massacre as “heroism,” or Islamic Education texts defining jihad as a duty to “free Palestine from Zionist occupiers.” Antisemitic content includes depictions of Jews as treacherous in historical battles, fostering conspiracy myths.³⁸

In 2025, independent monitors alleged extensive Hamas and PIJ penetration within UNRWA staff, including principals and administrators, revealing an alleged 1,462 UNRWA staff affiliated with Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad,³⁹ some inciting terrorism online. This indoctrination morally betrays the UN’s peace mandate, and sowing hatred that sustains conflict, thereby ensuring the ideology of maximalist rejectionism survives every political peace attempt.

Conclusion: A Call for Moral Reform

The UN was conceived after the Holocaust with a promise to prevent genocide and uphold equality. Today, it perpetuates double standards that echo antisemitic libels. Israel receives more condemnations than the world’s worst abusers combined. UNRWA sustains, rather than resolves, refugees, and its schools have become a vector for hate.

The facts confirming this bias are stark: Syria’s civil war, with over 500,000 deaths, triggered numerous HRC resolutions, yet Israel alone is subjected to a permanent dedicated agenda item.⁴⁰ UNSC vetoes address security, not human rights, and do not excuse HRC selectivity, where China’s Uyghur abuses go unaddressed.⁴¹ On UNRWA, independent audits from 2023-2025 document systemic incitement, not anomalies, with staff praising October 7 massacres and materials glorifying jihad. Morally, justifying this as “context” normalizes double standards, eroding universal human rights.

Reform is not optional. It is urgent. The UN must abolish Agenda Item 7, merge UNRWA into UNHCR under normal refugee protocols, and insist on proportional accountability for all states regardless of geopolitics or alliances.

The viral condemnation chart is more than a meme. It is a mirror held up to an institution that has lost its moral compass. Justice delayed is justice denied. In this case, it endangers Jewish lives.

If you agree the UN needs reform, share this article with your network. Let’s amplify the call for accountability

Sources and Footnotes

1. UN Watch Database, citing UN General Assembly official records. Reported UNGA resolutions against Israel vs. the rest of the world combined, 2015-2023.

2. For verifiable comparison, I rely on UN General Assembly country-specific resolutions (2015–2023: 154 on Israel vs. 71 on all others), rather than mixing UN bodies or resolution verbs.

3. A core grievance is Agenda Item 7, titled “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories,” which mandates discussion of Israel at every regular session—the only country-specific item on the permanent agenda. Established in 2007, it ensures automatic scrutiny of Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), including Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. No other country, even those with severe crises like Syria or Myanmar, has a similar standing item. Critics argue this institutionalizes discrimination, leading to repetitive resolutions and enabling politicization. The U.S. has cited Item 7 as a reason for withdrawing from the UNHRC in 2018 (rejoining in 2021) and criticizing it again in 2025

4. UN Human Rights Council. Documentation on Agenda Item 7: “Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.”

5. The Secretary-General is disappointed at the Council’s decision to single out only one specific regional item, given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world. (Ban Ki-moon, June 20, 2007).

6. Important to note: UN Human Rights Council puts abusers in guardian role…. China and its autocratic allies are using their majority on the United Nations Human Rights Council to shield each other from oversight. The result is a UN body led by countries with substandard human rights records.

7. The UN was founded primarily to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war” by maintaining “international peace and security” (UN Charter, Preamble; Article 1, Para 1). The statement in the text refers to the organization’s simultaneous commitment to the principle of “sovereign equality of all its Members” (Article 2, Para 1), a principle undermined by the disproportionate targeting of Israel. This pattern of bias is documented by the data cited in Footnote 2(UNGA resolutions), Footnote 3 (Agenda Item 7), and the lack of proportional action against gross abusers (e.g., China/Uyghurs and Syria’s civil war, as detailed in Footnotes 5, 18, and 19). The selective focus serves as prima facie evidence of institutional bias overriding the charter’s commitment to equality and, consequently, its ability to pursue global peace impartially.

8. American Jewish Committee (AJC) and/or Holocaust Encyclopedia. Documentation on the evolution of blood libel from medieval ritual murder accusations to modern claims of organ harvesting, well poisoning, and child abuse against Jews/Israelis. See also: ADL (Anti-Defamation League) analysis on the antisemitic trope of well poisoning, which resurfaced in claims made by Palestinian Authority leaders.

9. This is a modern echo of the ancient antisemitic “well-poisoning” blood libel. The claim gained renewed UN-platform visibility when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas asserted in a 2016 address to the European Parliament (a key partner of the UN) that “certain rabbis” called to poison Palestinian water. Abbas later retracted the statement as “baseless.”

10. The charge of deliberate starvation has been advanced by several UN-affiliated bodies and officials. A joint statement by multiple UN Special Rapporteurs in 2024 warned that Israel was “using starvation of civilians as a method of war.” Separately, UNICEF, in late 2023 and 2024, repeatedly warned of “spiraling” child malnutrition and deaths from dehydration and starvation, effectively creating a “hellscape” of manufactured famine. The claim that Israel is intentionally starving Gaza children is fundamentally contradicted by the extensive humanitarian aid Israel facilitates and the documented issue of aid theft by Hamas.

1. Massive Scale of Aid Flow: The Israeli government, through its Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), provides daily updates showing the high volume of aid entering Gaza.

   • Since the start of the conflict, Israel has coordinated and facilitated the entry of hundreds of thousands of tons of aid, with a large majority consisting of food. For instance, data from one seven-month period showed that the total caloric and nutritional content of food entering Gaza exceeded Sphere standards for per capita minimal humanitarian requirements.

   • Aid is primarily funneled through the Kerem Shalom and Nitzana crossings, and new entry points like Erez West, with Israel also supporting the establishment of secure aid corridors and daily “tactical pauses” in fighting specifically to speed up distribution.

   • Israel also provides fuel directly for operating bakeries, water systems, and hospitals, directly countering the notion of a deliberate starvation policy.

2. The True Obstacle: Hamas Theft and Diversion:

   • The core of the distribution problem within Gaza is Hamas’s documented practice of diverting aidintended for civilians. UN tracking and Israeli reports have shown widespread interference and theft of convoys by armed groups.

   • Reports indicate that a significant percentage of aid trucks have been intercepted inside Gaza before reaching civilians. In one cited incident, nearly 90% of a food aid convoy was hijacked in a single day.

   • Hamas’s diversion of resources extends beyond food, as the group has historically used building materials and fuel—essential for civilian infrastructure—to construct terror tunnels and manufacture weapons, directly contributing to the collapse of public services that could alleviate the crisis.

In essence, while tragic food insecurity and malnutrition among children exist, the available data suggests the cause is not a failure by Israel to allow aid entry, but rather a failure of secure distribution within the enclave, exacerbated by Hamas’s systematic theft and prioritization of its military infrastructure over the well-being of the Gazan populace.

For more information on the challenges of aid delivery and the reported theft of supplies in the region, watch this video:

11. United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel. Report released September 16, 2025, which concluded that Israel is responsible for the commission of genocide in Gaza.

12. The video below discusses the UN Commission of Inquiry report which Israel denounced as a “blood libel.”

13. Statements by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other senior Israeli officials (e.g., Isaac Herzog, Amir Ohana) on September 16-26, 2025, denouncing the UN COI Genocide report as a “blood libel.” See, for example: coverage of Netanyahu’s address/statement following the report’s release, where he explicitly compared the accusations to medieval claims of poisoning wells.

14. The regions historically known as Judea (south) and Samaria (north) are the biblical heartland of the Jewish people. These names were used in antiquity, in the Ottoman administrative system, and by the British Mandate after World War I. Following the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Jordan occupied these territories and in 1950 formally annexed them — an act recognized only by Britain and Pakistan. To emphasize that the land was now part of Jordan’s kingdom east of the Jordan River, Jordanian authorities deliberately replaced the traditional names with the geographic term “al-Ḍiffah al-Gharbiyyah,” or the West Bank (of the Jordan River). This terminology was then adopted in UN documents and international diplomacy. After Israel captured the territory in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli officials continued to refer to it as Judea and Samaria, while most of the world retained the Jordanian-era term “West Bank.” The competing names thus reflect not just geography but political and historical narratives: one emphasizing continuity with Jewish history, the other the mid-20th century Arab framing of the conflict.

15. While critics justify the UN’s disproportionate scrutiny of Israel on the grounds of the “occupation,” it is far from the only unresolved territorial dispute or military occupation in the world, nor the longest-lasting. For example: Morocco has occupied Western Sahara since 1975 (49+ years); Turkey has occupied Northern Cyprus since 1974 (50 years); China has controlled Tibet since 1950 (75 years); Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and occupies parts of eastern Ukraine since 2014/2022; Russia also controls South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia since 2008; and Russian-backed forces have held Transnistria since 1992. Historic cases include the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states (1940–1991, 51 years) and Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor (1975–1999, 24 years). Despite their duration and severity, none of these situations are subjected to a standing agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council or the volume of country-specific resolutions Israel receives.

16. As discussed in Blood Libels #2, Israel’s legal position is distinct from most other disputed territories. When Israel captured the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Six-Day War, those areas were not recognized sovereign territories: Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank (1948–1967) was recognized only by two countries, and Egypt never claimed sovereignty over Gaza. Under international law, occupation typically refers to control over the sovereign land of another state; in this case, no such sovereign existed. Israel therefore argues the territories are disputed rather than occupied. Further, the 1922 League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (incorporated into Article 80 of the UN Charter) recognized the Jewish right of settlement throughout Mandatory Palestine, which included the West Bank. Jurists such as Eugene Rostow, one of the drafters of UN Security Council Resolution 242, concluded that this provides Israel with a continuing legal right to at least part of the territory for “secure and recognized boundaries.” In Secure and Recognized Borders: UN Resolution 242 and the ’67 Lines, Dr. Cynthia Day Wallace, demonstrates cogently that the 1967 lines are not “borders” under international law. Therefore, this word should not be used to create and perpetuate the impression that Israel has illegally transgressed the borders of another State. Israel also notes that it gained the territories in a defensive war, not through aggression. Another factor that differentiates its situation from occupations such as Russia in Crimea, Turkey in Northern Cyprus, or Morocco in Western Sahara. Critics dispute Israel’s view, arguing that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies regardless of prior sovereignty and that settlement activity violates Article 49(6). This position has been endorsed by the International Court of Justice (2004 advisory opinion) and the UN General Assembly. Nonetheless, Israel’s case is legally stronger than most other occupations because of the territories’ unresolved sovereign status in 1967, its rights under the Mandate, and the defensive nature of the war.

17. Mandate for Palestine, Preamble and Article 25 (1922) & Transjordan Memorandum (1922). The Mandate, ratified by the League of Nations, incorporated the Balfour Declaration’s goals (Preamble) and, through Article 25 and the subsequent Transjordan Memorandum, explicitly excluded the territory east of the Jordan River from all provisions regarding the Jewish National Home and Jewish settlement.

18. The Mandate explicitly incorporated the Balfour Declaration (November 2, 1917), which expressed British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The Mandate’s preamble states: “Whereas the Principal Allied Powers have also agreed that the Mandatory should be responsible for putting into effect the declaration originally made on November 2nd, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people...” This was endorsed by the League of Nations and formalized in the Mandate. The Mandate’s core purpose was to facilitate this. Article 2 states: “The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home, as laid down in the preamble...” The preamble further recognizes “the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” This aligned with Balfour’s intent, though it included safeguards for non-Jewish communities’ rights. The original Mandate (approved July 1922) encompassed territory on both sides of the Jordan River, including what became Transjordan (modern-day Jordan). The preamble defines it as “the territory of Palestine, which formerly belonged to the Turkish Empire, within such boundaries as may be fixed by them,” and Article 25 references “territories lying between the Jordan and the eastern boundary of Palestine,” confirming inclusion east of the river. This area was part of the Ottoman sanjaks Britain captured in World War I.

19. The Transjordan Area (77% of Mandate Territory). The territory of Transjordan (now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) comprised approximately 77% of the original land area of the Palestine Mandate. This separation effectively created an Arab state on the vast majority of the mandated territory.

20. Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. “A Short History of Palestinian Rejectionism.”

21. The Arab Higher Committee (AHC) was established in 1936 as the central political organization of the Palestinian Arabs, dominated by members of the Husseini family. Its leader, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, became the most influential Palestinian Arab figure during the British Mandate period. The AHC opposed Jewish immigration and the idea of partition, rejecting the 1937 Peel Commission’s proposal for separate Jewish and Arab states. Al-Husseini himself was a fierce opponent of Zionism and later gained notoriety for his collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II, where he met with Hitler, advocated for extending the “Final Solution” to the Middle East, and recruited Muslims for SS units in the Balkans. The rejectionist stance of the AHC under al-Husseini set a precedent: Palestinian leadership consistently opposed compromise formulas that included recognition of a Jewish state, framing the conflict in existential rather than territorial terms.

22. Peel Commission, Report of the Royal Commission, Cmd. 5479 (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1937); see also the analysis of the Arab Higher Committee’s rejection in Ian J. Bickerton and Carla L. Klausner, A Concise History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 4th ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002), p. 55-57.

23. United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), November 29, 1947. Record of the UN vote and the subsequent launch of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

24. The Khartoum Resolution (September 1, 1967). The text of the resolution, particularly the third paragraph, explicitly calls for “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with it.” (Source: Yale Law School, The Avalon Project).

25. Listen to former U.S. President Bill Clinton sharing inside details on Yasser Arafat’s failure to accept an Israeli peace deal that would have granted Palestinians nearly the entire West Bank and a capital in East Jerusalem. Clinton reflects on Israel’s right to self-defense in the face of continued violence from Hamas. Highlighting Israel’s ancient historical ties to Judea and Samaria, Clinton rejects claims against Israel’s legitimacy. He critiques Hamas’s intentions, arguing that its primary goal isn’t Palestinian statehood but rather the destruction of Israel, a stance that endangers Palestinians too. Clinton also addresses Middle Eastern geopolitics, warning of a growing alliance between Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. He urges world leaders to recognize the complexity of the conflict and support lasting peace based on truth and security.

26. The New York Times. “Olmert’s Peace Offer to Abbas.” Reporting on the 2008 negotiating parameters proposed by PM Olmert.

27. Mahmoud Abbas, Statement to the Arab League in Cairo (February 1, 2020), in response to the plan’s unveiling on January 28, 2020. See reporting in The Guardian, “Palestinians cut ties with Israel and US after rejecting Trump peace plan” (February 1, 2020). The plan is officially titled Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People (January 2020)

28. Dennis Ross. The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.

29. U.S. Congress, Taylor Force Act, Public Law 115-120 (2018). Legislation cutting U.S. aid to the PA over the stipends, officially terming them payments for “acts of terrorism.”

30. Palestinian Authority Ministry of Finance and Prisoners Affairs Commission Budget Reports. Documentation showing the annual allocation of funds (hundreds of millions of dollars) to the Martyrs’ and Prisoners’ Funds.

31. Palestinian Authority Law of Prisoners and Liberated Prisoners. Legal text defining the scale where stipends increase with the length of imprisonment, directly correlating payment size to the severity of the crime committed against Israelis

32. Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Records. Official documentation of the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty, and the 2020 Abraham Accords.

33. Israel Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Demographic data confirming the population size and citizenship status of Arab citizens of Israel.

34. The Knesset and Israeli Judiciary Records. Documentation on Arab citizens serving as Members of Knesset (MKs), Supreme Court Justices, and in other high-ranking civil positions.

35. The operational and legal distinction between the two agencies is foundational to the critique. UNRWA’s mandate, established by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) of 1949, is limited to providing relief and services to “Palestine refugees.” The UNHCR, established a year later, operates under the 1951 Refugee Convention and is tasked with seeking “durable solutions” (voluntary repatriation, local integration, or resettlement) which aim to end refugee status. Crucially, UNRWA defines its beneficiaries as including “the descendants of Palestine refugee males,” a policy that perpetuates refugee status across generations, a unique departure from the standard international framework used by the UNHCR.

36. UNHCR, also known as the UN Refugee Agency, emerged in the wake of World War II to help Europeans displaced by that conflict. Despite being founded with a three-year mission, the organization still exists today to address the more than 108.4 million people around the world who have been forcibly displaced as a result of conflict or persecution (including 36.8 million refugees). UNHCR’s budget was approximately $10.7B in 2022, equating to about $99 per displaced person. You can find more statistics here: https://www.unhcr.org/about-unhcr/who-we-are/figures-glance.

37. The specific claims regarding curricula are based on extensive, independently verified research. The following resources detail the content, UNRWA’s role, and the consequences of this education:

• Primary Research Source: IMPACT-se (Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education) is the leading NGO in this field.

  • Report (PDF): UNRWA Education: Textbooks and Terror, Nov 2023. This report documents the glorification of Dalal al-Mughrabi and the promotion of violent jihad in materials used by UNRWA.

  • Report (PDF): Review of UNRWA Schools Headed by Hamas Principals. This details the infiltration of terror groups into UNRWA school administration, reinforcing the systematic nature of the incitement.

• Parliamentary and Governmental Records:

  • UK Parliament: Written evidence submitted by IMPACT (MENA0029) - UK Parliament Committees. Provides a comprehensive overview of the PA curriculum’s consistent failure to meet UNESCO standards since 2016.

  • U.S. Congress: Hearing on UNRWA Anti-Semitism Poisons Palestinian Youth. Transcripts from a November 2023 Congressional hearing on the systemic nature of UNRWA-facilitated incitement.

• Video Documentation:

  • The Palestinian Incitement Exposed (March 2016). A video compilation shown by Prime Minister Netanyahu exposing PA officials’ rhetoric and the culture of incitement.

  • Was a 13-year-old Palestinian incited to terrorism by UN schoolbooks? (January 2023). Discussion on the real-world connection between the curriculum’s promotion of martyrdom and a terror attack committed by a minor.

38. The figures and specific examples of glorification of violence are drawn from research by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a non-governmental organization that analyzes educational curricula worldwide. Specifically, these findings are detailed in reports such as “UNRWA Education: Textbooks and Terror” (November 2023) and earlier related reviews of the Palestinian Authority (PA) curriculum used in UNRWA schools. The IMPACT-se reports document the systematic inclusion of antisemitic themes, the promotion of violent jihad as a duty, and the veneration of terrorists like Dalal al-Mughrabi—who was responsible for the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre—as “heroes” in subjects including Arabic language and Islamic Education.

39. UN Watch Report, January 2025 (citing intelligence estimates). Documentation of UNRWA staff with Hamas/PIJ affiliations and involvement in incitement.

40. UN Watch Database. Comparative HRC resolution totals for Syria (post-2011 Civil War) vs. Israel, 2006-2024. They report, Syria garnered only 45 HRC resolutions versus Israel’s 112.

41. UN Watch. Documentation on lack of HRC scrutiny for China’s Uyghur abuses.