Unfinished tasks

As the world switches over to the year 2024 in the civil calendar, those who are still sober will be aware that major pitfalls lie ahead.

Instead of old problems having been solved and dealt with, as 2023 is seen off, the challenges that have been either kicked down the road or swept under the carpet are guaranteed to confront humanity with a vengeance.

The primary casualty in the year ahead will be peace. 

In the absence of any will to deal with the old year’s primary sources of instability and mayhem in the world, the accumulated pressures will explode in our faces. That is the uncomfortable yet incontrovertible truth. Evil, left to fester and multiply will come back to menace all of us. The utter failure to root out and eradicate it and instead pretend that fancy rhetoric and moral cowardice may somehow solve the problem has repeatedly throughout history led to disasters and misery.

Jews have been described as the “canaries in the mine” because they usually are the first to suffer from the hate and incitement circulating in societies.

This can be clearly seen as we transition from the old to the new civil year. The long, littered trail of unresolved business is about to multiply and become more complex. It has the potential to engulf not only Jews in the Diaspora and Israel but also to contaminate all those living in endangered democracies.

Like diseases left untreated, the viruses now rampaging will mutate into incurable pandemics unless radical surgery and countermeasures are swiftly enforced.

The threats to peace, liberty and democracy remain the same.

In no particular order of malignancy they are clearly visible and growing more menacing as every day passes.

Iranian ambitions to acquire the means to threaten and destroy those they deem enemies have now progressed unhindered. Thanks to vacillating appeasement, craven hypocrisy and a collapse of all vestiges of morality, the Mullahs of Tehran stand on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Whether the failure by democratic nations to deter Iran involved circumventing trade sanctions, turning a blind eye to those who did so or unfreezing frozen funds the end result was the same.

The reaction of the international community has been one of total disinterest with each announcement of yet another missile development and revelation that enriching uranium had passed a previous red line. The Iranians, like the North Koreans, know that they can literally get away with murder without any fear of UN retribution. These two rogue regimes can threaten their neighbours with elimination yet remain upstanding members of an organization ostensibly established to preserve world peace and human rights.

Piracy has returned with a vengeance in the Red Sea and beyond. Everyone knows that those pulling the Houthi puppet strings are none other than the Iranian puppet masters. Piracy on the high seas can only be defeated by concerted action from maritime nations yet so far it has been a struggle to cobble together a coalition. The question, of course, is what will actually happen? Will the tin pot country of Yemen, with Iranian support, continue to get away with threatening shipping? Will this coalition actually tackle the threats or will it be more of a verbal volley and a slap on the wrist type response?

In 1967, Israel was assured by the USA that they and a coalition of nations would guarantee freedom of shipping in the Gulf of Aqaba. When it came to the crunch, however, this guarantee disappeared like a desert mirage and Israel was left to deal with the threat alone. Will 2024 see a rerun of this scenario as a loss of backbone results in the terror sponsors of Tehran being given a free pass?

The year now passing into oblivion witnessed the most scandalous exhibition of international duplicity ever perpetrated. The United Nations and its associated bodies demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that they have become irredeemably irrelevant as far as Israel is concerned. Evidence uncovered in Gaza reveals that Hamas and UNRWA are partners in terror and educating the next generation to become terrorists. The UN Human Rights Council has been hijacked by human rights abusers and UNESCO has helped to delegitimize Jewish history.

The UN General Assembly annual resolution scorecard has just been released, and it shows a continuing and unbridled fetish with condemning Israel. It is impossible to deny the evidence as provided by UN Watch: North Korea – 1; Venezuela – 0; Myanmar – 1;  Lebanon – 0; Pakistan – 0; Hamas – 0; Turkey – 0; Russia – 2;

China – 0; Qatar – 0; Saudi Arabia – 0; Syria – 1; Iraq – 0; Iran – 1;

USA – 1; ISRAEL – 14.

The Security Council record for 2023 is no better.

The pattern for 2024 will be just as bad, if not worse. One has to ask how much longer Israel should subject itself to continuing flagellation by an organization so obviously corrupt and irrelevant.

The International Red Cross has proven once again that it has zero interest when it comes to Jews. Continuing a pattern set during the Shoah years when it failed dismally, its recent refusal to demand access to hostages held by Hamas and even refusing to transfer medications to them is shameful.

Palestine Media Watch (PMW) has revealed that the PA has advised incarcerated terrorists and their families that in order to continue receiving stipends and pensions for 2024 they will need to submit the relevant forms via the International Red Cross.

All this brings us to the question of why Abbas and his PA/PLO/Fatah cronies should be rewarded with a State in the heartland of Israel.

There is nothing more certain that 2024 will witness a renewed frenzy to hand over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem to terror plotters, supporters, facilitators and sympathizers.

The frenzied mobs of university ignoramuses, green lemmings, Marxist-imbued hallucinatory youth combined with locally radicalized Islamists have only started. Disrupting Christmas carols and tree lighting is just the start. They have declared war on Christian and Western societies. Inciting rhetoric and civil disruptions will inevitably be followed by physical violence.

The genie of Jew hate has already been let loose and the coming year will witness an intensification unseen since the Shoah years. Surveys taken in various countries show that, especially among 18 to 30-year-olds, the Shoah is being increasingly questioned and Jews are increasingly being seen as justifiable recipients of the masses’ wrath. One has to wonder how much eradicating history as a subject and the promotion of woke narratives has contributed towards this wholesale brainwashing.

The Israeli campaign against terror will need to intensify in 2024 and it will inevitably result in increased threats to Jewish life in countries where Judeophobia already bubbles just below the surface. Living in la la land is no longer a tenable option, especially when the warning signs are so clearly evident.

If all this sounds overly pessimistic, I plead guilty.

Short of an imminent arrival of the messianic age I am afraid that we will have to reconcile ourselves to another very difficult year ahead.

Denial of reality and escaping into a make-believe world where the lion is already lying down with the lamb is not a realistic option as far as Jews are concerned.

Let us hope at least for a healthy year and one in which the purveyors of evil are defeated.

Buckle up tight for a rough ride ahead.

Michael Kuttner is a Jewish New Zealander who for many years was actively involved with various communal organisations connected to Judaism and Israel. He now lives in Israel and is J-Wire’s correspondent in the region.