CIJR – Toronto Co-Chairman Doris Epstein weighs in on UNRWA
CANADA FUNDS TERRORISM
Canada is feeding and fueling the organization responsible for propagating the world’s worst Jew-hatred, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency – UNRWA. Through its Hamas-organized schools, UNRWA educates thousands of Arab children in Jew-hatred. In their Hamas-organized summer camps, they learn how to kill Jews.
Elham Mansour teaches in a UNRWA school in Lebanon. He wrote last month of his belief that anyone who does not make killing a Zionist their life’s mission does not deserve to live. “By Allah,” he wrote,” anyone who can kill and slaughter any Zionist and Israeli criminal and doesn’t do so doesn’t deserve to live. Kill them and pursue them everywhere; they are the greatest enemy…All Israel deserves is death.” (Honest Reporting, June 28, 2022)
Mansour’s missive is just one of many documented examples of Jew-hatred expressed by teachers employed by UNRWA.
Canada is UNRWA’s tenth-largest funder. In 2020, Canada announced funding of up to $90 million over three years for UNRWA. From 2016 through 2019, Canada committed a total of $110 million. Moreover, as part of new funding designated to respond to Covid, Canada provided, in April 2020, an additional $1.5 million to support the agency’s preparedness and response to Covid in the region. It also committed another $75 million over three years for education, health, and social services.
In 2010, the Harper government cut all funding to UNRWA because of its close ties with the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
UNRWA has been accused of hiring known militants, perpetuating Palestinian dependency, demonizing Israel, and funneling money from Western governments to line the pockets of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and purchase arms for terrorists.
Like most mainstream Western media, Canadian media ignores all this and highlights the whining, petulant head of UNRWA, Philippe Lazzarini who is currently begging for even more money from Western donor countries to continue paying his antisemitic staff and purchasing hate-oriented teaching materials.
The original function of this agency was to help refugees transition into regular citizens in their adoptive countries. However, transitioning to citizenry elsewhere is never addressed when it comes to the Palestinians.
The UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) serves all other refugees internationally, enabling them to move forward in their lives and settle as citizens in welcoming countries like Canada. This indulgence toward Palestinians would never be tolerated as regard any other refugees. There has been no legitimate reason for UNRWA to exist for the past 60-plus years.
Instead of helping Palestinians transition into a new life, it perpetuates the false notion that the many generations of Arabs who left Israel in l948 following its declaration of independence are still “refugees,” when clearly, they are not. The 800,000 Jews ejected from Arab countries at that time, unaided by the UN, do not consider themselves refugees but citizens of the various countries in which they lived.
Having lived in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Kuwait for several generations, these countries must offer citizenship and integrate their brothers, sisters, cousins, and fellow Arabs, all Sunni Arabs, into their respective countries. For political reasons, none of these countries offers them citizenship. Similarly, the PA also maintains refugee camps. Why? Arabs who remained in Israel are not refugees by any international standards.
By continuing to fund UNRWA, Canada and other Western nations are worsening Jewish and Arab lives. They are perpetuating the refugee status of these people, keeping them in crowded camps with poor living conditions, a state of dependency, and a bleak future. By flooding UNRWA with money, the Jews are prevented from having peace and security and putting an end to terrorism. Moreover, Canada is perpetuating the illusion that all of Israel will be theirs one day and, therefore, does not have to make the hard decisions necessary for a two-state solution.
On moral and legal grounds, Canada must detach from UNRWA.
