Jonathan S. Tobin
JNS, Jan. 29, 2024
“If the past is any indication of the future, even those who have spoken out about this, like the United States, will eventually, even if quietly, resume full funding of UNRWA.”
Let’s not get caught up in the details of the controversy that made headlines this past weekend about the fact that 12 employees of UNRWA—the U.N. refugee agency dedicated to assisting the Palestinians—took part in the Hamas pogroms in southern Israel on Oct. 7. The New York Times broke the story, and many of the governments that are the principal funders of UNRWA, including the United States, which is the largest donor giving $422 million to it in 2023, have since expressed various levels of concern or outrage.
No one who knows anything about UNRWA can pretend to be surprised by what happened. The notion put forward by some of its apologists that the people who took part in the terror attacks are just a tiny minority of its 13,000 employees is not to be taken seriously. As The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported, it is estimated that approximately 10% of UNRWA employees are either active members or have ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
For years, it has been well known that UNRWA facilities, including schools and other places that are supposed to be devoted to charitable purposes, have been used by Hamas to store weapons or otherwise assist terrorists. Its education programs are as bad as those run by Hamas or the Palestinian Authority when it comes to indoctrinating young Palestinians in hatred for Israel and the Jews. UNRWA’s creation in 1949, coupled with its actions and the infrastructure it has built up since then, is dedicated to perpetuating the conflict with Israel. Forget philanthropy or—as every other refugee agency in the world focuses on—resettling those displaced by war in some safe place where they can make a new start in life.
That said, the notion that anything is shocking about the fact that a few of the UNRWA staff were caught taking part in the Oct. 7 attacks, including direct participation in kidnapping and mass murder, is a joke.
Sadly, so is most of the discussion about holding UNRWA accountable.
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