February 15, 2024
UNRWA AND THE UN: STOP THE MONEY
The news stunned the world. In Gaza at least 12 UNRWA employees personally participated in the massacre of October 7th, in which 1200 Israelis and foreign nationals were murdered along with mass rape of women, girls and boys and horrendous acts of torture and mutilation. The world also learned that at least 12 UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) employees in Gaza are Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives within these terrorist organizations. Further, an estimated 5000 UNRWA employees, half of the UNRWA workforce in Gaza, have close family members in the terror organizations. Most recently, the IDF discovered the headquarters of Hamas has been located below UNRWA headquarters in Gaza. The photos show Hamas’s living quarters and the command center, all in tunnels accessed from within or beside UNRWA.
UN Secretary-General Gutierrez expressed shocked on learning of the UNRWA employees being part of UNRWA. (He also claimed to have been unaware of the subterranean military installations Hamas excavated underneath Gaza over the years--tunnels whose total length is greater than that of the London Underground.) But for decades people like Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch and David Bedein, Director of the Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research, have been submitting detailed reports to the UN, reports showing evidence of widespread and systematic incitement to jihadi terrorism, including calls to kill Jews on the part of UNRWA educators. Bedein, Neuer and anyone that dared unmask UNRWA were ignored. Worse, says Neuer, “We were attacked for doing the work they failed to do.”
The culture of UNRWA, that allowed its employees to rape, murder and kidnap Israelis, did not happen overnight. The UNRWA school curriculum, is based on the glorification of violence, adulation of martyrs, and incitement against the Jews. Generations of Arab youth have been brainwashed to fight and die, starting with kindergarteners.
In a new report, UNRWA Terrorgram, UN Watch documents a Telegram chat group of over 3000 UNRWA teachers in Gaza. It contains messages, photos, and videos cheering and celebrating the massacre of October 7th.
UNRWA Perpetuates Refugee Status
UNRWA has worked relentlessly to perpetuate refugee status among the descendants of the Arabs who fled Israel in l947. Billions of dollars have been provided by Western nations to Gaza, which could have re-settled all the Arabs, whether in Gaza, in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait or elsewhere, places which ought to have provided permanent residency, but which refused to give civil rights and opportunities, permanent residency or citizenship to these fellow Arabs. Had they done so, it’s likely the “Palestinian Arabs” would have successfully integrated and prospered. Instead, UNRWA, which has never re-settled a single Arab, has fostered a culture of dependence, and created and maintained miserable living conditions, and provided an education that breeds hatred for Israel and desire for revenge, keeping false hopes and ahistorical lies alive to create a festering sore and incentive to attack Israel. From the initial number of 750,000 so-called “Palestinian refugees,” the number has swelled to approximately 5.6 million. Of course this is ludicrous because refugees by definition are only the first generation of people who flee their homeland and cannot return. Those Arabs dwelling in Gaza and Judea, Samaria and other parts of Israel are not genuine refugees by any reasonable standard; the majority are living in land under Arab control, not under Israeli control. And those in Arab countries, by international standards and expectations, should have been naturalized or given permanent status decades ago. Others who live abroad and hold citizenship, may still appear on UNRWA refugee rolls.
UNRWA has become an arm of Hamas, and an incubator of hatred and violence UNRWA must be defunded and demolished once and for all. “It’s not just a few bad apples,” wrote Terry Glavin in the National Post, “It’s the entire tree, trunk, root and branches.”
Suspension of Funding—Not Sufficient
So far, 14 countries, most of UNRWA’s donor nations, including Canada, have announced suspensions or pauses of UNRWA funding. In June of 2023, Canada made a four year commitment to contribute $100 million to the agency. It also announced an additional $3 million dollars for immediate aid. A further $60 million was allocated for relief in Gaza in November, 2023, $20 million for UNRWA, with the remainder going to other UN and international organizations. However, despite the announcement from International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen, that funding would be paused, Global Affairs Canada on Tuesday, January 30th, announced an additional $40 million in funding for Gaza.
Speaking to reporters on that day, Hussen refused to answer questions on whether the $40 million had been originally earmarked for UNRWA. When asked when the first payment for Canada’s $100 million UNRWA donation was due, Hussen walked away from reporters.
“Trudeau hasn’t actually frozen funding. It appears they already transferred the payment which isn’t due till spring,” said Conservative MP, Melissa Lantsman.
Canada had suspended funding to UNRWA under the previous Harper government due to long standing allegations, and evidence, that the agency promoted antisemitism and violence against Israelis, with possible links to terror groups, such as Hamas. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reinstated funding in 2016.
UNRWA is just one of the many UN agencies which have aided and abetted Hamas, diverting funds to its terrorist activities, providing misinformation and indoctrination to media outlets throughout the world. The UN’s one-sided discriminatory actions against Israel, while ignoring the constant Arab-initiated violence and property destruction, shatters its credibility.
The UN Court of Injustice and other UN Anti-Israel Entities
The UN’s International Court of Justice in the Hague accepted a case brought by South Africa that alleged Israel is committing “genocide” when it is obvious that Israel was the recipient of a genocidal attack against its citizens by an antisemitic terror organization whose blatant stated purpose is to annihilate the Jewish people. As Melanie Phillips wrote, “Bringing a claim of genocide against Israel for defending itself against the genocide intended by Hamas and its patron, Iran, is obscene.”
The UN Security Council, created to protect international peace and security, has never condemned Hamas. Recently the Council remained unwilling to affirm Israel’s right to defend itself against attempted genocide. Over the past seven years, the UN General Assembly has passed a total of 208 resolutions targeting various countries for reported violations of the UN Charter and other transgressions, and 140 of these resolutions singled out Israel. Last year the UN General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions targeting Israel.
Since its founding, 17 years ago, the UN’s Human Rights Council has adopted 90 resolutions condemning Israel. Council members include, China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Cuba, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia—not exactly shining examples of human rights or democracy. Only three in ten of the members of UNHRC are democracies. Two years ago, UNHRC established a permanent commission of inquiry to examine Israel’s breaches of human rights and the well-funded, permanent commission is headed by a well-known antisemite.
Last year, the UN’s Economic and Social Council, ECOSOC, produced only one resolution. It accused Israel of being a “major obstacle” to the rights of Palestinian women, ignoring the status of women under the patriarchal Palestinian Authority and Islamist Hamas in Gaza. “They completely ignored the world’s worst abusers of women’s rights--Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Chad, Qatar and Algeria,” commented Hillel Neuer.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutierrez on October 9th, responded to Hamas’s brutal onslaught by calling it “a cycle of violence”, demonstrating the lack of moral clarity and honesty to tell the difference between Palestinian Arab terrorists who target civilians and an Israeli military that targets terrorists.
Once more, Israel is the canary in the coal mine for the world, exposing the painful truths about its many enemies, and the breakdown of institutions like the UN, which is now part of the problem and not the solution it was intended for in its beginning. Truths about the civilizational struggle that threatens our way of life, if not addressed, will herald an era of barbarism and darkness for generations to come.
For more information on the UN, see the webinar Systemic Antisemitism at the UN on the website of the Canadian Antisemitism and Education Foundation.
Doris Strub Epstein, Editor
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End Jew Hatred Canada is the Jewish civil rights movement, fighting for freedom from bigotry, and oppression that denigrates our people, our homeland, our culture. Jew hatred threatens our safety and Canada’s thriving democracy. It comes from all forms of extremism. There is no justice without truth.
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