Thursday, February 01, 2024
- Thursday, February 01, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Thursday, February 01, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
Wednesday, January 31, 2024
Netanyahu: UNRWA gave ICJ false information against Israel
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the United Nations Relief and Works Agency of providing false information against Israel to the International Court of Justice at The Hague during a conversation he held with a delegation of visiting ambassadors on Wednesday night.‘UNRWA Is a Front for Hamas,’ Israel Says. Read the Full Intelligence Dossier.
“Many of the charges, false and unfounded, that were leveled against us in The Hague were brought by UNRWA officials,” Netanyahu charged.
He spoke close to one week after the ICJ issued a provisional order against Israel in which it asked it to refrain from acts that could lead to genocide against the Palestinians but fell short of asking it to stop its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.
It listed UNRWA as one of the organizations that provided it with information, on which it based its ruling.
Israel has rejected all genocide accusations and has argued that it is Hamas that seeks to annihilate the Jewish people. It has been said that the Hamas-led October 7 attack against Israel in which 1,200 people were killed and another 253 were seized as hostage, is proof of those genocidal intentions.
“The only time that we've seen anything like that directed against the Jewish people was in the Holocaust,” Netanyahu told the delegation of ambassadors from different countries stationed at the UN headquarters in New York.
Netanyahu: "UNRWA is totally infiltrated with Hamas"
On the same day as the ICJ issued its order, Israel provided UNRWA with information that 12 of its staff members had participated in the October 7 attack. UNRWA summarily fired nine of those staff members.
In the wake of the accusations 18 countries, including the US, have suspended funding to UNRWA. The agency has warned that unless the suspensions are rescinded it would not be able to provide vital humanitarian aid to the 5.9 million Palestinians it services in Gaza, the West Bank, east Jerusalem, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.
Netanyahu has persistently called for the agency to be replaced.
He told the ambassadors that “UNRWA is totally infiltrated with Hamas. It has been in the service of Hamas and its schools, and in many other things.
“I say this with great regret because we hoped that there would be an objective and constructive body to offer aid. We need such a body today in Gaza. But UNRWA is not that body. It has to be replaced by some organization or organizations that will do that job.”
Israel this week shared with the Washington Free Beacon and other news outlets a declassified intelligence dossier detailing how the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency has allegedly been compromised by Hamas. About 10 percent of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency's some 12,000 workers in Gaza are Hamas or Islamic Jihad "operatives," according to the document, and at least 13 participated in Hamas's Oct. 7 terror attack in southern Israel.
"UNRWA is a front for Hamas," Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said during a briefing on Tuesday that marked the 116th day of the war in Gaza.
The dossier—based on signals intelligence, interrogations of Hamas terrorists, and documents recovered in Gaza—was part of an Israeli briefing of U.S. officials that convinced Washington and others to suspend funding to UNRWA. U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken on Monday called the findings "highly, highly credible." Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on Tuesday welcomed the world body's announced investigation of UNRWA. She said the United States would need to see "fundamental changes" to the agency before any resumption of funding.
Ben Shapiro and Elon Musk Discuss DEI, Anti-Semitism and X
- Wednesday, January 31, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
According to political circles close to the obstructionist axis (called al-Moumanaa), Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya (Al-Ezz Brigades) is the name given to a fictitious group that is not known to the factions that gravitate in the orbit of this axis.According to the above-mentioned sources, this group is credited with any operation that has not been validated by these factions, namely Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Islamic Movement, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the Al-Quds Brigades, and others.In practice, any military operation carried out from the Lebanese front requires the approval of the various parties in the operations chamber, in particular Hezbollah, the same sources explained. Consequently, any operation not approved by the latter is claimed by Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya, with the aim of covering its tracks.This was the case with Sunday’s operation in the Shebaa Farms, where three armed men had infiltrated. They were killed by the Israeli Army. According to the above-mentioned sources, their bodies were left there to avoid giving Israel any clues about the Kataeb al-Ezz al-Islamiya group, which claimed responsibility for the operation.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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- Wednesday, January 31, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- Elder gets results
Gulf CSR screenshot |
Bret Stephens NYTs: Abolish the UN's Palestinian Refugee Agency
UNRWA employees were involved in the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 and Israeli intelligence estimates that 1,200 of UNRWA's 12,000 employees in Gaza have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad.National Review Editorial: End UNRWA
But the fundamental problem isn't that UNRWA is infested with terrorists and their sympathizers. It's that UNRWA may be the only agency in the UN system whose central purpose is to perpetuate grievance and conflict. It should be abolished.
The UN has two agencies dedicated to the plight of refugees. One, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, is responsible for nearly all the world's 30 million refugees, with a mandate to help them resettle in third countries if they can't go home. The other is UNRWA. No other group except for Palestinians gets its own permanent agency.
Why? In part, because neighboring Arab countries refused to fully absorb Palestinian refugees. The changing borders and independence movements of the postwar era produced millions of refugees, including 800,000 Jews who were kicked out of Arab countries that had been their homes for centuries. Nearly all of the world's refugees found new lives in new countries - except for Palestinians.
The Palestinians have been kept as perpetual refugees as a means of both delegitimizing Israel and preserving the irredentist fantasy that someday their descendants will "return" through the elimination of the Jewish state. UNRWA's very existence keeps this hope alive.
Palestinians should be citizens of the countries in which they live - just as some two million Arabs are in Israel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict can't be solved so long as millions of Palestinians have been turned into the world's only permanent refugees. By doing that, UNRWA makes itself an obstacle to peace.
UNRWA tried to cover its tracks. In December, it demanded that an Israeli reporter delete a social-media post in which he reported that one of the Hamas hostages had been held by a UNRWA teacher. In October, UNRWA made a post alleging that Hamas had stolen supplies, then deleted it and gave an explanation so incomprehensible that there can be no doubt that it was covering for the terrorist group.NYPost Editorial: Never mind UNRWA — end US funding for the pro-terror United Nations itself
All the while, U.N. leaders have dismissed the critical work of watchdogs such as UN Watch, which has brought evidence of UNRWA’s links to terrorism to light countless times.
In the short term, Congress needs to pass a blanket prohibition on the use of U.S. funds for any of UNRWA’s operations. It must do this to preempt any future decision to lift the temporary suspension of funding and to set the stage for UNRWA’s eventual elimination.
UNRWA’s supporters say that cutting the agency out of the picture would leave a gap in humanitarian aid for Gaza. They ignore that much of the assistance entering Gaza is likely snatched by Hamas anyway. Most important, to continue funding UNRWA would maintain America’s de facto culpability in financing terrorism. Other U.N. agencies with a better track record, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S.-dominated World Food Program, should step in, and America should help them build the capability to do so.
But that’s just a start. America needs to fight hard to repeal UNRWA’s U.N. General Assembly–granted mandate. Given the rank antisemitism that goes unquestioned at the international body, that’s no small task, but Washington also has not tried particularly hard to get this done.
Other U.N. agencies need to be on the chopping block as well. UNRWA might be the worst, but that doesn’t say much.
John Bolton once said that if the highest ten floors of the U.N. headquarters were to disappear it “wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” But depending on where UNRWA’s offices are, it might lessen international support for Hamas terrorism.
It’s time — beyond time — to rethink US funding for the United Nations.
After all, America has laws against financing terrorist groups, and the United Nations does just that:
It employs actual Hamas terrorists and promoters of terror.
Its secretary-general supports Hamas, demanding an end to attacks on the terror group, whose Oct. 7 massacre he tried to justify.
Its “court of justice” claims Israel is a possible perpetrator of genocide.
It’s aided and abetted mass murderers, demonized an innocent democracy (Israel) and perpetuated Mideast venom.
And, no, it’s not just the 13 UN Relief and Works “staffers” who took part in the Oct. 7 massacre, including at least nine actual Hamas terrorists.
As UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer notes, UNRWA’s ostensible mission — to provide social services for “refugees” of the Arabs’ 1948 war against Israel — is a “front.”
After all, most actual refugees are handled by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
UNRWA’s main purpose is to perpetuate the notion that the descendants of Palestinians who left Israel 75 years ago are themselves refugees today, and that through violence and “martyrdom,” they’ll one day return and make the land Jew-free.
Its staff teach children to strive for this and never give up.
They spread lies about Israel, redirect international aid and resources to Hamas and welcome terrorists to use their schools and homes as bases, including storing weapons and holding hostages.
The United Nations can plead ignorance; Secretary-General António Guterres claims he was “horrified” — “horrified” — to learn about the 13 UNRWA workers.
In fact, over a thousand of these UN employees have documented terror ties.
Groups like UN Watch (and The Post) have long sounded the alarm about UNRWA.
- Wednesday, January 31, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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- Wednesday, January 31, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
- unrwa
Rafah smuggling tunnel, 2010 |
A reliable source revealed to the Palestine Press News Agency, “The outlaw Hamas movement is digging tunnels under the densely populated western camp, specifically in the Qatatuta camp area in the city of Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip.”The source said, "Hamas militias are digging these tunnels that lead to the UNRWA school in the camp as part of their plan to store heavy weapons (Dushka machine guns and missiles) in tunnels under the students' schools."The source added, "While Hamas militias were digging a tunnel in the area, they broke one of the main water pipes in the camp, which led to water leaking onto the neighboring residents, which sparked the residents' anger at these foolish actions."
Firstly, Yunus Al-Astal has at least three tunnels around his house on the eastern line. Secondly, Fawad Abu Marouf has two tunnels, one of which is Mariout in the Halima Mosque near his house, and there is another tunnel that leads to Ibn Ummah’s house east of Khan Yunis’ license. Amjad Abu Al-Tajja has a tunnel that leads in only three directions. Al-Muttaqeen Mosque in Al-Bahr Street has a large weapons storehouse supervised by Mounir Abu Hatab, an explosives storehouse in Omar Al-Najjar’s house in the Rantissi area, a lathe, a weapons storehouse, and four tunnels near Al-Salam Hospital on the eastern line road.
- Wednesday, January 31, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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Tuesday, January 30, 2024
The Briton who joined the IDF: ‘My family died in the Holocaust – I had to defend Jewish people’
It was hearing one of my comrades praying as we crossed the border into Gaza in October 2023 that brought home what we were about to do. Just a few hours earlier, I had been in Tel Aviv with my girlfriend, when I was sent a codeword on my phone which meant we were going to be moving in and I needed to be back with my unit which had been sitting on the southern border for three weeks.Israeli ‘public relations’ will not solve the problem of the world’s moral bankruptcy
In some ways, the waiting was harder than anything else. It was frustrating, because apart from getting acquainted with the newest technology, there wasn’t much we could do. On the one hand, we weren’t in danger, which was great, but on the other, we were still reeling from the events of Oct 7 and we were poisoned with anger about the massacre of our civilians.
We wanted to go and get the hostages back and we knew we needed to fight for Israel. But we also knew that some of us may not come back.
Even on that first night, as we rolled through the border at 3am with the words of our commanding officer telling us that this was the war of our generation ringing in our ears, we saw coming in the opposite direction a wounded soldier leaving Gaza and it was chilling.
It is a shock, surreal, to actually get there. Everything seemed like a mess. I’d been told to head to a particular building but the stairs had caved in so I then had to get to another building not knowing what would be in it.
The whole time you are moving there are these crazy explosions going off, noises of gunfire, bombs. You hear more than you see in Gaza – it takes a while to get used to the intense noise.
My job is reconnaissance – I am the eyes and the ears of my unit, watching out for danger. It is a huge responsibility and I felt it keenly as my girlfriend’s cousin was among those I was tasked with keeping safe. The sun was going down at 4.45pm and then you can’t see anything apart through night vision goggles.
I hated seeing the scale of the destruction in Gaza. People have been killed and displaced on both sides and I know that Gazans are suffering too. I am not a war-mongering person and I found it quite tough knowing the human impact of what we were doing even if I knew why I was there; our war is not with the Palestinian people but with Hamas.
Going into Gaza we also saw the scale of what we were fighting. I would say that 75 per cent if not more of the homes we went into had some sort of affiliation with Hamas. Lots of weapons; we’d find RPGs and grenades on the floor. You’d go into a pink bedroom and think about the young girl who lived there and hope she was safe, feeling terrible, and then go next door and see guns or detailed maps of Israel showing the kind of thing that was happening in that house. Knowing that that stuff was there because they wanted to kill us.
No amount of “public relations” could “explain” anything to a judicial body that is supposed to be impartial but consists of justices who lack the moral clarity to separate good from evil. Israel may have to honor the decisions of the ICJ, but that does not mean those decisions should be respected.Israel is the true victim of genocidal intent
It is ironic that a country that was recently obsessed with issues related to the need for an independent judiciary has become the subject of a supposedly “independent” panel that issued an interim order described as a “blood libel” by Israeli President Isaac Herzog. In a ridiculous move, the ICJ accused Herzog, a consensus figure in Israel known for his moderation and mild-mannered personality, of engaging in “incitement” by using language that any rational person would consider appropriate after the type of attack perpetrated by Hamas.
We are dealing here with a distorted value system, not a lack of information. It is senseless to believe that, after experiencing the atrocities of Hamas, Israel would have to “explain” anything. It is futile to continue trying to convince people with debased moral standards that beheading, rape, kidnapping and random murder are wrong. Of course, the ICJ judges would say that those actions are terrible, but they fail to act on that belief, creating a reality in which the victim and not the oppressor is in the dock.
The ICJ farce may not mark the death of hasbara, but it proved that it is on life support. Morality is not something that can be sold like a hamburger at McDonalds. It is something that comes from one’s culture, social experiences and ability to show fortitude in the face of corrupt pressure.
Rather than investing energy and resources into convincing others, we would be better served by continuing our fight to be a “light unto the nations” and doing what is right. As for those who see Hamas as an entity deserving of protection, let their moral failings serve as a model for evil.
To anyone with a good heart and a logical mind, this is something that does not need to be explained.
Watching American Justice Joan Donoghue read the decision of the International Court of Justice, live at 2 p.m. Israel time on Friday afternoon, was surreal.Israel to Pursue Genocide Case Against Iran’s Regime with ICJ
Everything about this legal proceeding is grotesque and represents a perversion of ethics and law that is beyond difficult to process. South Africa, a signatory to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide — as is Israel — brought this application to the court with the support of some rather nefarious international actors. There has been a significant uptick in activity and contact between South Africa and the Islamic Republic of Iran of late, either a coincidence or reflecting an enhanced alignment of values between the two countries. Iran, of course, is the head of the proverbial Islamist snake, openly fomenting antisemitism globally and responsible for significant acts of violence targeting Jewish civilians.
The moral inversion of all pertinent circumstances giving rise to the Israeli military action in Gaza was of secondary importance in the ICJ hearing, presided over by Justice Donoghue, the court’s chair, and with an unprecedented panel of 17 judges.
Hamas invaded Israel on Saturday Oct. 7, shortly after 6 a.m. on a quiet holiday. The stated intent of Hamas, before, during and after the well-documented savagery unleashed on that day and into the following night, was, is and remains to obliterate the state of Israel and annihilate every Jewish person living in its borders. Hamas’ hatred of Israel and Jews is so primal that any person it encountered on this particular mission was marked for murder. If the odd non-Jew got in their way they were not spared, either. It seems that the crime of merely consorting with Jews is enough to justify murder, to Hamas.
Hamas leaders and supporters worldwide have gloated over the suffering inflicted and stated their unequivocal aspiration to repeat the genocide of Oct. 7, repeatedly. All Jews, ultimately, must be murdered, according to Hamas doctrine. This will facilitate the liberation of Jerusalem and establishment of a global caliphate.
Hamas is also closely allied with and supported by Iran, which boldly proclaims its genocidal intentions with respect to Israel, constantly. Its regional proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, bolster its position and claims.
That the victim of true genocidal conduct and policy — Israel — should be put in the dock at the ICJ and charged with perpetrating the crime perpetrated against it by Hamas, is more macabre, almost, than the events of Oct. 7 themselves.
On Monday, an Israeli cabinet minister announced plans to begin efforts to bring charges of genocide against the Islamic Republic of Iran to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).South Africa's Case at the ICJ Is Built on Reports from Groups with Links to Terrorist Organizations
Gideon Moshe Sa’ar, an Israeli politician who served as Minister of Justice between 2021 and 2022, highlighted that the leadership of the regime in Tehran has openly called for the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel, providing immense support to Hamas and other Islamic terrorist proxies in the Middle East region that were responsible for the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
“Iranian leaders have been making genocidal statements for years, with impunity,” said Eugene Kontorovich, Professor of Law at George Mason University and Director of Scalia Law School’s Center for the Middle East and International Law to The Foreign Desk.
“There are public statements by senior Iranian officials in favor of destroying Israel,” Sa’ar told the Kan public broadcaster. “Iran finances, arms, and trains all the jihadi terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which carried out Oct. 7, so in my opinion, there is an abundance of evidence which can be submitted to the court in the Hague,” he added.
Knesset member Sa’ar noted that the Jewish state is a small and persecuted nation that is fighting for its life while “fighting on the international stage for its right to self-defense.”
“It is a nation that is truly at risk of genocide given that there are enemies around it that declaredly want to destroy it,” Sa’ar told Kan.
“The State of Israel, a liberal democracy fighting against the most heinous act of mass terror perpetrated against the Jewish state, should never have been in the dock of the accused at The Hague in the first place,” said Arsen Ostrovsky, human rights attorney and CEO of the Israel-based NGO International Legal Forum, a global network of pro-Israel lawyers combating antisemitism and terror, who was also present in The Hague, for the hearings against Israel.
“If anyone ought to have been on trial at the ICJ, it was Hamas and their genocidal sponsors, the Islamic Republic of Iran, which remain open about their intentions of annihilating the Jewish state and supporting Hamas,” he said to The Foreign Desk.
For years, a network of Western-funded NGOs involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been engaged in a concerted and coordinated effort to attach the "apartheid" charge to Israel.
South Africa's submission to the International Court of Justice contains 45 references to NGO publications, including several from outfits linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a terrorist organization.
Staff and board members of these PFLP-linked groups helped prepare South Africa's case.
The ICJ should be ashamed that it is accepting evidence from blatant propaganda groups that have proven track records of supporting hate and violence against Israel and Jews.
- Tuesday, January 30, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
The Israel Defense Forces has recently changed its orders to soldiers in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip and its special units have begun fighting inside the city's tunnels and engaging Hamas fighters in close combat.The reason for the change stems from the army's perception that creating contact with Hamas in the tunnels will lead to significant information about the location of the hostages and senior Hamas figures residing inside them. Intelligence officials believe that the hostages and the Hamas leaders are still in the tunnels in the area, and are moving from place to place based on the army's progress.
When the fighting started in Gaza, soldiers were ordered not to enter the tunnels because army brass believed that Hamas was trying to draw the forces in to attack them. In practice, it seems that Hamas didn't really believe that the army would try to look for its leaders. In most tunnels, only the shafts were booby-trapped, and so far the tunnels themselves have not been booby-trapped in a way that threatens the soldiers. Commanders have said that they were surprised by the scope of the tunnels and the shafts dug throughout Gaza. They added that they think that Hamas was surprised that the army was also fighting underground.
The IDF is the first army to deal with underground fighting of such proportions and are learning on the fly. Battles underground are difficult and complicated, with fighting conducted in complete darkness and knowledge that hostages could be there as well. The army recognizes that aerial attacks are insufficient to reach Hamas leaders because most of the tunnels they are in are too deep.
In cooperation between units in the IDF and the Ministry of Defense, various tools were developed to channel large volumes of water into Hamas’ terror tunnels in the Gaza Strip. This is part of a range of tools deployed by the IDF to neutralize the threat of Hamas’ subterranean network of tunnels.These capabilities consist of installing pumps and pipes, the materialization of engineering developments, and the ability to locate tunnel shafts suitable for the deployment of these tools. The capability was developed in a professional capacity, including analysis of the soil characteristics and the water systems in the area to ensure that damage is not done to the area's groundwater. The pumping of water was only carried out in tunnel routes and locations that were suitable, matching the method of operation to each case.This project was developed following combat procedures, accelerated force-building efforts, and while training forces with technological expertise.
While I'm sure these plans existed for a while, actual testing, fixing unforeseen engineering problems and implementation couldn't be done except while under fire in an actual war zone. Again, this is impressive.
As long as Israel is fighting, it will continue to get better and better, both at attacking Hamas and at minimizing civilian deaths that Hamas tries to maximize. Hamas does not have any new tricks up its sleeve: the tunnels were its guarantee, and they bet their organization on the IDF not being able to fight in the tunnels themselves and not being able to neutralize more than a small percentage of them. But the IDF is gaining more knowledge, more experience and more intelligence every day, and it applying this information extraordinarily quickly.
Which means that time is on Israel's side. It needs to make clear to the world that it will not stop fighting until the war's goals are met, but also that it is not only progressing but accelerating in achieving them.
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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- Tuesday, January 30, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon
Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. Read all about it here! |
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Intelligence Reveals Details of U.N. Agency Staff’s Links to Oct. 7 Attack
Israel says it has documented deepening ties between Unrwa and Hamas since the militant group cemented its hold on Gaza in 2007. Unrwa has admitted to finding Hamas weapons stored in schools and Israel has repeatedly said Hamas tunnels run under and through Unrwa buildings as well as other civilian facilities. The former head of Unrwa’s union in Gaza was fired in 2017 after Israel found out he had been elected to Hamas’ top political leadership.Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA exists to help fight the war to eradicate Israel
The dossier is the most detailed look yet at the widespread links between the Unrwa employees and militants. It offers telling details regarding the events of Oct. 7. A math teacher belonging to Hamas was close enough to a female hostage in Gaza that he took a picture of her. Another teacher was carrying an antitank missile the night before the invasion.
One Unrwa employee set up an operations room for Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Oct. 8, the day after the attack. Three other employees, including another Arabic teacher at an Unrwa school, received a text from Hamas to arm themselves at a staging area close to the border the night before the attack. It was unclear whether they went.
A different elementary school teacher did cross into Israel and went to Reim, a district where a kibbutz, an army base and a music festival were attacked.
One of the intelligence reports seen by the Journal said a 13th Unrwa employee, who didn’t have a discernible affiliation with a terror group, also entered Israel. Hundreds of Gazan civilians flooded across the border as part of the Hamas-led attack, Israel says.
Teachers make up nearly three-quarters of Unrwa’s Gaza-based local staff. Unrwa schools, which use textbooks approved by the Palestinian Authority, have come under fire for using materials that allegedly glorify terrorists and promote hatred of Israel. Unrwa says it has taken steps to address problematic content, but a 2019 U.S. Government Accountability Office report said that measures haven’t always been implemented.
Unlike every other refugee population, the Palestinian Arabs were not resettled. They were kept in camps throughout the Middle East with the largest concentration in Gaza, which was controlled by Egypt from 1949 to 1967. They were prevented from finding new homes in Arab and Muslim countries, where they spoke the language and shared a common culture. Nor were they enabled to go elsewhere to make new lives.Brendan O'Neill: UNRWA is worse than you think
Instead, they were kept in place to wait for the day when they could “go home” to their former villages in what was now Israel. Their leaders and the rest of the Arab world opposed their resettlement, doing all they could to prevent it.
And the agency that enabled this policy to continue for generations was none other than UNRWA.
It’s important to understand that at the time when all these refugee problems arose, the United Nations created two refugee agencies. One, UNRWA, deals only with the Palestinians. The other, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (or UNHCR) has the responsibility for all of the other refugees in the world.
The UNHCR has its flaws, but its job is to help the refugees by giving them not just immediate aid in surviving being displaced by wars and other disasters but also assistance in resettling in places where it will be safe for them. Their goal is to ensure that their problems are resolved and that their children will make new lives rather than continue to live in camps.
By contrast, the UNRWA exists solely to ensure that Palestinian refugees are never resettled. That’s why almost all of the people who are called Palestinian refugees are the descendants of the people who fled the war the Arab world started in 1948. Several generations have been born in the camps but, contrary to the way other populations are treated, all are given the same status as those who were the original 1948 refugees.
Of all the tens of millions of refugees of the 1940s, the only ones whose descendants have not been resettled are the Palestinians. A humane and rational policy would have led to their being absorbed into other populations. But that’s not UNRWA’s job. It operates the ultimate welfare state in which generations are kept dependent on charity. Worse than that, its programs and policies all encourage the Palestinians to go on believing that someday Israel will cease to exist, and then they can return to where their grandparents and great-grandparents lived three-quarters of a century ago. Though it pretends to be a humanitarian force, it encourages its charges to look forward to the day when Hamas’s genocidal objective—the mass murder of Israel’s 7 million Jews—will be achieved.
Therefore, it’s little surprise that UNRWA is riddled with supporters of Hamas and that among its staff are people who take part in terrorist atrocities. And that much of the aid it receives from the world goes to help Hamas continue to function. UNRWA allows the very people its donors think they are helping to be used as human shields in a cynical hopeless war.
So, let’s not waste much time arguing about the details of UNRWA’s complicity in Oct. 7 or other acts of terror. The only discussion that needs to be held is one about its abolition and replacement by a genuine refugee agency. The world needs one that can give Palestinians new homes rather than keep them in misery awaiting another Holocaust for the Jews that they’ve been led to believe will magically solve their problems.
Most striking is the left’s attempts to downplay the seriousness of the charges against UNRWA. These people pose as ‘anti-fascists’ yet they seem alarmingly blasé about the possibility that a UN agency employed people of such an intense fascistic persuasion that they were happy to take part in an orgy of anti-Jewish murder. It’s ‘10 or 12 individuals’ from a ‘workforce of 13,000’, said LBC’s James O’Brien. This is a man who said the right-wing media’s defence of Boris Johnson during Partygate was proof that Britain is moving in a ‘fascistic direction’. It seems a handful of pro-Boris thinkpieces is fascism, but ‘10 or 12’ UN employees allegedly kidnapping and murdering Jews is not something we should overreact to.
The Guardian’s Owen Jones dismissively says these are ‘allegations against 0.04 per cent of [UNRWA’s] staff’. Is there an acceptable number of alleged Jew-killers for a UN agency to employ? If 12 isn’t a particularly big deal, how about 50? Or 100? A hundred alleged pogromists would still only be 0.77 per cent of UNRWA’s workforce – is that cool?
Mehdi Hasan speaks of ‘the alleged acts of a handful of UNRWA employees’ and slams the ‘demonisation campaign’ against UNRWA. This is the same Mehdi Hasan who once said Donald Trump’s description of lefties as ‘vermin’ was ‘right out of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda playbook’ and that Trump should ‘terrify’ us all. If a privileged member of America’s media elites can feel ‘terrified’ of Trump’s bluster, surely Jews can feel terrified of Jew-killers, even if it is ‘just’ 12. To a Jew, a ‘handful’ of murderous anti-Semites is still a terrible thing.
The speed with which the woke left went from handwringing over racists to saying, ‘Well, it’s only 12 racists’, has been mind-blowing. These are the kind of people who denounce gender-critical feminists as ‘fascist-adjacent’ if some alt-right arsehole attends one of their demos. Who will damn the entire Tory party as irretrievably Islamophobic if one of its lowly local councillors makes a joke about Muslims. Who insisted that Wayne Couzens – the London police officer who murdered Sarah Everard – was not a ‘bad apple’ but rather was symptomatic of the entire sexist, murderous rot of the Metropolitan Police. ‘Sarah Everard’s killer isn’t one bad apple – the whole police force is rotten’, cried Novara Media in 2021 – a mag whose fanboys are no doubt all over social media saying the 12 alleged Jew-killers in UNRWA were just bad apples. Funny that.
When a British cop was unveiled as a misogynistic murderer, the left cried ‘Defund the police!’. Yet when 12 employees of UNRWA were accused of taking part in a carnival of racist rape and murder they said the opposite: fund UNRWA; give it more money. In response to Britain and other nations’ suspension of donations to UNRWA, the activist class took to X to drum up support for UNRWA. They seem blissfully unaware of how horrendous, how sick, these optics are. It boils down to this: within hours of Israel saying, ‘We believe UNRWA staff participated in the mass murder of Jews’, leftists were on social media saying, ‘Give money to UNRWA’. In all my years observing the left’s abandonment of reason and Enlightenment, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything as appalling as that.
Most importantly, they’re just wrong to push the ‘bad apples’ argument about UNRWA. To haughtily tweet about the tiny percentage of UNRWA staff who are alleged to have bloodied their hands on 7 October. To go around saying ‘10 or 12’ possible pogromists does not a wicked organisation make. For the truth is that UNRWA has long been morally and politically compromised. The Wall Street Journal reports on intelligence dossiers that suggest up to 10 per cent of UNRWA’s employees have links with ‘Islamist militant groups’. A study of a Telegram channel made up of 3,000 UNRWA-employed schoolteachers found thousands of messages praising Hamas’s pogrom and expressing hatred for Jews. Analysts have found that some UNRWA-run schools ‘glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonise Israelis and incite anti-Semitism’. The truth about UNRWA, as a writer for Haaretz put it, is that it is ‘riddled with Hamas’.
And yet on Saturday, Holocaust Memorial Day, we had the chilling spectacle of the West’s supposed anti-fascists rattling the tin for UNRWA. We witnessed the self-righteous woke classes helping to fundraise for an organisation that is ‘riddled’ with links to a terror outfit that was founded with the express purpose of killing Jews and destroying Israel. The very people who claim to hate racism spent a day when we remember the victims of the worst act of state racism in history drumming up support for a UN agency that is ‘riddled’ with supporters of an avowedly racist terror group. We must be nearing the nadir of woke, surely?
- Tuesday, January 30, 2024
- Elder of Ziyon