Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

One more UNRWA email chain (updated)

After the UNRWA spokesman sent me his latest denial that Hamas diverts or steals aid, I sent him this:

Thanks, but my original question and all followups were asking not only about UNRWA aid but also about aid meant for other NGOs, such as Red Crescent. In at least one case UNRWA was the alleged recipient of the diverted aid, as reported in the Arabic News last February:

Hamas says it seized Jordan aid to keep it safe
Palestine-Jordan, Politics, 2/12/2008
Hamas government in Gaza acknowledged on Saturday that they had seized 16 trucks of aid supplies from Jordan to keep it safe from Palestine Authority.

Hamas government's Social Affairs Minister Ziad Zaza said that the government will hand it over to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees.

He said that Hamas wanted to prevent the aid supplies from falling into the hands of the Palestinian Red Crescent, which operates under the Palestine Authority led by Mahmud Abbas.

"This sort of aid never reached the Palestinian people in the past but was instead monopolized by a single party," al-Zaza said.

Zaza said that Hamas had secured Jordanian agreement to hand over the supplies to UNRWA.

Israel imposed a complete lockdown on the Gaza Strip on January 17 blocking even fuel, foods and medicines.

But in a population of 1.5 million that is largely dependent on foreign aid without any independent income, many families remain desperately short of basic goods.

Jordan said on Saturday the Islamist Palestinian group Hamas has confiscated a convoy of humanitarian aid sent to people living under an Israeli blockade in the Gaza Strip.

Minister of State for Information Affairs Nasser Joudeh said Hamas government on Thursday seized 16 trucks carrying emergency supplies into Gaza.

"We are surprised it should be confiscated and distributed in a manner based on political considerations...this only penalizes those who really deserve this aid," Joudeh said.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
So while your statement makes clear that you deny the claims that aid trucks meant for UNRWA were diverted by Hamas, but I must ask you again: are you aware of any incidents where Hamas diverted, interfered with or stole aid meant for other NGOs, including the example cited here where Hamas admitted diverting aid to your agency?

In addition, a UN press release yesterday says that "The Under-Secretary-General also emphasized that Hamas must refrain from any interference with the movement or distribution of humanitarian goods" which indicates that at least John Holmes is aware of such incidents in the past. Do you know what he might be referring to?

Thanks so much,

The answer was terse:

I speak only for unrwa. C

Even though the example I cited had the aid going to UNRWA.

So I just emailed one more time:

I understand; can you confirm the February incident cited where the Jordanian aid was diverted to UNRWA? Did UNRWA accept a shipment that was meant for another NGO, or is Hamas not telling the truth when they said they would send it to UNRWA?

Thanks

The reply:

Cannot confirm

I may sum up what I've learned soon...

My UNRWA correspondence adventures can be seen here.

Nothing's changed

A fantastic find from Simply Jews, apparently the work of a Swiss cartoonist in 1956.

A tacit UN admission of Hamas stealing aid? (updated)

While UNRWA adamantly denies that Hamas is stealing aid in Gaza, contrary to reports from Israeli, PA and Jordanian officials, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes has just said something intriguing.

In a report to the UN on the situation in Gaza, where he criticizes both Israel and Hamas,

The Under-Secretary-General also emphasized that Hamas must refrain from any interference with the movement or distribution of humanitarian goods.

Why would this UN official ask them to refrain if they hadn't done anything?

It appears that those on the ground in Gaza know the rules: you don't directly criticize Hamas for doing things it does not admit to doing on its own. Everyone denying that Hamas steals aid happen to be in Gaza under effective Hamas rule; everyone who charges Hamas with these crimes are safely out of its reach.

UPDATE: I just got the official UNRWA denial via email:

There have been reports in the media and elsewhere that UNRWA aid for Gaza is being stolen, confiscated or diverted. These reports are entirely baseless. UNRWA has a system of closely monitoring our aid pipeline; from the port of Ashdod in Israel, our warehouses in the West Bank and the aid arriving in Gaza from Egypt and Jordan, through the crossings into the Gaza Strip, to our storage facilities in Gaza itself and finally to our distribution centres where recipients with authorized cards receive our assistance. At every stage our aid is checked by UNRWA officials. From this monitoring and our constant vigilance, we can say with certainty that no UNRWA aid in Gaza has been stolen, confiscated or diverted. If such eventualities were to occur, UNRWA would be aware and immediately take the issue up with any relevant parties and ensure redress.

Central to our obligation to assist and protect Palestine refugees is the duty to ensure that the relief provided by the international community reaches its intended recipients, namely, Palestinian civilians rendered vulnerable by the closure of Gaza’s borders and by the elusiveness since 1948 of a just and lasting solution to their plight.

I asked some very specific followup questions, which will be posted here if/when I get a response.

Hamas Baby Armor!

From The People's Cube, h/t Israellycool:

PalArab news roundup 1-28-09

The rumors that have popped up in the past day that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad might have some Jewish ancestors - probably cooked up by his political opponents - is resonating in the Fatah-linked Palestine Press Agency. Its readers are not surprised, as they consider all Shiites to be really Jewish.

In PalArab self-death news, a Qalqiya resident was found shot to death in Hebron. A Gaza man was tortured to death by Hamas. And I had not yet counted yesterday's reports that a former B'Tselem worker was also killed by Hamas earlier this month. My latest gross count based on newspaper articles came before that death, so I don't think it is double-counting. So the 2008 PalArab self-death count is now at 41.

The PA's Minister of Social Affairs now counts 63 trucks of aid hijacked by Hamas on the 19th and 20th of this month, something that UNRWA calls "utter nonsense." Which story makes more sense?

Hamas had promised to act like Hezbollah and pay families thousands of dollars in compansation for lost relatives or damaged homes. So far, the families that Hamas paid have received only a fraction of the promised amounts.

Meanwhile, the PA pays - and protects - terrorists

Hamas is being portrayed in the media as representing the "extremists" among Palestinian Arabs and Mahmoud Abbas' PA is consistently viewed as being "moderate." The Gaza operation has seemingly shown that the two sides are polar opposites, and has made many consider that it is now more important than ever to prop up the PA as Israel's only viable peace partner.

A little research shows that the idea of the PA and Fatah being anti-terrorism is a gross error.

It is true that the PA stayed largely on the sidelines during the war, and even seemed to passively support Israel against Hamas. It is equally true that there is no love lost between Hamas and Fatah over Hamas' violent, bloody coup in Gaza in 2007.

However, this antipathy must not be considered proof that the PA leaders are against terrorism.

The JCPA just released an important study about the Western hopes of the PA retaking Gaza and the PA's shortcomings. A couple of salient facts emerge:

In 2009, thousands of "unemployed" Fatah militiamen, such as members of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, still hold weapons that they conceal in their homes. In their current dormant status, they also continue to receive monthly salaries from the Palestinian Authority on the instructions of Abbas and Fayyad,¹⁵ who are eager to avoid conflict with these groups and to protect themselves from the death threats made by the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and Hamas against them.¹⁶

Remarkable and ignored in Western diplomatic circles is that Fayyad has continued to pay the monthly salaries of between 6,000 and 12,000 Hamas Executive Force operatives in Gaza, in line with the 2007 Mecca national unity agreement that brought Hamas under the umbrella of the Palestinian Authority for budgetary purposes.20

It is widely believed in Western diplomatic circles that the PA in Ramallah was only paying the salaries of civil service employees in Gaza to encourage them to stay at home to avoid working with Hamas, especially after Hamas' expulsion of Fatah in June 2007. This is incorrect. The PA, and indirectly the U.S., and international donor countries have continued to pay monthly salaries to Hamas security operatives (Read: terrorists) and their commanders from the PA's $120 million monthly budget allocation to the Gaza Strip.²¹ The height of irony in this regard may have been seen during the Gaza war when Hamas fighters received their salaries from the PA at Gaza City's Shifa Hospital which was immune from IDF fire.²²

Fatah's armed wing, the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, announced on January 19, 2009, that its men in Gaza fought against Israel alongside Hamas, together with Islamic Jihad's Al-Quds Battalions. The Al Aksa Brigades said they fired 102 rockets and 35 mortars, and detonated explosive devices that wounded a number of IDF soldiers.⁷²

Another recent article reveals an even more egregious display of support for terrorists by the PA:

Col. Radi Assidah, the Palestinian Authority's security commander in the Jenin area, said over the weekend that his force is protecting and providing shelter to Islamic Jihad fugitives.

A number of Islamic Jihad activists wanted by Israel recently handed themselves over to the PA security forces in the city out of fear that they would be killed or arrested by Israel, Assidah said.

Assidah said the Islamic Jihad men arrived about five months ago at the headquarters of the PA security forces in Jenin to seek sanctuary until their cases with Israel were resolved.

"They sought refuge with us," he said. "Since then we have been hosting them in our headquarters. They are not prisoners and they are entitled to leave whenever they want."

Assidah also revealed that the PA government of Salaam Fayad was paying the wanted Islamic Jihad men monthly salaries.

The PA is not only indirectly financially supporting terrorism by sending most of its budget to Gaza and freeing Hamas to spend money on weapons, it is also directly paying terrorists from Hamas, Al Aqsa Brigades and Islamic Jihad! And it is actively protecting wanted Islamic Jihad terrorists from jail!

To call this outrageous would be an understatement, yet the West - which is bankrolling the PA to the tune of some $2 billion a year - remains supportive of these corrupt, terror-supporting so-called "moderates."

Ironically, the Gaza operation makes the terrorist-leaning PA seem even more of a strategic partner for "peace," and the EU, US and current Israeli government is encouraging such thinking.

As Western money goes directly to people sworn to murdering Israelis.

Saudi Vice, episode 24: Wild college women

Al Yamamah College, a Saudi Arabian institution of advanced learning, hosted a British University Fair last Sunday. At this fair, representatives of 25 British universities could interact with potential students and tell them all about their programs, and the students could ask questions.

The organizers of the fair might have had good educations, but they didn't think about the moral implications of such a sinful gathering:

* Some of the British representatives were - women!
* Some of the potential Saudi students were - women!

Our heroes at the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice wasted no time to stop this outrage. They barged into the fair, posing as government representatives, and immediately demanded that any Saudi women attendees leave the fair immediately.

They then went to the British whores, I mean, university representatives, and told them to stop all their interactions with the remaining male students.

The British fair organizers caved to the clear moral imperatives that the Muttawa politely demanded of them and told their women to leave the fair.

Thanks to our heroes, Saudi women cannot go abroad to study, where they would inevitably become corrupted by the evil infidels, and virtuous Saudi men cannot be seduced by the loose British women who dare enter Saudi Arabia under the pretense of marketing their universities, those dens of iniquity.

And Saudi Arabia is safe and moral again!

Previous episodes can be seen here.

All you need to know about UNRWA

A former UNRWA legal advisor, James Lindsay, just wrote a report detailing the problems with UNRWA with specific recommendations. His history and analysis of the organization look to be spot on. While he finds few specific examples of UNRWA employees engaging in terrorism, he details the political tilt that UNRWA has been showing towards Hamas based on their statements. For example:

In 2008, UNRWA issued comparably fewer calls for engaging Hamas. Instead, it has focused on criticizing the Israeli blockade of Gaza (which targets all items except humanitarian aid).64 In this regard, the agency echoes the Hamas view of the conflict with Israel. For example, when UNRWA ran out of fuel supplies in late April–early May 2008, it implied that its shortage was caused by the Israelis (who were blocking deliveries to Hamas but not to UNRWA) rather than by Hamas’s actions (which included allowing demonstrators to prevent delivery of fuel to UNRWA as well as intimidation of the Petrol Station Owners Association, which subsequently refused to distribute fuel delivered to Gaza by Israel).65 This propensity to echo Hamas views extends to other issues as well. As mentioned earlier, Commissioner-General AbuZayd has referred to Qassam rockets being fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza as a response to Israeli military incursions.66 Regarding the resolution of the Palestinian refugee problem, UNRWA’s sympathies are not with resettlement or “repatriation” to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, but with “repatriation” to Israel.67 And in May 2008, during an interview with Iranian Press TV, Commissioner-General AbuZayd reportedly proclaimed that Hamas was “free from corruption” and “more popular than ever.”68 Even if true in the sense she meant—by “corruption,” she was presumably referring to theft for personal gain—her claim demonstrated something of a disconnect from earlier reports that Hamas was stealing fuel and items intended as humanitarian assistance.69

Lindsay is harshly critical of UNRWA's prolonging of the "refugee" problem and has specific suggestions to reduce it, as was the original purpose of UNRWA.

The entire report is available for download.

Melanie Phillips goes into much more detail on more recent criticism of UNRWA, including UNRWA denials that Hamas steals aid (a fact touched upon in Lindsay's paper as well, from early 2008.) Phillips is much more negative than Lindsay; Lindsay strikes me as a bit more fair in his criticism. Even so, UNRWA was quite upset at his paper, as he writes in his epilogue - yet they refused to detail any supposed mistakes when he sent it to them last year. (YNet also seems to exaggerate Lindsay's claims.)

It is notable that AP reported today on a UNRWA teacher specifically advocating violence and terrorism to his eight year old students:

In one classroom Saturday, when UNRWA schools reopened, a Palestinian teacher was filmed asking children about their trauma during the war. The unidentified teacher then told the children that Palestinians have to "wage war against them (Israelis) until they leave their land," and asked her students, aged about 8, how they should react.
Two children in the class suggested hurling stones or rockets back at Israel. "Okay," the teacher said, apparently summing up her class' position. "We throw rockets at them, we throw stones at them," she said.

UNRWA denies stories

I just asked Chris Gunness, UNRWA spokesman, two questions:

I would like to follow up on my earlier inquiry about the Jordanian aid truck meant for UNRWA that had been reportedly been hijacked by Hamas. Did you ever confirm that this happened, or that any aid truck was hijacked by Hamas?

Also, I just found a story from Palestine Press Agency from last April that quoted sources as saying that residents of a camp in Khan Younis were complaining about Hamas digging a weapons bunker underneath a UNRWA school there. (http://www.palpress.ps/arabic/index.php?maa=ReadStory&ChannelID=29137 ) Could you comment on whether this was ever investigated and, if so, what was discovered?

He answered:

The stolen aid story is utter nonsense. The bunker thing I have only heard once before and it was wrong.

Completely useless trivia question

If you could have your choice of 100 pounds of dimes, quarters, half-dollars or old Eisenhower dollar coins, which one should you choose?

And how much would they be worth?

-----------------
Joem figured out the answer. From his comment:

Assuming face value, in purely mathematical terms, they would be equivalent, based on:

100 lbs = 45359.237 grams

dime = 2.268 g = 199996.6358 coins = $1,999.66
quarter = 5.670 g = 79998.65432 coins = $1,999.66
half dollar = 11.340 g = 39999.32716 coins = $1,999.66
Eisenhower dollar = 22.68 g = 19999.66358 coins = $1,999.66

But, since you can't have part of a coin, you'd have to round off the decimal of the coins, so you would be best off with dimes, since you would have $1,999.60. With the quarters or half-dollars you would have $1,999.50, and the dollars would leave you with just $1,999.00.

The question that popped in my mind that prompted this was if I had an arbitrarily sized piggy bank, what coin would be best to fill it with? Once I started figuring it out I was surprised to see that the quarter, dime and half-dollar had the same weight/value ratio. The current dollars, of course, are worth more per gram, but on a hunch I looked up the Eisenhower dollar and sure enough it was the exact same ratio as the dime/quarter/half-dollar.

In case you care, 100 lbs of pennies is $181.43, of nickels it is $453.55 and of current dollar coins it is $5,599.

"Martyr posters" suggest a high terrorist death toll

From AP:

Some were killed when tank shells hit their homes. Others died when bombs erased their offices. Still others _ like Islamic Jihad fighter Mohammed Bedawi _ met their end battling Israeli troops.

"The drone hit him," said his cousin, Abed Bedawi, 21, referring to the unmanned surveillance planes often seen in Gaza's skies. "He was laying a bomb for a tank when the drone fired a missile at him."

Now they are all memories, their faces rolling off the presses at the Nibras print shop.

The shop prints customized, full-color posters and banners commemorating the dead _ a Palestinian tradition for people killed by Israel. In the wake of Israel's 22-day Gaza offensive _ which killed nearly 1,300 Palestinians _ the shop is one of Gaza's few businesses experiencing a postwar boom.

...While not comprehensive, the posters enter a new element into the debate over how many militants were killed by Israel. The Israel military says it killed 700, while Hamas and other militant groups say they lost 158. In its final report on the death toll, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights said 223 of the 1,285 killed in the war were fighters.

Although the shop hasn't kept records, al-Hor guesses he has done posters for 350 people since the war's end, about 250 of them militants, suggesting the militant groups lost more fighters than they acknowledge. Other say the groups often claim the dead as members of their movements even when they were not.

Fatah was known for creative accounting of its billions of dollars; Hamas is known for its creative accounting of dead terrorists.

April 2008: Hamas dug weapons tunnels under UNRWA school

Someone doing a search on this site found a story that I had completely forgotten about. Here's the autotranslation from Palestine Press Agency, April 3, 2008:

Hamas militants digging tunnels under the Gaza Strip camps and store weapons and missiles under the UNRWA school in Khan Younis refugee camp

A reliable source told Palestine Press Agency that Hamas was digging tunnels beneath the densely populated Western camp, specifically in the area of the camp Alqtatop in the city of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The source said that "Hamas militants are digging tunnels leading to the school in the camp in the works for the storage of heavy weapons" and missiles Aldo_ka "in the tunnels beneath the school students."

The source added that "Hamas militias, while digging one of the tunnels in the area, broke one of the main water pipes in the camp, which led to the leak of water to the nearby population to the chagrin of the residents."

So the UNRWA could be technically accurate when it says that no Hamas militants are allowed in its schools. In, no; under, perhaps.

UPDATE: The UNRWA denies this story.