The Case Against UNRWA
There is overwhelming evidence that UNRWA is complicit with HAMAS
I’ve written before about the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The excellent history, War of Return, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf explains how UNRWA has been central to preventing a peace settlement, ever since Israel won its war of independence in 1949.
In spite of this well documented history, much of the world has seen UNRWA as an essential tool for supporting the Palestinians. They are suspicious of any criticism of UNRWA, because they see it as part of Israel’s efforts to prevent the Palestinians from winning their rights. What those rights are is a matter of debate, but people are often content to leave that fuzzy and just say that UNRWA is essential to protecting them.
Since the beginning of the war, that global consensus has been disrupted. Israel has done a good job of presenting the evidence that UNRWA is hopelessly compromised by its relationship with HAMAS, and that therefore those who want to help the Palestinians must find some other channel through which to send that help. Some of those other channels may not be much better, but that is a battle for a different day. For now, the good news is that UNRWA itself is increasingly seen as indistinguishable from HAMAS.
How has Israel done this? First, Israel has used Hamas’ brazen pride in its own crimes against it. Hamas filmed and streamed many of its atrocities in real time. The perpetrators are indelibly caught on film and the resulting images have been put in front of decision makers in a way that cannot be refuted. The first body of evidence put in front of the UNRWA leadership and the US Administration was so damning that UNRWA immediately fired the twelve members that Israel identified as actively participating in the depravities of October 7.
Presented with the same evidence, the US administration immediately cut funding to UNRWA, as did sixteen other governments and intergovernmental organizations, including Canada. These governments represent the vast majority of the funding tht keeps UNRWA operating. While the UNRWA leadership claimed to be investigating Israeli allegations, the evidence which has now been released to the public is overwhelming. The UNRWA employees are caught on film or located due to their cell phones at the times and places where HAMAS engaged in genocidal attacks on Israel. Other than to confirm the identities of the perpetrators there is not much to investigate.
In this Times of Israel story, the families of victims react to video that shows UNRWA employees driving a UN jeep into Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7 and using it to take away the body of Jonathan Samerano, an Israeli who had been murdered by Hamas. Jonathan Samarano’s mother Ayelet asked, “Does the UN hold my son?”
Image: Ayelet Samarano, mother of murdered Israeli whose body was taken to Gaza in a UN truck. — Times of Israel
As a result of intelligence gathered during Israel’s military campaign against HAMAS in Gaza, Israel has now been able to identify hundreds of UNRWA employees who are also members of HAMAS. On January 29, this story reported on an Israeli dossier that showed that 1200 UNRWA employees, about 10% of all staff, are members of HAMAS. At that time, it also showed that half of all UNRWA employees had a first degree relative who was a HAMAS member.
The United States Administration and the Canadian government have come under intense pressure to reverse their decision to cut off support of UNRWA. In this story from February 9, about a Biden administration representative who met with Arab Americans, the Administration reiterated its position that any decision on resuming aid to UNRWA would have to await the results of an internal UN investigation, which is expected to take weeks.
The campaign to restore UNRWA funding has also relied on claims that the alternative to funding UNRWA is starvation in Gaza. Claims that there is not enough food in Gaza have been disputed by Israel, which claims that HAMAS is looting the aid convoys that enter Gaza daily, and that the UN and other humanitarian agencies have been ineffective in distributing the aid.
For those of us who know the key role UNRWA has played as an obstacle to peace over the decades since Israel’s war of independence, it can only be encouraging to see that the vast majority of funding to the agency remains suspended. Unless some other source is found, UNRWA’s operations will have to be wound up and its staff will ahve to find another way to make a living.
In the months to come, there will be no alternative to finding other channels to get help to the civilian population of Gaza. As HAMAS is increasingly eliminated from its administrative role, it is important that the people who take their place be people who are not compromised by their complicity in terrorism. That means that most former UNRWA workers will be unsuitable.
The possibility that the western governments which have kept UNRWA going will finally turn off the taps, is one of the more hopeful developments we have seen in the course of these harrowing months of massacre, war and international pressure on Israel to abandon its campaign against HAMAS.
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The nature of UNWRA was suspected, if not known already, decades ago, shortly after its creation
Though the UNWRA intimate ties to Hamas may have been common knowledge to many, I hadn't realized it. So this article is wonderful for highlighting this bit of success, that UNWRA has been internationally disgraced, and now no longer has the funding that Hamas has been taking for itself. Thank you for letting me / your readers know.