UNRWA Finally Recognized for the Failure It Is

"We're concerned about the fungibility of support directed by Canada to the agency, and ultimately where money goes and what it supports."

"There's been a very long track record of not just of internal corruption within UNRWA, but there were a number of UN investigations of the agency and impropriety on the part of their staff -- not just its local-hired staff, but the international UN staff that manages the organization."

"I think it would be great if Canada were to step up and seize opportunities to play a meaningful role [in the future of Israel]. But you can't do that independently -- it requires Canada to be more fully in sync with the approaches, the thinking and the considerations of our like-minded allies, and that's been where we haven't been as intentional as we could be, and perhaps as we should be."

Shimon Koffler Fogel, President/CEO, Centre for Israeli and Jewish Affairs 

"We've seen instances in which the United States and Republican administrations have frozen [funding and also under Stephen Harper [as Prime Minister of Canada prior to the current administration]."

"But the fact now that you have a Democratic administration in Washington, Biden, that froze [funding], and now all the other countries have followed, particularly Canada."

"The evidence has been very clear -- it's something countries have ignored for many years, but now because of the direct connection with the brutality of October 7, there's a recognition that UNRWA cannot continue to function the way it has been up until now."

Gerald Steinberg, president, NGO Monitor, Jerusalem

"What we are doing are taking these allegations very seriously."

"These are disturbing allegations, we have very serious concerns about those allegations, and I expressed Canada's concern over the allegations to the head of UNRWA."

Canadian International Development Minister Ahmed Hussein

Israel's Iron Dome air defence system fires to intercept rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel on Jan. 21. Hamas claimed responsibility for rocket attacks that reached Tel Aviv on Monday. (Leo Correa/The Associated Press)

 

The New York Times on Sunday published an outline of Israel's indictment of UNRWA. It included the information that agency employees were directly involved in the atrocities that took place on October 7; mass murder, rape, torture, mutilation, and the abduction of 240 innocent civilians comprised of children, the elderly, women and men as well as non-Jews and foreign farm workers. 

A day later the Wall Street Journal published an article that led to the declaration that as many as ten percent of the 12,000 Gaza employees of UNRWA have ties to terrorist groups. According to the Israeli dossier, ten of the dozen UNRWA employees identified with links to terror, were revealed to have been implicated directly by participation in the Hamas/Palestinian Islamic Jihad storming of the Israeli border to commit countless acts of sadistic savagery on Israeli civilians.

Of that number of UNRWA employees directly involved, ten were full members of Hamas, while another was affiliated with the Islamic Jihad terror group. Of the employees implicated, seven were employed as teachers at UNRWA schools; facilities that have long been known to incorporate antisemitic and anti-Israel messaging in their school curricula. Two worked for schools in non-teaching positions and the remaining three were a social worker, a clerk and a storeroom manager, according to the New York Times. Stockpiles of weapons were kept in UNRWA schools as they were in hospitals.

The Times also pointed out that one of the implicated employees was a school councillor in Gaza. This man, assisted by his son, abducted an Israeli woman to take her as a hostage back into Gaza. She was wounded, and was kept prisoner in a room of the councillor's home. As well as participating in the taking of hostages, the UNRWA councillor was delegated the responsibility of co-ordinating vehicles and ammunition on October 7. When the Israeli woman was released in a prisoner exchange in November she related her experience as a captive.

 

An Israeli soldier guards the broken fence that Hamas militants crashed through to enter the Kfar Aza kibbutz days earlier, near the border with Gaza, Oct. 15, 2023 in Kfar Aza, Israel. Alexi Rosenfeld/Getty

By Monday of this week fully fifteen nations had announced they had cut their financial support for UNRWA following the American announcement of their decision to do so, late last week. It is worth noting that the Republican administration under Donald Trump had cut its donations to UNRWA in recognition of its links to Hamas terrorism, and in Canada under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, funding by Canada was also discontinued.

In both countries succeeding administrations resumed UNRWA funding. Despite that it was well known how compromised UNRWA was, an utterly failed institution that knowingly allowed its schools to have textbooks glorifying violence against Jews and Israel, portraying the Jewish state as the 'enemy' of Palestinians. In Canada, funding will continue for Palestinian aid funnelling it through other UN agencies; the World Health Organization and the World Food Program.

The problem there is that aid tends to end up in the possession of Hamas, which uses the medicines, food, water, fuel for its own purposes, stockpiling it for their own use. Any that does reach ordinary Palestinians is often 'sold' to them at outrageous cost, further propping up Hamas rule. In other words the West continues through its humane generosity to the suffering Palestinian population, to support and sustain the Palestinians' terrorism oppressor.

Several countries, including Canada, have cut funding to the United Nations relief program for Palestinians after accusations that some workers had links to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. The reduced funding is expected to make aid in Gaza more precarious. CBCNews

"We had so many warning signs about UNRWA. There were studies done by NGO Monitor and others that were rejected by Canadian diplomats, but the evidence is staring them in the face."

"Now, the evidence was so stark that there was clearly documentation that shows members of UNRWA were actually moonlighting as terrorists. It got to the point where they just ignored the evidence, but it's not as if the evidence wasn't there, they didn't want to see it."

"The evidence was hiding in plain sight."

Aurel Braun, professor of international relations, University of Toronto