UNRWA's Linkage With Hamas and October 7

"We have sufficient information in order to take the actions that we're taking -- which is to say, the termination of those nine individuals."

"For nine people, the evidence was sufficient to conclude that they may have been involved in the seventh of October attacks."

"For us, any participation in the attacks is a tremendous betrayal of the sort of work that we are supposed to be doing on behalf of the Palestinian people."  

Farhan Haq, UN spokesman 

"[UNRWA's employees participated in the] raping [of Israelis]."

"Nine of your employees might have participated in the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And no, this isn’t evidence ‘fabricated’ by us. This is straight from the [United Nations] itself."

"Your ‘relief’ agency has officially stooped to a new level of low, and it is time that the world sees your true face."

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson Nadav Shoshani  

 

Although there were long-held suspicions of untoward links between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East and many of their employees that were locally engaged from Gaza, there was always the standard outraged denial of the UNRWA authorities of any complicity between the UN body for Palestine and the terrorist activities of Hamas in Gaza. Even when, during previous military-terrorist clashes when Israel charged that UNRWA schools were being used as weapons depots for Hamas, sanctimonious denials rained forth.

 

In the Israel Defense Forces' invasion of Gaza following the October 7 atrocities against Israelis in southern Israel adjacent the border with Gaza, it was soon enough verified with repeated discoveries unearthing the incredible extent to which UNRWA was complicit when Israeli troops discovered that Gaza UNRWA schools and hospitals acted as operation centres and weapons depots with tunnels snaking under UNRWA institutional buildings. In UNRWA's central logistics hub Hamas operated its own logistics focused on attacking Israel. 

Praise for Hamas's October 7 atrocities carried out by Islamist terrorists gushed on social media from a group of 3,000 teachers with UNRWA in Gaza. Not surprising that Palestinian children attending Gaza UNRWA schools were taught a curriculum of Jew-hate and that Israel was illegally squatting as imperialist colonialists on Palestinian land. Children were being groomed in those schools to hate and to envision their futures as martyrs for the greater glory of Islam and the restoration of 'Palestine' once Israel was wiped off the map.

The United Nations' internal investigation identified a handful of the much larger contingent of Palestinians with Hamas connections. When the public announcement of the completion of the study was pronounced the finding was that there may have been involvement by employees of UNRWA in the Hamas-led vicious savagery of rape, pillage, torture, and massacres that took place by design on October 7.

Israel had been instrumental in shaming and claiming that at minimum 19 of UNRWA's employees had been actively involved in the attack that killed 1,200 Israelis, abducting 240 other infants, women, the elderly and a handful of Israeli soldiers, along with foreign farm workers. Denials came first, until insistent demands by Israel finally led the UN to reluctantly agree to undertake an internal investigation of the allegations of UNRWA employee-Hamas connections.

Israel's initial claims and evidence to back up those claims were convincing enough to persuade Western backers of the United Nations, including top donor, the United States and others, to suspend their funding to the agency. UNRWA appealed to its donors, stressing its inability to deliver aid to Gaza with the withdrawal of funding and most of those withdrawing financial support to UNRWA have since relented and restored its funding.

"I have decided that in the case of these remaining nine staff members, they cannot work for UNRWA."

"All contracts of these staff members will be terminated in the interest of the Agency."

"The agency’s priority is to continue lifesaving and critical services for Palestine refugees in Gaza and across the region, especially in the face of the ongoing war, the instability and risk of regional escalation." 

Philippe Lazzarini, head, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

A man collects trash while wearing a jacket bearing the logo of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), along a street in the city of Jenin in the West Bank. Photo by JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images

Malicious Advice by Antisemitism-Embracing Progressives

"[Israel must] ensure accountability for ongoing acts of violence against Palestinians by extremist settlers, reverse the record expansion of settlements in the West Bank which are illegal under international law, and work towards a two-state solution." 

"Israel must listen to the concerns of the international community."

"The protection of civilians is paramount and a requirement under international humanitarian law. Palestinian civilians cannot be made to pay the price of defeating Hamas. It must end."

"We call on parties to the conflict to agree to the [proposed Biden] deal. Any delay will only see more lives lost."

Joint statement from Canada, Australia, New Zealand

"The Jewish people are not conquerors in their own land -- not in our eternal capital Jerusalem and not in the land of our ancestors in Judea and Samaria."

"No false decision in The Hague will distort this historical truth and likewise the legality of Israeli settlement in all the territories of our homeland cannot be contested."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

Protesters holding a banner "From the river to the sea" at European March organized by a coalition of organizations including the ABP to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, Brussels, Belgium, May 19, 2024. (Photo: Sophie HUGON / Hans Lucas)

The more often and more horrendously Israel is attacked by those whom the international community view as entitled, despite their inhumane, sadistic and savage atrocities, to 'share' geographic space with the very state those attacks target the more isolated Israel becomes. Needless to say, those in the forefront of encouraging Israel to restrain its response to barbaric onslaughts on its civilian population, have never themselves been forced by circumstances beyond their control to confront the reality of a savage neighbour for whom slaughter of innocents is viewed as a right by 'oppressed' people.

 

Oppressed simply as a result of the neighbour endlessly targeted for bloodshed, forced by those circumstances to maintain a military vigil to apprehend terrorist attacks in a never-ending effort to protect its population. A neighbour whose leaders have never missed an opportunity to spurn opportunities to have a state of their own which would call upon them to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state and an obligation to put a halt to assaulting it in efforts to pry the state loose from its geography.

 

For four thousand years evidence links Judaean life with the ancestral lands that have become a controversial international concern. The plan for Partition allotted both Jews and Arabs their own particular portions on what was traditionally Jewish geographic territory. Jewish leaders were willing to surrender their quest for the greater proportion of the land that represented their heritage, while the Arabs who took on the mantle of 'Palestinians' (nomenclature dating from the Roman Era to identify land dedicated to ancestral Jewish land) spurned the opportunity to accept their portion.

 

They have spurned it ever since. The West speaks of the solution inherent in the 'two-state' condition of Partition, as a fair division of land enabling two states to live side-by-side. Palestinians speaking to the West agree, while conspiring among themselves, adhere to a 'one-state' solution; envisioning Israel absent the land that would revert in its totality to their sponsorship as 'Palestine' engulfing both areas, with a Jewish state no longer a reality.

 

Yet the prime minister of Canada and his Australian and New Zealand counterparts feel justified in pressing Israel to agree to a 'compromise' reflecting their idea of a solution. In reality what they impress upon Israel is their agenda that the Jewish State set aside the horrors of October 7 in favour of supporting an official, internationally approved Palestinian State to be established as a neighbour, one which will inevitably return to its 'resistance' mode against the presence of Israel to fulfill its larger scheme of the one-state solution.

 

The International Court of Justice non-binding opinion representing condemnation of Israel's supervision of lands captured 57 years ago, handily neglects to consider that this was accomplished in defending the state from a series of  neighbourly military attacks to unseat it from the region, and all failed. In no other part of the world, by no other country, would it be seen as 'illegal' internationally when a country in defending itself from military aggression takes possession of disputed land; borders historically have seen alterations and have never been internationally challenged.

All three Western countries are adamant in their renewed calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. So in that event, Hamas can reconstitute itself, rearm, recruit, and repeat -- as it promised was its intention -- the Satanic acts of unrestrained inhumanity that it demonstrated on October 7, 2023 it was so capable of, and revelling in, an extent of bloodletting that was never sufficiently repugnant to satiate the terrorists' appetite for torture, mutilation, excruciating pain and ghoulish acts of sexual depravity before murdering their victims.

These three lily-livered leaders of once-credible countries outperform themselves in the depths of their concern for humanity expressed toward a nation whose dedication to human rights far exceeds their own, whose system of justice is more than fully capable of punishing miscreants of its own in the event of their civilly-unapproved actions, and whose military has done more to protect civilian lives than any other nation's military in history. 

"Israel will continue to defend itself against hostile attacks on seven fronts, all directed by Iran through its proxies in the region."

"We call upon Canada, as a nation that values international law and institutions that uphold it, to do all it can to prevent those who try to disrupt global order from achieving their goals."

Israeli Ambassador to Canada, Iddo Moed

Palestinian Terrorist Groups Excelling in Committing Atrocities

More than 360 civilians were killed at the Supernova music festival on 7 October  EPA

"[The terrorists committed a crime against humanity because they launched a] widespread attack directed against a civilian population."

"The killing of civilians and taking of hostages were all central aims of the planned attack, and not actions that occurred as an afterthought or as a plan gone awry or as isolated acts, for example, perpetrated by unaffiliated Palestinians from Gaza." 

"That [the claim that random Palestinian civilians took part in the attack] was a claim that was made very early on, it was made by Hamas in order to distance its own fighters from the abuses, and it was made by Israel to justify attacks on civilians in Gaza."

"The intentional killing and  hostage-taking of civilians was planned and highly co-ordinated."

Belkis Wille, associate director, Human Rights Watch

Palestinian militants move towards the border fence with Israel from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 7.   Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

 

It has taken almost a year, but finally Human Rights Watch -- never a friend of Israel -- issued a report affirming the sadistic savagery visited upon Israeli civilians on October 7 of 2023 was a deliberately planned mass slaughter of devastating proportions. Palestinian terrorists killed some 1,200 people, kidnapping over 250 people of all ages, taking them to Gaza as human pawns, some 120 of whom remain in Hamas' hands.

Human Rights Watch has declared that the attack met the international legal definition for crimes against humanity and war crimes. Still in Gaza are 115 of the 251 abducted during the fateful early October day of dread infamy. Still being held for 'trade' agreements are 42 dead Israelis, among them soldiers captured by the terrorists on their crossing into southern Israel, who manned Israeli border observation posts. 

According to the HRW report, five different Palestinian armed terrorist groups engaged in war crimes, violating international law by killing, torturing, taking hostages, looting and committing crimes involving sexual and gender-based violence, primarily the mutilation of girls and women before they were raped and murdered. All the groups were led by the Hamas Qassam Brigades.

 

Photographs of some of those taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel are seen in Tel Aviv, Israel on October 18.   Leon Neal/Getty Images

 

HRW researchers relied on a report by a special United Nations envoy who had found "reasonable grounds" to believe Hamas committed sexual violence during the attack, while claiming its own researchers had been unable to independently verify claims of sexual violence and rape. Somewhat akin to Medecines sans Frontieres claiming that since it had not actually witnessed these atrocities, it could not subscribe to their condemnation.

At 230 pages in length, the report focused on the October 7 attacks without examining actions taken by Hamas or Israel linked to the subsequent war brought to Gaza. As the terrorists launched a "widespread attack directed against a civilian population, theirs was a crime against humanity". HRW's Belkis Wille had arrived in Israel mere days following the October attack, spending  a month in research with local staff.

Palestinian terror attacks at 26 civilian sites were examined by the researchers, who spoke with close to a hundred survivors, along with 50 experts and first responders to the violent tragedy. The conclusion was reached by the researchers that following their review of hundreds of photos and videos the majority of the Palestinians taking part in the atrocities were terror-group affiliated, not random civilians who had taken advantage of the open fence.

 

A family photo hangs on the wall inside a burned-out house in Kibbutz Be'eri in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 assault by Palestinian armed groups on southern Israel, October 14, 2023. Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times

Footage of the events observing the terror operatives included those who wore civilian clothing, communicating via walkie-talkies, taking orders from commanders, which led the researchers to conclude the operatives who carried out the worst abuses, particularly in the early hours of the attack, belonged to 'armed factions'. 

Hamas issued a nine-page response to the report, elucidating that the Qassam Brigades had planned and led the attack, and the Hamas political movement was not involved; operatives, they claimed were instructed to avoid targeting civilians. A claim that even HRW found "false". The organization concluded their report by calling on Hamas to release the 120 hostages immediately, along with bodies of hostages remaining in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers inspect houses that were destroyed in a battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants on Saturday's Hamas attack on a kibbutz in Be'eri, Israel, on October 14.

Amir Levy/Getty Images

Restraining Anti-Israel University Protests -- Too Little, Too Late

"[Our campuses remain open; protest activities] must not interfere with the ability of students, faculty, librarians and staff to learn, teach, research and work."

"Our preference is to start with dialogue. Those who contravene university policy or the law risk the consequences set out in various laws and policies such as the Code of Student Conduct, which could include suspension."

McGill University Statement

"Everybody in Quebec has to respect laws, and right now these encampments are illegal."

"We have to respect the law. And I want to make sure that the police officers ensure the laws are respected."

"[The Quebec Superior Court rejection of a request from two McGill students wanting the protesters barred from within 100 metres of the school; however] if  you read the decision, they say clearly that [the encampment is] illegal."

"We're all worried about what's happening in Gaza. People can show their [position] in demonstrations -- these are legal. But they cannot have encampments on a university site."

Quebec Premier Francois Legault

Police stand between counter-protesters and a protest encampment in support of Palestinians, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at McGill University’s campus in Montreal, Quebec, Canada May 2, 2024. REUTERS/Peter McCabe

 

Those in authority in government and university administration must surely be aware that appeasing those who insist with little experience and a lot of arrogance that they are entitled to disrupt and disengage from the social weal in executing protests relating to a foreign country -- that also happens to be a bastion of democracy in a region of autocrats, dictators, kingdoms and oil sheikhdoms where human rights and democracy are absent, espouse an agenda inimical to the values of the West -- and reason will not prevail. 

 

Submitting to their demands results in greater demands all of which run counter to reason.

"We have many, many students, many undergraduate students, graduate students from all kinds of backgrounds, all kinds of religions ... all here."

"We also have a number of faculty who are supporting us."

Erin Mackey, protest organizer, UofT Occupy for Palestine

What she failed to mention, however, is that many unauthorized personnel, outsiders from the universities under siege by 'pro-Palestine' orgies of expressions of contempt and hate for the State of Israel, and determined to make life as miserable as possible for Jewish students on campuses across Canada. Outsiders representing professional agitators linked to Muslim extremist groups and terrorist groups in the Middle East from whom they take their marching orders as loyal and rabid Jew-haters and enemies of Israel.

 

Protesters gather in an encampment set up on the University of Toronto campus in Toronto on Thursday, May 2, 2024. The demonstration has entered its second day.peaceful. (Christopher Katsarov/The Canadian Press)

 

From years of celebrating the 'Nakba' of Israel's founding, in the name of free speech on university campuses, and the steady infiltration of Muslim students studying in Canada eventually taking up positions on university faculties planning and supporting annual BDS events and spreading the canard of Israeli genocide on Palestinians, the suborning of students' minds, empty of historical facts and actual events, prepared to take up the popular chants of 'from the river to the sea' to be part of a brave new movement linking to antisemitism, the stage was set for today's massive anti-Israel protests.

In Toronto, as in Montreal and Vancouver and elsewhere across Canada, tents, banners and Palestinian flags have cropped up festooning campuses; signage crude and baldly antisemitic stating Jews not permitted entry on university grounds where 'pro-Palestine' agitators harass, insult and threaten Jewish students, society looks on passively and governments at every level claim 'this is not who we are', while the landscape of encampments and calls for Jews to 'go back to Poland', presumably to the death camps ring out.

In Toronto, informed by the school administration that the tents and protesters, some sporting keffiyehs, are given until 10 p.m. to vacate the encampment, little interest is evinced; they have no plans to leave. They have been given written notice acknowledging the university respects the right to assemble and protest but such unauthorized activities as encampments "are considered trespassing". The protesters are not the least bit impressed. Why should they be? Their actions and activities have had no pushback in the past.

Midweek ,a request from two McGill Jewish students seeking a judicial assent in barring protesters at the encampment from within 100 metres of any of the university's buildings were informed their request was rejected. A counter-protest by pro-Israel groups was scheduled for the sixth day of the encampment's presence, bringing a police presence to monitor proceedings. 

Members of the Jewish community counter-protest outside a protest encampment set up in support of Palestinians, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at McGill University’s campus in Montreal, Quebec, Canada May 2, 2024. REUTERS/Peter McCabe

Delegitimizing The Citizenship Rights of Canadian Jews

"The murder and maiming of over 1,200 people, the taking of over 250 hostages -- 134 of which remain in captivity and continue to suffer as we speak: make no mistake, that's motivated by antisemitism."

"Not because I say so, but because the perpetrators say so."

"They've repeated it, and said they'll continue October 7 over and over again until they carry out our [sic] genocidal mission -- that is the message of Hamas, and what their goals are."

"We are calling on the Canadian government to take action, to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization, and to impose Magnitsky sanctions against the leaders of Hamas, of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and of the various businesses and organizations that funnel them money."

Brandon Silver, human rights lawyer, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights policy director

Israeli Ambassador to Canada Iddo Moed, Irwin Cotler and Brandon Silver (left to right) listen to speakers talking about family and the situation in Israel on Oct. 30, 2023, in Ottawa. Photo by Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press

A rally organized by the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights based in Montreal, brought together relatives of Canadians whom the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas had raped, tortured, slaughtered and/or taken hostage into Gaza where they remain imprisoned and tormented. The gathering on Parliament Hill called out to the RCMP for an investigation to be launched into the massacre of Canadians on October 7 by a terrorist group on Canada's terror watch list.

Quoting the Hamas charter, human rights Lawyer Brandon Silver noted it calls specifically for the destruction of Israel alongside the mass murder of Jews, wherever they happen to be domiciled -- and -- he pointed out, "Including here in Canada". Given the public demonstrations by those who label themselves Palestinian supporters who in essence promote the sentiment that Hamas's sadistic, planned savagery was justifiable, the notion that sleeper agents for Hamas have infiltrated Canadian society is not too far-fetched.

These are committed Jew-haters who infest the public with blatant falsehoods about Israel and the Israel Defense Forces, in their campaign to enlist not only Arab-Canadians, other Muslims and Canadian Palestinians in their viral and grotesque campaign to sow hatred and division between groups of Canadians, but to attract others to their sordid messages of antisemitism, holding Canadian Jews responsible for the ground and air offensive in Gaza through their support of Israel's defense-and-security rather than naming the true instigator of the conflict, Hamas.

 

Ashley Waxman Bakshi advocating for Israel's hostages taken by Hamas. Photo by @ashleywaxmanbakshi/Instagram

Playing on latent antisemitism among the public, stirring it to fiery rhetoric of 'final solutions','Palestine will be free', 'Intifada', 'From the River to the Sea', all of which link to the destruction of Israel and the death of Jews by popular acclaim, popular support among these ravening crowds targets Canadian Jews shouting for them to 'go back to Europe', threatening their presence in Canada, despite that Jews have been Canadian citizens for countless generations.

The Centre For Human Rights has alerted the Government of Canada -- which has been obliviously unresponsive to the ongoing threats levelled against Canadian Jews -- of 60 individuals and entities that have been linked to the terrorist flood out of Gaza into southern Israel which led to the deaths of 1,400 Israelis and foreign farm workers, the mass rapes of Israeli girls and women, the hostage-taking of 240 frail elderly men and women, children and infants.

Visiting family in her hometown of Ottawa at the time of the October 7 attacks, Jacqui Rivers Vital who lives now in Jerusalem spoke of her daughter Adi Vital-Kaploun whom Hamas terrorists murdered in the presence of her three-year-old and six-month-old children, in her home. Adi's body was booby-trapped by the terrorists so that any rescuers would be killed, as well. The children were taken hostage, but finally left at the border.

Tiferet Lapidot, 23, daughter of Canadian parents, was kidnapped by Hamas at the Supernova music festival. "I was there when she was born" said her aunt Galit Lapidot. "She was my sunshine, I loved her like a daughter". Tiferet had called her mother from the festival as Hamas went about raping, shooting and murdering the young men and women at the music festival. "Tiferet asked, 'what shall I do? I'm running and hiding behind the bushes'", her aunt explained. A week later, her body was found.

Others speaking to reporters from the Parliament Hill rally told their own stories, like Iris Weinstein relating that her mother, 70, Judih Weinstein was taken hostage by Hamas when she was out for a morning walk with her husband on that fateful day. In late December both of the elderly people were confirmed dead. "They said there were hundreds of rockets over their heads", recalled Iris Weinstein, after her mother Judih last communicated with her daughter.

According to other reports from the kibbutz, Hamas terrorists had been garbed in uniforms of the Israel Defense Forces. There were reports by residents that terrorists went door-to-door, killing indiscriminately. They shot civilians and children in their homes, lighting the houses on fire afterward.
"Almost fifty percent, if not more, of the houses are completely burnt", said Iris Weinstein. "Massacring my hometown."

 

Pro-Palestinian protesters wave flags facing a pro-Israel demonstration in front of a synagogue hosting "the Great Israeli Real Estate Event," in Thornhill, Ont., Thursday, March 7, 2024. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press)

An outcry of disbelief, betrayal and anger among the Jewish community of Canada, and Jewish communities worldwide rang out at the Parliament of Canada, led by the Liberal Government of Justin Trudeau, voting for an NDP motion that before being altered by the Liberals, called for Canada to recognize Palestinian statehood. Sharren Haskel, born in Canada, now an Israeli politician and member of the Knesset, reacted with concern and outrage to the passage of the motion.

"You have failed to support Israel at a time of deep trauma, war, and need."

"Your response -- as articulated in a motion passed, resoundingly, in Canada's Parliament yesterday, undermines the legitimacy of Israel's inherent right to defend itself against brutal assaults by Hamas, an Islamist death cult which Canada lists as a terrorist organization." 

Sharren Haskel, Israeli-Canadian, Knesset member

York Regional Police and Toronto Police were present outside of the Beth Avraham Yoseph of Toronto synagogue on Thursday. (Chris Langenzarde/CBC)