UNRWA -- Rotten Through to the Core

`UNRWA has taken steps to address allegations regarding individual employees`support for terrorist organizations and demonstrated its willingness to pursue and implement reform of internal processes.`

Statement co-signed by Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Britain

The opening assembly of the Knesset’s winter session. (Yoav Dudkevitch/TPS-IL)

 

And despite having been updated in full by the Israeli government on the UNRWA propensity to hire Gazan Palestinians who just also happen to be members of terrorist groups, Hamas among them, somehow evidence is not proof enough to believe Israel over the word of innocence from the UN body some of whose employees took active participation on the barbaric sadism of October 7 in southern Israel. ``Ìt is not just a few rotten apples ... UNRWA in Gaza is a rotten tree entirely infected with terrorist operatives``, they were assured by the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Yet, even so, condemnation was fairly universal from most of Israel`s democratic allies when the Israeli government made the decision to sever all ties with UNRWA, charging that the UN body is irreparably involved with terrorism. Which failed to give thoughtful pause to Canada`s foreign affairs minister Melanie Joly who threw her support to the agency that Canada continues to support financially with an annual $25 million.

Israel provided ample evidence that UNRWA facilities were appropriated by Hamas for use as command posts. That roughly one hundred Hamas commanders and operatives were on the UNRWA payroll. Israel made it clear that despite its determination to no longer cooperate with the corrupt UN agency which has pleaded ignorance of the content of the Palestinian school curricula which it supplies, and its complicity in demonizing Israel, encouraging Palestinians to reject attempts at peace, it intends to continue work with other UN agencies in the provision of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

 

Hamas terrorist Muhammad Abu Attawi and UNRWA staffer during the attack on a bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

 

Under the former government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Canada`s UNRWA funding had been suspended for the very reason that it was recognized the agency`s agenda was fundamentally anti-Israel and corrupted with institutionalized antisemitism. One of the first acts of the new Trudeau government in foreign affairs had been restoration of federal funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. It had been briefly suspended when proof had initially been given of its employee complicity in October 7, but speedily restored.

International Development Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau had stated that UNRWA would no longer be funding terrorist groups, with UNRWA instituting a `very robust oversight and reporting framework`. Perhaps she knew something that UNRWA was unaware of, since there was much that the agency purported to be unaware of with respect to its links to Palestinian terrorist groups. This, despite a dossier that up to 2,000 UNRWA employees had ties to Palestinian terrorist groups.

Much less that many schools operated by UNRWA served as entrances to the Hamas underground tunnel network, and that over a dozen known UNRWA employees had taken part in the October 7 massacres of Israel civilians. UNRWA social worker Faisal Ali Mussallem An-Naimi was seen on surveillance video dragging the dead body of a murdered victim at Kibbutz Bee`ri, where over 100 civilians were savagely murdered.

 

This image from video shows Faisal Ali Mussalem al-Naami (right) and another terrorist abducting the body of an Israeli on October 7, 2023. (Screenshot: South First Reporters)

 

Canada`s International Development Minister had claimed to have been assured by UNRWA`s pledge they had `taken immediate measures to strengthen oversight, accountability and transparency` -- for what that was worth. UNRWA fired nine of its employees admitting it seemed credible they had participated in the October 7 attacks, after all. Following the death of Hamas`s Lebanon chief Fateh Sherif Abu el-Amin in an Israeli airstrike, it was confirmed by UNRWA that he was one of their employees, a past chairman of the UNRWA Teachers`Association.

UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, stated that el-Amin had been placed on administrative leave for political activities -- but his agency had no idea whatever that in him they had employed a senior Hamas commander. `The specific allegation at the time was that he was a part of the local leadership ... I never heard the word command before`, said Lazzarini.

Months before the October 7 atrocities took place. the German magazine BILD published an investigation of rampant antisemitism and incitement to violence among UNRWA teachers and in their textbooks. 

`Ìn an exercise for students in a 9th grade class in Gaza, a Palestinian arson attack on a bus carrying Jews is referred to as a `barbecue`.

`Germany continues to pay for hatred of Jews.`

Israeli soldiers walk inside an evacuated compound of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in Gaza City. Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP