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Ignoring UNRWA’s Problems Will Only Condemn Future Generations of Palestinians
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
It’s common knowledge that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) is a deeply problematic organization, and its decades long collusion with terrorists has been well-documented.
UNRWA’s staff have been caught espousing and encouraging terrorism, and its facilities have been used to hide terror infrastructure, including recent revelations that a Hamas command center was found underneath the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza City, and was sharing its electricity.
Yet, despite this well-publicized and publicly known information, much of the world has turned a blind eye, preferring to maintain the false and lazy narrative of UNRWA being an organization whose sole purpose is to look after Palestinian refugees and their descendants, instead of admitting that UNRWA actively perpetuates the Palestinian conflict.
But after revelations in late January of the direct involvement of at least 12 UNRWA personnel in the October 7 massacre, and a further revelation that at least 10% of its 13,000 Gaza workforce were members of terrorist groups, many countries could no longer ignore these issues and correctly decided to suspend funding to the UN body organization.
During a UN Security Council session on UNRWA, its leader, Philippe Lazzarini, and Israel’s UN Ambassador, Gilad Erdan, traded barbs, with Lazzarini blaming Israel for the Gaza death toll and accusing Israel of leading an “insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s [aid and social services] operations,” and Erdan responding that UNRWA is “one of the weapons” used to try to destroy the Jewish state and is the “single biggest obstacle to a solution.”
In early February, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, under growing pressure to secure UNRWA funding, was forced to appoint what he called an “Independent Review Group” to investigate if UNRWA was doing “everything within its power to ensure neutrality and to respond to allegations of serious breaches when they are made.”
Yet the group’s independence was immediately called into question, with NGO UN Watch labeling the entire investigation “rigged.”
The head of the group appointed was Catherine Colonna, a former French Foreign Minister, who stated on February 22 that the purpose of the review was to “enable donors, the largest among them … to regain confidence … in the way UNRWA operates.”
That means the investigation was never about investigating the workings of UNRWA, but about securing the confidence of donors to keep the money pouring in. And with France being one of UNRWA’s biggest backers, both financially and politically, it’s difficult to see just how independent she could be in this investigation. Colonna had even commended UNRWA for its work shortly before her appointment.
Helping Colonna in this “investigation” was the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI) research center, which published a report in 2022 on UNRWA which denied accusations that the agency “instigates violence… through school curricula with an anti-Israeli edge.” The lead author of that report was Kjersti G. Berg, who published a book in 2023 arguing in favor of the Palestinian “right of return,” which would effectively mean the destruction of Israel as a democratic, Jewish-majority state.
With so-called “independent” credentials such as this, it came as no surprise that the “Independent Review Group” delivered its report and verdict on April 22, claiming that the UN agency had “robust” neutrality mechanisms and that Israel hadn’t provided any evidence that agency staff were members of terrorist organizations.
Although the review did find that biased social-media posts and antisemitic content in some textbooks did “constitute a grave violation of neutrality,” and acknowledged that UNRWA must do more to ensure its employees are politically neutral, it also claimed a significant screening process already existed in order to “ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles.”
Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer disputed this, calling the report a “whitewash” that ignored the severity of the problem, because it did not deal with the enormous scope of Hamas’ infiltration of UNRWA, which is so deep that “it is no longer possible to determine where UNRWA ends, and Hamas begins.”
This lack of any significant critical findings was in contrast to the European Parliament, which, in early April, denounced and condemned UNRWA’s role in inciting violence and antisemitism in a series of resolutions stating that Palestinian school textbooks (created by the Palestinian Authority) were responsible for “hateful contents encouraging violence, spreading antisemitism and inciting hatred” against Jews and Israel.
This echoed a previous denouncement back in April 2021, when the Parliament adopted a resolution condemning UNRWA for the “hate speech and violence taught in Palestinian school textbooks.”
Yet despite this, the EU, along with most donor countries, except for the US, have now resumed funding to UNRWA.
UNRWA remains a serious problem, and by ignoring and whitewashing the evidence of its collusion with Hamas, future Palestinian generations will continue to be condemned to an education indoctrinated with hatred and violence rather than peaceful coexistence.
Justin Amler is a Policy Analyst at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).
The post Ignoring UNRWA’s Problems Will Only Condemn Future Generations of Palestinians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Shifts One of Two Aircraft Carriers Away From Middle East
The world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford steams alongside USNS Laramie (T-AO-203) during a fueling-at-sea in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in this photo taken on Oct. 11, 2023 and released by the US Navy on Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: US Naval Forces Central Command / US 6th Fleet / Handout via REUTERS
One of two US aircraft carrier strike groups deployed to the Middle East in part to deter Iran from carrying out a threatened attack against Israel has departed the region, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The decision to end the dual-carrier presence came nearly three weeks after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group to remain in the Middle East, even after the arrival of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to replace it.
The Roosevelt has now departed the Middle East and is headed to the Asia-Pacific region, Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told a news briefing.
Austin’s order for the Roosevelt to stay in place came on Aug. 25, as Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel and Israel‘s military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to thwart a larger attack, in one of the biggest clashes in more than 10 months of border warfare.
Officials have been concerned that Iran might make also good on its threats to carry out an attack against Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran in July.
Ryder played down the idea that the United States was no longer concerned about potential Iranian action and said the decision was based on the Navy’s fleet management.
“Iran has indicated that they want to retaliate against Israel. And so we’re going to continue to take that threat very seriously,” Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon.
Iran has vowed a severe response to the July killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which took place as he visited Tehran and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has been seeking to limit the fallout from the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, now approaching its one-year anniversary. The conflict has leveled huge swathes of Gaza, triggered border clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group and drawn in Yemen’s Houthis.
“We remain intensely focused on working with regional partners to de-escalate tensions and deterring a wider regional conflict,” Ryder said.
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Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted
Protests also occurred at multiple screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The post Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism
SUNY Purchase College President Milagros Peña attends the 52nd annual commencement at Westchester County Center in White Plains, New York, May 17, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase president Milagros Peña will leave office at the end of this academic year, ending a four-year tenure that was derailed by pro-Hamas demonstrations on the campus.
According to The Journal News, Peña announced her “retirement” in a letter to the campus community and further discussed the decision at a convocation event held earlier this month.
“After considerable reflection and discussion about what is best for me and my family, I informed Chancellor [John B. King, Jr.] over the summer that this 2024-2025 academic year will be my last year as president,” Peña wrote, according to excerpts of the letter shared by the local news outlet. “I have mixed emotions about my decision to retire as president after the spring semester, because, though we still face challenges as a community, we have accomplished a great deal together and our shared mission of providing access to a high quality, transformative public education is as important as ever.”
Appointed to office 2020, Peña became a target of far-left faculty last academic year when she authorized the clearing of an illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which, the school’s newspaper reported at the time, led to clashes between law enforcement and pro-Hamas students who refused to obey orders to leave the area. An estimated 70 students were arrested, The Phoenix Purchase has said, and at least one professor was detained for obstructing justice.
However, Peña was inconsistent as a policy maker. In an account of her responses to campus antisemitism published by The Algemeiner on Wednesday, SUNY Purchase alumna Esti Heller said the president ignored numerous supplications for increased security for Jewish life on campus after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Peña was unresponsive, even after someone vandalized an Israeli flag and desecrated a sukkah, a hut built for the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Later, Peña reversed course in her handling of the pro-Hamas protesters, Heller said, acceding to their demands for “ethical investing,” amnesty for students charged with violating the code of conduct, and public disclosure of the school’s financial decisions.
Ultimately, Peña lost a no-confidence vote on June 3 in which 87 percent of the voting faculty called for her to leave office.
“While disappointed by the resolution, I am committed to continuing to take part in conversations with stakeholders on and off campus about many of the issues raised and look forward to engaging with the faculty, staff, and students about our shared goals and the best way of moving forward as a community,” Peña told the Purchase following the vote.
Now, three months later, Peña has granted faculty their wish, becoming the third university president in New York State this year to leave office after being criticized for mismanaging a series of crises, antisemitic incidents, and riotous demonstrations. Last month, Minouche Shafik resigned as president of Columbia University after her administration’s credibility crumbled amid revelations of antisemitic conversations between administrators and a partisan investigation of a pro-Israel professor. In May, Cornell University president Martha Pollack resigned after weeks of convulsive protests and disruptions on campus caused by mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty.
In Wednesday’s announcement, Peña pledged to make her final months in office productive.
“We still have a lot to do before I step away, and I look forward to working together to ensure that Purchase College continues to thrive,” she said. “While there are challenges ahead, I feel confident that we have the flexibility, the skills, and the determination to continue to provide an excellent education for our students and to make progress as an institution that is continually evolving, while safeguarding our community and living up to our values during this extraordinary time.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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