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The Washington Post Covers for UNRWA, Again
Palestinians pass by the gate of an UNRWA-run school in Nablus in the West Bank. Photo: Reuters/Abed Omar Qusini.
A United Nations agency has been caught helping Hamas. The Washington Post, however, is here to help both the genocidal terrorist group and the corrupt organization that shares its ultimate objective: the destruction of the Jewish state.
A Jan. 30, 2024 Post column entitled “Biden’s cutoff of Palestinian aid is inhumane and strategically stupid” was a veritable whitewash of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), whose employees took part in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of Israel, the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.
On Jan. 26, Philippe Lazzarini, UNRWA’s commissioner-general, acknowledged that Israeli authorities had provided the organization with “information about the alleged involvement of several UNRWA employees in the horrific attacks on Israel.” Lazzarini stated that he had “immediately terminated the contracts of these staff members.”
Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin noted that “12 U.N. employees in Gaza” allegedly participated in the attack, noting that, “if found guilty” they “deserve no sanctuary and no mercy.” He also said that “UNRWA has big questions to answer about this and other instances of some of its 13,000 employees seeming support for violence against Israelis.”
But Rogin declined to elaborate on what some of these “other instances” were. No additional facts were given. Instead, Rogin devoted most of his column to calling Biden administration cuts to UNRWA “cruel” and counterproductive. Cuts to UNRWA, he warned, “will have ripple effects that will make solving all of the Middle East’s problems more difficult.”
It is far from certain whether solving “all of the Middle East’s problems” should be a US objective, let alone whether that is obtainable.
However, what it is certain is that eight decades after the end of World War II, UN employees helped carry out the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. And far from being outliers, their behavior is reflective of UNRWA itself. The UN agency’s support for murdering Jews is endemic. It is also extensively documented. And Rogin declined to provide examples that were already in the public domain.
Indeed, as The Wall Street Journal reported before Rogin’s column ran, intelligence reports indicate that no fewer than a dozen UNRWA employees “had connections” to the Oct. 7 massacre, and at least six took part in the attack. At least two others helped kidnap Israelis, and others “were tracked to sites where Jewish civilians were shot and killed.” The Journal also noted that “others coordinated logistics for the assault, including procuring weapons.” UNRWA vehicles and facilities were also used.
Far from a case of “a few bad apples,” as both UNRWA and its apologists in the press would have the world believe, UNRWA’s complicity is extensive. Intelligence estimates shared with the Journal indicate that no fewer than 1,200 of its employees in Gaza “have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, about half have close relative who belong” to these US-designated terror groups.
Put another way: how many UN employees aiding and abetting the systemic slaughter of Jews is too many before US taxpayers quit the footing the bill?
Indeed, as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA) has documented, UNRWA’s terror ties are not only extensive, but they’ve long been public knowledge. In 2014, for example, terrorists were caught using UNRWA facilities to launch attacks. The UN’s own internal investigation acknowledged as much. And then the UN did what it does best — nothing. No real changes were made, and the problem went unaddressed.
Indeed, a 2014 report by the Center for Near East Policy research found that Hamas and Islamic Jihad “control the UNRWA stations in Gaza.” Two years earlier, in 2012, “UNRWA in Gaza elected Hamas to all 11 seats in UNRWA’s teachers’ union.”
All of this, of course, is as unsurprising as it is disturbing.
UNRWA’s core mission is the destruction of the Jewish state. While all of the world’s other refugee populations fall under the jurisdiction of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, UNRWA is the only entity devoted to a sole category: “Palestinian refugees.” Uniquely, UNRWA’s definition of what constitutes a “refugee” includes people who are generations removed from the 1948 War of Independence, people who are citizens of new states, and people who live in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip — places that Palestinians themselves claim as part of a future Palestinian state.
In contrast to the UNHCR, UNRWA’s definition of “refugee” is not aid dependent. The UNHCR seeks to settle refugees — that is its mission. By contrast, UNRWA seeks to perpetuate the Israel-Islamist conflict, not only by actively aiding Hamas but by maintaining the fiction that one can be a millionaire, American-born model like Gigi Hadid and be a “refugee.”
According to UNRWA’s doctrine, these “refugees” will maintain their “refugee” status until they settle in Israel, a land that many weren’t even in born in. The sole purpose of this doctrine is the destruction of the Jewish state.
UNRWA perpetuates the conflict in other key ways. In addition to being massively corrupt — pound for pound UNRWA receives more money than UNHCR despite dealing with far fewer refugees — the organization is openly antisemitic. As a recent UN Watch report revealed, antisemitism is rife among UNRWA teachers and staff.
Indeed, entire books, such as 2020’s The War of Return by Einat Wilf and Adi Schwarz, have extensively — and irrefutably — profiled the pernicious role that UNRWA plays.
Nor can UNRWA’s promises of an “investigation” be trusted. As Eitan Fischberger documented, several of the groups chosen by UNRWA to review UNRWA have expressed support for groups like Al-Haq, the legal arm of the Popular Front For Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), itself a terrorist group.
All of this important context is omitted in the Post’s column, which calls for American taxpayers to keep funding a UN Agency that both condones, and commits, the murder of Jews.
But Rogin needn’t worry. UNRWA USA is still a 501 (c)3, capable of receiving tax-deductible donations. And more importantly, UNRWA continues to receive copious funds from the US. As Victoria Coates and Brent Sadler of the Heritage Foundation revealed, “99.8 percent of U.S. funding to UNRWA has already been delivered, leaving only .2 percent to be ‘paused’ by the Biden administration.”
Both Hamas and The Washington Post should be happy: UNRWA will almost certainly keep functioning just as it always has.
The writer is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
The post The Washington Post Covers for UNRWA, Again first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Strikes Houthi Targets in Yemen
Smoke rises after Israeli strikes near Sanaa airport, in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Israel struck multiple targets linked to the Iran-aligned Houthi terrorist group in Yemen on Thursday, including Sanaa International Airport, and Houthi media said three people were killed.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he was about to board a plane at the airport when it came under attack. A crew member on the plane was injured, he said in a statement.
The Israeli military said that in addition to striking the airport, it also hit military infrastructure at the ports of Hodeidah, Salif, and Ras Kanatib on Yemen’s west coast. It also attacked the country’s Hezyaz and Ras Kanatib power stations.
Houthi-run Al Masirah TV said two people were killed in the strikes on the airport and one person was killed in the port hits, while 11 others were wounded in the attacks.
There was no comment from the Houthis, who have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as acts of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said following the attacks that Israel will continue its mission until it is complete: “We are determined to sever this terror arm of Iran’s axis.”
The prime minister has been strengthened at home by the Israeli military’s campaign against Iran-backed Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon and by its destruction of most of the Syrian army’s strategic weapons.
The Israeli attacks on the airport, Hodeidah and on one power station, were also reported by Al Masirah TV.
Tedros said he had been in Yemen to negotiate the release of detained UN staff detainees and to assess the humanitarian situation in Yemen.
“As we were about to board our flight from Sanaa … the airport came under aerial bombardment. One of our plane’s crew members was injured,” he said in a statement.
“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters from where we were — and the runway were damaged,” he said, adding that he and his colleagues were safe.
There was no immediate comment from Israel on the incident.
More than a year of Houthi attacks have disrupted international shipping routes, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys that have in turn stoked fears over global inflation.
The UN Security Council is due to meet on Monday over Houthi attacks against Israel, Israel‘s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said on Wednesday.
On Saturday, Israel‘s military failed to intercept a missile from Yemen that fell in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, injuring 14 people.
The post Israel Strikes Houthi Targets in Yemen first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Controversial Islamic Group CAIR Chides US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew for Denying Report of ‘Famine’ in Gaza
US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew. Photo: Alchetron.
The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) has condemned US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew for casting doubt on a new report claiming that famine has gripped northern Gaza.
The controversial Muslim advocacy group on Wednesday slammed Lew for his “callous dismissal” of the recent Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) report accusing Israel of inflicting famine on the Gaza Strip. The organization subsequently asserted that Israel had perpetrated an ethnic cleansing campaign in northern Gaza.
“Ambassador Lew’s callous dismissal of this shocking report by a US-backed agency exposing Israel’s campaign of forced starvation in Gaza reminds one of the old joke about a man who murdered his parents and then asked for mercy because he is now an ‘orphan,’” CAIR said in a statement.
“To reject a report on starvation in northern Gaza by appearing to boast about the fact that it has been successfully ethnically cleansed of its native population is just the latest example of Biden administration officials supporting, enabling, and excusing Israel’s clear and open campaign of genocide in Gaza,” the Washington, DC-based group continued.
On Monday, FEWS Net, a US-created provider of warning and analysis on food insecurity, released a report detailing that a famine had allegedly taken hold of northern Gaza. The report argued that 65,000-75,000 individuals remain stranded in the area without sufficient access to food.
“Israel’s near-total blockade of humanitarian and commercial food supplies to besieged areas of North Gaza Governorate” has resulted in mass starvation among scores of innocent civilians in the beleaguered enclave, the report stated.
Lew subsequently issued a statement denying the veracity of the FEWS Net report, slamming the organization for peddling “inaccurate” information and “causing confusion.”
“The report issued today on Gaza by FEWS NET relies on data that is outdated and inaccurate. We have worked closely with the Government of Israel and the UN to provide greater access to the North Governorate, and it is now apparent that the civilian population in that part of Gaza is in the range of 7,000-15,000, not 65,000-75,000 which is the basis of this report,” Lew wrote.
“At a time when inaccurate information is causing confusion and accusations, it is irresponsible to issue a report like this. We work day and night with the UN and our Israeli partners to meet humanitarian needs — which are great — and relying on inaccurate data is irresponsible,” Lew continued.
Following Lew’s repudiation, FEWS NET quietly removed the report on Wednesday, sparking outrage among supporters of the pro-Palestinian cause.
“We ask FEWS NET not to submit to the bullying of genocide supporters and to again make its report available to the public,” CAIR said in its statement.
In the year following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s invasion of and massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7, Israel has been repeatedly accused of inflicting famine in Hamas-ruled Gaza. Despite the allegations, there is scant evidence of mass starvation across the war-torn enclave.
This is not the first time that FEWS Net has attempted to accuse Israel of inflicting famine in Gaza. In June, the United Nations Famine Review Committee (FRC), a panel of experts in international food security and nutrition, rejected claims by FEWS Net that a famine had taken hold of northern Gaza. In rejecting the allegations, the FRC cited an “uncertainty and lack of convergence of the supporting evidence employed in the analysis.”
Meanwhile, CAIR has been embroiled in controversy since the onset of the Gaza war last October.
CAIR has been embroiled in controversy since the Oct. 7 atrocities. The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage across southern Israel.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
CAIR has long been a controversial organization. In the 2000s, it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
The post Controversial Islamic Group CAIR Chides US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew for Denying Report of ‘Famine’ in Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Civil Rights Group Representing Amsterdam Pogrom Victims Slams Dutch Court for ‘Light Sentences’
Israeli Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters are guarded by police after violence targeting Israeli football fans broke out in Amsterdam overnight, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, November 8, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ami Shooman/Israel Hayom
The international Jewish civil rights organization legally representing more than 50 victims of the attack on Israeli soccer fans that took place in Amsterdam last month has joined many voices in lambasting a Dutch court for what they described as a mild punishment for the attackers.
“These sentences are an insult to the victims and a stain on the Dutch legal system,” The Lawfare Project’s founder and executive director Brooke Goldstein said in a statement on Wednesday. “Allowing individuals who coordinated and celebrated acts of violence to walk away with minimal consequences diminishes the rule of law and undermines trust in the judicial process. If this is the response to such blatant antisemitism, what hope is there for deterring future offenders or safeguarding the Jewish community.”
On Tuesday, a district court in Amsterdam sentenced five men for their participation in the violent attacks in the Dutch city against fans of the Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv. The premeditated and coordinated violence took place on the night of Nov. 7 and into the early hours of Nov 8, before and after Maccabi Tel Aviv competed against the Dutch soccer team Ajax in a UEFA Europa League match. The five suspects were sentenced to up to 100 hours of community service and up to six months in prison.
The attackers were found guilty of public violence, which included kicking an individual lying on the ground, and inciting the violence by calling on members of a WhatsApp group chat to gather and attack Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. One man sentenced on Tuesday who had a “leading role” in the violence, according to prosecutors, was given the longest sentence — six months in prison.
“As someone who witnessed these trials firsthand, I am deeply disheartened by the leniency of these sentences,” added Ziporah Reich, director of litigation at The Lawfare Project. “The violent, coordinated attacks against Jews in Amsterdam are among the worst antisemitic incidents in Europe. These light sentences fail to reflect the gravity of these crimes and do little to deliver justice to the victims who are left traumatized and unheard. Even more troubling, they set a dangerous precedent, signaling to future offenders that such horrific acts of violence will not be met with serious consequences.”
The Lawfare Project said on Wednesday that it is representing over 50 victims of the Amsterdam attacks. It has also secured for their clients a local counsel — Peter Plasman, who is a partner at the Amsterdam-based law firm Kötter L’Homme Plasman — to represent them in the Netherlands. The Lawfare Project aims to protect the civil and human rights of Jewish people around the world through legal action.
Others who have criticized the Dutch court for its sentencing of the five men on Tuesday included Arsen Ostrovsky, a leading human rights attorney and CEO of The International Legal Forum; Tal-Or Cohen, the founder and CEO of CyberWell; and The Center for Information and Documentation on Israel.
The post Jewish Civil Rights Group Representing Amsterdam Pogrom Victims Slams Dutch Court for ‘Light Sentences’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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