20,000 members of the Hamas terrorist organization who have been organizing and participating in continuing riots on the Gaza fences, are actually employees of UNRWA.

That is because Hamas won consecutive elections and gained control of the UNRWA workers association and the UNRWA teachers association, since 1999, under a platform of absolute adherence to the slogan of the “right of return by force of arms”

The “return” they refer to is to villages that the original Arab refugees left after the 1948 war.

UNRWA now hosts five million descendants of Arab refugees in “temporary” conditions, while Hamas ads Islamic passionate fuel to the fire.

The question remains: What can be done to douse the flames of Hamas?

US, Canada, the UK, the EU and Australia all have tough laws on the books which clearly state that their respective nations must condition aid to UNRWA with a strict requirement that no member of an FTO, a Foreign Terrorist Organization, can receive a salary.

Indeed, Canada cut off its aid to the general fund of UNRWA in 2009 after Hamas won the elections and gained control of the UNRWA workers union and UNRWA teachers association, as documented in a study that our agency published that was commissioned by the European Parliament.

Donor nations to UNRWA can therefore demand the cut off of UNRWA salaries to all terrorists, which would transform Hamas into beggars starving for cash flow.

Canada renewed funding of the UNRWA general fund in 2016, but only after UNRWA lied to Ottawa that it no longer employs members of Hamas.

Since few Hamas members were removed from the staff of UNRWA, this would be an opportune time for donor nations to demand that UNRWA conduct a review of its employees for terror connections.

The next logical step for the donor nations, beginning with the US: Demand that UNRWA dismiss Hamas members on the payroll.

A case in point:

At an UNRWA policy symposium held in Geneva in 2004, I asked Peter Hansen, then the head of UNRWA, how he could justify Hamas members on his staff.

His answer was that “UNRWA does not look at the religious affiliation of its staff members” and he went on to say that he had no problem employing Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll.

As a result of that answer, donor nations forced UNRWA to fire Hansen.

Hansen’s dismissal provides a precedent that UNRWA donor nations could invoke.

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David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.