What a contrast

February 17, 2024

Argentina’s newly elected president’s recent visit to Israel was a politically refreshing breath of fresh air.

Devoid of doublespeak, diplomatic mumbling and hectoring hyperbole, this head of state stood out for his uncompromising denunciation of terror, its perpetrators and those who fund and sponsor the murder of Israelis.

Javier Milei is an unabashed supporter of Israel whose plain speaking is a welcome change from the usually mealy-mouthed mutterings of most other international leaders. Whereas others hedge their ostensible friendship and support with all sorts of caveats and dire warnings dressed up as mock moral outrage, the Argentinean President’s speeches are a model of unambiguous support.

Not only is President Milei a genuine friend of Israel but he is also at the same time an avid student of Judaism and Jewish history. This gives him an insight and appreciation of exactly what motivates Israelis in the continuing battle against the deniers and the delegitimizers. Therein lays the difference between him and those international political leaders who are totally bereft of any appreciation of the historical Jewish experience. Not only are they deficient in their understanding, but they have an irresistible urge to demand action which, if acted upon, would lead to another catastrophic cataclysm.

Australia’s Foreign Minister said she did not have time to visit the Gaza area communities attacked by Hamas and see for herself how “peaceful” Jihadists slaughter civilians. Contrast this with President Milei, who took the first opportunity to see the situation for himself.

It did not take more than a few hours of visiting the decimated Kibbutzim and Moshavim of Israel’s south for him to realise the enormity of the pogroms that had taken place there. His firm denunciation of Hamas and their enablers as being “the Nazis of the 21^st century” was crystal clear. There were no “ifs” and “buts”, and his support of Israel’s campaign to eliminate the scourge of terror emanating from Gaza and elsewhere was firm. No hedging with moral equivalence, hypocritical expressions of support and exhortations to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian terror state in Israel’s heartland.

Instead, President Milei promised to move the Argentinean Embassy to Jerusalem. This move naturally caused Hamas and others to denounce him. Unlike other fellow world leaders and officials, he saw no need to make a pilgrimage to Ramallah and embrace the PA head or shower him with taxpayers’ money.

His three-day visit to Israel was such a startling contrast to that of others. It makes one wonder yet again how much more garbage Israelis have to listen to from totally clueless individuals as they continue their endless hectoring and futile fulminations.

Well, we did not have to wait very long for the deluge of delusory denunciations to descend from the mouths of the “enlightened” media and addled politicians.

The world is convulsed as never before at the prospect of Hamas and its followers being finally brought to account for their crimes. The continued plight of the Israeli hostages is ignored, and instead, an increasing crescendo of craven condemnation of Israel has become the siren song of the appeasers. The International Red Cross long ago lost interest in safeguarding the hostages’ welfare and access to medication and food. The UN has no interest in holding the terror groups and their supporters to account. This corrupt organisation’s descent into moral depravity is exemplified by its Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories.

Francesca Albanese unashamedly stated this week that the 7 October was caused by “Israeli oppression” and not antisemitism. Instead of her being dismissed for these blatant pieces of revisionist lies, her bosses remained silent, and she continued on her poisonous path. She now will be denied entry to Israel, which, no doubt, in turn, will convulse the usual braying mobs.

It, however, only gets better as the days unfold.

The IDF, in a dramatic and well-documented raid, managed to rescue two kidnapped Israelis being held hostage by “innocent” Palestinians in Rafah in Southern Gaza. It should be noted that these two were incarcerated in an apartment building that was in the midst of other buildings inhabited by Hamas. The Israeli action naturally resulted in the destruction of the buildings and the elimination of most of those involved.

Needless to say an uproar of volcanic proportions has ensued.

The only foreign head of state to actually congratulate the IDF and Israel on rescuing the hostages and expressing a wish for further action in defeating terror was the Argentinean President. Everyone else preferred to splutter specious expressions of outrage at the loss of “innocent” Palestinian lives. Conspicuously absent are denunciations of Hamas and Hezbollah targeting of thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. Also absent from the torrent of criticism is any concern for the thousands of Israelis displaced from their towns and villages after being targeted by these terrorist groups.

The chorus of demands for Israel to cease flushing out the terror leaders is led by Biden and Blinken. Desperately trying to appease the rabid anti-Israel progressives in election year, their increasingly strident strictures exemplify everything that is rotten in today’s political environment. We are faced with a President whose cognitive faculties are increasingly suspect and a Jewish Secretary of State who has the chutzpah to accuse Israelis of “dehumanising” those who foster and support terror.

These two cheerleaders are joined by a supporting cast of UN members. Lord Cameron, using his best Eton upper-class accent, lectures Israel to stop and think. Presumably, this means letting Hamas escape retribution and dismantlement. Others of the rapidly diminishing democracies join in this chorus of the appeasing choir. An incredible and amazing feature of this collective hypocrisy is the demand for Israel to immediately cease its response to murderous terror mere hours after the rescue of two hostages. Reading between the lines of the demands issued by the Australian and New Zealand Prime and Foreign Ministers is the unmistakable message to let Hamas off the hook and surrender to every outrageous condition set by the terrorists. Would they have admonished Churchill that German civilians could not pay the price of the Allies trying to defeat the Nazis?

An official PA newspaper issued an appeal to Hamas to NOT release the Israeli hostages without the release of all nine thousand terror prisoners in Israeli jails.

Has there been any international outrage at this PA demand? Is this the international community’s idea of a revitalised PA living in peace and tolerance with Israel? Listening to the rhetoric from world capitals, there can be only one conclusion.

Delusions and deceit know no bounds.

The recently appointed First Minister of Northern Ireland has declared that Hamas could be a peace partner. Presuming that she had not drunk too much Guinness, one can only marvel at this fantastic leap into the world of fantasy. Tragically, there are many who think that this idea has merit. Their demands for Israel to surrender prove it.

Meanwhile, the IDF has uncovered an extensive Hamas underground control and computer centre directly underneath the headquarters of UNRWA. This sophisticated facility, which operated supposedly undetected by the UN agency, proves that UNRWA and Hamas are partners of long standing. With a straight face and not one glimmer of shame, the head of UNRWA claims he knows nothing of this hive of terror activity beneath his headquarters. No avalanche of shock or any feeling of remorse has been issued forth from UN headquarters in New York. Donor nations to UNRWA, whose beneficence over the years no doubt facilitated the construction of this underground terror tunnel, remain mute and prefer instead to concentrate their ire against the Jewish State.

All is not lost, however. A Norwegian MP has nominated UNRWA for the Nobel Peace Prize. If Arafat, the PLO terror chief, could be a recipient, then any farce is possible in today’s woke and messed up world.

There is plenty of scope for a decent Purim shpiel this year.

Intelligence Reveals Details of U.N. Agency Staff’s Links to Oct. 7 Attack

February 16, 2024

At least 12 employees of the U.N.’s Palestinian refugee agency had connections to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and around 10% of all of its Gaza staff have ties to Islamist militant groups, according to intelligence reports reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Six United Nations Relief and Works Agency workers were part of the wave of Palestinian militants who killed 1,200 people in the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust, according to the intelligence dossier. Two helped kidnap Israelis. Two others were tracked to sites where scores of Israeli civilians were shot and killed. Others coordinated logistics for the assault, including procuring weapons.

Of the 12 Unrwa employees with links to the attacks, seven were primary or secondary school teachers, including two math teachers, two Arabic language teachers and one primary school teacher.

Click here to read the full article.

ATCHALTA UNRWA: How is an issue so critical for national security not led by the government?

February 13, 2024

The Atchalta team participated in an open discussion of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee called by MK Ze’ev Elkin that dealt with UNRWA. In the discussion it was revealed that more than two weeks after important countries stopped their support for the Agency due to its connection to Hamas, there was no discussion on the issue led by the Prime Minister or the head of the National Security Council.

The professional echelon in various government ministries is the one that actually crystalizes the policy vis-a-vis UNRWA. They are acting without coordination and with a very vague directive. For example, even though Israeli intelligence officials claimed to have presented the Americans with incriminating materials regarding UNRWA, Israel did not pass such information to the European Union (at least according to EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Joseph Borrell). On the one hand, it is reported that the Prime Minister instructed the IDF to examine alternatives to working with UNRWA in the field, and on the other hand, the state representatives in Washington explain why at this stage UNRWA has no alternative there.

The government’s conduct does not reflect an internalization of how significant the issue is, as one that may instill a sense of loss for Hamas in the war. The dissolution of UNRWA means the practical cancellation of the ‘right of return’ and its removal from the agenda. According to UNRWA’s unique definition, the status of a refugee is inherited. The Agency does not update its lists, and even those hundreds of thousands ‘refugees’ who have left the refugee camps, become citizens elsewhere, left abroad, or now live under Palestinian rule – are counted as refugees. Thus, their number today has climbed to almost 6 million, while after the War of Independence in 1948 they numbered only about 700 thousand refugees.

Updating the number of refugees according to the existing generic definitions of the United Nations, is expected to reduce their number to several tens of thousands at most and, in fact, eliminate the issue of the refugees as an important variable in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Hamas will not be able to claim victory if the result of the war it started is the practical cancellation of ‘the right of return’.

The fear of a humanitarian crisis is of course a weighty issue. But even in this case, the solution seems to be available. Until now, the international community adopted the Egyptian point of view and looked at the problem of the displaced people as a political problem rather than a humanitarian one. The possibility of dismantling UNRWA might be a reason for creating international pressure on Egypt to temporarily open its border. Unfortunately, so far, no such pressure has been applied.

In any case, these are weighty issues, and it is unperceivable that they are not dealt with by politicians, but rather by the professional ranks.

Calls To Remove UNRWA From East Jerusalem, After Video Shows Students Terror Statements

February 9, 2024

“I am ready to carry out a suicide attack”, a student at a UNRWA school in East Jerusalem says in a video filmed in 2022 by the Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research. Another student says that “we have to fight the Jews to prove that we are stronger than them.”

The Ynet news site quoted the English translation of the students statements, such as “stabbing and trampling Jews brings respect to the Palestinians,” “I am ready to carry out a suicide attack,” and “we are taught that the Jews kill our children. I will stab and run over them.” One of the students says that “we are taught that Al-Aqsa and all of Palestine is ours,” and another shares that “we are taught that the Jews are terrorists.”

David Bedein, director of the research institute that has been dealing with UNRWA and the Palestinians since 1987, notes: “In the textbooks of UNRWA students in the Shuafat refugee camp, there are pictures praising murderers who committed terrorist acts and killed many Israelis used as role models.”

Following publication of the video, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem and the chairman of the United party, Aryeh King, contacted the chairman of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), Ifat Ovadia-Luski. The UNRWA school in question was established on land owned by JNF, and King demanded that the school be vacated.

In an appeal to Luski, he wrote that the expectation was that the area would be used for the benefit of the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, but in reality the UNRWA school was established “where, according to the evidence, they teach hatred of Jews and incite against the State of Israel.”

The JNF stated in response that “in accordance with the Israel Land Authority law and in accordance with the agreement between the state and the JNF, the Israel Land Authority manages JNF lands. Any information regarding the owners and/or encroachers of the land and how their treatment should be addressed to the Israel Land Authority.”

On Tuesday, the Knesset held a joint discussion with the Education Committee and the Committee of Children’s Rights to mark the International Day of Education, in which the lawmakers spoke about antisemitic content taught in the Palestinian education system. It was decided that there would be strict supervision in educational institutions in East Jerusalem.

“It’s crazy that the 11th and 12th grades are given textbooks with antisemitic content and incitement against the state,” he said. The members of the committees called for the removal of antisemitic content from Palestinian education plans and sharply criticized the United Nations and UNESCO “for not doing anything against the Palestinian education industry that teaches jihad, the demonization of Jews and Israelis, and delegitimization of the State of Israel.”

On Friday and Saturday, UNRWA faced an uproar when nine contributing countries decided to freeze funding that was intended for the organization despite the commissioner-general’s announcement of an investigation into the allegations that some of the agency’s employees were involved in the murderous terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, and of the termination of employment of some of those employees.

In a separate development, a protest was held this week outside UNRWA’s offices in Jerusalem, located in the Jewish neighborhood of Maalot Dafna. Demonstrators, including bereaved families and families of Hamas hostages, demanded that in light of the organization’s proven record of terror support, its offices should be closed and its activities in Jerusalem should be terminated.

The protest was initiated by Aryeh King, who said that “for years I have been begging Israeli governments to remove this body from Jerusalem, even before the massacre in the south and the war. Their school books don’t have Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Ashkelon, only Arab cities because they don’t want to see one Jew here. They took over Jewish properties in Kfar Akeb in East Jerusalem, properties donated by Canadian Jews to the JNF and built a mosque, a country club, a school and a monument for terrorists. They are criminals , so why do we give them water and electricity? Are we suicidal?”

King added that “Instead of this anti-Israel organization having a huge presence in West Jerusalem, we need to build here a neighborhood for soldiers who fought in Gaza, for wounded or kidnapped soldiers, schools and parks. I call on the state of Israel to wake up and evacuate the Hamas UNWRA from Jerusalem, so we won’t see this antisemitic organization here again.”

Beware of the small print

Michael Kuttner

February 9, 2024

Aftermath of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas gunmen from Gaza near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel — The personal belongings of festival-goers are seen at the site of an attack on the Nova Festival by Hamas gunmen from Gaza, near Israel's border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, October 12, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

When offered a deal that sounds too good to be true, it is always advisable to read the small print.

What holds true for individuals contemplating tempting offers is even more critical for politicians and officials whose decisions will impact citizens and nations.

Throughout the long and tortuous history of the Jewish People, there have been innumerable occasions when the deals on offer have alternated between the devil and the deep blue sea. In other words, no matter which alternative was embraced the end result was decidedly deathly and even irreversible.

The two approaching Festivals of Purim and Pesach are classic examples of how things can turn out if the correct choice is made.

On Purim, we averted and defeated the genocidal ambitions of an official who plotted to carry out a Hamas-like massacre.

On Pesach, the Hebrews were liberated from bondage, and their oppressors’ leader and army were decimated.

In the former, we rejected assimilation and passivity, while on the latter occasion, we rebelled and started the long march to the Promised Land and sovereignty.

Unfortunately, there have been far too many times when we have ignored the warning signs with consequent lethal calamities engulfing us.

Today, Israel and the Jewish People face a situation whereby so-called friends and foes alike are dangling deals in front of our eyes. Accompanied in equal measure by blandishments and threats, these offers contain small print, which we ignore at our dire peril.

A brief survey of some of the “metziyot” (bargains) being touted graphically illustrate the perilous pitfalls we could easily fall into if our leaders are seduced by quick and seemingly popular embraces of dubious deals.

It is amazing but not surprising to witness how, faster than the speed of light, all those who were horrified by the massacres of 7 October have now transitioned to a traditional mode of condemnation of the country attacked. Every international official, it now seems, has a perfect plan not to rescue the hostages still being held by Hamas but instead to prevent Israel from finishing the job of defeating terror.

If the same policies now being advocated by UN members had been implemented between the years 1939 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan would have survived intact with all the lethal consequences that might have entailed. Yet, unbelievably, today, as though nothing has been learnt, Israel is being lectured to leave Hamas intact. In fact, the situation is considerably worse than just stopping the campaign to dismantle terror.

The demands now being articulated will reward terror and punish Israel. That, in plain language, is the inevitable end result of establishing a Palestinian State in the midst of Judea and Samaria and joining it up with Gaza. An analyst compared this to Chamberlain and the European appeasers handing the Sudetenland province of Czechoslovakia to the Nazi terrorists in 1938. The same shameful sham is currently being peddled, accompanied by the most transparent excuses to justify it.

The US and others talk about a “revitalised” PA/PLO/Fatah in charge and embracing democratic values, human rights and fraternal tolerance. Experts such as the Australian Prime Minister have proclaimed in all seriousness that the key to an enduring peace is a “demilitarised” Palestine. Can there be anything more delusionary than this? With terror tunnels, terror groups and hordes of weapons in the hands of indoctrinated jihadists, the very notion of a peace-loving demilitarised state is the height of hallucinatory make-believe.

Who will disarm them? Who is going to ensure that this mythical state remains demilitarised? Who will guarantee that stipends to murderers of Israelis and their families will cease? Nobody has yet been able to verify that medications intended for the hostages have been received by them. In the face of this international impotency, how on earth can Israel ever trust or rely on guarantees of a peaceful, disarmed PLO State?

Based on the failure of the UN to enforce the demilitarisation of Southern Lebanon, the idea of a disarmed Palestine in the heartland of Israel is so ludicrous that one has to wonder what the real agenda is of those articulating these stupidities. Despite Iranian support for all terror groups threatening Israel neither the US, the UK nor the EU act against the masterminds in Tehran. Bombing the Houthi pirates and sites in Syria and Iraq will not eliminate the root of the problem.

What actually is behind this sudden revival to reward terror facilitators?

The sight of Jews actually fighting back unnerves those who believe that we should meekly accept our preordained fate. However, there is something more worrying afoot. In Europe, Scandinavia, Canada, USA, UK, Australia and even NZ the electoral clout of a rapidly increasing Islamic presence is being felt. A large number of these voters, especially since 7 October, identify with radical anti-western groups and rabid anti-Israel and Judeophobic movements. One needs only to read the banners they carry and the hate-filled slogans they scream to understand that something foul is brewing.

The plain fact is that the more certain political parties and politicians depend on these sectors for electoral support, the greater will be the urge to condemn and censure Israel. The Democrat Party in the US is slowly but surely following this trend which explains why Biden and Blinken’s rhetoric is ramping up. In other democracies, some parties are already totally dependent on appeasing anti-Israel voters.

Biden has “discovered” four alleged “settler” extremists and imposed sanctions on them. Is it a coincidence that this has occurred while he is facing re-election? Is this a precursor of more progressive pleasing policies in the pipeline? Where are his sanctions against the PA/PLO/Fatah officials and followers who incite and support the murder of Israelis?

Whereas once upon a time, not so long ago, it was electorally expedient to pick on the Jews, today it is advantageous to target the Jewish State. It may not be politically correct to state the obvious, but it must be exposed.

Meanwhile, the UNRWA scandal has miraculously morphed into a classic case of whitewashing and denial.

The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs has claimed that Israel has not presented any conclusive proof of UNRWA and Hamas links. Norway’s Foreign Minister revealed that countries that have suspended aid are now looking for a way out to resume funding. Without waiting for any investigation Norway and Spain have already pledged to open the money taps. Bear in mind that Norway is the designated country that Israel has agreed to transfer the PA’s tax money to for onward transmission, providing that no part of it will be used to fund dubious activities in Gaza. Can there be a bigger example of Chelm than this?

The UN is about to investigate the UNRWA situation, which means that a clean bill of health will be forthcoming, and it can then be business as usual. The US and New Zealand intend to redirect UNRWA funding to the World Food Programme and UNICEF. What provisions are in place to ensure that this aid is not hijacked by Hamas and diverted for its own terror purposes?

Saudi Arabia is portrayed as eager to recognise Israel and make peace. The Biden Administration is pursuing this with zealous enthusiasm. Its eagerness to achieve this mirage ignores the fact that Saudi Arabia and Iran have jumped into bed with each other. It deliberately overlooks Saudi reluctance to support the US campaign against the pirates of the Gulf. Those who wax ecstatic about a Saudi embrace should take a long, hard look at the very small print accompanying such a proposed deal. As currently formulated, it provides the terror patrons with the means to achieve their aims without firing a shot.

If offers are indeed too good to be true, it is doubly important to understand the small print before it is too late.

Support an effort to press criminal charges against the High Commissioner of UNRWA

February 9, 2024

What They Are Actually Teaching Kids in UNRWA Schools and Summer Camps

February 9, 2024

The precursors for the October 7th massacres began 75 years ago. Beginning with approximately 700,000 Palestinian refugees from the original War of Independence of the state of Israel, refugee status has been passed down from generation to generation. Not only has this status been bequeathed, along with the “right of return” to cities and towns that are inside of Israel, but so has a steady and constant indoctrination in profound hatred of the Jew, and even instruction in military tactics to teach children to be able to overcome and conquer the Jewish state within UNRWA schools and summer camps.

This webinar will show real-time footage of how these children are being indoctrinated to hate and kill, which constitutes the worst sort of child abuse imaginable. About the Speaker: David Bedein is the Director of The Center for Near East Policy Research. For the last 25 years, he and his center have been focusing exclusively on the sort of education that Palestinian children are being exposed to in their UNRWA schools and summer camps. He has reported for the Jerusalem Post, CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, The New York Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Jewish World Review. For four years, Bedein was the Middle East correspondent for The Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010.[4] Bedein has covered attempts at Middle East negotiations centered around Israel—in many major cities of the world. Bedein lives in Efrat with his family.

WATCH: Biden Admin Repeatedly Praised UNRWA’s ‘Essential’ Work

February 8, 2024

The Biden administration repeatedly praised the United Nations’ Palestinian aid organization as “essential” in the weeks and months after Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel, going so far as to defend the agency against allegations it works alongside the Iran-backed terror group. Then allegations emerged late last month that at least 12 of the organization’s employees participated in the attack that left 1,200 dead.

The State Department spent nearly three months defending U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) against allegations that the group promoted anti-Semitic educational materials and calling its humanitarian work “valuable” and “essential.”

“I would reject that interpretation of UNRWA,” State Department spokesman Matt Miller said in a Nov. 1 press briefing, when reporters raised questions about the aid group’s longstanding ties to Hamas and promotion of educational materials that advocate Israel’s destruction. “It is a United Nations agency that provides humanitarian assistance to innocent civilians in Gaza.”

Since 2021, the Biden administration has sent more than $1 billion in taxpayer funds to UNRWA, making the United States its largest contributor. Funding for the agency was frozen during the Trump administration due to UNRWA’s ties to Hamas and promotion of anti-Israel propaganda.

Miller continued to defend UNRWA through mid-January, even after evidence emerged indicating the aid group’s employees helped Hamas hide Israeli hostages.

“UNRWA has done and continues to do valuable work to address the humanitarian situation in Gaza,” Miller said at a Jan. 17 briefing.

The Biden administration ultimately paused American funding for UNRWA late last month, after overwhelming evidence emerged showing the aid group’s employees worked alongside Hamas to kill Jews.

The temporary pause has led GOP lawmakers in Congress to propose cutting all U.S. aid to UNRWA permanently.

Rep. Brian Mast (R., Fla.) said during a congressional hearing last month that it is likely the Biden administration pushed out “tens of millions” of dollars to UNRWA before announcing a halt in funding.

“It does appear as though they may have waited to make this announcement until after they allowed for a disbursement of tens of millions of dollars to go out to UNRWA on or before Jan. 24, and if that’s the case it should be considered outrageous,” said Mast, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Researcher has sounded alarm for decades about hate in UNRWA camps

February 8, 2024

Palestinian children in U.N. Relief and Works Agency camps, mere yards from the border with Israel, talk in a video about killing Jews and returning to their land. “The actions of Hamas match the ideology of UNRWA,” the narrator says.

“In the camps, we learned to defend our land and our country,” one boy says. “We learned how to fight, to attack.” Another says of Jews, “with God’s help, very soon, we’ll smash their heads, and we’ll return to our lands.”

The three-minute video “The Terror of Return” was filmed at the same location where Palestinian terrorists breached the southern border and invaded Israel on Oct. 7. But the Center for Near East Policy Research released the prescient footage in 2018, some five years before countries, including the United States, suspended funding to UNRWA following allegations that the agency’s employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack.

The CNEPR, which has since been renamed the Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research, has tried for decades to raise the alarm about hatred and incitement festering in the 59 UNRWA refugee camps scattered throughout Gaza, Judea and Samaria, and eastern Jerusalem. Those warnings, its director told JNS, have fallen on deaf Israeli governmental ears.

More than 20 years ago, the center issued a 37-page scholarly report about UNRWA. Despite its findings about UNRWA that could have directed policy, Israeli policymakers and leaders in other Western countries that fund UNRWA largely ignored those and subsequent materials that the Jerusalem-based center issued.

Multiple spokespeople for the Israeli government did not respond to a JNS query about whether Israeli policymakers were aware of the findings in the center’s report.

The 2003 report described how UNRWA is predicated upon the belief that Palestinians have a “right of return,” so the agency keeps them in “temporary” limbo until, it says, they can return to the homes and villages in Israel that their great-grandparents left more than 75 years ago. In fact, most of those homes no longer exist.

The report added that UNRWA perpetuates Palestinian dependency without seeking realistic solutions to the plight of refugees, including resettlement. In language that could describe present-day conditions in Gaza, the report warned: “Refugees, encouraged by UNRWA to see themselves as entitled to a return that will never happen, believe they are being cheated. As a result, they are filled with frustration and rage, and turn to radicalism.”

“They’re told that it was Israel who inflicted those indignities,” David Bedein, director of the present-day center, told JNS. “They didn’t know that it was the United Nations keeping them in refugee camps.”

All of the center’s research shows that Palestinians are “indoctrinated with the idea that Israel stuck them in those camps,” Bedein added.

Last month, a Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that 12 UNRWA employees were involved directly in the Oct. 7 attacks, and some 10% of the agency’s staff has ties to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. (The center report noted in 2003 that “most” of the 23,000 UNRWA employees are refugees and “they too are often associated with terrorist groups such as Hamas” and that refugee camps are sites for bomb manufacture, recruitment and dispatching suicide bombers.)

When the violence of the First Intifada emanated from refugee camps, Israelis didn’t know what was happening, according to Bedein. He thinks the indignities that the refugees suffered motivated their violent outbursts—then and now.

“Everything we said then is true now,” he said. “Everything we warned about—all the incitement, the keeping people in the refugee situation, it’s all a formula for war.”

David Bedein and Shimon Peres in 1992. Credit: Courtesy of David Bedein

‘It’s just children’

Children and adolescents learned in UNRWA summer camps—in full view of the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli intelligence cameras—to launch incendiary balloons and kites with explosive material that burned large swathes of Israeli agricultural land just across the fence.

Bedein told JNS that the Israeli army didn’t take the summer camps seriously and told him, when he sounded the alarm, “It’s just children.” (An IDF spokesman referred JNS to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which did not respond by press time.)

Bedein claims that Israel overlooked the threat from Gaza due to the 400 Israeli corporations, including major food conglomerates and cement companies that had monopolies on supplying the Strip, that do business with the Palestinian Authority and with UNRWA.

“In the Western mind, if you’re doing business with someone you can’t possibly be at war with them,” he told JNS.

Bedein told JNS that millions of people have visited the center’s website since Oct. 7 and that an eight-minute video, “Askar-UNRWA: Cradle of Killers,” which was released a few months before Oct. 7, has drawn 15,000 views.

The Arab interviewers who film the center’s videos within UNRWA camps are glad for the work, Bedein said.

‘For their children and our grandchildren’

Bedein was first drawn to the work that would define his career as a high school student in Philadelphia at the Akiba Hebrew Academy. An Israeli sociologist who spoke at the school in 1968 told Bedein and his fellow students that Israel had a chance after the Six-Day War to reverse the indoctrination that Palestinians internalized. It could also convince them that Jews need not be the enemy.

Inspired, Bedein went on to study and then qualified as a social worker. He made aliyah.

Later, a neighbor who owned a construction business told Bedein that he fired his Israeli workers and replaced them with Palestinians from the UNRWA Dheisheh refugee camp, near Bethlehem, to save money.

Bedein tagged along to a construction site, where he heard workers singing, “We’re building homes for the Jews; for their children; and our grandchildren.” It became clear to him that UNRWA was planting unrealistic expectations in the minds of the refugees.

Before turning his focus full-time to UNRWA, Bedein worked as a fixer for foreign news crews.

On a trip to Gush Katif with a BBC crew, Bedein met an Arab fixer who was taking the journalists to one of the UNRWA camps.

Bedein and the Arab agreed that nothing should be covered up and began to collaborate. Bedein also hired a Moroccan TV crew, and UNRWA cooperated fully with the Moroccan reporters, so the center was able to produce first-hand information that was published in Israel. The team has also provided footage from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

After more than two decades investigating UNRWA practices and its influence on the descendants of generations of refugees, Bedein is not surprised by IDF soldiers who report finding weapons in every building they enter in Gaza, nor by revelations about the involvement of UNRWA employees in Hamas.

He thinks it is unrealistic to call for UNRWA to be dismantled and have the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees take over its portfolio, since the U.N General Assembly will never allow one U.N. agency to replace another.

Donor countries should press the General Assembly to incorporate humanitarian principles from the UNHCR to encourage descendants of refugees to voluntarily resettle, he told JNS.

He is also fundraising presently to press criminal charges against UNRWA for arming children and training them to use weapons; for using textbooks in its schools that glorify those who murder Jews; and for letting Hamas control its teachers association and workers union.

Einat Wilf: Without UNRWA there would be no Hamas — it must be dismantled

February 8, 2024

Canada’s temporary suspension of its financing of UNRWA over charges that some of UNRWA’s members participated in the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel should be made permanent. That UNRWA has created the ideal conditions for murderous terrorist groups to emerge, from Black September, which carried out the gruesome slaughter of Israeli Athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics, to Hamas, is not a bug in the operating system, but a feature. Anyone who truly cares about charting a path to true peace in the Middle East should have every interest in ensuring UNRWA is dismantled.

There was nothing particularly unique more than seven decades ago in the establishment of a temporary agency to settle refugees from war. With empires collapsing across the world — Habsburg, Ottoman or British — and new states emerging to replace the former imperial lands, tens of millions of people became refugees as they were fleeing across newly delineated borders. Whether in the Indian subcontinent, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, there was nothing unique in the brutal wars of post-imperial independence leading to tens of millions of refugees. Those refugees were all settled in the places to which they fled (typically new countries with similar ethnic makeup to that of the refugees) or in new places. This was done through local and independent efforts or through dedicated agencies.

The general agency established to handle refugees, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, was mostly focused on Europe in its first years of operation. Therefore, in other conflicts of the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, such as the one in Korea or in the Middle East, temporary specialized agencies were established with the goal of settling the refugees in a few short years. Unlike the UNHCR these agencies were temporary because they were designed to carry out a specific purpose and close down upon achieving it. That was the case in Korea. UNKRA settled 3.1 million refugees from the war, at least three times the number of the Arab refugees from the Arab-Israeli war of 1947-1949, with a third of the budget allocated to UNRWA. It completed its job within a few short years and closed down, as planned. Look at South Korea today. It could have been the Arabs.

But the Arab refugees themselves, today known as Palestinians, refused any form of settlement in place because they knew that would mean that the war is over and that the Jewish state would thereby be legitimized as a fait accompli. Given that the explicit Arab goal in the war of 1947-1949 was to ensure that no Jewish state of any size emerged anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, the Arab refugees were determined, even when a ceasefire with the Arab states ended the war, to keep fighting to ensure that the Jewish state is undone. Keeping themselves as perpetual refugees, rejecting any form of permanent personal settlement that would allow Israel to exist, became one of the main weapons in this total Arab war against the Jewish state.

UNRWA was established with the best of intentions to help settle the Arab refugees from the war (the much larger number of Jewish refugees, including those from the war and those ethnically cleansed from across the Arab world in retaliation for Israel’s birth, as well as the Jewish refugee survivors from the Holocaust were all absorbed by Israel without any international support). But the Arab refugees and the Arab countries fought against UNRWA resettlement. The agency therefore failed to settle even one Arab refugee. UNRWA’s funders at the time, the U.S. and U.K., wanted to close down the failed agency. There was no question that UNRWA was failing to settle refugees.

But the Arab countries would not hear of closing UNRWA. They had already secured the letter UN in its name in order to send the message that Israel’s existence was essentially the fault of the UN. They also secured a legal loophole exception for UNRWA from the UNHCR, knowing that if the Arab refugees would be treated like all other refugees in the world, no refugees would remain within a few short years. The next step then was to ensure that UNRWA remains open and funded by the West. Given the importance of oil and the Arab position in the Cold War the Arab countries successfully threatened the U.S. and U.K. to keep UNRWA open. UNRWA remains open to this day as a still temporary agency, now funded by numerous western countries to a tune of more than one billion dollars a year.

Once it became clear that UNRWA would neither settle a single Arab refugee nor close down, it became necessary for UNRWA to keep busy, especially since immediate relief was no longer necessary. What started as initiatives for vocational training turned within a few short years into a sprawling education system run by the Arab refugees themselves. In the UNRWA compounds (misnamed “refugee camps״) and the schools a new nationalism was born, the Palestinian one, that united Arabs living in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip around the goals of revenge and “return.” The idea that Palestinians were “refugees” generation after generation, possessing a “right of return” that supersedes Israeli sovereignty to settle in Israel’s sovereign territory, became the most deeply held markers of the Palestinian identity and its national ethos.

But Palestinians are not refugees by any international standard. UNRWA registers 5.9 Million refugees in its five areas of operation: Gaza, West Bank, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Forty per cent of them live in the West Bank and Gaza. Certainly by their telling they live in Palestine. They have been born there and lived there. This is where they need to build their future. They are not refugees and have no need of resettlement. Another forty per cent are citizens of Jordan. Jordan naturalized the Arab refugees after the war. By now the vast majority of those registered as refugees in Jordan have been born in Jordan. Nowhere else in the world is a citizen of a country, born in that country, somehow a refugee of another sovereign country.

The remaining 20 per cent are registered in Syria and Lebanon. Both countries have denied citizenship to these Arab born residents in their midst. Lebanon also has a web of laws preventing these Arabs from partaking in the Lebanese economy and society (an actual apartheid system). Yet recent data shows that most of those registered in Syria and Lebanon have long left these countries. Many of them attained citizenship in other countries, and yet UNRWA continues to register them as “refugees.”

In practice the Palestinian “refugee” issue is quite small. Only around two to three hundred thousand people living in Lebanon and Syria are either the real original refugees (the ones who escaped the war from 1947-1949) or their status deprived descendants who are in need of settlement in place or resettlement in third countries. These are small numbers that the actual UN agency for refugees is quite capable of managing. But the issue was never practical, it was always symbolic, the purpose being to keep the Palestinian “refugee” issue as the living symbol that Israel’s existence as a Jewish state is temporary.

Not only are those registered as “Palestine Refugees” not refugees by any international standards, but they also do not possess a “right of return”, meaning a right that supersedes Israeli sovereignty to settle within the sovereign territory of Israel. Such right for a people who were never citizens of a country, that supersedes the right of sovereign countries to control their borders and decide who become their citizens, simply does not exist. Even the various UNGA resolutions that Palestinians cite, do not support such a right. But Palestinians believe they have such a “right” and have forged themselves into a nation based on the singular commitment to “return” and revenge.

It should therefore come as no surprise that UNRWA has given rise to generations of trained murderers who took pride in the slaughter of Jews, whether the Israeli athletes in the Munich Olympics of 1972, or the peace supporting Kibbutzniks on Oct. 7. Even if UNRWA employees were not directly involved in murdering Jews, and we know that several of them were, given that their entire ideology is about undoing the Jewish state, their continued existence all but ensures that such organizations, whether Black September or Hamas, will always rise to fulfill that goal.

I have spent 14 years by now researching UNRWA, writing and speaking about it and advocating for its dismantlement. The only reason I devoted my time and capabilities to doing so is that, contrary to the reigning impression, UNRWA and the Palestinian “refugee” issue are not marginal aspects of the conflict. They are at the core of the conflict and the reason for its perpetuation. The conflict has always been about one thing and one thing only, the Arab rejection of the Jewish right to self determination in any part of the Jewish historical homeland. Everything else has been the outcome of that single rejection. UNRWA has been one of the most substantial forces in ensuring that this rejection not only never ends, but is indulged, supported and magnified to become the core element of an entire people.

I have always supported the idea that the Jews and Arabs of the land would be best served governing themselves by themselves in states of their own — known as the two-state solution. I continue to support that idea, but I now consider myself a long-term peace activist. Precisely because I continue to be committed to peace, I understand there can be no peace as long as the fundamental reason for the century long war waged by the Arabs against a Jewish state remains. For there to be peace, the war must first end, and the war cannot end if there is an organization, supported by Canada and other Western powers, that does everything possible to ensure it continues.

Einat Wilf is a former member of Knesset and coauthor, with Adi Schwartz, of The War of Return: How Western Indulgence of the Palestinian Dream Has Obstructed the Path to Peace, published in 2020 by All Points Books.

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