Facing Another Inconvenient Truth: The Misuse of Foreign Aid

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January 10, 2024

View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building during a strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on July 26, 2018. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90 *** Local Caption *** אונר"א
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A little review of history sheds some light on the predicament that Israel now finds itself facing.

In the beginning comments of Chapter 9 of Nathan C. Belth’s book A Promise to Keep (Times Books, 1979), an apparent devastating conclusion of a 1968 UNESCO study of the textbooks used in the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools attended by Palestinian children was determined. UNESCO’s conclusion was that “a majority of the 127 textbooks reviewed by the Commission employed the deplorable language of anti-Semitism, distorted history, incited to violence, and were educationally destructive because student exercises (were) often inspired by a preoccupation with indoctrination against Jews rather than by educational aims.” In response to the report, the Syrian Minister of education wrote, “The hatred which we indoctrinate into the minds of our children from their birth is sacred.”

One would think the UNESCO report would have stimulated an abrupt change in how Palestinian children were taught and a replacement of the textbooks that promoted vile falsehoods. It did not. The democracies that funded UNRWA, of which the United States of America contributed the most, continued to provide their annual contributions. Oversight over what was taught, or the teaching materials was not exercised. A study by Arnon Gross and David Bedein referenced in a Jerusalem Post article (June 20, 2020.17:39) documented the ongoing demonization of Jews in the UNRWA “educational system.”

It is not just UNRWA schools that are involved in the indoctrination. In 2005, the Foreign Press and Public Affairs Adviser to the Prime Minister of Israel, Dr. Raanan Gissin, wrote a reply to me, after reading my paper that classified the teaching of hatred to children as a form of psychological abuse, since it resulted in an imposed arrest of moral development (G. Katzman. A Bioethical Analysis of a Form of Psychologic Abuse: Teaching Hatred to Children. Clin Pediatr. 2005;44:143-150 ). A portion of the Adviser’s letter stated, “The Palestinian communications and education systems – electronic media, newspapers, textbooks, etc. have been mobilized to instill hatred and enmity among Palestinian children, youth and adults, and to preach for “the liberation of Palestine with blood and tears”, and the destruction of the Jewish State. These harbingers of hatred and unrest are constantly adding fuel to the flames and inciting the

Palestinian masses to violence and martyrdom, through the murder of innocent people.” Please be assured that the Prime Minister considers a cessation of incitement to be a primary pre-requisite to any political progress.” Unfortunately, for a large segment of the Palestinian community, such a cessation has not been achieved.

A word about UNRWA-sponsored “summer camps” that have been operating for decades provides further understanding of the incitement to violence instilled in Palestinian youth. David Bedein who leads the Center for Near East Policy Research in Israel mentioned to me that there was no problem getting crews into the Hamas summer camps and filming them. Intense military training goes on in these camps with a specific message that the goal is to kill Jews and liberate “Palestine.” An October 9, 2023 article in 7 Israel National News (7INN, Arutz Sheva), contained a recommendation to “Watch and see the breeding ground of the savage murderers who attacked Israel” on October 7, 2023. The reader can view the video on the 7INN Arutz Sheva site or Google “The UNRWA Child Soldier” on vimeo. In the video, one sees the radical Islamic concept of Jihad introduced to the youth and vigorously, malevolently promoted.

In the context of the indoctrination to hate and the incitement to kill Jews, the October 7, 2023 massacre is put into perspective. It is interesting that many participants in anti-Israel rallies on college campuses often wear patterned Kaffiyehs representing Palestinian solidarity but also often associated with militancy by groups such as Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Although multifactorial, it is quite clear that the UNRWA “educational system” has played a major role in the violence perpetrated by Arabs against Jews. There have been multiple efforts over the years to inform countries funding UNRWA schools to influence what is taught, so as to take action against the cancer of hate that has now metastasized to other countries around the world. There are efforts in Israel by groups such as the Abraham Initiatives, where Jewish and Arab children go to school together, to stem the tide of festering malevolence. Seeds of Peace is another group that promotes non-violence with the difficult task of changing attitudes and approaches held by older children. And there are other efforts to promote peace. Clearly, there is much work to be done in this regard. In the meantime, the United Nations and those countries that criticize Israel for its manner of conducting a very difficult military campaign should understand their own culpability for over 60 years of funding UNRWA’s significant contribution to the causation of the present dilemma.

UNRWA Misinformation on Hamas-Israel War

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January 10, 2024

As a supposedly neutral UN agency, UNRWA should be promoting peace pursuant to the UN Charter. Yet, time and again, we see the UN’s refugee agency for Palestinians doing the very opposite—spreading misinformation and fueling conflict—enabling Hamas terrorism.

Following October 7th, UNRWA teachers cheered the Hamas massacre on social media. When UN Watch exposed this in a new report, instead of addressing the issue, UNRWA dismissed our human rights organization as “extremists trying to undermine the agency.” When journalist Almog Boker of Israel’s Channel 13 reported that one of the released Israeli hostages had been held captive by an UNRWA teacher, UNRWA’s first reaction was to lash out at Boker, accusing him of spreading “misinformation” based on “unsubstantiated” information. Boker rejected the accusation, reaffirming that the report was the direct testimony of a survivor.

In fact, it is UNRWA that is spreading misinformation. Since October 7th, UNRWA has repeatedly disseminated pro-Hamas propaganda that criticizes any Israeli military action—be it attacks on Hamas military assets or calls on the Gaza civilian population to evacuate—while at the same time refusing to hold Hamas accountable for any violations. For example, Hamas weapons and tunnels have been found in or under UNRWA schools, including under UNRWA crates and in UNRWA sacks and Hamas has attacked from inside UNRWA schools. Nevertheless, UNRWA always blames strikes on UNRWA facilities on Israel, either directly or by implication. UNRWA never holds Hamas responsible and almost never even mentions Hamas.

UNRWA’s tweets are filled with outright lies and highly misleading information designed to generate international condemnation for Israel while giving Hamas a free pass. Naturally, this serves Hamas’s goal of increasing international pressure on Israel to stop its military campaign prematurely, before Hamas is destroyed so that Hamas can continue its campaign of terrorism against Israel.

Below is our response to a sample of UNRWA’s tweets in the twelve-days leading up to Christmas containing lies and misinformation that aid Hamas.

UNRWA Misinformation on Twitter from December 13-24, 2023

1. 20,000 Civilians Killed (@UNRWA, December 24, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: @UNRWA mourns 142 colleagues killed in #Gaza, alongside over 20,000 civilians killed since the war began…

UN Watch Comment:

UNRWA relies on the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health for its casualty numbers, which does not distinguish between civilians and Hamas combatants, so it is misleading for UNRWA to label all 20,000 reported casualties as “civilians.” According to the IDF, at least 8,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed as of December 23^rd, 2023.

Additionally, a close review of the UN’s official Gaza casualty count reveals that, unsurprisingly, the data is being falsified. The count of children and women casualties on some days increased more than the total casualty count. It is in Hamas’ interest to inflate children and women casualty numbers, blaming Israel to incite global antisemitism and to build diplomatic pressure against IDF operations.

Regardless of the veracity of the numbers, every civilian casualty is a tragedy. However, Israel does not target civilians and actively seeks to minimize civilian casualties. The IDF’s policy of Tohar HaNeshek, or “Purity of Arms,” enshrined in its Code of Conduct, explicitly forbids soldiers from targeting civilians.

On the contrary, Hamas intentionally targets Israeli civilians every time it fires indiscriminate rockets into Israel with the goal of killing as many Israelis as possible, while at the same time endangering Palestinian civilians by using them as human shields—a double war crime. An estimated 10 to 20 percent of the 12,000 rockets fired at Israel since October 7^th have fallen short within Gaza. While we do not know what percentage of the 20,000 reported casualties are due to the 1,200 to 2,400 indiscriminately fired Hamas rockets falling short on Gazans, or due to Hamas attacks on Gazan civilians evacuating south, or seeking humanitarian aid, one thing is clear: Every civilian casualty in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas.

2. Only a Ceasefire Can Prevent Killing and Destruction in Gaza (@UNRWA, December 23, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: “We need a ceasefire that will stop the killing of civilians & destruction of civilian infrastructure in #Gaza…

UN Watch Comment: A ceasefire can be achieved immediately if Hamas lays down its arms and returns the remaining Israeli hostages. UNRWA has never called for this.

On December 25^th, 2023, it was reported that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad rejected an Egyptian proposal for them to relinquish power in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire.

3. Difficulty in Distributing Aid in Gaza is Caused by Israel (@UNRWA, December 23, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: “We are not able to distribute as much food as we should – simply because it’s a sky full of airstrikes & there’s very little supplies we’re allowed to bring in”

@JulietteTouma @RTERadio1: It’s been 10 very long weeks of brutal, brutal war in #Gaza

UN Watch Comment: This tweet directly blames Israeli airstrikes for difficulties distributing aid in Gaza. It fails to mention that Hamas actively prevents distribution of aid. Specifically the tweet omits that Hamas gunmen stole humanitarian aid as they beat the Gazans attempting to get the aid and that Hamas operatives commandeered aid trucks carrying food, water, medicine, and fuel. UNRWA tweets never name or condemn Hamas. According to a Gazan civilian, Hamas itself controls UNRWA inside Gaza and steals humanitarian supplies for itself.

4. Israeli Evacuation Orders Put Gazans in Danger (@UNRWA, December 23, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: Evacuation orders issued by Israeli authorities move people to areas where @UNRWA shelters are beyond capacity & there are ongoing airstrikes

UN Watch Comment: This tweet suggests that Israeli evacuation orders endanger Gazans. In fact, it is Hamas that endangers Gazan civilians by embedding itself in the civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, mosques, and homes. Not evacuating civilians from active combat zones would result in much higher civilian casualties. By providing advance warning to civilians of areas where its battles against Hamas will soon take place, the IDF is fulfilling its obligation under international law at the expense of its military edge.

5. High Number of UN Workers Killed in Gaza Implies Israeli Wrongdoing (@UNRWA retweeting Antonio Guterres, December 23, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: 136 of our colleagues in Gaza have been killed in 75 days – something we have never seen in @UN history.

UN Watch Comment: UNRWA retweeted Secretary General Antonio Guterres paying tribute to the 136 UNRWA employees killed in the war. The tweet expresses outrage at the fact that so many UN staff have been killed in Gaza, commenting “something we have never seen before.”

The reason for that, which is omitted from the tweet, is that of all the conflict-affected areas in the world (Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan, Myanmar, etc.), only the Palestinians have their own UN agency that hires 30,000 mostly local people—more than 10,000 in Gaza alone—to provide basic government services like education and healthcare. Nowhere else in the world does the UN have that amount of staff on the ground, let alone local staff. By way of comparison, UNHCR has a total of approximately 30,000 employees covering the entire rest of the world.

The fact that so many UN employees in Gaza have been killed does not prove that this war is any more deadly than other wars around the world or that Israel is deliberately targeting UN staff. It is indicative only of the fact that the UN devotes far more resources to the Palestinians than to any other conflict-affected population.

6. Gaza is Worse Than Other Conflicts (@UNRWA, December 20, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: “All of this is unprecedented: the level of destruction, the displacement of people, the grief this has brought on the agency with the loss of colleagues, the hits on our own facilities”

UN Watch Comment:

What makes the situation in Gaza unprecedented is that a terrorist regime has had 16 years and billions of dollars of international aid to embed its terror operations into the civilian infrastructure for the purpose of attacking the liberal-democracy next door, Israel, from across the border. Hamas’s tactics are designed to achieve maximum levels of civilian casualties and destruction despite Israel’s best efforts to avoid that. The level and extent of Hamas entrenchment among the civilian population hasn’t been seen in any other conflict in the world.

UNRWA’s choice of the very dramatic word—“unprecedented”—to describe the situation is clearly intended to generate condemnation of Israel, the party carrying out the strikes. The tragic reality is that millions of people in the region from Syria to Yemen are displaced and in dire need of humanitarian assistance due to conflict.

7. Death of Gaza Children is Evidence of Israeli Violations (@UNRWA, December 19, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: Nowhere, and no-one, is safe in #Gaza. The killing of thousands of children cannot be collateral damage.

UN Watch Comment:

The reason Gaza is unsafe at the moment is because Hamas has turned it into a war zone by embedding itself in the civilian infrastructure. Knowing how dangerous Gaza is, one has to wonder why UNRWA is intent on keeping Gaza’s civilians in Gaza instead of advocating for neighboring countries to temporarily host the displaced until these hostilities are over? Since Hamas refuses to surrender, continues to attack Israel, and hides behind the Gaza civilian population, Hamas is fully responsible for all civilian deaths in Gaza.

From a legal perspective, this tweet is also wrong. “Collateral damage” is a legal term that comes from the IHL proportionality rule, which the tweet suggests is violated based on the result of the Israeli military strikes, i.e., the number of casualties. However, as military law expert Professor Geoffrey Corn explains, “proportionality is not defined by attack outcome, but instead by asking whether the individual launching the attack made a reasonable proportionality assessment when the trigger was pulled.”

8. Percentage of Destruction and Displacement Make Gaza Situation Unprecedented (@UNRWA, December 19, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: Over 60% of the infrastructure in#Gaza has been destroyed or damaged.

More than 90% of the Gazan population have been displaced.

This is a staggering and unprecedented level of destruction and forced displacement, taking place in front of our eyes.

UN Watch Comment: The reason there is a high level of destruction and displacement is because Hamas has spent its 16 years of rule of Gaza spending billions of dollars in international aid embedding its terror operations within the civilian infrastructure. It has built over 500 kilometers of subterranean tunnels running under homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques from which it conducts military operations.

9. Israeli Evacuation Orders Constitute Forcible Transfer (@UNRWA, December 18, 2023)

Since the war started, Israeli Authorities have forcibly moved 1.9 million Gazans from their homes- the largest forced displacement of Palestinians since 1948

UN Watch Comment: UNRWA falsely accuses Israel of the international crime of “forced displacement.” The rules of customary international law prohibit the deportation or forcible transfer of the civilian population of an occupied territory “unless the security of the civilians involved or imperative military reasons so demand.” Evacuation of civilians from an active war zone is not “forced displacement.” Suggesting otherwise is misleading and intended to demonize Israel. Moreover, Israel has not forced any Gazan civilians to evacuate, they have merely issued warnings as to which areas will soon see fighting. The decision of civilians to evacuate thereafter is voluntary.

The warnings are provided by the IDF as a courtesy to civilians, to give them ample time to flee the dangerous area, in the interest of saving innocent lives. These areas have been made dangerous because Hamas embedded its terror operations into civilian infrastructure, so Hamas is entirely to blame for the need for civilians to evacuate.

10. UNRWA Ensures Stability in the Region (@UNLazzarini, December 18, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: UNRWA’s presence has been pivotal in preventing #Gaza, and the region, from descending into chaos. The high standard of @UNRWA‘s educational system has been widely admired globally.

Undermining @UNRWA undermines international efforts in #Gaza & beyond.

UN Watch Comment: UN Watch recently documented how UNRWA staff celebrated Hamas’s October 7th massacre on Facebook. Since 2015, UN Watch has exposed more than 150 UNRWA staff who posted antisemitism and incitement to jihadi terrorism on Facebook. Our March 2023 report also showed how UNRWA staff routinely incite against Israel in the classroom and encourage impressionable students to follow a path of violence and martyrdom. As it stands, UNRWA’s education derails future prospects for peace by raising another generation of Palestinian children on hate and false dreams. In fact, it is UNRWA that “undermines international efforts in #Gaza & beyond,” by ensuring the perpetuation of the conflict.

11. Gaza Becoming a Graveyard (@UNRWA, December 17, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: #Gaza is becoming the graveyard of a population trapped between war, siege and deprivation.

UN Watch Comment: This type of exaggerated hyperbole and melodramatic language is intended to generate strong condemnation of Israel. While Gaza is now a war zone, it is not a “graveyard.” Moreover, every civilian casualty in Gaza is the responsibility of Hamas because Hamas’s strategy is to deliberately use Gazan civilians as human shields so that Israeli strikes targeted at Hamas will unavoidably cause civilian casualties, generating international condemnation and diplomatic pressure against IDF operations.

12. 2023 Israel/Hamas War is Worst Humanitarian Crisis in the Region (@UNLazzarini, December 15, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: Reassured by the decision from the Council of States this morning to keep supporting @UNRWA during one of the worst humanitarian crises in #Gaza and the region.

Critical that Switzerland expresses its solidarity to the victims of this brutal war.

UN Watch Comment: Without diminishing the seriousness of the humanitarian situation in Gaza, it is far from being “one of the worst humanitarian crises in…the region.” A quick survey of other ongoing conflicts shows this characterization is highly exaggerated. At least 306,000 Syrian civilians have been killed in the Syrian civil war and more than 14 million Syrians have been forced to flee their homes. UNHCR describes Yemen as the world’s “worst humanitarian crisis” with 4.5 million people displaced and 21.6 million people “in dire need of humanitarian assistance” as of March 2023. In Iraq, more than 1.2 million people are currently displaced by conflict and 3 million are in need of humanitarian assistance. Moreover, the UN could end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza immediately by demanding Hamas unconditionally surrender and release all hostages.

13. UNRWA Collapse Would be Betrayal of Palestinians (@UNLazzarini, December 13, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: Told @baysontheroad it is of utmost importance that the members of the @UN General Assembly realise if @UNRWA collapses in #Gaza, the Palestinian community will feel this ad the last betrayal of the International Community.

UN Watch Comment: Actually, by keeping UNRWA alive, the UN betrays the Palestinian people and the long-term prospects for peace in the region. The sole purpose of UNRWA is to perpetuate the conflict by giving Palestinians false hope that they will one day return to homes inside Israel. Thus, it prevents them from settling and developing productive lives where they are—which for more than 2.3 million so-called UNRWA refugees is territory designated for the future state of Palestine, either the West Bank or Gaza.

Moreover, despite its name, UNRWA acts as a welfare agency for the Palestinians, rather than a refugee agency. This encourages a culture of dependency that prevents the Palestinians from taking responsibility for their own future. The UN doesn’t provide long-term healthcare solutions, education, or cash assistance for one of the parties in any other conflict. If the General Assembly genuinely cares for the Palestinians, it should end UNRWA and start demanding accountability from the Palestinian leadership.

14. Israeli Attacks on UN Facilities Violate Laws of War (December 12, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: Saw videos of an @UNRWA school in northern #Gaza blown up. It is outrageous. All public facilities, including hospitals & @UN schools are protected under international law. Parties to this brutal war have the coordinates of all our facilities in Gaza.

UN Watch Comment: Yes, civilian objects like hospitals and schools should be protected under international law. However, they lose their protection and become valid military objectives “when and for such time” as they are being used for military purposes. UNRWA should direct its outrage at Hamas which has used UNRWA facilities for military purposes, causing them to become valid military targets. With some 10,000 Palestinian Gazans on its payroll, many of whom have ties to Hamas, UNRWA cannot plead ignorance about Hamas misuse of its facilities.

During the current hostilities there have already been reports of Hamas operating from UNRWA schools, including through its tunnel network, weapons depots which have been found in UNRWA crates and in UNRWA sacks, and attacks from inside UNRWA schools. A released Israeli hostage recently testified that while in captivity she witnessed Gazan’s cheering Hamas with shouts of “Allahu Akbar” after it launched rockets at Israel from a school where they were sheltering. By failing to name Hamas, this tweet falsely implies Israeli responsibility for attacks on hospitals and schools even though Hamas is the party that converted them into military objects.

15. “There is nowhere for people to go.” (@UNRWA, December 23, 2023)

UNRWA Tweet: To expand ongoing military operations, Israeli authorities have issued MORE evacuation orders for people in Middle Area of #Gaza to move into areas where there are ongoing airstrikes.

More than 150k people impacted.

There is nowhere for people to go. Nowhere is safe.

UN Watch Comment: “Evacuation orders” from the IDF are merely warnings that the dangerous ground war against Hamas will soon expand into new territory. The warnings are provided by the IDF as a courtesy to civilians, to give them ample time to flee the dangerous area, in the interest of saving innocent lives. These areas have been made dangerous because Hamas embedded its terror operations into civilian infrastructure, so Hamas is entirely to blame for the need for civilians to evacuate.

The tweet also says that there is “nowhere for people to go.” It is true that the expanding battleground within Gaza has created a humanitarian crisis and leaves practically nowhere in Gaza safe for civilians. However, this is true for all war zones. If this were any other conflict zone in the world, the UN’s response would be to assist civilians in fleeing the war zone and finding refuge, either temporary or permanent, in a safe country. When war broke out in Syria, the UN never demanded that Syrian civilians remain in the line of fire. Instead, UNHCR assisted millions of Syrians in seeking refuge in 130 different countries. As of December 2023, there are 1.9 million Syrian refugees registered with UNHCR in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon alone, and 3.7 million Syrian refugees registered in Turkey.

This begs the question: Why isn’t the UN facilitating a temporary evacuation of Gazan civilians out of the war torn Gaza Strip? For one, Gaza borders Egypt, which has heavily fortified its border and refuses to allow Gazan civilians through. But instead of condemning Egypt for this, the UN has supported Egypt’s position that no Gazan civilians should leave Gaza.

The answer is that the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has a mandate to assist and resettle refugee populations of all nationalities in the world except one: Palestinians.

Instead, Palestinians are serviced by UNRWA, which has a different mandate and a different definition for “refugee.” UNRWA’s mandate is explicitly not to resettle Palestinians. Rather, UNRWA holds them in “refugee camps,” which today are simply urban areas in Gaza, for generation after generation.

So when UNRWA says that “there is nowhere for [Gazans] to go,” the reason is because UNRWA’s mandate is keeping them trapped in a war zone.

In order to save Gazan civilians, UN Watch calls on UNHCR to intervene to assist in the temporary evacuation of Gazans, either by land through the Rafah Crossing, or if Egypt refuses to cooperate, then by sea. Israel should provide guarantees to all Gazan civilians evacuated that they will be able to return to Gaza once Hamas has been eliminated. In the long run, UNHCR should assist Palestinians who wish to voluntarily leave UNRWA refugee camps and resettle elsewhere in the world.

Herzog reveals Hamas documents outlining directives for ‘terror summer camps’ in Gaza

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January 10, 2024

President Isaac Herzog revealed on Sunday evening what he said was a Hamas document discovered by Israeli troops in Gaza dealing with summer camp programs hosted by the terror group.

He presented the documents during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and told the news show that the recently discovered documents were “a directive by the commanders of Hamas as to how to manage summer camps for children in order to disseminate the values of jihad. It says it clearly — to disseminate the values of jihad, and the values of the resistance, meaning terror, and how to make it a militarized society.”

The president said that while normal summer camps are about enabling “youngsters, kids and adolescents to become citizens of the free world and with liberty, with happiness with joy, with sports — here their entire aim is to make them terrorists.”

Summer camps run by terror organizations in the Gaza Strip have been a well-documented phenomenon over the years, with both Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad operating their own versions, featuring kids training in use of weapons and practicing activities such as fighting, kidnapping and killing Israelis.

During a press briefing earlier this month, the IDF showed reporters footage that it said depicted terror groups indoctrinating young people.

It accused the organizations of using minors to carry out tasks for them during the war, and asserted that children had been sent by the terror groups to battlefields in Gaza after an attack “to assess the damage and report it to the terrorists who are hiding in shelters.”

An undated image released by the IDF on January 3, 2024, showing Palestinian children playing on a mock tank next to Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. (Israel Defense Forces)

In 2021, a Hamas-run summer camp trained children to shoot soldiers at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and Al-Aqsa Mosque through computer simulations. Other activities the children were encouraged to participate in included a simulated kidnapping of an Israeli soldier.

At a similar camp operated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2023, PIJ official Darwish al-Gharabli told AFP that “Hundreds have participated in the camps of the al-Quds Brigades, the camps of glory and pride, ensuring that jihad and resistance will continue.”

Rockets are seen next to children at an Islamic Jihad summer camp in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, June 22, 2023. (AP/Fatima Shbair)

Asked during “Meet the Press” about comments made by several right-wing government ministers in recent days in which they have advocated for encouraging the mass emigration of Palestinians from Gaza, Herzog firmly rejected the notion that displacement is an official government policy.

The idea, he said, “is not the position of the Israeli government or the Israeli parliament or the Israeli public.

“But we are a democracy,” he continued. “And in a democracy, you have a variety of ideas in a variety of areas, and in a society where free speech is the basis of our national DNA, people can say whatever they want.”

“In a cabinet meeting of 30 ministers, a minister can say whatever he wants. I may not like it, but this is Israeli politics,” he added.

Comments advocating for the mass displacement of Palestinians which were made by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir have received fierce backlash in recent days, including from the US State Department, which called their rhetoric “inflammatory and irresponsible.”

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir leads a faction meeting of his far-right Otzma Yehudit party, at the Knesset in Jerusalem, on January 1, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

For his part, Ben Gvir told reporters that the war in Gaza presents “an “opportunity to concentrate on encouraging the migration” of the coastal enclave’s residents, while Smotrich told Religious Zionism Party members during a faction meeting that the “correct solution” to the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be to “encourage voluntary migration.”

Reiterating that “officially and unequivocally, this is not the Israeli position,” Herzog cautioned that Israel’s national psyche should be taken into consideration when interpreting what is being said.

“In the last three months, we have seen so much agony, pain and sadness,” he said, adding that there are still more than 130 Israelis held in Gaza, including Kfir Bibas, who is just one week shy of his first birthday, as well as several Holocaust survivors and other elderly people.

“Because of that, our nation is worried, is agonized, and we are doing whatever we can, to do whatever it takes to bring back these hostages.”

Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza erupted after the deadly terror onslaught on October 7 in which thousands of terrorists burst into Israel from Gaza, slaughtering some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — amid scenes of horrific brutality and seizing around 240 hostages.

In response, Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas from the Gaza Strip, which the terror group has ruled since 2007, and launched an aerial campaign and subsequent ground operation, which the United Nations estimates have displaced around 85% of Gaza’s population.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said that since the start of the fighting, more than 22,800 people have been killed, although these numbers cannot be independently verified. The figure does not differentiate between civilians and combatants and includes Palestinians killed by errant rocket fire from Gaza. Israel says it has killed 8,500 terror operatives inside the Strip since the start of the war.

This is a former Israeli foreign ministry official, Noga Arbell talking about destroying the UNRWA.

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January 10, 2024

This is a former Israeli foreign ministry official, Noga Arbell talking about destroying the UNRWA.
byu/hunegypt inPalestine

Israeli military discovers Hamas terrorist equipment hidden inside UNRWA bags in Gaza clinic

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January 10, 2024

Israeli Defense Forces discovered vests belonging to elite Nukhba forces of the Hamas terror group stashed inside bags belonging to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The vests were discovered during a raid on a Gaza medical clinic over the weekend. The IDF also found weapons hidden in an adjacent building.

“IDF troops, directed by intelligence, conducted a targeted raid on an area in Gaza City from which shots were fired at the troops over the last few days. During the activity, the troops located Nukhba military vests that were concealed by Hamas in UNRWA bags in a medical clinic. In an adjacent building, the troops located RPGs, AK-47s, and ammunition,” the IDF said in a statement.

Hamas weapons found in Khan Younis, southern Gaza (Photo: IDF)

The Nukhba force played a leading role in the unprecedented Hamas massacre of more than 1,200 Israelis during its surprise invasion of southern Israel border communities on Oct. 7.

The UNRWA for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is officially tasked with providing education and health care to the residents of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

The UN organization claims it is a non-political agency focusing on humanitarian work. However, Israeli and international critics have argued for years that the controversial UN agency has close ties to the terror organization Hamas. In addition, UNRWA-run schools have played a central role in spreading incitement and hatred against Israel and the Jewish people.

In December, Israeli Channel 13 journalist Almog Boker reported that a former Israeli hostage had testified that a UNRWA teacher had kept him imprisoned during his captivity in the Gaza Strip.

“’Uninvolved,’ they say, right? Well, read this story carefully. One of the abductees, held for nearly 50 days in an attic, reveals he was held by a UNRWA teacher – a father of ten children. This teacher locked the victim away, barely provided food, and neglected medical needs,” Boker wrote.

On Oct. 7, as the Hamas terror attack on civilians in Israel unfolded, UNRWA employees in Gaza celebrated.

UN Watch, the Geneva-based NGO that monitors the performance of the United Nations wrote in a November report:

“As soon as news of the horrific slaughter broke, which was live streamed on social media by some of the terrorists, United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) staff immediately celebrated and justified it on Facebook… UNRWA has been a breeding ground for Palestinian terrorists from its early days… The perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympic Massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered… almost all were raised and educated in UNRWA schools… Likewise, Mohamed Deif, the commander of Hamas’ Al Qassem Brigades who masterminded the October 7th massacre, was also educated in an UNRWA school.”

Israel hopes to have UNRWA removed from the Gaza Strip once the war is over, according to a Times of Israel report last week.

Action to be taken against UNRWA

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January 10, 2024

David Bedein

0587222661

IsraelBehindTheNews.com January 2024

TAKE UNRWA TO THE HAGUE

UNRWA does not hide the fact that its 30,000 workers act as soldiers at war with the Jews.

This is the time to take into account the origins of UNRWA, initiated by the 1948 UN mediator, , Folke Bernadotte, who first conceptualized the “Inalienable Right of Return to Palestine” as a contra to the Jewish aspiration of a the Return to Zion, later enacted by Israel as the Law of Return.

The time has come to take off the gloves and to finally define UNRWA as a hostile organization and to investigate criminal responsibility of the Commissioner General of UNRWA, who bears direct responsibility for the daily discovery of immense quantities of weaponry inside UNRWA schools,

A criminal investigation of UNRWA will focus on its direct involvement in terror actions.

All it takes is for one member of theKnesset to request the research division of the Knesset to gather evidence to present to the UN Secretary General of with charges of war crimes committed by UNRWA. That will get the ball rolling towards

It would be appropriate to ask at least one UNRWA donor to reactivate the dormant RWG – REFUFEE WORKING GROUP – as the UNRWA donors to oversee UNRWA 1.6 billion dollar budget, with the vast amount of funds received in cash and unaccounted for.

In that context a revitalized RWG would investigate the transparency of 1.6 billion dollars of annual donations from 68 donor countries and 33 organizations – most of it in cash – so that further funds for UNRWA will no longer wind up in hands of the terror organizations that now control the UNRWA treasury i

In that context, a revitalized RWG vet UNRWA employees associated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Fatah , in accordance with the laws of donor nations which forbid assistance to any terror entity,

Since UNRWA does bear responsibility for more than 5 million descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war, it would seem logical to eplicate working principles of the UNHCR – the UN High Commission for Refugees – to promote the permanent resettlement of 4th and 5th generations of refugees born after the 1948 war who have lived the past seven 7 decades as “refugees in perpetuity”, because
UNRWA policy had always been that a policy of the resettlement of the Palestinian Arab refugees from the 1948 war will harm their “Right of Return”.

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1. Removal of thousands of graffiti spread all over UNRWA , which call for Jihad and the praise of martyrs and murderers, while praising “Right of Return” by force of arms.

Cancel the new UNRWA new school curriculum, based on Jihad, adulation of martyrs and incitement against the Jews. . There is no excuse for UN school indoctrination to violence, “values” , at a time when the motto of UN education is “Peace begins Here“. 58% of the UNRWA budget is spent on UNRWA “education”

Conduct a thorough check for weaponry in all UNRWA facilities.
Cease any weapons training of UNRWA students
Remove PA text that praises mass murderer Dalal Al Mugrabi from all UNRWA schools.
Strengthen US- UNRWA Accord which conditions UNRWA aid on cancellation of incitement

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Take UNRWA to the hague

By

David Bedein

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January 10, 2024

UNRWA does not hide the fact that its 30,000 workers act as soldiers at war with the Jews.

This is the time to take into account the origins of UNRWA, initiated by the 1948 UN mediator, Folke Bernadotte, who first conceptualized the “Inalienable Right of Return to Palestine” as a contra to the Jewish aspiration of a Return to Zion, later enacted by Israel as the Law of Return.

The time has come to take off the gloves and finally define UNRWA as a hostile organization, and to investigate the criminal responsibility of the UNRWA Commissioner General, who bears direct responsibility for the discovery of immense quantities of weaponry inside UNRWA schools, as reported to the renewed Israel Knesset Lobby for UNRWA Policy Change by an IDF officer on active duty.

A criminal investigation of UNRWA at the Hague will focus on its direct involvement in terror actions.

All it takes is for one member of the Knesset to request that the Knesset research division gather evidence to present to the UN Secretary General of with charges of war crimes committed by UNRWA. That will get the ball rolling towards the Hague.

It would be appropriate to ask at least one UNRWA donor to reactivate the dormant RWG — REFUFEE WORKING GROUP — as the UNRWA donors to oversee UNRWA’s 1.6 billion dollar budget, with vast amount of funds received in cash and unaccounted for.

A revitalized RWG would investigate the transparency of 1.6 billion dollars of annual donations from 68 donor countries and 33 organizations – most of it in cash and unaccounted for – so that funds for UNRWA will no longer wind up in the coffers of terror organizations that now control the UNRWA treasury. The RWG would be asked to vet UNRWA employees associated with Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Fatah , in accordance with laws of donor nations that forbid assistance to any terror entity.

Since UNRWA bears responsibility for more than 5 million descendants of Arab refugees from the 1948 war, it would seem logical to apply the working principles of the UNHCR — the UN High Commission for Refugees — to promote the permanent resettlement of 4th and 5th generations of refugees who have lived the past seven decades as “refugees in perpetuity”, because UNRWA policy had always been that a policy of the resettlement of the Palestinian Arab refugees from the 1948 war will harm their “Right of Return, which has been reinforced by thousands of graffiti spread all over UNRWA , which call for Jihad and the praise of martyrs and murderers, while praising “Right of Return” by force of arms, along with the new UNRWA new school curriculum, based on Jihad, adulation of martyrs and incitement against the Jews. .

There is no excuse for UN school indoctrination to violence, since the motto of UN education is “Peace begins Here“. Notably, 58% of the UNRWA budget is spent on UNRWA “education”.

There is no reason why a renewed RWG cannot demand a thorough check for weaponry in all UNRWA facilities, a cessation of any weapons training of UNRWA students and the removal from all UNRWA schools of PA texts that praise the mass murderer Dalal Al Mugrabi.

Pursuant to Article 15 of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, any individual, group, or organization can send information on alleged or potential ICC crimes to the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the ICC.

Ending the Perpetual Epidemiological Disaster of the Hamas Ideology

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January 9, 2024

Palestinian members of the marine unit of the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas movement, take part in an anti-Israel parade in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on July 13, 2015. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90 *** Local Caption *** çîàñ
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As a doctor who spent a lifetime of work in epidemiology and environmental medicine, I have extensive experience thinking about how external factors drive public health outcomes – preventable disease and premature death.

I have studied and recommended reductions in pesticide use, the deployment of speed cameras, and removal of lead from contaminated flour mills, and household exposure to tobacco smoke in children among other areas of focus.

Much of this work occurred in the West Bank and Gaza. That experience has much to say about the catastrophe we have witnessed in Israel and Gaza, and which we risk reoccurring, if we do not address the intergenerational incitement and murderous intent in the Palestinian world.

As an epidemiologist with significant work studying genocide and incitement, I see indoctrination in genocidal ideology as a form of hazardous exposure with toxic effects on all age groups, but with specifically dangerous impacts on the young. Exposure to such incitement can be likened to frequent and high-dosage exposure to poisons like lead, PCBs, asbestos, and tobacco smoke. The impacts are both immediate and long-lasting. We should act accordingly.

October 7 as An Epidemiological Event

It’s critical that we see the Hamas attacks of October 7 and the resulting war in Gaza not just as a geostrategic milestone event but also as an incident in environmental medicine with impacts on both Israeli and Palestinian lives.

The barbaric attacks on Israel were systematic. For one day, Hamas waged total war, raping, murdering and kidnapping, and setting out to make Israel’s Gaza envelope communities uninhabitable, which many now are.

Israel has responded by defending itself and seeking to defeat Hamas militarily. For Gaza, this has been an epidemiological catastrophe. Whatever Gaza once was, it no longer is – and more destruction is surely coming if Hamas does not surrender.

While some in the public health and humanitarian community blame Israel for this destruction, that would be a mistake.

The predicate for all of the public health losses –of life, medical infrastructure, safe water, homes – was the ideology which made Israel’s military action inevitable.

Not Poisoned Wells, but Poisoned Minds

In a disease model, we must look for the disease, not the symptoms of the disease, if we are to heal the patient. The same is true in epidemiology: We must identify the content and effect of toxic exposure. The most famous such epidemiological discovery came in 1854, when John Snow deduced that a cholera epidemic in London could be linked to a single water pump on Broad Street.

In this case, we are not looking for a contaminated well. We are looking for contaminated minds: The contaminant is the ideology of Hamas. Hamas and its enablers have indoctrinated all Gazans in this ideology, from cradle to grave. Many of the thousands who came across the border to murder, rape and loot on October 7 were not only uniformed and trained Hamas terrorists, but ordinary Gazans who joined in on the genocidal massacre.

They were motivated to commit murder and rape by what they were taught at home, at school, at mosques, in the streets and on social media. If they had no formal training to kill, they didn’t need any.

It is rare that a society becomes so sick to the core that mass murder becomes a socially acceptable norm. Hamas terrorists bragged to their parents. They were greeted as conquering heroes and were eligible for large cash awards and free apartments. This is a culture in which genocidal massacre is celebrated.

Critics of Israel’s offensive into Gaza say it will only create more supporters for Hamas. That is absurd. Gaza already is dominated by intergenerational indoctrination of an extreme version of jihadist Islam.

It is critical that we recall Gregory Stanton’s seminal “Ten Stages of Genocide” speaks to this issue specifically. Genocide follows a distinct pattern, from classification of the enemy to symbolization of the enemy, to discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination and finally, denial.

Just as Palestinian society has been shaped by an ideology of genocide, it is also not destined to serve the cause of genocide. This was not inevitable. There are many traditional and religious societies in the Arab world similar to Palestinian Arabs which do not engage in any of the kind of genocidal or pre-genocidal steps of Hamas.

Destroying Hamas is Not Enough

If the problem is man-made, then the solution will be man-made. First, let us dispense with the fiction that destroying Hamas’s hardware, its fortifications above ground, and its tunnels underground is sufficient.

If Israel exits Gaza only having killed Hamas operatives and destroying Hamas infrastructure, it will have achieved very little of lasting value. It must take on the hard work of removing genocide-indoctrination and incitement.

Like any epidemiological matter of any consequence, this will take many years. Most public health scourges of the previous two centuries – typhoid, cholera, H1N1 flu, HIV/AIDS – took many years, considerable resources and a generational commitment of the entire medical and policymaker community.

There is, however, a model for this process, and it comes from America and its allies as they sought to denazify Germany and to pacify Japan after World War II. These efforts were comprehensive and driven by military dominance.

In Germany, the process included the Nuremberg trials, which did much to expose the world – and Germany – to the truths of the Nazi genocide program. But it wasn’t enough.

The process was not perfect. Many former Nazis avoided punishment; some innocent Germans were unfairly accused. The Allied forces confiscated all media – including school textbooks – that would contribute to Nazism or militarism. Art extolling Nazism was similarly banned and shunted aside. This was not a libertarian exercise.

But it succeeded. Germany had, at that point, emerged from roughly a century of bellicose militarism and deep antisemitism. It had started two world wars and an industrial-scale program of genocide. Few believed it could ever be anything but a source of human misery in the heart of Europe.

The Germany of today – peaceful, global and prosperous – would have seemed to be a mirage. In fact, General Eisenhower predicted the deNazification of Germany would take 50 years.

In Japan, too, the efforts were monumental. Japan had been a militant and bellicose society, with deep racial animus towards its neighbors and the West, for several centuries. Not only were its military and military industries disbanded, but outward signs of patriotism were banned in public life, including schools.

Massive other changes, including the introduction of a parliamentary democracy, the political rights of women and basic free speech rights, were enshrined in its new constitution. Again, as in Germany, textbooks were censored and control over schools was strictly regulated.

Indoctrination

Which brings us to Gaza in particular, and Palestinian nihilism in general. This work must begin first, and with Palestinian children both in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas, like the Palestinian Authority, values its control over children, as does any culture of indoctrination because it needs a large ever-renewable pool of morally pliable recruits

This was particularly valuable to Stalin’s commissars, Mao’s revolutionaries, Nazi Germany, and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Schools, youth clubs, summer camps and other institutions of child-rearing become instruments of hate. Textbooks signal what children are supposed to think. Other vectors of the genocide-pathology include children’s television, social media, and children’s songs and rhymes.

All of it is shaped and engineered to produce generations who see a specific enemy of the state as subhuman requiring eradication. Again, Stanton’s model applies: In Palestinian textbooks, provided by the Palestinian Authority in both the West Bank and Gaza, the citizens are already being prepared for genocide’s first four steps. The Palestinian textbooks are as bad as ever, according to EU authorities.

Incentivization

Then, our attention must turn to civil society. All systems of genocide incitement create a culture of compliance. Personal space, freedom and autonomy are eliminated. Through coercion, direction, intimidation, and harsh systems of reward and punishment, messages of hate became ordinary thoughts and actions that are criminal and immoral. This is Stanton’s fifth, sixth and seventh stages.

In the case of Gaza, the ideology of Hamas has been enabled by UNRWA (UN Relief and Work Agency) schools, summer camps and a wide variety of social programs, including some tied to health care institutions. UNRWA is staffed by Hamas’s sympathizers and enforcers who amplify hate. UNRWA schools adhere to Jihadist indoctrination, employ Hamas members as commissars to enforce ideological conformity, and create each year a large cadre of students willing to sacrifice themselves in order to kill more Jews. As with Nazi Germany, Hamas has many willing executioners – as we saw on October 7.

The reward-and-punishment system enforced in Gaza and the West Bank includes stipends given to terrorists or their surviving families for attacks – stipends paid for through international aid to Palestinian organizations including the Palestinian Authority.

All those organizations and nations that are willing or unwitting parties to such “pay for slay” programs – Qatar, the United Nations, Canada, the United States, and several European nations and organizations — must confront the epidemiological implications. They are actually hurting the people they aim to help.

Confronting the Foundations

As with the denazification of Germany after World War II, willing parties must take over Gaza’s legal, educational, political, religious, and cultural institutions or reestablish them under new direction and with new governance.

Schools in particular will require substantial reform, with new textbooks and curricula free from Palestinian Authority control or oversight, rigorous programs focused on dignity and respect for the other in line with Muslim teachings focused on charity, kindness and self-improvement (rather than a suicidal ideology of martyrdom on behalf of a political entity).

The process for de-hamasification must begin immediately. Convoys of food, water and other necessary supplies has the perverse effect of resupplying not just Hamas but sustaining its ideological grip over Gaza and causing still more harm to the public. All relief aid that goes into Gaza must be linked to programs to change mindsets. That will require new humanitarian organizations who pledge to end incitement as a part of their public health mission.

Any program of de-hamasification must be undertaken with special awareness of the character of the conservative and religious nature of Palestinian society – it would be foolish to expect a society that is deeply religious and traditional to embrace any of the conventions of a liberal Western secular nation like Germany or see it as a model.

In fact, the most difficult part of de-hamasification will be to decouple Islamic theology and Muslim cultural norms from Hamas and its leadership. But it is possible. For leadership and guidance to promote basic tolerance and moderation, within the texts and the traditions of Islam, we must consult with moderate Islamic theologians and philosophers.

One good example is Wasatia, the movement founded by Professor Mohammad Dajani. The Abraham Accords can serve as the political framework for promoting de-hamasification in Gaza and doing the same in the Palestinian Authority. And the US’s own work in de-Baathification of Iraq may prove instructive.

Some Islamic nations, notably Saudi Arabia, have long sponsored and run counter-indoctrination programs of their own to reverse the effects of exposure to the toxic messages of radical Islamist ideologies. These programs have a solid record of restoring individuals to society. But Saudi efforts are not consistent; the nation’s textbooks continue to promote intolerance and bigotry, especially towards Shia and Sufi Islamic traditions, as well as Christianity and Judaism.

Other models exist. The Carter Center in Atlanta has researched how to counter the indoctrination efforts of ISIS during its rise and years of control over schools in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. ISIS, like Hamas, concentrated efforts on promoting its genocidal ideology in school curriculum. This curriculum has been studied by public health experts who correctly appreciate its doctrinal character. The effort to remove ISIS ideology in Arab and Muslim nations is ongoing, but clearly is working – and we must include those nations and organizations in the effort to dehamasify Gaza. Their expertise will be critical.

There will be inevitable efforts to revivify Hamas in fresh garb. This must be resisted at every step. It must be stopped not only because of the danger Hamasism represents to Israel, but what it means to Palestinians. Every genocidal regime has been ruined by its own militancy and forced to confront the sources of its pain. This may happen in Gaza one day; but it will only happen if Gaza’s Palestinians are allowed to break free from the industrial level of ideological contamination that Hamas and Iran’s mullahs have been emitting for decades.

Elihu Richter is a retired head of the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Hebrew University School of Public Health and is the founder of the Jerusalem Center for Genocide Prevention.

Sen. Ted Cruz accuses UN agency of supporting ‘Hamas war machine,’ urges Biden admin to halt funding

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January 8, 2024

The Biden administration’s massive financial support for the scandal-ridden U.N. agency for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip was hit by a call from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, to scrap U.S. funds for it due to its alleged benefits for the Hamas terror movement.

“The United States should immediately halt funding to UNRWA and work to replace it with a more responsible organization. UNRWA provides direct benefit to Hamas by distributing resources across the Gaza Strip that go straight into the Hamas war machine, which means their activities pose a direct threat to Israelis and Americans,” Cruz told Fox News Digital in a statement.

UNRWA is the acronym for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. The Biden administration has pumped $1 billion of taxpayer money into UNRWA since 2021.

ISRAEL AMBASSADOR BLASTS UN ‘SILENCE’ OVER HAMAS ATROCITIES; TO WEAR YELLOW STAR UNTIL TERRORISTS CONDEMNED

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas is calling on the Biden administration to defund UNRWA

Biden’s funding for UNRWA is in the crosshairs of congressional oversight as some representatives accuse the agency of being complicit in its support of Hamas in Gaza.

Cruz, who has spearheaded efforts over the years to root out corruption at U.N. agencies, added, “Nobody denies that aid that goes into the Gaza Strip. When Joe Biden became president, his administration knew that restarting aid to UNRWA would illegally benefit Hamas terrorists, but they gave themselves exemptions from anti-terrorism laws and did it anyway. They didn’t care and neither does UNRWA, and they’re still engaged in benefiting Hamas terrorists after October 7.”

Antony Blinken at UN Security Council meeting

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (C) speaks with UN Secretary General António Guterres (R) and US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield (L) before the start of a United Nations (UN) Security Council meeting on the conflict in Middle East at the UN headquarters in New York City on October 24, 2023. (TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

John Kirby, U.S. National Security Council spokesman, said last week, “U.N. Relief Agency does important work. In fact, they’re doing a lot of heavy lifting right now in terms of trying to get food, water, medicine to the people of Gaza, all up and down the Strip. They’re doing a lot of work, and they’re doing it in harm’s way – very much so in harm’s way.”

The UNRWA tent camp, where hundreds of Gazan families have fled amid the war, in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Nov. 27, 2023. (Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

He added “And you can’t hold them accountable for the depredations of Hamas and the way Hamas uses civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, to – for command and control, for storage of weapons, for the holding of hostages.”

David Bedein, director of the Center for Near East Policy Research and an expert on UNRWA, produced a video in August titled “Askar—UNRWA: Cradle of Killers” purportedly showing Palestinian children inciting hatred against Jews and Israel at the Askar refugee camp near the West Bank city of Nablus.

DESANTIS BLASTS BIDEN FOR PRIORITIZING GAZA AID THAT WILL BE ‘COMMANDEERED’ BY HAMAS OVER RESCUING HOSTAGES

Children look at photographs of kidnapped Israelis during a rally in Bucharest, Romania, on Nov. 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda, File)

A young boy who is said to be a student at an UNRWA school declares, “With Allah’s help, they (the Jews) will all die.” A number of the alleged UNRWA school children promise they will return to Israel and Israeli cities as part of a Palestinian absorption of the Jewish state. “We will free Palestine and sacrifice martyrs to free Palestine,” says a second young student.

The area they refer to as “Palestine” is used by the children throughout the short documentary film to cover the entire territory of Israel. Since its release, Bedein’s documentary went viral on social media, gaining millions of views.

A Fox News Digital report in November showed some teachers and staff members of UNRWA praising the Hamas slaughter on Oct. 7. The U.S. and the E.U. have classified Hamas as a foreign terrorist organization.

GAZA CITY, GAZA – JANUARY 30: A man walks in front of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building as UNRWA personnel strike demanding a salary increase because of the high cost of living, in Gaza City, Gaza on January 30, 2023. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

When asked about Bedein’s film expose, Juliette S. Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, told Fox News Digital, “Attacks such as these attempt to discredit the Agency despite the lifesaving work it carries out. The latest video, circulating on X (formerly Twitter), attempts to link UNRWA’s education system to violence, using clips of alleged ‘UNRWA’ students and teachers.”

She added “The videos do not portray the reality in UNRWA schools. UNRWA dismisses those accusations in the strongest possible terms. UNRWA firmly condemns the antisemitic and inflammatory statements made during some of the interviews filmed. We also have serious concerns around the potential harm caused to children through the making and publication of these videos.”

Israel Defense Forces troops in the Gaza war zone accompanied by dogs from the Oketz unit. (IDF Spokesman’s Unit)

Touma stressed that “UNRWA has zero tolerance for hate, discrimination or any action that could be viewed as taking sides in conflict. UNRWA prides itself on providing a quality education in line with U.N. principles to Palestine refugees. To ensure no controversial material is taught in schools, the Agency undertakes regular and meticulous review of all textbooks and learning materials used by UNRWA schools to ensure their compatibility with UN values and principles.”

Israeli soldiers search the remains of a torched vehicle for forensic evidence at the site of the Oct. 7 attack on the Supernova desert music festival by Palestinian terrorists, on Oct. 13, 2023. (Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who has sought legislation to stop U.S. funding to UNRWA due to its alleged enabling of terrorism and antisemitism, said last year, “UNRWA has a long history of employing people connected to terrorist movements like Hamas, promoting antisemitic textbooks, and using its schools to store Hamas weapons. It is unthinkable that U.S. taxpayer dollars would be used to help fund such an organization.”

UNRWA schools and facilities have served as weapons storage facilities over the years for Hamas. Israel’s army located “a number of rocket launchers installed near an UNRWA school,” according to a report by the Israel-based Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center in the first week of January.

The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital press queries.

UNRWA Mandate to Relocate Palestinians outside of Judea, Samaria and Gaza Under the “Right of Return”, as taught in Palestinian Authority Texts in the PA and in UNRWA school system.

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January 5, 2024

By: David Bedein

Research: Dr. Arnon Groiss

The US State Department has denounced a proposal that Arabs dislocated from Gaza be settled elsewhere:

https://www.state.gov/rejection-of-irresponsible-statements-on-resettlement-of-palestinians-outside-of-gaza/

However, what the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA teach in their schools in Judea, Samaria, Gaza is that Arabs from UNRWA must be settled elsewhere- under the “Right of Return”.

The Right of Return is considered a basic element in the Palestinian narrative and is expressed in the Palestinian Authority’s schoolbooks. Following are three examples taken from the latest edition of these books that are used today in all schools in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, including those ones operated by UNRWA:

The presentation of this issue to four-graders includes the Palestinian point of view regarding the creation of the refugee problem in 1948, which serves as the basis for the notion of the right of return with a view to annulling the results of that war and returning to the pre-1948 situation:

“I have learned:

The Palestinians were forced to leave their cities and villages in Palestine in 1948 due to their harassment by the Zionist occupier and the killing of many of them, so they lived in refugee camps in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and neighboring Arab states, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and are still there until now.

The Palestinians who were expelled from their country are called refugees and they still hold the keys to their houses and the ownership documents for their lands and homes, from which they were forced to emigrate. They have the right to return to them.”

(National and Social Upbringing, Grade 4, Part 1 (2020) p. 34)

The return is not dependent on agreements or on Israel’s good will. Rather, it is an integral part of the fighting for the liberation of Palestine’s territory occupied by Israel in 1948. Following is a poem expressing that notion:

“I am the owner of the great right from which I will create the morrow

I shall retrieve it. I shall retrieve it as a precious and sovereign homeland

I shall shake the world tomorrow and shall march as a unitary army

I have an appointment in my homeland and it is impossible that I forget the appointment”

(Arabic Language, Grade 5, Part 1 (2020) p. 86)

The notion of the right of return to liberated Palestine is emphasized again in the following piece taken from the same book, which ends a story of a 1948 refugee:

“We shall return; we shall return with the soaring eagles; we shall return with the raging wind; we shall return to the vine and the olive tree; we shall return to raise the flag of Palestine, alongside the anemone flower, over our green hills.”

(Arabic Language, Grade 5, Part 1 (2020) p. 84)

Israel Behind the News

Facing Another Inconvenient Truth: The Misuse of Foreign Aid

UNRWA Misinformation on Hamas-Israel War

UNRWA Misinformation on Twitter from December 13-24, 2023

1. 20,000 Civilians Killed (@UNRWA, December 24, 2023)

2. Only a Ceasefire Can Prevent Killing and Destruction in Gaza (@UNRWA, December 23, 2023)

3. Difficulty in Distributing Aid in Gaza is Caused by Israel (@UNRWA, December 23, 2023)

5. High Number of UN Workers Killed in Gaza Implies Israeli Wrongdoing (@UNRWA retweeting Antonio Guterres, December 23, 2023)

6. Gaza is Worse Than Other Conflicts (@UNRWA, December 20, 2023)

7. Death of Gaza Children is Evidence of Israeli Violations (@UNRWA, December 19, 2023)

8. Percentage of Destruction and Displacement Make Gaza Situation Unprecedented (@UNRWA, December 19, 2023)

9. Israeli Evacuation Orders Constitute Forcible Transfer (@UNRWA, December 18, 2023)

10. UNRWA Ensures Stability in the Region (@UNLazzarini, December 18, 2023)

11. Gaza Becoming a Graveyard (@UNRWA, December 17, 2023)

12. 2023 Israel/Hamas War is Worst Humanitarian Crisis in the Region (@UNLazzarini, December 15, 2023)

13. UNRWA Collapse Would be Betrayal of Palestinians (@UNLazzarini, December 13, 2023)

14. Israeli Attacks on UN Facilities Violate Laws of War (December 12, 2023)

15. “There is nowhere for people to go.” (@UNRWA, December 23, 2023)

Herzog reveals Hamas documents outlining directives for ‘terror summer camps’ in Gaza

This is a former Israeli foreign ministry official, Noga Arbell talking about destroying the UNRWA.

Israeli military discovers Hamas terrorist equipment hidden inside UNRWA bags in Gaza clinic

Action to be taken against UNRWA

Take UNRWA to the hague

Ending the Perpetual Epidemiological Disaster of the Hamas Ideology

October 7 as An Epidemiological Event

Not Poisoned Wells, but Poisoned Minds

Destroying Hamas is Not Enough

Indoctrination

Incentivization

Confronting the Foundations

Sen. Ted Cruz accuses UN agency of supporting ‘Hamas war machine,’ urges Biden admin to halt funding

UNRWA Mandate to Relocate Palestinians outside of Judea, Samaria and Gaza Under the “Right of Return”, as taught in Palestinian Authority Texts in the PA and in UNRWA school system.

Column from the Director