Over 100 Israelis have joined the lawsuit alleging UNRWA as complicit in genocide against Israelis. The UN refugee organization knowingly employed Hamas members who aided and abetted in the kidnapping, torture, and systematic rape of men and women.
UNRWA’s schoolbooks were Hamas-approved, containing Nazi methodology for the creation of killing machines and suicide terrorists.
Senior Hamas operatives have been in control of the UNRWA education system and its staff union. UNRWA was an active partner in building control systems and centers, and Hamas’s headquarters were inside UNRWA schools and clinics, where missile launchers were set up, in violation of international law.
Eighty-four-year-old Ditza Hayman, released after 53 days in Hamas captivity, stated that the terrorist who held her was a teacher at the UNRWA school and a Hamas member.
Senior UNRWA officials have for over a decade financed the Hamas terrorist infrastructure.
The lawsuit, filed at the Manhattan Federal Court, accuses UNRWA of transferring no less than a billion dollars to Hamas over the years, with which the terror group was able to buy the weapons used on October 7 and to construct the “Gaza Metro,” used to store weapons, hide terrorists, and hold hostages.
The lawsuit describes the sophisticated method by which UNRWA deliberately allowed for the transfers to be made in dollars and exchanged by Hamas money-changers so that they could keep a considerable share of each transaction.
In the meantime, an UNRWA spokesperson has responded that: “The United Nations, including UNRWA, enjoys immunity from legal proceedings, as do all UN officials, including those who serve in UNRWA.”
Earlier this year, Talia Einhorn wrote (on the Mida website) about the need to shut down UNRWA. She said that “UNRWA was established by the United Nations after the War of Independence, specifically to rehabilitate the Palestinian refugees and provide them with employment.
However, in practice, the organization works to achieve completely different goals. The exceptionally expansive definition of the Palestinian refugees that UNRWA is in charge of, together with the powers given to UNRWA and the way it conducts itself, have resulted in the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugees. UNRWA has become one of the main factors that ensure that we will forever be eaten by the sword.”
The time has come for Israel to act to shutter UNRWA and compare the treatment of Palestinian refugees with that of refugees of all the other wars in the world.
According to data provided by the media as far back as 2007, most of the approximately 23,000 UNRWA employees are “refugees,” themselves who, contrary to the rules of the United Nations General Refugee Agency (UNHCR) are making a living from their very existence as refugees.
In Gaza, UNRWA has some 100 international professional employees whose work is related to the organization’s purported aims.
Funds that serve terrorism
The rest cooperate with Hamas terrorists. Funds supposed to serve the residents have been used for weapons and ammunition and to establish an anti-Israeli propaganda machine.
The main points of the Hamas charter are as follows.
• The conflict with Israel is a religious conflict between Islam and the “infidel” Jews.
• The entire Land of Israel is waqf land, meaning “Islamic holy land,” which no one has the authority to give up.
• Every Muslim has a personal duty to wage an uncompromising war, jihad, as a central means of destroying the State of Israel.
Numbers of refugees have been artificially increased by the non-reporting of deaths and the false registration of additional people as refugees, aimed at increasing support for the agency over the years.
Bedouins who were wanderers in the area and had no permanent home in Israel were also included in the numbers, but UNRWA has neither improved the lives of the refugees nor rehabilitated them.
Internal UNRWA reports from 1951 and 1960 note that UNRWA was “very flexible” in defining people as “refugees,” to be able to include those who had not even had a home in Israel but only worked for within the territory before the 1948 war was declared by Arab countries on the nascent state.
ISRAELI HOUSING and Construction Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, also chair of the Israel Land Authority (ILA), has found a way to dislocate UNRWA from property owned by the Jewish state in response to the organization’s deviation from its contractual obligations, The ILA has demanded that UNRWA immediately vacate buildings and land in Jerusalem and pay tens of millions of shekels owed.
Shockingly, despite evidence of the UNRWA-Hamas-and-Islamic-Jihad terror alliance, countries such as Germany, Japan, France, Australia, Canada, Sweden, and Spain have hastened to renew their funding of UNRWA in Gaza.
Germany was, surprisingly, the first, on the heels of the publication of a UN report stating that Israel had not provided evidence that many UNRWA employees belonged to the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip and that at least 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the October 7 massacre.
Yoav Zeitoun wrote this week on Ynet: “The IDF recognizes how Hamas has recovered in Gaza City in recent months in terms of governance, which has not only manifested itself militarily. The terrorist organization has even managed to pay the salaries of its operatives and recruit hundreds of new militants, some of whom are now confronting IDF forces...”
Hypocrisy reaches new heights
In February, hypocrisy reached new heights when a senior MP in Norway’s ruling Labor party, and a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee member, Edmund Okrost, announced Norway’s submission of UNRWA for the Nobel Peace Prize for its long-term work in providing essential support to Palestine and the region in general over the past over 70 and particularly in the last three months – even as UNRWA was being investigated for ties to Hamas.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed an Independent Review to investigate UNRWA.
The review reported “a more developed approach to neutrality” than found in other similar UN or NGO entities. France’s former foreign minister Catherine Colonna chaired the inspection committee, submitting its report to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who moved to adopt its recommendations and immediately set a plan in action, called on all stakeholders to actively support UNRWA as a “lifeline” for Palestinian refugees.
Beneath UNRWA headquarters the IDF dug up an 18-m. deep by 700-m. long tunnel, containing an electrical infrastructure shared with Hamas. The tunnel would have enabled raids on additional Israeli targets.
UNRWA Director-General Philip Lazzarini’s comment on this issue was that the organization does not have the “military expertise” to check what is underground.
As proof of UNRWA terrorism, IDF Spokesperson Rr.-Adm. Daniel Hagari published two recordings of UNRWA teachers who infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7 massacre. In one, an Arabic teacher brags that he has “captured Judaism.”
According to the IDF, more than 450 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists in the Gaza Strip are also UNRWA employees.
It is time to act to close down UNRWA so that the funds contributed by many countries not become the wages of terror, attracting hundreds of new armed terrorists.
The writer is CEO of Radios 100 FM, honorary consul of Nauru, deputy dean of the consular staff of Israel, and vice president of the Ambassadors Club.