End UNRWA

National Review Online

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

 

For the first time since the U.N.’s membership voted it into existence in 1949, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East is in a fight for its survival. It deserves to lose.

 

The recent allegations, based on Israeli intelligence, that have led to the current situation are as follows: Twelve of its employees took part in the October 7 attack, with two of them directly participating in the slaughter at the kibbutzim in Israel’s south; some 190 UNRWA employees are operatives of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another terror group in Gaza; and approximately 1,200 UNRWA employees of the 12,000 in Gaza are otherwise linked to Hamas.

 

Put simply, U.N. employees participated in a horrific terrorist attack. Many of their colleagues are terrorists, too.

 

It’s arguably the biggest scandal in the U.N.’s history, or at least very close to the top of the list.

 

Now Turtle Bay, the international-development–industrial complex, and Foggy Bottom are working to evade what should be the consequences.

 

The leaders of the U.N. and UNRWA are “horrified,” the organization’s internal audit arm has launched an investigation, and the relevant UNRWA employees have been fired (two have already died and the identity of one is still being determined).

 

The State Department has “temporarily paused additional funding for UNRWA” while the U.N. investigates and Washington reviews the situation (after the Trump administration cut all U.S. funding for the agency, President Biden resumed it in 2021, with the U.S. sending it over $1 billion over the past three years). Other countries have done the same.

 

UNRWA and its apologists have already launched a PR campaign to pressure countries to reverse course and continue to send UNRWA money. Unfortunately, the liberal internationalist foreign-policy establishment has an unquestioning attachment to UNRWA as a concept, and the suspensions will almost certainly be temporary. In the U.S., even as top officials call the allegations credible and express horror at the situation, they continue to vouch for UNRWA as a critical vehicle through which to deliver aid to Palestinians.

 

But to resume funding for UNRWA would be a massive mistake. It would continue to lend legitimacy to the premise behind the agency — the idea that Palestinians are different from refugees in any other part of the world because they have a right to “return” to Israel.

 

And resuming funding would further entrench the unseemly incentives that have insulated the U.N. from accountability for the agency’s rank antisemitism and incitement of terrorism. It’s not as if 1,200 UNRWA staffers in Gaza woke up on October 7 and chose to embrace a mass-murder cult. The support for terrorism within the agency has been well established for decades. The international bureaucrats in charge have chosen to look away time and time again.

Textbooks used in U.N. classrooms glorified terrorism; the teachers did too. UNRWA schools doubled as arms depots and rocket-launch sites. The agency once dismissed its top official in Gaza after Hamas leaders demanded the personnel change.

 

UNRWA tried to cover its tracks. In December, it demanded that an Israeli reporter delete a social-media post in which he reported that one of the Hamas hostages had been held by a UNRWA teacher. In October, UNRWA made a post alleging that Hamas had stolen supplies, then deleted it and gave an explanation so incomprehensible that there can be no doubt that it was covering for the terrorist group.

 

All the while, U.N. leaders have dismissed the critical work of watchdogs such as UN Watch, which has brought evidence of UNRWA’s links to terrorism to light countless times.

 

In the short term, Congress needs to pass a blanket prohibition on the use of U.S. funds for any of UNRWA’s operations. It must do this to preempt any future decision to lift the temporary suspension of funding and to set the stage for UNRWA’s eventual elimination.

 

UNRWA’s supporters say that cutting the agency out of the picture would leave a gap in humanitarian aid for Gaza. They ignore that much of the assistance entering Gaza is likely snatched by Hamas anyway. Most important, to continue funding UNRWA would maintain America’s de facto culpability in financing terrorism. Other U.N. agencies with a better track record, such as the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.S.-dominated World Food Program, should step in, and America should help them build the capability to do so.

 

But that’s just a start. America needs to fight hard to repeal UNRWA’s U.N. General Assembly–granted mandate. Given the rank antisemitism that goes unquestioned at the international body, that’s no small task, but Washington also has not tried particularly hard to get this done.

 

Other U.N. agencies need to be on the chopping block as well. UNRWA might be the worst, but that doesn’t say much.

 

John Bolton once said that if the highest ten floors of the U.N. headquarters were to disappear it “wouldn’t make a bit of difference.” But depending on where UNRWA’s offices are, it might lessen international support for Hamas terrorism.